What else would expect from complete hypocrites? All their attacks on the ACA were based on rising costs, deductibles and not enough choices. Their actions however were to make all those problems worse, when they knew what was needed to fix all those problems.
They did worse than not doing anything, they sabotaged it. Their attacks called for liberal solutions while knowing all along they would do the exact opposite, and Trump’s cheering morons had no clue what fools they were
It’s bait-and-switch, and they’ve got an expert salesman when it comes to flimflamming.
There is a conservative philosophy that right-leaning health policy wonks will offer in favor of higher cost-sharing. They are argue that if consumers are exposed more directly to health care costs, they’ll be more selective about what services they receive, prompting market forces to drive down the prices.
Ah, the Sacred Free Market (home of the Eminent and Majestic Job Creators). This works great for beer and cars. But is forcing individuals and the irrational free market into being the deciders of health care service choice a good thing? The choice of health services should be driven by positive health outcomes, and that can’t be evaluated by the free market/consumers. Only science can evaluate that.
The GOP: they should follow the 1st commandment of their first religion and ditch their worship of their other religion, the free market.
I believe I hear some peasants sharpening sickles.
These a$$hat$ are really big on the bible. They’d do well to remember Numbers 32:23 –
But if you fail to keep your word, then you will have sinned against the LORD, and you may be sure that your sin will find you out.
The specific context isn’t too far off this debate – it concerns the conquest of Canaan, and hence governance somewhat more generally. I suppose it depends on what the peasantry view as “their word.” It seems pretty clear (at least to me) that “their word” is seen to be that they would “fix” the problems of the ACA – expense, mandatory health insurance, lack of choice in providers, etc. – and not change the goodies – community rating, caps on age differential premiums, mandatory issue.
Any thinking person can see those things are in pretty serious conflict, but anyone not among the 1% who votes GOP isn’t a thinking person.
Republican’ts also have big plans to sell you a brand new car for only $199!*
(*Of course if you want doors, wheels, a steering system, brakes, a gas tank, an engine and a transmission you’ll have to pay another $30,000. And, no, you don’t get to pick and choose among the options…)
The problem with a free market solution is that , while insurers will compete for young/healthy/wealthy customers, they actively do not want the people who are actually in need of health services. They won’t compete with each other for what is essentially added cost.
Well you know huge tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires and corporations don’t just grow on trees.
they rationalize by knowing the insurance companies will make and keep more money which means more cash flowing into their re-election campaigns…
Pay $200 a month for the right to pay $7500 more before you get any benefit?
That’s not health insurance. That’s insurance company welfare.
A “better” option would be to not pay $200, wait until something catastrophic happens, and then use the expensive, taxpayer-backed, free hospital services.
It’s what Trump would do.
The reasons are wonky but incredibly important
Wonky yes (Tierney has explained the wonky part well here) and no.
The non-wonky part is simply that the GOP Wealthcare bill gives a huge tax break to the wealthy and makes up for it by increasing the amount people pay out of pocket for healthcare.
I live on a snark-rich diet, so I can appreciate your contribution while also grumbling about any reinforcement for the notion that taking insurance away from people isn’t that bad, because they can always go to the emergency room.
There are some urgent healthcare needs that can be satisfied mostly by a visit to an ER, but ER’s only have a niche role in healthcare (except on TV). Hell, even a simple bone fracture that can be held in place with just a cast will require non-ER followup care to watch for infection, to determine when the bone is sufficiently healed, and to remove the cast. Many diseases don’t present the kind of symptoms that qualify for ER care, or require ongoing treatments that ERs don’t provide.
I am confident that you know all this. I’m just using your comment to caution TPM readers against accepting or contributing to the meme that the ER is there as backup for people who’ve had their insurance taken away.
All that math and numbers - so hard to understand. I just know that if it’s a Republican plan blessed and signed by Donald J. Trump with his big beautiful signature, I will like it better than Obamacare no matter what it costs me, including my life.
No one makes “free market” decisions when it comes to their own health. The very concept is absurd. I don’t decide whether I can afford to be diagnosed with leukemia the way I decide whether to buy a new car. I don’t make a cost-benefit decision about the air ambulance flight when they pry me out of the traffic wreck with head trauma.
Even if we did try to do so, it is a well documented fact that in many cases no one, not the patient, not the doctor, nobody, has the foggiest clue how much some of this stuff actually costs, so you can’t make an informed consumer decision.
Anyone who uses the words “free market” in the context of health care is basically saying “I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
So these evil fucks think exposing people to an inelastic economic product is going to make them shop around. Like my wife getting Chemo for cancer had any clue or the wits to shop around. This is evil bullshit from evil people.
More free market issues, in the rural parts of the great plains, patients are heavily medicaid or medicare, which pay less to the provider, since people wont be forced to have insurance anymore, many would skip it altogether and just show up at the emergency room when real sick, hospitals that take medicaid money are obliged to take all emergency cases. In the big cities they will just add this costs to the price of the high paying patients and be done with it.
But in the rural areas in states with sparse population, like Kansas or Nebraska or the Dakotas, the hospitals have no way of recovering the emergency services because there are very few high paying patients, many small city hospitals and clinics will decide that it’s not worth it and simply close.
So the people in the plains that brought us Donald Trump and that still approve of him so much will be left without medical care at any price, and deservedly so.
And just imagine a world in which the free market does become the model for delivering healthcare - it’ll be Dr. Nick Riviera’s Discount House o’ Healing (I’ll set any broken limb for the low, low price of…) all the way down…
If premiums and deductibles were going up under Obamacare, but the Senate plan will make out-of-pocket costs go up even more and even faster - and that’s now a good thing, then why not just leave Obamacare in … oh yeah, I forgot about the massive tax cut for the 1%ers and the almost orgasmic satisfaction of taking insurance away from those who need it most (especially those nursing home moochers and chronically ill kids).
CHICO: Its free, just a one dollar delivery charge.
GROUCHO: Can I move a little closer and make it fifty cents?
CHICO: Yeah, but then I’d just move over here and make it a dollar again.