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| Member |
I have zero faith that the Republican Party knows how to rule or even wants to. This was the most half baked attempt to pass legislation in years. You have to think they wanted this thing to fall apart. Otherwise, you'd have to conclude they're just a bunch of egocentric incompetents. I've been voting for republicans since 1980, but I am done voting for people who are scared to lead when they're in charge. Its pathetic. After 7 years of screaming to anyone who would listen that we had to repeal Obamacare, the best they could do was that piece of crap bill? WTF have they been doing for 7 years? | |||
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Cursed be he who moves my bones! |
Zackly. | |||
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Member |
Health Saving Accounts have always been a good idea to me. I had a CT scan last year. The cash price was $450.00. The bill to insurance price was $470.00. Then the negotiated rate knocked the cost lower. We do the same as you when helpful. But, emergency doctor care is a monopoly run from the Bay area for us. They have the franchise and charge relentlessly inflated rates with no competition whatsoever. Only insurance and editing hospital entry forms while sitting in the emergency room gets them to accept negotiated insurance rates. At one point an ER Doctor said she said would not treat if forced to accept insurance rates. She made a call and said it came from higher up; she knew it was wrong but it did not stop her from giving it a go. That took a trip from a hospital administrator. That ER doctor is the unfettered market at work. _______________________________ NRA Life Member NRA Certified Range Safety Officer | |||
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| Member |
Well, that's dramatic. Standard Oil serves as a good example of what can happen in an unchecked free market. They became so strong that they made a railroad pay a kickback to Standard Oil every time the railroad carried any competitor's oil. The result was prices went up as they crushed their competition until trust busting regulation stopped restraints on trade. Pure market forces seek to kill competition to allow high prices and profits. It is nice to think that health care will be delivered benevolently in an unregulated market but it is not always so. I do not wish to pursue this issue anymore so as to keep the thread on course. Discussing all the instances of necessary regulation to check the excesses of the market are plenty and could be argued round and round. I was originally responding to the use of Friedman's quote to imply that those who see a need for reasonable regulation lack a belief in freedom itself. People who see a need for some government role in untangling what exists now in order to keep sick or desperate consumers of the heath care environment from being harmed during a transitional period do not hate freedom. _______________________________ NRA Life Member NRA Certified Range Safety Officer | |||
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| Cursed be he who moves my bones! |
Amen. | |||
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Essayons |
Maybe they don't "hate freedom". But they stupidly put too much faith in government. The government WILL fuck it up. Thanks, Sap | |||
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Tinker Sailor Soldier Pie |
Passing huge legislation like this is not supposed to be easy; it's designed to be hard and for good reason. The Democrats crapped all over the process and bastardized it. At least the Republicans have reintroduced the process of legislating even if they failed to pass anything this time. And it's good that it failed because it was a crap bill. If it were the Democrats in charge, they would simply pass a crap bill simply because the leadership told them to even if they haven't read it. In fact, that's how we got Obamacare. So I'm still thankful we have a majority, and I'm going to keep trying to keep it that way. ~Alan Acta Non Verba NRA Life Member (Patron) God, Family, Guns, Country Men will fight and die to protect women... because women protect everything else. ~Andrew Klavan | |||
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| Lawyers, Guns and Money  |
BOOM! THIS is how you do a repeal bill! Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks cut through all the political mumbo-jumbo and filed a 2-page repeal bill today. With a simple two-page document, an Alabama congressman has filed a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives to repeal Obamacare. Or, as it is stated in the bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Huntsville, introduced the bill Friday. "This Act may be cited as the 'Obamacare Repeal Act,'" the bill states. And the bill uses just one sentence to do it. "Effective as of Dec. 31, 2017, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is repealed, and the provisions of law amended or repealed by such Act are restored or revived as if such Act had not been enacted," the bill states. And that's it - one sentence. Another bill signed into law by former President Barack Obama - the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 - would also be repealed under Brooks' bill. The health care aspect of the law is also considered a part of Obamacare. In a statement on Friday announcing he would oppose the Republican health care plan, which was eventually pulled from a vote because of a lack of support, Brooks said he had plans to introduce the bill to repeal Obamacare. Brooks challenged his fellow lawmakers in Washington to sign the discharge petition that would bring the bill out of committee, where it otherwise could be left to die. Brooks' bill has no co-sponsors at this point. "If the American people want to repeal Obamacare, this is their last, best chance during the 115th Congress," Brooks said. "Those Congressmen who are sincere about repealing Obamacare may prove it by signing the discharge petition." "At a minimum, the discharge petition will, like the sun burning away the fog, show American voters who really wants to repeal Obamacare and who merely acts that way during election time." http://www.al.com/news/huntsvi...iles_bill_to_re.html "Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." -- Justice Janice Rogers Brown "The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth." -rduckwor | |||
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Info Guru |
But it's really not. The bill is already dead. This is how you make a statement or advocate for a position, but it's not how you get a bill repealed or passed in Congress. The Freedom Caucus is out of the loop on Obamacare now. They won't be consulted and won't have any input on what ultimately happens with Obamacare - they stood on their hill and died there.  Trump will be working with democrats now to replace Obamacare and I would wager that the Freedom Caucus would have liked the bill that was just shot down a lot better than what comes down the pike.  “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” - John Adams | |||
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| Lawyers, Guns and Money |
Yes, BamaJeepster, you are right that Mo Brooks' bill is going nowhere, it won't get enough signatures on the discharge petition... but I'm glad he filed it to make the point. So. What comes next on repealing ObamaCare? The RyanCare bill (AHCA) was a disaster. It was not a vote to repeal ObamaCare, but rather a vote to keep it, and tweak it. That’s not what Republicans promised to do, and it’s not good enough. We should not mourn its passing, but celebrate it. The defeat of the bill was glorious, and the members of the Freedom Caucus who opposed it are heroes. The reason fans of the free market are angry is not because RyanCare failed — but because of the statements by Paul Ryan and Donald Trump that they are done with trying to repeal ObamaCare. Those statements are wrong and dangerous. As Ted Cruz once said: First principle: Honor our promise. When you spend six years promising, “If only we get elected, we’ll repeal Obamacare,” you cannot renege on that promise. Failure is not an option. Breaking our word would be catastrophe. The voters would, quite rightly, never again trust Republicans to deliver on anything. Amen. The response to the defeat of RyanCare is not to pick up the ball and go home. It must be to draft a bill that actually does what Republicans promised, and drives down costs through market-based mechanisms. What should such a bill look like? As it turns out, Ted Cruz had a proposal that outlined a blueprint that could bring Republicans together and actually repeal ObamaCare. I think it’s worth giving his proposal another detailed look. First, Cruz suggests something I have been pushing throughout this process: starting with the 2015 repeal bill. First, begin with the 2015 repeal language. . . . Virtually every Republican in Congress voted for that language, and the parliamentarian has already ruled it as permissible. We should begin with that previously approved repeal language as the baseline. Bingo. The recent debate over AHCA has shown that the previous votes to repeal ObamaCare may have been fraudulent show votes. But here’s the thing: if you’re a moderate, it’s easier to justify a vote against AHCA than it would be to justify changing your vote on the exact same language you voted for before. A duplicate of the 2015 bill, we learned yesterday from Andrea Ruth, exists — today, in this Congress. It is languishing in committee. It needs to be pushed to the floor and voted on. But the 2015 bill is not enough. So Cruz next focuses on areas that should provide broad consensus for Republicans. They include excellent ideas like “allow[ing] consumers to purchase insurance across state lines,” ensuring the ability to buy “low-cost catastrophic insurance on a nationwide market,” and the use of health savings accounts. These would all have the effect of increasing competition and lowering costs. But it’s what Cruz says next that I consider critical: Third, we should change the tax laws to make health insurance portable, so that if you lose you[r] job you don’t lose your health insurance. You don’t lose your car insurance or life insurance or house insurance if you lose your job; you shouldn’t lose your health insurance either. And that would go a long way to[wards] addressing the problem of pre-existing conditions, since much of that problem stems from people losing their jobs and then not being able to get new coverage on the individual market. Fourth, we should protect continuous coverage. If you have coverage, and you get sick or injured, your health insurance company shouldn’t be able to cancel your policy or jack up your premiums. That’s the whole point of health insurance. These suggestions by Cruz are very important, and I want to discuss them at some length. Here’s where it gets tough, because there’s a bitter pill that, in my view, Americans have to swallow: we have to get rid of the ObamaCare provision that requires companies to insure pre-existing conditions. Now I can already hear a bunch of people yelling: hold up there hoss, that’s never going to work and people don’t want that. Do me a favor: hear me out. There’s a way to address the concerns people have about insurance companies’ refusal to insure against pre-existing conditions without this mandate. The answer lies in Cruz’s suggestions in his op-ed, which contains terms that may seem abstract to some people, such as “guaranteed renewal” and “equal tax treatment for individual plans” and “portability.” But if you stick with me for a moment, I’ll explain the reality behind these abstract terms, and how they can help solve the problem. First, let me say that I understand why people wanted the provision requiring coverage for pre-existing conditions. Very simply: the situation before ObamaCare was untenable for a lot of people, and the recession made it worse. Here’s the scenario: you’ve been carrying health insurance for years through your job — but then the recession hits and you are laid off. You’ve been responsible all these years, but in the meantime you’ve developed a serious health condition. Because insurance is tied to work, you’re now thrown into the individual market, which is entirely dysfunctional and which may well reject you because of your “pre-existing” condition. This is an entirely unacceptable state of affairs. It’s unfair, and Americans should not have to stand for it. And it seems to many people as though the easy answer is to tell insurance companies: hey, you have to cover these conditions! But here’s the problem: that leads you inextricably down the ObamaCare path, because if you mandate coverage for pre-existing conditions, most people just won’t buy health insurance until they develop those conditions. That’s clearly an unworkable situation for insurance companies, because they can’t make money by selling only policies that are going to lose them a lot of money. And that’s what led us to this Rube Goldberg contraption of ObamaCare, where the government decided to pad the insurance companies’ bottom line by forcing healthy people to buy insurance, and even forcing them to buy coverage for things they didn’t want and would never want (like maternity care for a single male). So the pre-existing conditions requirement is not some perk that we can keep while ditching the rest of ObamaCare. So what else can be done? Well, there’s always single-payer. If you liked socialism and think it worked well for the Soviet Union, North Korea, and Venezuela, you’ll love socialism in health care! The rosy Big Media descriptions of socialized health care in Canada, the UK, and elsewhere often leave out the plight of people who die waiting for their operations, and are simply neglected by a system that has no real incentive to improve their health. There’s also a corrosive effect of nationalized health care on your ability to criticize the government. If you think politicians making decisions about your life is a good thing now, just wait until they have power over whether you live or die. Dissent is going to be a little more difficult then, isn’t it? Luckily, the free market has another way. It’s called guaranteed renewability — the same concept as the “continuous coverage” described by Cruz in his op-ed. Guaranteed renewability is described in this excellent paper from the Mercatus Center: [G]uaranteed-renewable insurance permits consumers to renew their coverage at the same premium, regardless of whether they have developed any new chronic health conditions since obtaining the insurance. If you really want to go deep into the policy analysis, I recommend reading that paper. But the essence of the idea is that, like term life insurance, annual premiums are lower if you buy in when you’re young and healthy. This way, the money that insurance companies need to cover people who have developed serious health conditions is provided voluntarily by younger people who want to buy into guaranteed renewal coverage early, rather than by a government-ordered mandate enforced by penalties (or if you prefer, Justice Roberts, by “taxes”) imposed on people who don’t comply. Why didn’t this happen pre-ObamaCare? Actually, it did — but it was unworkable for a lot of people who lost their jobs, because insurance was not truly portable. The Mercatus Center paper says that “most individual market plans were indeed sold with this guaranteed-renewable provision” — but if you lost your job, you’d end up having to convert from a health plan sponsored by the employer to an individual health plan. This would subject you to rejection for a pre-existing condition — the very same unacceptable racket described above. The HIPAA law in 1996 attempted to address the issue of portability, but did not really fix the problem. A large part of the reason health insurance is not fully portable is the differential tax treatment between employer-sponsored and individual plans. Insurance premiums paid by employers are not taxed, while premiums paid by individuals are. How could we even out the tax treatment of employer-sponsored and individual plans? We could follow the lead of most economists and rescind the tax exemption for employer-sponsored plans, but that would be very unpopular. The Mercatus Center instead suggests “modification of the tax code to extend the tax break for health insurance beyond the employment-based market into the individual market.” In other words, give the tax exemption to everyone. This would still amount to a subsidy by the federal government — but employees already enjoy this subsidy, and the unequal treatment of individual plans is not equitable and distorts the market. The key is treating both types of plans equally under the tax code. Of course, we can’t just snap our fingers and achieve all this overnight. As the Mercatus Center paper acknowledges, “a transition to this market-oriented arrangement would likely have to be coupled with high-risk-pool coverage for those who already have pre-existing conditions, but the need for these high-risk pools would decline over time.” You can’t just yank the rug out from people who have no choice but to depend on the ObamaCare system in the near term. But moving towards a market-based system will lower costs and premiums. We also have to move away from the situation where a third party pays for everyday costs. Basic health care should not be covered by insurance. Your car insurance does not cover oil changes, and health insurance should not be used for basic care like checkups and treatment of everyday illnesses. When people have to make their own choices about how much to spend, prices will fall — and so will insurance premiums. What about the people who can’t afford insurance (or who are simply irresponsible and do not buy insurance)? Well, first of all, with the above reforms, there would be far fewer people in that situation than there were in 2008, before ObamaCare was passed. But in the end, this is a separate question from the basic policy of how to repeal ObamaCare. There will always be the less fortunate in society who can’t afford some of the basics of life: housing, food, health care, and the like. And there will always be people who are irresponsible and don’t plan for their future, whether it’s in the area of health insurance, life insurance, retirement, their kids’ education . . . the list goes on. For these groups of people, there will always be a tension between people like me, who recommend that such issues be taken care of by charity and the private sector when the problems to be addressed are serious or life-threatening, and leftists who want the government to take care of everybody. Either way, the reality of the world is that resources are scarce, and not every need can be met. This will always be true under any system. Government cannot simply decree that everyone will receive the best possible care for every illness. Any system, whether public or private, will result in some people not being able to access scarce resources. No government health care system is a panacea, and anyone who keeps their eyes open and watches for stories of people being mistreated under socialized health care will find them. The VA is just the tip of the iceberg. But the solution is not to give ideal care to people who could have bought insurance but chose not to. Imagine doing that with any other type of insurance: Gallant buys a fire insurance policy and Goofus does not — but Goofus knows that government will buy him a new house if his house burns down. Goofus is not going to buy insurance in that scenario — and Gallant won’t either. The concept of insurance is destroyed by such an arrangement. Some Goofuses are going to suffer in the free market — but again, no resources in this world are unlimited, and Goofus will never have all his needs met without contributing to society. Finally, let me briefly revisit a topic I covered before — because the reigning assumption appears to be that repealing ObamaCare would leave millions uninsured and worse off. This is completely bogus, and the fallacy of that argument must be central to any discussion of what to do next. For the full argument, I commend to you my post from March 8. Here’s the summary: to the extent that health care coverage has increased, that increase has resulted from two factors: a) gains in employer-sponsored insurance, and b) an expansion of Medicaid. The former (increased employer-sponsored insurance) is not due to ObamaCare but rather is due to the (tepid) recovery and millions going back to work. Indeed, private coverage has been harmed by ObamaCare, since ObamaCare has hampered the recovery and hurt employers’ ability to hire more people. Since the passage of ObamaCare, believe it or not, “the share of Americans with private insurance has declined.” Yes: declined. So ObamaCare does not get credit for expanding private health insurance. The latter factor (expansion of Medicaid) is not a net gain for Americans because outcomes under Medicaid are worse than outcomes of the uninsured. Under ObamaCare, age-adjusted death rates increased in 2015 after declining for decades — and life expectancy fell for the first time since 1993. Repeal will not cost lives. If anything, full repeal with no replacement will save lives. We can’t give up. Republicans promised repeal. The time to deliver is now. Republicans need to stop buying into the false premise that ObamaCare has helped people. Republicans need to enact real market-based reforms. http://www.redstate.com/patter...are-ted-cruz-answer/ "Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." -- Justice Janice Rogers Brown "The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth." -rduckwor | |||
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| wishing we were congress |
Paul Ryan and House leadership giving press conference right now. They are saying they are committed to repealing and replacing obamacare. Ryan said there is no time line. But they are committed to get it done right. Several members said they will work to get agreement across the REP House membership. ******************* this is the right message. Friday Ryan left it as if they were abandoning repeal & replace | |||
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| Lawyers, Guns and Money |
Which is the tactic he should have taken from the beginning. At least it sounds like he may have learned something. "Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." -- Justice Janice Rogers Brown "The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth." -rduckwor | |||
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| Tinker Sailor Soldier Pie |
Exactly the right message. We all know that previous bill was crap. Even the President must know that. Just passing it for the sake of passing it was never the right choice. Hopefully now we'll get something better. And the threat to work with Democrats now to fix Obamacare (cause that's the only thing the dems will do; they certainly won't repeal it) just doesn't make sense. Whatever happens, the bill must be repealed. Absolutely. ~Alan Acta Non Verba NRA Life Member (Patron) God, Family, Guns, Country Men will fight and die to protect women... because women protect everything else. ~Andrew Klavan | |||
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Member |
So, we spend seven years telling are representatives to act with courage and get this law repealed. When they finally have all the elected branches of government, they put up a turd of a repeal bill that maintains a majority of Obamacare. Let us not quibble about the (part of 3 step plan) nonsense; when has the government ever delivered on their promises once they got the part they wanted through? Immigration; oh, just let these people become citizens and then will secure the border. Now, we're blaming the one group of people that had the courage to point out that this was a crap bill that enshrined elements of Obamacare with Republican Endorsement? BS. Elect a National Populist, you get national populist legislation. The opinions expressed in no way reflect the stance or opinion of my employer. | |||
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safe & sound |
I can pay for my preexisting condition, out of pocket, for less than what my current policy cost. What I never understood was why an insurance company simply couldn't preclude the condition itself were that the problem. As it was, I could only get insurance under a group plan. My condition would have nothing to do with me breaking my leg, having a heart attack, or getting cancer. If you don't want to cover the condition, which is completely understandable, just exclude it and insure the rest. Heck...we're not even sure my condition is an actual condition. It may be allergy related. But now that it's part of my "record" it will never go away. | |||
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| Member |
I'm not going to spend too much time getting into the detail, but I do want to point out that the law for continuous coverage when you loose Group, Employer Sponsored coverage already exists, it's COBRA. Came in July 1986 IIRC The assumption is that you will enter another Employer Plan within 18 months by getting a replacement job. Borrowing the life insurance terminology and sales feature called GUARANTEED RENEWABLE is not feasible nor actuarily sound if it means (as it does with Term Life), that RATES won't change. When trend factors are double digit, not a single carrier will offer this. Many of today's policies ARE Guaranteed Renewable but it means the group or class or pool you are in will not single you out and all members get the same rate increase or decrease. Finally, the myth of crossing State lines as a major savings is exactly as I said, a myth. See my post for details.
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| Lawyers, Guns and Money |
Right. That's true. Of course it doesn't mean rates are locked in. I think people just want some assurance that if they have been paying for insurance for 20 years (or however long) and then they get sick they aren't going to lose it if they get laid off or take a different job. It ought to be portable and renewable, which solves most of the problem with pre-existing conditions.
If auto insurance can be standardized to the point that it can be marketed and competitive nationwide, I see no reason why health insurance can't be. "Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." -- Justice Janice Rogers Brown "The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth." -rduckwor | |||
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| Member |
I am glad. Rand Paul touts a process where all Republicans get together and list what is agreed first. Then, he says the bill should be built around that. It is unclear what the "purist" House members would do once a proposed bill came back from the Senate. Rep. Poe in withdrawing from the Freedom Caucus said that its members would not even find a way to vote in favor of the Ten Commandments. And this is from someone who was on the inside of the thought process. I do hope the bill goes right and not left. _______________________________ NRA Life Member NRA Certified Range Safety Officer | |||
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Shorted to Atmosphere |
If it goes anymore left than what we have now, it will be complete government control. | |||
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| Lawyers, Guns and Money |
First of all, they weren't "consulted" to begin with. Ryan wrote the bill in secret. They were only brought in at the last minute, when the WH realized they weren't on board, for Bannon to tell them: "Guys, look. This is not a discussion. This is not a debate. You have no choice but to vote for this bill." The bill had 17% support from the American people. Most people, left and right, hated it. Second, those tweets aren't really helping him. The responses (on twitter) to the one blaming the Freedom Caucus are hilarious. They actually stood against a bad bill. They wanted to honor their promises to their voters to fully repeal Obamacare. 3rd. if he's gonna go with the Dems.... then maybe you're right: the Freedom Caucus would have liked the bill that was just shot down a lot better than what comes down the pike. But at least they won't have their fingerprints on it.... if it means moving further toward socialism. Dems don't move toward Republicans, they are completely committed to their socialist agenda and any compromise means moving their way. Rush: PDT Democrat Outreach Means Advancing Their Agenda, Not His https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/d...king-with-democrats/ Trump's problem here is that at various times he has been all over the place on health care. He promised both "full repeal of Obamacare" but also "repeal and replace" with something great, "it's gonna be terrific, everyone will love it" AND "everyone's going to be covered" and "the government will pay for it". He just wants to WIN. "Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." -- Justice Janice Rogers Brown "The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth." -rduckwor | |||
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