Everything the Kenyan touched or was involved in has turned to pure shit. 8 years of him!

I want the U.S. government out of healthcare. No Medicare. No Medicaid. If not that, I want the same healthcare benefits that Congress critters get. Seems only fair.

Trump Says GOP 'Will Become the Party of Healthcare,' But Where Is Their Plan?

(CNSNews.com) - "The Republican Party will become 'The Party of Healthcare!'' President Trump tweeted on Wednesday.

Earlier, he voiced that same thought as left a luncheon on Capitol Hill with Senate Republicans: "Let me just tell you exactly what my message is. The Republican Party will soon be known as the party of healthcare. You watch," Trump told reporters as he left Capitol Hill.

Rob Portman (R-Ohio) is one of the Republican senators who lunched with the president.



"He talked about health care...and said that Republicans ought to be for protecting people with pre-existing conditions," Portman told Fox News's Neil Cavuto.

"I couldn't agree with him more, Portman continued. "I think that's the consensus among Republicans. The question is not about pre-existing conditions. We agree on that. The question is about the incredibly high costs that have been associated with the Affordable Care Act. And how do we provide better access to people and lower costs?"

This week, the Justice Department informed a federal court in Texas that it agrees with the court's December ruling that the individual mandate is unconstitutional, and therefore, the entire Affordable Care Act is invalid.

"The Department of Justice has determined that the district court’s judgment should be affirmed," DOJ wrote to the court. DOJ also said it intends to file a brief to that effect.

The law remains in effect pending appeals.

But what will replace Obamacare if the courts throw it out?

"You don't have anything yet in its place," Cavuto told Portman.

"Yeah, it'll take a while, as you know," Portman responded. "And I don't know that this (the Texas case) will make its way up to the Supreme Court even before the end of this first term for the president, even before the end of this Congress. But it doesn't mean we shouldn't get started. We should. And we should have a backup plan.

"We should be sure that we're protecting pre-existing conditions. We should also be sure that we're giving people a better deal for their health care dollars. I mean, our costs continue to go up."

"Don't you think you should have a backup plan, though, Senator, before you jettison the one that's out there?" Cavuto asked. "Because you're going to have millions of people potentially who are going to be very scared, if not in the most extreme case, out of coverage."

"No, of course," Portman said. "But it wouldn't be Congress that gets rid of it. It would be the Supreme Court saying that it's unconstitutional."

"Yes, but those people would still be left out, right?" Cavuto said. "They're going to turn around and blame you guys, whether that's fair or not. What do you do?"

"Yes. So we should act. We should act," Portman said.

"I mean, I have always believed that the constitutional underpinnings of the Affordable Care Act were really questionable. We have talked about this before. It's been a couple years probably, but it never made sense, you know, to say that this was somehow a constitutional bill, when, in fact, the mandate was viewed to be a taxing power issue by the Supreme Court, which was quite a stretch, to be able to call it constitutional.

"Then that was taken out in the tax bill. As you know, that is something that has now led this court in Texas to say, well, now there's really not a constitutional leg to stand on.

"But the question is, what should we do legislatively? So, regardless of what the court does, if the court decides it's unconstitutional, or if it upholds the ACA, we should still move, because legislation is needed to be able to reduce costs in health care, improve access, ensure people have pre-existing condition coverage.

"And we're getting started on that right now with prescription drug costs, as you know."

Polls indicate that health care was, and still is, a main concern of the U.S. electorate.

On Tuesday, a number of Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), blasted Republicans for abandoning Obamacare:

"Last night, we learned of President Trump and Attorney General Barr's decision to change their legal position and declare the entire Affordable Care Act unconstitutional," Schumer told a news conference on Tuesday.

"President Trump said the Republican Party will be the party of healthcare. If that is true, God help middle class Americans, 'cause Donald Trump wants to raise the cost of prescription drugs, get rid of protections for pre-existing conditions, throw tens of millions of people off healthcare, and tell 21- through 26-year-olds they can no longer get healthcare from their parents' plan, among many other bad things.

"So, I haven't heard a single Republican or the President, for that matter, defend the administration's decision. Why? Because it's indefensible," Schumer said.

"The potential consequences of this politically motivated move cannot be overstated; skyrocketing costs for families, massive increases in prescription drugs for seniors on--on Medicare, women charged more because they're women, seniors charged more because of their age, cancer patients denied coverage."

Most Democrats want to fix Obamacare by expanding it. Some of the Democrat presidential candidates want to transition from private insurance to a "Medicare for all" system.

On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats unveiled the "Protecting Pre-Existing Conditions & Making Health Care More Affordable Act."

Pelosi said details are forthcoming, but in general, "it lowers health care insurance premiums, stops junk plans, strengthens protections for pre-existing conditions and reverses the GOP health care sabotage."

"Protecting and strengthening health care is why Democrats are here," Pelosi said on an issue that helped them re-take the House in 2018.

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/a...are-where-their-plan

Said it before, will say it again:
If you "protect people with pre-existing conditions", you are not providing health insurance, you're providing health care.

we don't have a healthcare problem in this country

we have great healthcare

we have a runaway insurance problem and jackpot medicine law practices

No Obamacare Repeal Until 2021 (at the Earliest)

Congressional repeal of the Democrats’ health care fascism will have to wait.

Congressional Republicans have decided to resume their push to legislatively repeal and replace Obamacare only after the next election in November 2020, which means they will be able to campaign against the program over the coming 19 months.

This is, depending on your perspective, a brilliant move that guarantees the GOP recaptures the House of Representatives, or the umpteenth time the GOP has betrayed its conservative, Obamacare-hating base.

This delay has been engineered by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) who, after President Donald Trump met with Senate Republicans last week to press for legislative repeal (excluding protections for patients with preexisting conditions), decided not to play ball. Trump had tweeted before that that he wanted “The Republican Party … [to] become ‘The Party of Healthcare!’”

McConnell told reporters he would not promote repeal while the Democrats controlled the House. RINO Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah oppose Trump’s repeal drive. Collins said Trump was making “a mistake.”

Democrats, of course, are fine with this, because they love the health care law that empowers bureaucrats and death panels while robbing patients of choices and setting the nation on the path to a full-blown takeover like the economically insane “Medicare for All” proposal. Democrat presidential hopefuls are tripping over each other in the rush to endorse Medicare for All even though it is utterly unsustainable.

Democrats also want to keep the issue of health care alive so they can run on it in 2020 and in every election until the end of time. These people claim that Democrats’ health care policies helped them regain the House – though they can’t seem to explain why their minority in the Senate shrunk in the same election last year.

Since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that created Obamacare was signed into law by Barack Hussein Obama on March 23, 2010, Republican lawmakers have tried to get rid of the abominable, un-American law scores of times without success. But they have still tried to spin away defeats as at least moral victories.

GOP careerists like to put lipstick on a pig by saying that the House “repealed” Obamacare 70-something times, by which they actually mean “voted to repeal,” as if that ended the matter. Every congressional repeal effort has ended in failure at the hands of the Senate or by presidential veto as happened in January 2016.

The mainstream media responded with a mixture of glee and horror when late last month Trump’s Department of Justice announced it supports getting rid of the Obamacare statute that nationalized a huge chunk of the nation’s economy.

But what the media has tended to leave out was the fact the Obamacare statute is already legally dead.

It was killed Dec. 14, 2018, when U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas held that in 2017 Congress effectively repealed the mandate that forced Americans to buy health insurance and, in the process, that body “sawed off the last leg it [i.e. Obamacare] stood on.”

“The court finds the individual mandate ‘is essential to’ and inseverable from ‘the other provisions of’” the Obamacare statute and is therefore unconstitutional, O’Connor wrote.

But unlike the aggressive leftist judges on the federal benches we are accustomed to, O’Connor agreed to stay enforcement on his commonsense ruling pending appeal.

At the time President Trump celebrated O’Connor’s decision with a Twitter post.

“As I predicted all along, Obamacare has been struck down as an UNCONSTITUTIONAL disaster! Now Congress must pass a STRONG law that provides GREAT healthcare and protects pre-existing conditions.”

After calling the ruling “Great news for America!” at that time Trump urged McConnell and then-incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to “get it done!”

The Hill newspaper reported March 25 that the Justice Department sent a letter to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals advising the court that its new position was that the Dec. 14 decision should remain intact while it goes through the appellate process. Previously it was the department’s position that only parts of the law should be struck down.

“The Department of Justice has determined that the district court’s judgment should be affirmed,” the agency said in the letter.

This was not a sudden flip-flop by a schizophrenic president as left-wing journalists depicted it. It reflected a dispassionate acknowledgement of reality. Barring some activist judges or Supreme Court justices overturning O’Connor’s ruling, Obamacare will remain unconstitutional.

But whatever happens in the courts, the issue won’t go away anytime soon.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/f...rliest-matthew-vadum

quote:

Originally posted by leavemebe:
I want the U.S. government out of healthcare. No Medicare. No Medicaid. If not that, I want the same healthcare benefits that Congress critters get. Seems only fair.

Money that I earned was taken from me to pay for Medicare. I had no say in the matter. My money was taken.

Now that I am old enough for the program, I damned well want the Medicare that I paid for. I paid for it from the first day of the program.

As far as Congress, I agree with what you say. A member of Congress should receive the same medical care that they legislate for the general population. No more, no less.

quote:

Money that I earned was taken from me to pay for Medicare. I had no say in the matter. My money was taken.

Yes... you paid into it.
No one is going to take away your Medicare.

But Democrats have been telling seniors for at least a generation that if they vote Republican the Republicans will take away their Medicare.
Remember this?:

quote:

Money that I earned was taken from me to pay for Medicare. I had no say in the matter. My money was taken.

Yes, I was in the same boat. From my perspective, it was stolen from me. I am now "eligible" for Medicare but can't bring myself to apply. For now I have good insurance. I may or may not ever apply for it when my regular health insurance is no longer available. It will be a difficult choice for certain.

For my part, everything .gov touches tends to go into the crapper. That is certainly the case with healthcare. The only way to fix it is to get .gov out, even if it means personal pain.

On the Congress bit, we will have to wait for at least the next ice age before the general population will get any perks substantially equal to the U.S. Congress.

quote:

everything .gov touches tends to go into the crapper. That is certainly the case with healthcare. The only way to fix it is to get .gov out, even if it means personal pain.

I agree. Medicare is not actuarialy sound. It's a socialist program, operating by force.
However, those who paid into it will get the benefit. It could be fazed out, over time but probably won't be.

The bigger issue is not expanding it and creating more market competition for those not on Medicare.

quote:

The bigger issue is not expanding it and creating more market competition for those not on Medicare.

Agreed.

Government needs to get out of the medical insurance business...period. Not replace Obamacare, get rid of it.

The Medicare for all is a stupid idea. I paid into it for 45 years. I pay $114/month for me and another $114/month for my wife. We pay $183/year each as Medicare co-pay. I pay $156 each for us to have Medicare supplementary insurance and pay co-pays for medications and we hit the doughnut hole every year where the costs go up. People will not like Medicare for all once they see the costs and what is provided.

quote:

Originally posted by jbcummings:
Government needs to get out of the medical insurance business... period. Not replace Obamacare, get rid of it.

Exactly right.
It started long ago...
In 1942, Congress passed the Stabilization Act, which instituted wage controls in the workforce. Like every other deleterious government intervention, the wage controls led to unintended consequences.

Venture socialist health care in America: Employer insurance plans now cost as much as a car

Daniel Horowitz · September 27, 2019


Imagine if government created a scheme whereby $20,000 of your annual salary is diverted into the purchase of a product, which creates a monopoly for a small group of companies, thereby boxing you out of that entire product or service unless you find a job where that amount of money is diverted for that product? Well, that is essentially our government-manipulated health care system in one sentence.

According to a new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, annual premiums for “employer-provided” medical insurance plans for families rose 5% this past year, more than double the rate of inflation. The price tag now stands at $20,576, as much as the cost of purchasing an economy car over again every single year. That is the money that is coming out of worker paychecks with so few people even realizing it. According to Kaiser, employees are now paying an average of $6,015 toward their premiums, up $1,200 since 2014, but they often forget the remaining $14.5K is coming out of their salaries too.

In total, premiums have risen 54 percent over the past decade. While that is not as bad as the skyrocketing cost of individuals plans, which have essentially become insolvent without government handouts, it is an outrageous indictment of Obamacare’s promise.

Oh, and deductibles, co-insurance, and co-pays have skyrocketed as well. Deductibles and co-pays are actually good when and if you are paying premiums that are the cost of catastrophic coverage. But to pay “Cadillac prices” for premiums and still get hit with so many more charges is outrageous.

Employer-based insurance is not market-based, it’s venture socialism from government

Now would be a good time to revisit the original sin of employer-based health insurance, and now that Obamacare is destroying it, maybe we should ditch the entire concept. What in the world is “employer-provided” health insurance to begin with? Why don’t we have employer-provided auto insurance or employer-provided homeowner’s insurance? The answer is because government didn’t force us into the other arrangements like they did with health care through the tax carveout for employers who provide medical insurance. Thus, for every additional dollar your employer increases your salary, he must pay taxes on it, but for every additional dollar he funnels to the insurance cartel on your behalf, he doesn’t pay any taxes.

This is the reason why insurance companies control the supply chain of health care and box out individuals seeking to purchase plans, two vices we don’t find with other forms of insurance. We don’t see State Farm price fixing the cost of roofing and construction materials the same way Aetna and United Health price fix the cost of MRIs or blood work. Government never created a monopoly for them through employer tax exclusions and government welfare programs funneled to “private” companies.

The medical insurance industry subsists on more government favors than any other industry. Between the requirement to purchase insurance, the requirement that companies offer the insurance industry’s product, and the $280 billion tax exemption to offer their product (four times the size of mortgage interest deductions!), the insurance cartel is essentially a government-sponsored entity or public utility. It has done nothing for society, but has destroyed the patient-doctor relationship, prevented medical innovation, and raised costs astronomically. It would have never persisted in this structure had government not distorted the market.

Imagine what would happen if the government mandated that every citizen not only own a firearm, but purchase a specific type of firearm produced only by a few companies. Then employers would be required to purchase them for employees, and they’d get a collective $280 billion tax cut for doing so. In addition, the entire personal security for all the elderly and poor would be managed by those companies and their services, through $1.6 trillion in combined federal and state spending! They’d be pretty darn wealthy and have all the power in the world to lobby for endless subsidies. And of course, a simple 9 mm handgun would cost you $50,000 if you were purchasing it without your “Ammo-caid card.” That, in a nutshell, is the exact situation in our critically ill health care system.

How did this nonsense begin? In 1942, Congress passed the Stabilization Act, which instituted wage controls in the workforce. Like every other deleterious government intervention, the wage controls led to unintended consequences. In order to compete in the labor market, employers began to look for other means of compensation to attract talent and reward productive employees. This gave rise to the tax exemption for employer-provided health insurance officially created by a 1954 IRS ruling. Concurrently, labor unions began engaging in collective bargaining for fringe benefits in addition to wages.

When government created the concept of tethering medical insurance to employment, it not only boxed out those individuals who seek to purchase insurance on their own, but has also immutably hitched health insurance to health care. Now health care is defined by medical insurance in a way that does not exist in any other industry with insurance, such as home or auto. The insurance cartel is now both the provider and consumer at the same time, squeezing out anyone who is not either subsidized by government or by the employer (although it’s coming out of your salary) into oblivion.

It’s no mystery why our national expenditures on health care have popped from $27 billion in 1960 to over $3.5 trillion today. Assuming health care would rise at the same rate as the rest of the economy, that number would be under $250 billion today. Thanks to government-run health care and government-distorted conception of private insurance, only 10 percent of all health care spending is out of pocket. This dramatically inflates the price for the few people actually willing to do spend out of pocket.

The government’s employer health insurance scheme together with Medicare and Medicaid becoming cash cows for the insurance cartel has impelled a circuitous cycle of creating monopolies to artificially inflate prices, thereby demanding more subsidies, which inflates the cost even more, so they can lobby for … more subsidies. Almost 60 percent of the annual revenue of the top five insurers comes from Medicare and Medicaid!

It’s time for conservatives to offer a vision of health care beyond the government’s failed model of giving a handful of insurance companies control over the market. It’s time to cut out all the middle men and have people directly purchase their own catastrophic insurance from day one and pay for the rest through a transparent market like everyone does with every other product or service. Those who truly can’t afford it should receive a subsidy in an escrow account to pay for it directly like with food stamps, rather than lining the pockets of the insurance cartel through the cronyist Medicaid program.

Over and beyond repealing Obamacare, conservatives should push for the following:

Equalize tax treatment of health-sharing ministries, concierge medicine, and other alternatives to traditional insurance by allowing HSAs, self-employed tax deduction, and employer health care exclusion to be used for non-cartel health care costs.
End the practice of Medicaid paying higher payouts to large hospitals through “facility fees” over private practice. This market distortion has destroyed private practice health care delivery and is responsible for the unnatural monopoly of a few larger health care conglomerates. It stifles consumer choice and innovation.
Demand price transparency by prohibiting any insurance contracts that prevent providers from offering discounts to self-pay patients. Repeal the HMO Act and expose managed care insurers to antitrust laws like any other industry, especially because most of their success comes from government intervention. The core reason why there is no price transparency, and as such, no consumer-driven market in health care, is because the insurance industry uses its monopoly on taxpayer-funded programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and employer-sponsored plans to shake down providers with contracts that prevent them from offering competitive pricing. This is not a free market; it’s socialism.
Eliminate the prohibition on physician-owned hospitals, which has given the large health care administrators a monopoly on medicine and has hurt the sustainability of rural hospitals.

Bottom line: Would we rather have health care look like a mini-bar in a hotel room or Amazon? The shelves in an America supermarket or in a Venezuelan supermarket?

https://www.conservativereview...s-now-cost-much-car/