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Tuesday, March 7, 2017

GOP Obamacare Replacement: I would prefer repeal and just repeal....



My first spoken reaction to Paul Ryan's proposed House Bill was not family friendly. We do not want Obamacare-lite, most of us want Obamacare gone. How do you make this work with making insurers cover preexisting conditions without higher premiums?  If you know anything about insurance (and math), you know this makes affordable coverage very difficult (Powerline addresses what insurance is supposed to be). Someone is going to pay for the unhealthy and that burden falls mostly on the young. Since they know preexisting conditions are covered in the future, they will opt out.

But there are some unfortunate realities here. Unlike Democrats, Republicans do not march in lock step. There are more than enough Republicans willing to jump ship to kill any Obamacare repeal only bill in the Senate. The only way to reverse this is to hope enough voters will rise up in these states to get these Senators to change their minds. Perhaps that is possible.



The Week: Wants Failure?

Doug Ross: Replace worse?

HotAir: GOP Healthcare DOA?

Regular Right Guy: Ryan and Obamacarelite

Powerline: The good part: reforming Medicare

AoSHQ: Healthcare for Dummies and What a POS

Heat Street: Paul Ryan's self inflicted Health Care Disaster

Rush Limbaugh: Does anyone know what insurance is anymore?

Victory Girls: The Good and the Bad (unfortunately too much bad)

Fox News: Let's first repeal Obamacare and then discuss how to replace it

Breitbart: Pence pushes Paul Ryan's Healthcare Reform Bill and Conservatives push back

Wombat: Power Line: Are Republicans Blowing It On Health Care? , American Thinker: Obama’s Rasputin Moves Into The Bunker, and Weasel Zippers: Secret Service Agent Says Obamagate Will Blow Open This Week, also, Trump Busts Planned Parenthood Narrative With Funding Offer
Rush Limbaugh: Swords drawn on Obamacare Repeal

WombatMegan McArdle: The Republican Plan – Even Worse Than Obamacare and American Power: Tough Resistance To GOP’s #Obamacare Overhaul

4 comments:

  1. Agree on the repeal and just repeal idea, but this will be a fusion.

    There's a Senate bill and Trump will have his say.

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  2. I agree as well. I think a difficult part is how to handle the completely uninsured and uninsurable. The fact is, even before Obamacare, anyone can walk into a hospital, present symptoms, and demand care; whether they planned to pay or not. And the hospital will treat them, like every other patient because they are required to by law, and release them knowing the patient will never pay the bill.

    Part of what made Obamacare palatable is that it suggested that hospitals would at least get more compensation in this area. The fact is, it never materialized, and in fact was made worse. Worse in that all compensation is based on a overall customer satisfaction survey, and the thing is, the freeloaders typically give the worse satisfaction score, because that's their only currency and power they hold over the hospital.

    If there is one area of health care that Congress should address in a replace, that's the area in my mind. However, this can mostly be accomplished through an increase in Medicaid that goes directly to hospitals. I don't like it, but its a reality unless you intend to repeal the laws making healthcare mandatory, which would be a tougher fight.

    Of course, the other issue that must be address by a GOP Congress, or else they are f'ing useless as Democrats; is medical tort reform. It's bad enough doctors, nurses, hospitals have to provide services for free. It is absolutely criminal that they can then be turned around and sued; often by those same freeloaders, for multiples of the cost of the healthcare for simple mistakes to misunderstandings of the start of the art of healthcare. Even if they introduced loser pays in these scenarios, it would make a vast improvement.

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    Replies
    1. That is true and not true about treatment at hospitals. If you can't pay you will always get emergency room care. They will give you top notch trauma and drug od care if you are brought in, you will get minor health care treatment for other lesser ailments to get you out of the ER (and a whopping bill that will never be paid), but it is not like you can go into the ER and get chemo or a heart bypass. If you are sick enough to be in the ER for a serious on going disease the hospital administrators will treat you for that day and will not admit you... And if you are going to the ER for treatement for those sort of conditions, you are probably not long for this world.

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    2. It depends on the disease, but treatment can and does last several days. You can't put a person with emergent symptoms on the street, even if there is little you can do for them. Sure, a cancer patient that's terminal, but not in their final days will be shown the same door as the non-compliant diabetic. But heart disease aren't given just a day's treatment. They may not get that bypass, but if they have a heart attack in the parking lot after being medically released; the hospital is sued. So they have to be stable enough to make it all the way home. This is more true of stroke victims.

      I'm simply pointing out that the road to Obamacare started out much earlier; and the GOP actually supported many of the laws that put us in a position in which socialism sounded like a reasonable solution. My view; if single payer meant every single person paid out of pocket for their own care, medical care would be cheaper and more ubiquitous.

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