Calling out the demagogues on their Bravo Sierra.
These liars are just contemptible.
42 thoughts on ““The Republicans Have No Health Plan””
Comments are closed.
Calling out the demagogues on their Bravo Sierra.
These liars are just contemptible.
Comments are closed.
About now the Democrats wish they could make that claim.
“President Bush proposed a sweeping health reform plan that would have replaced the current tax exclusion for employer-provided coverage with standard tax deductions ” Is a nice way to get standard tax deductions but wouldn’t
do anything to make sure everyone got health insurance. As long as it’s a market, the Insurers have incentives to reject pre-existing conditions and as long as it’s open enrollment the healthy have incentives to wait until they are sick to sign up.
It’s why COBRA is so expensive, only the sick sign up for COBRA.
I’m glad a couple of republicans had bills to work on health care, what were the votes for them?
“It’s why COBRA is so expensive, only the sick sign up for COBRA.”
THAT is completely untrue. When I was a single parent and I lost my job I signed up for Cobra immediately. I had a daughter to take care of.
IMMEDIATELY.
Why don’t you take your blithering numbskull witless pronunciations elsewhere where they will be swallowed whole by other witless dweebs?
The reason COBRA is expensive is that the person signing up pays a lot of the freight that their former employer used to handle. You get to choose whether or not you can handle that. It’s a system that allows coverage continuation after you’ve lost your job. It is not refused based upon pre-existing medical conditions. It ought to be something you love.
Yes, COBRA’s main advantage over individual coverage is that (like employer-based group coverage) there’s no discrimination based on medical conditions. Since individual coverage will stop discriminating starting January 1, COBRA will lose much of its reason for existing.
Here’s my health plan: my doctor and I make decisions about my health care without input or interference from third-party bean counters corporate or governmental, and I pay him for his services. If I need something that I can’t pay for myself (cash, credity, medical savings account), then and only then do I make an insurance claim to cover it.
To the extent our health care system is screwed up, it’s because people other than those receiving the service are paying for it.
it’s because people other than those receiving the service are paying for it.
Indeed. But that’s unavoidable — even in your scenario you’d have your insurance company pay for some claims.
There’s no getting around the fact that necessary health care routinely costs more than the patient can afford.
Yes, you are quite right. And one of the reasons is that the cost of routine health care is invisible to the patient – or at least not very noticeable, because someone else is paying for it at the time. This inevitably results in hugely inflated prices for routine work – simply because the providers can get away with it.
This situation occurs in no other field. To take a rather simplistic example, it is not usual to make an insurance claim for a blown headlamp bulb on your car. Insurance is, in most fields, designed to cope with catastrophic and unpredictable costs caused by some unusual happening – someone trashes your car, lightning bolt hits your house…
And that’s the way it ought to be in health care. This may well be, and probably is, a consequence of decades of bad tax policy. It is cheaper for an employer to offer health insurance than to pay the employee enough extra that he can afford to pay for health care himself; this is due to various employment taxes and also income tax.
Another reason for high health costs is the existence of ambulance-chasing lawyers and the assumption that if something goes wrong, it is somebody’s fault. Well, sometimes it is. And sometimes it isn’t. This problem leads to medically unnecessary, but legally vital, tests and procedures. Which do, of course, cost money.
Car insurance is affordable because the P&C companies are allowed to total cars. Unfortunately, we don’t really like the idea of death panels
and writing off the sick.
Car Insurance would be really stiff if a mechanic had to take all practical measures to rebuild a car and to allow a car a painless ending when it’s terminal.
Worse, there is no pricing transparency. When hospitals put up price charts on the wall, we may see some changes, but right now, you get the bill after services are rendered.
“There’s no getting around the fact that necessary health care routinely costs more than the patient can afford.”
True.
And over the long run there’s no getting around the fact that it will eventually cost more than anyone can afford, especially paying for Someone Else’s care.
So … at some point it ain’t getting paid for, so it won’t be provided.
Which is okay, since we’re mortal anyway.
The problem is the assumption that “because MEDICAL CARE!!! will cost too much for someone to afford”, SOMEONE has to pay for it. Someone else – with no say and no strings.
That ain’t gonna work.
That ain’t gonna work.
Believe it or not, universal access to health care is a solved problem in most of the developed world, and has been for quite a while.
This whole argument about “health care” is a classic example of misdirection. Health care is what medical providers deliver to patients. The whole ObamaCare law is about who pays for health care. The government has a decades-long history of managing health care programs for the military, VA, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Medicare and Medicaid. They’ve never done a good job with any of them, so of course the likely suspects believe they should be in charge of everyone’s health insurance. Add in the unelected and unaccountable panel that gets to decide what is covered and what isn’t with the politically motivated abuses at the EPA, IRA, DoJ and other agencies and what could possibly go wrong? Seriously, how can anyone be dumb enough to believe the government is capable of doing a good job at this? And when it fails, they’ll use that as justification for letting them have even more control over healthcare, AKA “failing forward”.
universal access to health care is a solved problem in most of the developed world
“Universal access” is such a bullshit term. Everyone has universal access to health care. Just fly them into a hospital from wherever in the world they happen to be. If instead you mean relatively fast access to modern medical care, well, the US still has that. If it’s health care that solves every medical problem (including those of aging), then no one has access.
It’s only the peculiar state where everyone “affords” what health care (or perhaps health theater) you decide they need that certain countries can be deemed to have universal health care while the US doesn’t.
Believe it or not, universal access to health care is a solved problem in most of the developed world, and has been for quite a while.
Access to timely, quality health care isn’t, at least according to the Canadians who head south over the border for it.
There are medical tourists from every country. That doesn’t imply that timely, quality healthcare doesn’t exist anywhere.
Nice try, but Canadians heading to the US to get care that they can’t wait for in Canada are not “medical tourists.”
Why not? An American who goes to Mexico or India for medical care he can’t get here is a medical tourist. A Canadian who comes here for care he can’t get in Canada is a medical tourist. People leave every country on earth to get medical care elsewhere. That doesn’t mean that no country on earth has timely, quality health care.
“Medical tourists” are people who go to some other country to save money on a medical procedure (e.g., tooth implants in Costa Rica) and use the savings to take a vacation on the side. People who have to go to other countries for life-saving prcedures because their own country’s socialist health plan sux are not “medical tourists.”
So an American who chooses to get a hip replacement in Mexico rather than waiting to save up enough money to have it done in the US is a medical tourist. But a Canadian who chooses to get a hip replacement in the US rather than waiting to get to the front of the line to have it done at home isn’t?
So an American who chooses to get a hip replacement in Mexico rather than waiting to save up enough money to have it done in the US is a medical tourist.
No.
You are right Jim, healthcare often does cost more than people can afford and that wont change under Obamacare. Costs will continue to go up. Only a small percentage of us will see the subsidies and the rest of us have to pay for them plus ordinary health care costs which are skyrocketing.
Since Obamacare was designed to reward Democrat campaign contributors, like health insurance companies and activist groups, look for graft and corruption to drive costs up even further.
But those would be the kind of thing actual INSURANCE is properly used for.
Here’s my health plan:
I go to the doctor, he tells me a whole bunch of nonsense which he obviously made up, I go back three months later and he tells me a bunch of different stuff, including some stuff that contradicts what he said last time because, hey, can you remember what you said to some guy three months ago?
Oh yeah, I also love it when they lie to me and forget their lies a month later.. that’s the best, and they think they’re so smart about it.
I tell him to stop making stuff up and just do the damn tests, because I trust the data more than I trust him, and I can’t order my own tests. He gets pouty because I’m not treating him like an all knowing doctor, and often I go find someone else who will set his ego aside and take my health seriously.
This new doctor will tell me something different and we’ll start the process all over again. Recently, my doctor has been requesting that I get this: http://ehealth.gov.au/ Which makes perfect sense if you think making it easier to share information between doctors is a good thing. It’s terrible if you actually think of doctors as lying narcissists.
Over the last 2 and a half years the GOP House has voted nearly 40 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act. They’ve voted zero times to replace it. The Republicans have no health plan that they’re willing to go on record voting for.
The Republicans have no health plan that they’re willing to go on record voting for.
So submitting legislation and co-signing bills are no longer part of the Congressional record? When did this happen?
Even submitting and sponsoring legislation isn’t the same thing as actually voting for it (John McCain famously promised to vote against the immigration bill that he wrote).
Still, it would be a sign of progress if GOP officeholders even offered Obamacare replacement bills that covered as many of the currently uninsured as Obamacare. That hasn’t happened. If you look at the article’s list of Republican Obamacare replacements you’ll note that they are all think tank proposals; none is actual legislation. And Boehner hasn’t seen fit to bring any Obamacare alternative up for a vote.
The GOP health care plan, which they have voted for dozens of times, is to repeal Obamacare and go back to letting insurance companies cap lifetime benefits, spend as much as they want on non-benefit expenses, deny or drop individual coverage at will, etc.
Even submitting and sponsoring legislation isn’t the same thing as actually voting for it
Submitting, sponsoring and voting on legislation are all part of the Congressional Record.
If you look at the article’s list of Republican Obamacare replacements you’ll note that they are all think tank proposals; none is actual legislation.
From the article (emphasis mine):
•Ten Steps to Transform Health Care in America Act (S. 1783) introduced by Senator Mike Enzi (R-WY) July 12, 2007.
•H.R. 2300, Empowering Patients First Act introduced July 30, 2009 by Rep. Tom Price (R-GA).
As for this:
And Boehner hasn’t seen fit to bring any Obamacare alternative up for a vote.
Repealing Obamacare returns power to the states to implement GOP solutions like “Massachusetts health care insurance reform law” (enacted by a GOP governor). Only fascist statist think the only solution possible is national control of industries. Are you a fascist, Jim?
Neither of those bills replace Obamacare; they predate it, and in fact one provision of Enzi’s bill was cited by the White House as inspiration for part of Obamacare. Neither has been brought up for a vote by Boehner.
Repealing Obamacare returns power to the states to implement GOP solutions like “Massachusetts health care insurance reform law” (enacted by a GOP governor).
MA was able to enact Romneycare thanks to federal money that Ted Kennedy helped wrangle out of Bush’s HHS. Does today’s GOP advocate giving that sort of federal support to every state? Of course not.
Only fascist statist think the only solution possible is national control of industries. Are you a fascist, Jim?
I think that aviation (along with railroads, nuclear energy, the broadcast spectrum, etc.) should be regulated on a federal, not state, level. Do you disagree? Does that make us both fascists, or is your definition just an excuse for name calling?
Do you disagree? Does that make us both fascists, or is your definition just an excuse for name calling?
Yes I do. I don’t know how my disagreeing with you makes us both fascist.
Does today’s GOP advocate giving that sort of federal support to every state? Of course not.
The GOP is also not advocating anything like Romneycare in any state. I rather the federal government take less money from the states, so that the state governments and their citizens can decide the best course of action. If New Englanders wish to be taxed more to pay for an universal healthcare system; that would be their problems. But under the fascist Obamacare, every citizen in every state is expected to suffer.
Just keep moving those goal posts…
You said Obama had a plan he campaigned on despite no one ever voting on it.
Candidate Obama had a plan, and as soon as he was in office he pushed Congress to turn it into bills that were brought up for actual votes. The GOP has control of the House. If they have a plan, why aren’t they bringing it up for a vote?
Candidate Obama reamed Hillary for the user mandate and then added it to his “plan.” The fact of the matter is that Obama let Pelosi and others in Congress write the law. He’s too stupid and lazy to bother with actually governing the country or providing leadership.
Obama learned from Clinton’s failed health reform effort and let the Senate take the lead role in writing the law. That’s one reason it passed. Pelosi had no role in writing the ACA bill that became law; it was written by the Senate.
The bill was written by Democrat party special interest donors. The kind Obama and the Democrats keep saying are ruining our country. The regulations were written by HHS because Obama could not get the bill through congress if people knew what was going to be in it.
My liberal friends were shocked, as recently as a few weeks ago, that they will be forced to buy insurance or get taxed. They thought it was all going to be free…
Pelosi had no role in writing the ACA bill that became law; it was written by the Senate.
Well in that case, it is unconstitutional since “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives”
Keep moving those goal posts.
John Boehner gets the best in socialized medicine,with a doctor on call
at the house physicians office and access to Bethesda Naval when he needs
care or screening. He isn’t willing to cancel his coverage and try and get individual insurance from Aetna or Blue Cross.
For fun, check out the provisions of Mike Enzi (R-WY)’s Ten Steps to Transform Health Care in America Act:
Ensures affordable health insurance to low-income individuals through a refundable, advanceable, assignable tax-based subsidy
Hmm, doesn’t Obamacare ensure affordable health insurance for low-income individuals by giving them subsidies?
Emphasizes preventive benefits and helps individuals with chronic diseases so America will finally have health care and not sick care
I seem to recall that Obamacare requires no-copay access to preventative care.
Gives you the choice to convert the value of your Medicaid and SCHIP program benefits into private health insurance
Like the waiver Arkansas got to provide Obamacare-expanded Medicaid through private insurance?
Saves lives and money by better coordinating health information technology to improve health care delivery
Reminds me of all the funding Obama’s provided for electronic medical records.
Enzi’s bill (introduced in 2007) is a GOP health care plan, but there’s no way it would get GOP votes today — it’s too much like Obamacare. I’m guessing that Enzi himself would vote against it.
what was truly amusing was watching Romney have a little seizure everytime someone would ask him what the difference between ObamaCare and RomneyCare was? Tim Pawlenty called it “ObamneyCare” and i swear Romney almost had a grand mal seizure right there on Fox.
The GOP has a health care plan, it’s called RomneyCare, Obama swiped it.
Here’s a health plan: you pay for your own medical expenses; or, failing that, get your friends and/or family to pay them; or, failing that, persuade some charity to pay for them. If that fails, good luck, but you have no right to force other people to pay for them. It’s a radical concept called “liberty.” Obama should look it up.
If that fails, good luck
That is, essentially, the GOP health plan*. The voters have made it clear that they don’t want that sort of liberty.
* Some GOP leaders will also tell you to go to an emergency room, where (thanks to a bill Reagan signed) the hospital can’t turn you away.
Certainly State-fellators like Jim don’t want “that kind” of liberty.* “Mommy/Daddy State–please take care of me! Widdle Jim has a boo-boo! Force that mean man next door to pay for my band-aid! Waaahhh!”
*”that kind of liberty”= liberty. (Translated from Hivespeak into plain English by yours truly.)
Jim is like the Democrats of the ol’South that thought some people should be slaves to others. The only difference is he thinks he is now morally superior because he wants educated people like doctor and nurses to be slaves to the LIV.