Well, it looks like the voting on it will be delayed now that CBO revealed that 24 million are estimated to lose healthcare coverage under the Trump/Ryan plan.
HImom, the bill is in serious trouble. If I had to bet right now, I’d bet against it. I’d also bet that if ACA remains, there will be zero action to improve it. If they can’t repeal it, they will want to continue attacking it. And the very last thing they’ll want to do is make it better.
@TatinG When there are no insurers in an area, the party in power is going to own that problem. They could fix it if they wanted to. Did you read up on the elimination of the ACA risk corridors? They could certainly reinstate them, which would help to lure insurers back. But that’s going to be 100% on them. Healthcare is their baby now, lock stock and barrel.
I’m glad the bill is in trouble–it is so deeply unfair and flawed, imho. I really hope something good will happen in the US on making affordable healthcare available to all, preferably in my lifetime.
Well, this pretty much also describes what is happening to the House bill. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Really, the only people who are being honest about this are the ones who just want to take away poor people’s lunch entirely.
Anthem is one of 2 providers in the individual market in CT, and the other provider is hedging on their commitment as well. Yikes!
After watching yet another “It’s a great plan” show, last night, I would not say proponents are being honest. They claim they are giving the nice lunch; in fact, a yuge buffet spread. I’m so sensitive to spin. And some of them are so polished at dishing it.
More food for thought–why US life expectancy lags behind S Korea and other nations.
LF, they’re not fooling anyone. That’s why the bill is under fire from all sides.
They are just digging their own graves by not admitting this bill is a stinking pile of doo-doo.
I don’t understand why politicians think they must go down with the ship every time they pitch something terrible. We know you are human just like every one of us… admit to your mistakes and make things better… “We admit we screwed up on this and will work our butts off to fix it until it works”. Why is that so hard?
This is evolving, though, day to day, it seems. I was concerned the strongest non-Dem opponents were the folks who felt it isn’t awful enough.
Lookingforward, that’s what concerns me too. There’s a contingent that believes this bill is too generous.
@Hunt, exactly the same dynamic is happening on both sides, among ordinary people who haven’t yet grappled with the cost problem. They want a health plan that doesn’t cost them much money, and also doesn’t cost the government much money. They imagine that huge cost savings are there for the picking. Legislators just have to do… something something and everyone will be able to get cheap health care, without the government paying for it.
It’s like the people who think Medicare is paid for by Medicare taxes and Medicare premiums. Nope nope nope. There’s also a small matter of half a trillion dollars in funding.
The problem is there is no consensus on health care, no common ground, you have expectations on one side that to be honest are ridiculous and all kinds of ideas that may or may not be true. The current plan, for what it is worth, gets rid of direct subsidies and uses tax credits, and it also breaks with tradition in that it favors younger people over older, including allowing charging seniors more for care than under current regulations.
One of the ideas behind this is with less generous subsidies (or none as the tea party faction seems to think about this plan) that people suddenly will be aware of health care costs and ‘shop around’ for medical care, and that they are also going to introduce competition into health care itself, with the idea that medical care is like tv sets, that somehow there is room to make it so efficient it won’t be as expensive (and I am dubious about that, services like medicine are not assembly line manufacturing).
One of the fundamental mysteries of getting rid of ACA aka Obama Care is that a lot of the people who want it repealed are people who ended up having insurance because of it, whether through the exchanges or expanded medicaid.Some of that is quite honestly that there are more than a few people out there who like ACA but want to get rid of Obamacare , and when asked they said Obama care is the free health care poor people get (I assume expanded medicaid, since the very poor already had medicaid). Others complain about the high cost to them of the ACA, where in certain states premiums have soared, and like all health insurance plans many of them have copays and deductibles that can be expensive, especially the lower tier plans.
As someone else posted, a lot of the people who opposed ACA want a plan that is low cost, that doesn’t have large deductibles and copays, that will have affordable prescription drug coverage, and do it without the government having to pay for it…and in many ways to me that is the old wanting your cake and eating it too, and also may be based in perceptions that somehow there is a magic bullet that will allow them to get a cheap policy that covers everything and isn’t government run…
Though I find little to be amused about these days, I am kind of amused seeing what the play “The best little Whorehouse in Texas” called “the side step shuffle”, politicians trying to duck around the reality of all this, when you hear “well, this is only the first phase” it translates to “yep, you are going to feel some pain, folks, but don’t worry, it is gonna be alright when we pass the second phase of this”, and when that doesn’t pan out “don’t worry folks, we know, the next phase will cure that”…which translates pretty much into the classic scene at “a day at the races”, where Chico sells groucho a book with the winners in the races, when Groucho can’t read it says “oh, you need the code book to read it”, Groucho buys that, then he needs the master code book to read the code book, etc…
Musicprnt, I’ll go even further about the consensus problem. The essential question is whether or not healthcare should be a right of citizenship. I think what we’re seeing right now is a critical mass of public opinion suddenly deciding that Yes, it should be, and the party in power being caught completely off guard and unable to respond in any way besides the way it always responds.
Once we agree that it is a right, the rest is just mechanics. ACA could be tweaked to address its problems, or we could do the smart thing and take the other road. But no one will be kicked to the curb. I firmly believe that day is coming.
I would not be so sure of that. There probably still is the perception, among those who have what they see as good or acceptable coverage from their employer or the government (Medicare), that fixing the mess for others is an act of expensive charity for those who may be seen as lazier (“why don’t they just get a job?” ignoring that many jobs have poor or no coverage, some people are self employed, some want to retire before Medicare age, etc.). The issue gets enough notice because many people know, or have been in, the situation of not having coverage and having to forego medical care, but many others do not.
Even if the idea of universal coverage were broadly agreed on, the mechanics are likely to be politically difficult. Those who have something that they see as good or acceptable will probably be resistant to change which affects their coverage (even if the change is likely to be better). Grafting on something to the existing system of mostly employer based coverage (like ACA or AHCA) means that economic forces are distorted, mostly to the disadvantage of the smaller number of people on individual coverage. A bigger change will mean much bigger winners and losers (e.g. removing coverage from employment would be a boon to employers, but would they accept additional taxes in exchange, or would people in general pay extra taxes to what they see as a giveaway to employers?), with attendant fierce political lobbying. And then the cost monster hovers over everything – and each piece of the cost is defended by a powerful lobbying group.
Interesting poll (questions 11-23) at http://www.foxnews.com/politics/interactive/2017/03/15/fox-news-poll-315/
Planned Parenthood and “the 2010 health law, also known as Obamacare” are both viewed favorably. Both improved in polling since 2015; Obamacare was viewed unfavorably then, while Planned Parenthood was still viewed favorably, but less so than now.
Note that question 38 indicates that 51% of respondents have employer coverage, 27% have government coverage, and 15% have individual coverage. Question 41 indicates that opposition is greater than support for “the Republican health plan to replace Obamacare”, though some say it makes too many changes and others say it does not make enough changes.
H has a dental bridge that has cracked and will need to be replaced. He was quoted $3800.
One D needs her wisdom teeth out. We’ve encouraged her to get a quote from the dental school on campus.
For a basic silver ACA plan, no dental, plus two kids college health plans we are now paying the equivalent of our mortgage payment per month for health insurance. (Neither of us get coverage thru work).
It’s all too much to imagine Ryancare being worse.
We try to save and save and it gets sucked up by something in our lives that needs repair.
Someone upthread mentioned the pressure to save for retirement, save for college, and now save for our HSA accounts? That’s the liberty that is being touted? Every man for himself? Sink or swim?