It’s slanted.
The idea isn’t supposed to be, imo, rob Peter to pay Paul. Yes, it was hard on higher income folks who may not get the subsidy from ACA. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water, make it impossibly expensive for those at 40k, so those at 75k can get a small help.
I would just like the same option for those who work for employers who pay the majority of the premium , who have no clue what it is like for people like us…small business owners who pay thru the nose for the most basic of plans, with crazy deductibles and fear going to the dr or heaven forbid, specialists. There HAS to be happy medium for everyone to be able to have access to healthcare
Unlinking health insurance from employment would fix that.
Oh, I know! We can bring back debtors’ prisons and they can crush rocks or make license plates or whatever for $0.23 an hour, and the for-profit corporations that run the prisons can rake it in!
Things are really starting to come together around here!
They still have prisoners do “beautification” (landscaping of roadways" and printing materials for state departments around here and would like to learn to do other things as well so they can get jobs once released from prison. They get WAY under minimum wage.
Yes, and think about the profits if we fill prisons with elders who can’t afford healthcare!
Oh, just think of all the work we can get out of poor, disabled sick folks who can’t afford their medical care! Excuse me while I try to wake myself from this nightmare.
“The fee to cover the average cost of incarceration for Federal inmates in Fiscal Year 2015 was $31,977.65 ($87.61 per day).”
It would be cheaper to provide good medical care (not to mention better education, rehabilitation, and job training)
Of course it would, but that wouldn’t line the pockets of the insurance companies and for-profit prison corporations–and, thanks to their lobbying and campaign donations, the pockets of the politicians as well.
Anybody remember that old movie Roller Ball? This isn’t the first time I’ve thought about it in the past few month since we are increasingly corporatizing and monetizing everything.
Hey, hey, now hold on! Here in Illinois, our ex-governors make our license plates! Don’t take their job away! 
Not surprising but oh, the irony.
Saw this analogy of healthcare on FB, written by a physician. Seems just about right to me.
. . .
I’m a doctor and I love HGTV. With that in mind, I offer you my own easy-to-understand take on the differences between the government health insurance plans. If you want to share you can copy/paste, my initials are on the bottom.
Obamacare: Welcome to your starter home! It’s pretty good for your first one. I mean, there are some things you kind of wish were better. You got a variable rate loan, which seems to go up a little every year even though the house isn’t getting any nicer. So that’s annoying. Truth be told, it’s a little outdated, a little awkward in places, you might call it a little ugly. But basically it needs a bathroom/kitchen refresh and a new coat of paint. If you did the updates and refinanced into a fixed-rate mortgage, it would be a pretty nice place to live for the next 10-20 years.
Medicare for all/Single Payer: Oh yeah. It’s The Forever Home. Wouldn’t it be amazing? Plenty of room, all the updates done, fixed low rate mortgage. You know you would LOVE it. And there would be tons of equity once you own it - it’s a great long-term investment decision. If you’ve got some extra cash and want to get fancy you could also buy a vacation home or maybe a boat! But even if you could never afford the extras, you’d have a solid and functional house forever. Unfortunately, you just couldn’t quite get the down payment together in 2010. Maybe 2020…
Republicare/Trumpcare: Look. Your starter house is ugly and it doesn’t work that well. We will do you a favor and bulldoze that ugly old starter house. There. You’re welcome!
But, we know you might need a place to live now, so here’s $2 to rent a tent. We’ll make it $6 if you are getting too old to sleep outside! But you should know that we have eliminated any standards around tent quality, so your tent might have a lot of big holes in the ceiling.
What’s that? Even horrible leaky tents cost $200 a month? Well, maybe you shouldn’t have bought that iPhone… But anyway, we strongly suggest that you start renting your leaky tent now. If you wait a year it will cost $260/month. And if it’s starting to rain when you decide to rent it, make that $750/month. If you are old: $1200/month. Also, if you are already wet when you try to rent it, the rental company may choose not rent you a tent at all - no company wants water inside their tents, you know?
But don’t worry. There are a few shelters around here that will let you stay for up to 24 hours. So, if you couldn’t afford the $200-$1200 tent with the $2-$6 we gave you, and you end up getting really wet, we suggest you go to a shelter and hope they can dry you off a bit before you have to head back outside. It’s possible they will send you a huge bill for this service, though. Can’t be sure.
So America, those are your choices! Do you A) Keep the starter home with the ugly kitchen, ideally invest in some renovations and a refi, B) splurge for the forever home, or C) pay a company to bulldoze your starter home and trash your equity in favor of a super expensive, leaky, rental tent?
CEA
@marvin100 Prisoners get free health care so the idea isn’t all that bad.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: People couldn’t stay away from politics. I deleted several posts and I’m closing the thread.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: I am reopening the thread. Please stay on-topic and keep away from political discussion.
The GOP is negotiating on huge changes in the bill. Some recalcitrant members of Congress say they will vote for the bill only if it removes Essential Benefits:
Outpatient care—the kind you get without being admitted to a hospital
Trips to the emergency room
Treatment in the hospital for inpatient care
Care before and after your baby is born
Mental health and substance use disorder services: This includes behavioral health treatment, counseling, and psychotherapy
Your prescription drugs
Services and devices to help you recover if you are injured, or have a disability or chronic condition. This includes physical and occupational therapy, speech-language pathology, psychiatric rehabilitation, and more.
Your lab tests
Preventive services including counseling, screenings, and vaccines to keep you healthy and care for managing a chronic disease.
Pediatric services: This includes dental care and vision care for kids
It’s unclear whether all the Essential Benefits would be removed, or only some. Maternity care and mental health care are the ones most often mentioned. These same members of Congress also want to remove the prohibition against discrimination based on pre-existing conditions.
The bill already cuts the ACA taxes and slashes Medicaid. With these changes, the bill would amount to
repealing all of Obamacare,
giving big tax cuts to the wealthy (that’s part of repealing all of Obamacare),
giving people age-based subsidies to buy insurance,
and cutting the pre-ACA Medicaid that covers pregnant women, the elderly, children and the disabled.
Giving people money to buy insurance, but having no rules for what that insurance must cover, seems like a recipe for scams.
I don’t understand buying a policy that did not cover hospital care or ER care. That’s frankly all I would want. The other services are usually affordable, except for some prescription drugs which are horrendously expensive. I do like giving people more choice in what type of plan they want and what benefits they want.
If you cut out all the stuff in post #516, what’s the point of having insurance at all?
The proposal is to cut out essential benefits, while keeping the pre-existing conditions rule. This doesn’t work. Healthy people will be like TatinG. They will buy the skimpy policies.
But if insurance companies offer more comprehensive policies, only expensive people will buy them. Therefore, insurance companies can’t afford to offer comprehensive policies; they would lose money paying out all the claims.
This is not choice for consumers. It’s choice for insurers-- the choice to offer only crummy insurance, or to lose money on offering comprehensive insurance too. What choice do you think insurers will pick?
This is not a way to control costs; there is nothing in this proposal to control costs. Rather, this is a way to shift costs away from healthy people and onto the shoulders of sick people. Some people think it’s more fair to make sick people pay for their care. Others think it’s more fair to share costs.