So you were just being lazy? Too bad.
I’m fine with that, but you don’t really want to leave it to Trump.
No, my point was that you were being lazy.
Hardly, I just don’t need my hand held on a very basic thread with a couple people posting.
Too difficult to hit reply?. It’s in large letters to the lower right.
I want to but we can’t because he never had a plan, and still doesn’t. He won’t have one in 2020 either.
They were all replies. I am sorry you are so confused about the use of this forum; you have to hit the quote button (the cartoon bubble) to insert an always visible quote of the post you are replying to.
I don’t do that usually since it can cause moderation issues; mods have said it is better NOT to insert always visible quotes.
Hope that helps you!
We had a free market system which did not support a standard level of health care for all. Part of the problem was that health policies had to reflect what coverage the individual states mandated. And there were a lot of differences in coverage from state to state. At the core of the ACA was a standardization of services. I agree that it was a dumb idea to provide maternity coverage on every policy. And I also agree that TORT liability limits are a good idea. However it seems that Congress has never had an appetite for it.
The ACA certainly was an advantage to folks like my wife and me. We both have pre-existing conditions which made our catastrophic insurance policy super expensive. And our income level did not allow us to be on medicaid. We were paying over $30K a year. So the ACA gave us a whole bunch of great coverage and was affordable.
Certainly the ACA has areas that could be improved. And I will wait to see what the Republican plan is.
Let’s agree to meet here in 20 years (10 is obviously not long enough) to discuss the Republican plan. AOC will be president by then. 
We all know that candidates on both sides sometimes go pretty far out from the middle in order to get nominated. Then they have historically gone back to the middle before the general election. So if Bernie does get the nomination it will be interesting to see what he does.
I still believe that most of the middle age Democrats, like me are fairly fiscal moderates. And therefore we see the problem when it comes to funding something like Medicare for all. The message that Obama recently gave the candidates was not to get carried away with proposals that would have very major funding problems.
I posted my GOP plan in that thread, in this thread I will post what I deem a good Liberal/Dem plan.
Eliminate Medicaid. Have universal bronze level insurance until retirement, when it ascends to silver level/Medicare. Have private insurance cover deductibles, and extras like Medicare advantage does now, which is their most profitable business. This could include optical and dental.
Funding would be through the existing taxes on paychecks for Medicaid and Medicare for both Employer and Employee plus additional business taxes which would represent less than the amount they currently pay for private insurance for their employees. Target would be 90 percent of the current 3.5 trillion expenditure or roughly 3.1 trillion.
Businesses would love this and this would offer employees mobility, thus spurring wage growth due to increased competition for the best workers.
It would simplify billing and eliminate duplication of services while lowering the costs to providers and health care institutions. Global electronic record keeping would also improve safely and privacy while lowering costs. A ton of money is dumped into billing, but if there was one form and one set of rules this could drastically lower costs.
1 Like
Back in the day, insurance was “major medical” or “hospitalization” that covered anything that required hospital care. Routine office visits, inoculations, even ER visits that didn’t require an admission were fee for service. I lived in a lower income, blue collar area and knew nobody who couldn’t afford “major medical” or who was a charity patient. This is what I would go back to. Get the government out, and, probably institute a loser pays system for frivolous malpractice suits.
Government intrusion into the medical profession did what government seems to do best - make the simple complicated and the affordable unaffordable. I think the most reasonable assessment of medical care was made by Ben Shapiro (who may have been quoting someone else) - that what people want is medical care that is accessible, affordable and universal, but you can only have two of three. If you have universal health care that is affordable (to the client and taxpayer) then accessibility - either the supply of medical providers or the range of conditions that can be covered, shrinks. If you have universal coverage that is accessible, the cost will be prohibitive. And you can’t have affordable coverage that is easily accessed, for everyone.
The problem that is getting buried in this issue is the looming shortage of doctors. When technology has opened up so many careers that are well paying and take less time to train for, that top tier student is no longer going into pre-med. Every day, I hear ads on the radio encouraging people to choose a nurse practitioner for their medical care - not because anyone has discovered the benefits of choice, but because there is a shrinking number of doctors in the primary care fields, and NPs are seen as a stopgap. It goes beyond a shortage of medical school slots and residency slots - there just aren’t as many bright students choosing medicine as a profession anymore,
This is a desperation thread trying to cover for what trump said over the last 2 days.
“Oh yeah? We don’t have a plan? Where’s YOUR plan!?!?”
1 Like
Yes, Cal’s dem party are now split between the socialists and the moderate “corporate” dems as the left calls them, and so will the national party be split the same way.
And, yes both parties have people who are running on replacing and replacing Obama care.
I’m surprised dems supported forced payment to giant corporations…
Thanks, sounds like a well thought out plan. The best one I’ve heard. I doubt the budget would do anything but rise though. And the idea of “Global electronic record keeping” is way too big brother for me.
No, it was to point out both sides want to repeal and replace Obama care.
Yes, back before we became a welfare state doctors not only did house calls, many spent one day a week helping the poor for free.
There was a doctor’s group that would come to LA once a year and just start treating people who lined up for free. That’s what should take place a lot more.
Yes. To fix the healthcare system, we just need people to work for free. Genius.
1 Like
I know doctors who made house calls for home-bound patients 20 years ago, and some of them say they would do it today but for the time constraints. I always say that there is one thing we all have in common, we all only get 24 hours in a day. Doctors are now spending anywhere from 8-15+ hours a week on government mandated e-charting alone. The late Charles Krauthammer once referred to electronic charts as great in theory and a nightmare in practice and that’s true. It also requires a doctor’s diagnosis to accommodate one of the ICD codes and there may not be a code for a home visit, even if the doctor had the time to make one. And since most doctors are moving away from private practice - the government has just made it too onerous - and into salaried, hospital based employment, their employer may not allow them to make home visits.
Most of the doctors I know - and I know quite a few - have office practices with some hospitalized patients. That means they have to see office patients and then make rounds at the hospital. Their days are routinely 10-12 hr days not counting the commute and not counting the time spend in e-charting and not counting any time taken away by emergencies. Why doctors don’t do what they used to do a generation ago has to do with the demands made on their time that weren’t made a generation ago. And as a PS to this - a family member is going for a routine physical next week with one of the few general practitioners in our area. The appointment was made in mid-November, and mid-April was the soonest they could book the appointment.
