My sense too. The biggest concern is the loss of profitability, which has been so hard to achieve, on the individual market may be in doubt due to adverse selection without the mandate.
We saw how Mitch McConnell talked a good story two years ago, about how he was going to rip out the ACA, “root and branch,” then balked once he was confronted with actually doing it. So these repubs are all talk.
I can’t imagine any Republican running for re-election spouting similar rhetoric this year.
At least if they don’t want to be laughed out of the room.
That’s a really important. I often find Michael Moore humorless and off-target. I wasn’t a huge fan of Sicko all those years ago, but it was smart and prescient of him not to focus on the problem of large groups of the uninsured and the uninsurable in that documentary, but rather on the problem of people who thought they had real insurance coverage, but did not and got hosed.
Where is their upper hand, other than trying to kill every attempt to address the ACA? Or do you mean they have a better position, with regards to political election rhetoric?
I’m speculating that we will gradually morph to some form of a hybrid system for those under 65. We already have it for those 65+.
If anyone wants nostalgia for how bad it could actually be, they only need to look into minimed plans which were increasingly common among lower socioeconomic earners.
These would be plans that would cover expenses only up to a few thousand dollars.
And they still had deductibles.
Aside from the fact that the rightwing war on Mitch McConnell makes little sense to me, substantively, I’d argue that the problem is less with the lying Republicans who overpromised than with their voters, who encouraged them and rewarded them over and over for their ■■■■■■■■ despite the mathematical and institutional and political and practical difficulties of accomplishing what they said they were going to do. Part of me is like: Stop forcing them to say and do these stupid and unrealistic things that are doomed to fail or make things worse and blaming them for it.
What’s unrealistic about coming up with a repeal/replacement for the ACA, and passing it?
Right now, Congress could be meeting with everyone involved with the health care and insurance community, and be working on legislation that leads the nation’s health care into this century. But where is it?
Just repeal it and institute UHC. Maybe.
People don’t even agree on the problem and therefore can’t agree on a solution.
UHC would do just that.
As the midterms get closer, we’ll see who’s highlighting healthcare and who is not.
The idea that Democrats tried to “kill every attempt to address the ACA” is not true at all. For example, there was a bipartisan group (including Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray) that worked on legislation for stabilizing the ACA markets last summer and fall. McConnell promised a vote on it–then reneged.
The GOP had a chance to do healthcare reform through regular order–with hearings, committees, public debate, etc. Almost all of the ACA was done through regular order and took a year, and we all saw the sausage-making, for better and for worse. The legislation was availabel for public viewing online for months. In contrast, the GOP weasels set up a bad-faith, wholly hypocritical reconciliation process for healthcare that–literally–led them to hide the legislation and try to literally pass it in the middle of the night.
There’s no money for it, even given the terrible and unpopular ideas that the GOP has about healthcare policy when those ideas are made specific, held up to public scrutiny, or put into practice (see what happened last year). Whatever savings they clawed from the ACA mandate repeal, the GOP chose to use for the still-deficit-financed tax cuts instead.
Look at the Senate, and tell me how or why a majority for repeal would be easier now than it was a year ago when they failed. With Doug Jones there and McCain out, it’s basically impossible. Do you think Democrats want to repeal the ACA?
The GOP Congress could have chosen that open process/regular order all last year. They had no interest.
You didn’t have to get insurance. You could have paid the wee penalty and self insured.
So, I assume when you turn 65, you’ll self fund instead of signing up for Medicare?
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Thanks for the reply.
I have long maintained that the cost of US health insurance is too high because the cost of US healthcare (doctor salaries, malpractice, too many machines, hospitals and medical practices paying for image by favoring campus like layouts in high rent settings etc. etc. .)
More specifically our problem does NOT stem from greedy for-profit insurance companies fleecing the poor starving minorities etc. etc… The chart shows that.
In 2009 the US the cost of gov’t funded healthcare Medicare, Medicaid. VA healtcare etc. per capita (not per patient, per U.S. resident) at ~$4,000 was already as much as the rest of the OECD countrues pay for all healtcare, both public and private combined.
Cost shifting does not reduce costs. Forcing the young to pay for the old does not reducr cost.
Think about it. We could eliminate Aetna, Humana, etc., the entire insurance industry, eliminate every treatment, surgery and presciption they pay for and the total cost doctors nurses and hospitals charge just for current Medicare, current Medicaid etc. would STILL be more than the total France’s doctors, nurses and hospitals charge for public and private care combined.
Until we stop demonizing all the usual predetermined “guilty” parties and look at why hospitals and doctors and nurses charge more here than there, we are rearranging deck chairs on the titantic.
Deck chairs
How do you think life insurance works?
In short:
Doctors and nurses and hospitals in America charge the U.S. government almost $4,000 per year per American resident (not per patient served, per man woman or child). They charge that just for the services they provide to Medicare patients, Medicaid patients etc…
In Sweden, the UK, Australia etc. etc. doctors, nurses and hospitals charge the same amount and provide services for the entire population.
Our exhorbitant healtcare costs are not driven buy insurance companies. They are
exhorbitant because our doctors, nurses and hospitals charge exhorbitant rates.
Irrelevant.
Why is it irrelevant? Insurance is based on pooled risk. Always has been.
