Politico trolls the right on Obamacare
This report in Politico plays on the right’s fears that the GOP Congress will never do much about Obamacare:
Former House Speaker John Boehner predicted on Thursday that a full repeal and replace of Obamacare is “not going to happen.”
Boehner, who resigned in 2015 amid unrest among conservatives, said at an Orlando health care conference that the idea that a repeal-and-replace plan would blitz through Congress is just “happy talk.”
Instead, he said changes to former President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement would likely be relatively modest.
“[Congressional Republicans are] going to fix Obamacare ”“ I shouldn’t call it repeal-and-replace, because it’s not going to happen,” he said.
Boehner’s comments come as Republican lawmakers across the country are facing angry constituents at town halls worried that Obamacare will be yanked away without a suitable replacement.
I have a few things to point out. The first is that we don’t have a transcript of Boehner’s remarks, and I distrust articles like that which use a few quotes to characterize what a person said.
The second is that, when last I checked, Boehner was not in charge of this, so although he’s entitled to his opinion it’s just his opinion.
The third is that Politico is not the right’s friend, and the author is probably well aware of the cynicism and anger on the right towards the GOP, and is attempting (successfully, I think) to exploit that distrust to further split and dishearten the right.
The fourth is that we are mostly talking about semantics here, at least so far. I have never had much doubt that some of the elements of Obamacare would remain in place even if it’s repealed and replaced, although others will (hopefully) be changed. The exact mechanism by which that is accomplished—a full repeal of the act and passage of a full replacement that retains some elements (coverage of pre-existing conditions, for example) and changes others, or a series of moves changing it piece by piece—is still undetermined. I prefer repeal/replace. But the important thing is something better, designed with more liberty to choose and less cost, and based more on market principles.
Now, I’m not saying the GOP is going to be successful. I don’t even know how hard they will try. There’s certainly reason to be skeptical. We’ll see. But I don’t credit reports like Politico’s, and I don’t like to see people on the right fall for this game when it is in the realm of propaganda (concern-trolling, to be exact) at the moment rather than facts.
As well you shouldn’t!
HRC would be in jail if Trum was President, Trum claimed.
Maybe a little difficult to put the powers that be behind powers. Talk and deeds are two different dimensions.
The Deep State, Lucifer’s Own, the Leftist alliance, the Left’s Islamic Jihad allies, aren’t so easy to disappear once you become king of the US. Even if you have access to the entire arsenal of the United States, the enemies humanity faces is just a tad too strong to be disappeared the way the US disappeared Hiroshima. It takes a little more work than that.
The GOP has made a big mistake by promising to fully replace 0-care. With almost all the major insurers either pulling out of 0-care or sharply curtailing participation, and with the state exchanges failing, the end of this worthless experiment will soon be here.
However, since there are a lot of moving parts in 0-care and a lot of beneficiaries, something will have to be done as the death-spiral steepens and speeds up.
How about this: (i) Medicaid is the largest part of 0-care participation. It stinks, but fixing it is a whole other thing. Why not leave medicaid alone for now, with its expanded user base and come back later to fix it (which must be done).
(ii) get rid of the employer mandate and individual mandate parts of the bill right now and replace them with nothing and enhanced HSAs with improved major medical policies (actual insurance). Since the employer mandate has not yet had its chance to muck things up, snuffing it out now hurts no one – i.e., there is no constituency to keep it.
(iii) Allow individuals to purchase the Federal government policies available in their states. Prepare a way to sell insurance across state lines (not so easy since insurance is regulated at the state level).
(iv) think about some variant on the German/Swiss systems – everybody purchases a basic insurance plan. The patient pays out of pocket for regular medical visits. Plans with more coverage are available to those who wish to spend their own (or employers’) money. Figure out something for the indigent.
(v) require doctors and hospitals to post prices for everything in the list of procedures/activities/services, just like filling stations.
I know this has a lot of holes, but it represents a start. Why should we have the responsibility to completely fix something the Donk’s messed up.
And it has the added advantage of allowing Ryan and McConnell to continue to sell shares in “Springtime for Hitler” for the next election.
donkatsu,
All good ideas. Whisper this in djt’s ear.
The repeal/replace action should not be too difficult to do. Obamacare covers some 16 million people as of 2015. Approximately 10 million have individual policies. Of these I have no idea how many have pre-existing conditions, but I would assume maybe 50%.
6 million people get their Obamacare through Medicaid.
Repeal the law, and maintain the Medicaid program unchanged for now. That takes care of the 6 million on Medicaid.
Then allow those individuals with Obamacare policies without pre-existing conditions to buy policies on the open market allowing a full tax deduction for premiums paid. That takes care of another 5 million people.
The most difficult issue will be to get those 5 million (more or less?) people with pre-existing conditions into high risk pools where they have insurance that they can actually use. There are creative ways they can do this and maybe the government can subsidize some of the cost until a viable way to pay for the program comes down the pike.
My figures for the above come from:
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/06/03/Obamacare-2015-Numbers
Much of interest about the insurance numbers there.
donkatsu: “(v) require doctors and hospitals to post prices for everything in the list of procedures/activities/services, just like filling stations.”
This isn’t part of the Obamacare problem but it is most definitely a major problem with our healthcare system overall. It should definitely be apart of any reform of the system.
J.J., Parker,
The basic idea is to put forth some concrete proposals that do not have an enormous constituency that would suffer. That is the reason to keep Medicaid untouched for now, as awful as it is.
The pre-existing condition story is not really insurance, it is a payment plan. There are better ways than 0-care to do that. Also, within the pre-existings there are people who are insurable those who are not. We need to try to make distinctions so as to pare down the high risk pool as much as possible.
Finally, 0-care tampered with Medicare in a number of significant ways – hospital reimbursements, Medicare Advantage (Private insurance for Medicare participants), and other lesser ways. Medicare also needs an overhaul to move it toward some degree of actuarial soundness. While this goal is probably not attainable, Medicare’s future needs to be tied to a rise in the eligibility age (for SS as well) and a more constructive way for Medicare to share costs with private insurers for those still working and otherwise covered.
OTOH, as long as Ryan remains obsessed with his precious VAT (oops, Border Adjustment Tax), he is unlikely to entertain rational solutions and regular budgeting.
donkatsu,
” move it toward some degree of actuarial soundness.”
That is hard part. 🙁
When you take into account the millions who were forced off their insurance policies and into the “exchanges,” basically the only positive improvement made by Obamacare was opening up Medicaid to the non-impoverished poor. That could have bee accomplished in a two-sentence bill. All of the rest of the 2,000 pages of the act were devices designed to facilitate government control of health care.
I have yet to see a viable argument that it is within the federal government’s constitutional power to tell me that this health insurance policy is too good, or that one isn’t good enough. Or that the taxpayers have to pay for the health care of smokers who get lung cancer, injured motorcycle riders who don’t wear helmets, or AIDS patients who didn’t use condemns — thus giving the government the right to regulate all those activities. (of course, I feel the same way about the gummint telling me what gas mileage my car has to get, or what light bulbs I can use.)
Some Congressional staffers are going through, line by line, the dozens of statutes that were affected by Obamacare, and decide whether to keep or delete each provision. Whether you call that “amendment” or “repeal and replace” doesn’t really matter — what’s necessary is getting rig of the intrusive parts.
BTW, donkatsu, do you have any idea how many services there are offered by doctors and hospitals? Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of DRGs (the ID # of each individual service). That couldn’t be on a poster, it would be a book, a flash drive, or a website. There were 1,974 new DRGs for 2017 alone, 777 changed DRGs, and 311 deleted! Do you really think Joe or Jane Patient is going to be able to understand them and compare prices? Not!
It is a bit comical to see thetownhall “protests” by obvious Medicare recipients who are relatively unaffected by O’Care.
Two predictions:
1. The Republicans will do something without too much delay. They have made a very public promise that they must (seem) to keep.
2. Whatever they do will be attacked from both ends.
I don’t know what the best, or even an improved solution would be. I wouldn’t have a personal stake since, as an aged, retired Naval Officer, the wonderful U.S. taxpayers pick up my medical expenses through two different programs. However, I have a grand daughter who is four years removed from a Leukemia diagnosis. Since she is 25, she will have to leave her Mother’s policy soon. I can tell you that she and her Mother are scared to death about the pre-existing condition issue. Don’t know the answer to that one. Maybe a requirement that an existing insurance policy be extended to young people who are outgrowing their parent’s policies. There will clearly be a number of sticky issues of this nature.
(seem to) Pesky parens
I have long held that the O-Care beast will not be felled by politicians (top-down), rather it will die of it’s own bad design and a public that will come to ignore and/or hate it.
There is a scene in 1997’s ‘As Good As It Gets’ where the mom shouts to a (house call!) doctor: “Something-Rated-R HMO bastards!” – and the audiences cheered. Uh, who championed HMO’s in 1971? Ted Kennedy:
– – – – – – – – – – –
Introducing the HMO hearings, Kennedy said, “We need legislation which reorganizes the system to guarantee a sufficient volume of high quality medical care, distributed equitably across the country and available at reasonable cost to every American. It is going to take a drastic overhaul of our entire way of doing business in the health-care field in order to solve the financing and organizational aspects of our health crisis. One aspect of that solution is the creation of comprehensive systems of health-care delivery.”
– – – – – – – – – – –
Methinks this Bumble has been having its teeth pulled one at a time since it was prematurely hatched, and even if the R’s can’t fell it with slings and arrows, it will be good-for-nothing soon enough.
For anyone wanting to get an interesting perspective on what healthcare/health insurance (not the same things) might look like, read (Google) a 10-2009 article from The Atlantic by David Goldhill called ‘How American Healthcare Killed My Father.’ It is long, but a well thought out and well written piece.
According to this Weekly Standard article, ACA was sold with a 10-year cost of $983 billion cost. Current estimates are $1.98 trillion. I can think of another health insurance program the government started that missed it’s projections by a factor of 10 – Medicaire.
This is not going to be an easy fix. Politico supposedly has a leaked copy of some of the plan.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-five-worst-things-about-obamacare/article/2006940
Global warming will be an issue when the politicians and scientists who talk about man made global warming, stop flying their jets around every few hours.
Hussein care and national healthcare, will no longer exist once their proponents are forced into their own programs. Queue up Congress and in 30 days, it will be gone.
Alinsky’s attacks work on humans. DC is full of humans to mess up. Congress ain’t somebody’s Pagan God Pantheon, just in case people need to be told to their face what the trees in the forest look like.
The left-wing press is infamous, especially when targeting Trump et al, for quotes that do not quote.