Posted on 02/05/2016 7:41:57 AM PST by conservativejoy
The Iowa caucuses have solidified Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders as two of the leading candidates in this cycle: Sanders is the democratic socialist channeling liberal disenchantment with the Goldman Sachs wing of the party, while Trump represents the frustration of Republican blue-collar, white, middle-class voters with global competition and immigration.
Both of them are leading a revolt against their respective party elites.
The similarities don't end there. You might think the two candidates have wildly different views on the signature domestic issue of the last six years: health care reform. But you'd be wrong.
Sanders' plan, to the extent that his campaign has detailed it, is to create a "single-payer" system in the United States. Private health insurance would disappear, replaced by a single, government-run plan that would (according to the campaign) cover "everything."
What does "The Donald" want? Despite his signature vagueness on details, we have a pretty good idea. As he made clear on "60 Minutes," Trump would "take care of everyone, "paid for by "making deals" with the hospitals, along with a private plan for everyone. What might this look like in practice?
One way to reconcile the two is to assume that Trump is simply considering price controls. You could have a world where doctors and hospitals can only be paid based on a regulated fee schedule (a la Medicare), and let private plans deal with utilization. This would be, in some ways, Bernie lite: cost controls necessary for single-payer, but without the actual single-payer.
Another interpretation might be to look at how the United Kingdom's system functions. Many (though not all) doctors and hospitals are employed and owned by the government. Payment for services (with some exception) comes from the country's government-run insurance plan. The Donald could be considering doing something similar. First, employ all the doctors and hospitals in the country, and then allow private plans to manage claim payments.
What's particularly concerning about this second approach is that it would be a step beyond even what Bernie Sanders has proposed.
Under Sanders' plan, hospital ownership and physician employment wouldn't really change. The major change would be eliminating private insurance companies. Even this wouldn't be all that new. In fact, over 50 percent of national health care spending already comes from government programs like Medicare and Medicaid. There is much to dislike about Sanders' plan, including the effects it would have on innovation and the economy, but it would simply keep moving us down a well-worn path.
But moving all physicians and hospitals to government employment is a whole different ballgame. This wouldn't be single-payer - it would be a true "government takeover" of the health care system. Never mind that our graduate medical education system (for better or worse) is built on physicians earning a particular salary - for the government to employ all the docs and hospitals in the country would be prohibitively expensive under current costs, meaning that The Donald would need to make yet another "deal."
Conservatives are rightfully concerned about the prospect of a single-payer disaster under Sanders. But those who find themselves supporting Trump should take a step back and realize that, at least on health care, Trump's "art of the deal" could be an even bigger lurch to the left than Sanders.
Allowing insurance companies to compete over state lines would help
Wow, another troubling fact that Trumpophiles can accept or ignore.
Let’s remove the language of “deals” and “free health care” and “socialist”, and use Economics 101:
If you have a fixed resource, it is distributed either by the free market pricing system, or by forced rationing, or somewhere in between.
For the fixed health care commodity, apparently Trump is for fully forced rationing?
Trump has advocated allowing insurance to be sold across state lines, health savings accounts and portability ( retaining your plan when changing jobs).
Trump: We are going to work with our hospitals. We are going to work with our doctors. We've got to do something. You can't have a small percentage of our economy, because they're down and out, have absolutely no protection so they end up dying from, you know, what you could have a simple procedure or even a pill. You can'tt do that. We'll work something out. That doesn't mean single payer.
Lets not forget that building the wall and kicking out the illegals (even if he does allow about %5 to come back in LEGALLY) would help save a fortune in health care costs as well
It doesn’t matter because Trump.
One of the things about Trump is that he makes these big sweeping statements and then for the most part is really short on specifics. People then fill in specifics with whatever they wish he would do, then say with certainty “He’s going to do this”.
Thank you. Trying to paint Trump wrongly on this is just smarmy.
When it comes to socialized medicine, which is what Trump is calling for, there is always going to be the component of government making the decisions on the who gets what health care.
Yes, Trump wants to retain the private health insurance and lower premiums by allowing you to purchase across state lines. There is a small portion of the population that he wants to help so they don’t die in the street. Its always been that way. The county hospital cannot turn you away.
Wouldn’t it work like it does now?
We live in California, but my husband’s company is based out of Illinois, so we have Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois.
We have doctors we can go to in California, and my kids in Alabama and Texas for college have doctors they can go to.
What’s interesting is that my daughter’s neurologist isn’t covered by Blue Cross of California, but is under our plan.
Trump had a Q&A last night in NH, and he went into specifics about healthcare and this article is a bald-faced lie.
What are his specifics?
If anyone wants to hear Trump explaining his plan, watch his interview he did with Anderson Cooper. It is not what this reporter describes.
I am getting soooo tired of the lies on FR these days.
It does not bother me that lies being told about Trump are on FR. I want to see them and dispel them.
What has the libertarians upset is that Trump won’t go back to the way health insurance was before Obama blew it up. That was when if you had a pre-existing health care problem and lost your job/insurance, you could not get insurance or health care unless you were super wealthy or dirt poor. Many people had to go into massive debt to survive.
Trump said he wants everyone given the chance to get health care coverage. Voters want Obamacare repealed, but they don’t want to go back to the bad old days of not being able to get coverage.
The other problem we had was those who just chose to have no insurance and did not qualify for Medicaid or Medicare. Everyone who showed up at the hospital was ordered to be cared for. The hospitals and doctors were forced to eat the cost of this group of illegals and Americans. Illegals ran many hospitals out of business on the borders.
In the past, in conservative circles, we discussed the need to care for people who lost their jobs/insurance and those who could not get insurance. We wanted reform to address this problem. We did not want the whole system messed up as Obama did. Most people were happy with their insurance back then.
watch his townhall and yo’ll find out. I refuse to post any links or details for Cruzbots. They only turn around and bash everything, so find out for yourself.
Was this the town hall where Trump dropped the “F” Bomb?
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