Posted on 01/13/2017 12:28:08 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Obamacare, the left’s grand attempt to create a national government-run health care system, has failed.
They promised lower health insurance premiums, but delivered higher ones. They promised more choice and competition, but delivered less. They promised continuity and better access to care, but delivered disruption and dislocation.
Despite promises that people could keep their plans and doctors, thousands of Americans were forced into more expensive insurance with higher deductibles and plans that didn’t include their doctors.
After spending billions in tax dollars, Obamacare managed to increase the number of people with health insurance by much less than predicted—with over 80 percent of even that increase the result of simply enrolling more people in Medicaid. So far, the net growth in private health insurance has been only about 3 million people—or less than 1 percent of the population.
In the meantime, Republicans won—first the House, then the Senate, and finally the presidency—by campaigning to repeal Obamacare.
Now, those who created the mess have the audacity to insist that Republicans not repeal Obamacare until they first put in place a new comprehensive, national design for America’s health care system. Unfortunately, some Republicans seem to be listening to them.
Yet those demands reveal a fundamental ignorance of how to achieve more choices, higher quality, and lower costs for any product or service.
Perhaps they should take a look at the history books. By the end of the 1970s, Japan, once known for its cheap trinkets and poor product quality, was overtaking the U.S. automobile and manufacturing industries in terms of quality, efficiency, and costs. That was largely due to the business practices revolution led by Edward Deming, an American management consultant who went to Japan after World War II to rebuild its infrastructure.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailysignal.com ...
PING!
Trump has stated he will seek repeal and in almost the same instant explain his plan to follow.
That’s what I am waiting to hear.
It’s a two-part article.
#1 - ditch regulations & subsidies
I’m all for burying ~99% of ~99% of regulations.
Subsidies are needed, but they should not be based on 100% coverage.
Maybe say 90% of what Medicare covers, so providers have to fight it out to get a piece of the insurer’s pie by cutting their prices and costs.
Make it so Dr. Worthless Treatment doesn’t get to ride the coattails of Dr. Effective Treatment.
And don’t require any specific drug just because the FDA says its somewhat better than a sugar pill.
I was forced to retire after 40 years last year. The plan I want is a buffet style plan where I get to choose. Don’t need maternity so why have to pay for it. Same for birth control pills. Let the insurance companies also cross state lines and keep the local politicians out of it also.
Subsidize some and other will suffer through higher premiums. If the government subsidizes people's health care premiums there is no incentive for the insurance companies to lower them. Those without the government handout will have to pay the higher premiums all on their own.
The first five steps to fixing the health care system are getting the Federal government out.
Healthcare is a consumer good, and people should have some skin in the game to realize that, to realize that health goods and services don't just magically appear. Healthcare is not a "right" that can be plucked off a tree, and if you can buy $200 sneakers, $500+ cell phones, pay $200+ per month for cable TV, you can budget for a health savings' account and you can chip in to pay for healthcare costs.
They need to get the taxes out of the monthly premiums. Why can’t folks on the individual market make use of the Federal Group Rates?
Many of its provisions, such as the individual mandate, need no replacement, only repeal. Another such provision is every rule prohibiting insurance companies from selling their products across state lines. Get rid of everything in the Unaffordable Health Non-Care Act that does no good, and then work on replacing the very few provisions that might actually benefit American citizens.
The problem is too many cooks and too many plans.
It will be sorted out
Immediacy not an issue of relevance
The only way to actually fix it and to allow wider access than any other method is to give it all back to the Market, to remove the government totally from Medicine and from Insurance. Anything else that leaves government in charge of anything degrades medicine from its optimum.
Repeal is replace. We replace Obamacare with no Obamacare.
No subsidies. Subsidies are something that will be continually raised and expanded until they take over the whole field. Returning Medicine and Insurance wholly to the market will have the side effect of bringing the churches and other charitable organizations back to the fore. Access will be more likely for the destitute than it is in any government system no matter how extensive.
In a completely market system Insurance would be actual insurance, policies that are purchased to pay for the event of a major expensive illness. Everything else would be cheaper out of pocket. The current system is NOT insurance. It is a prepaid medical plan for day to day care. As such it employs far too many expensive drones to administer the "plans." Find a doctor who advertises that he has no malpractice insurance and who accepts cash only and you will be paying around half of what it costs with "insurance." There are still enough built in artificial costs due to regulation that the cost is still higher than if you could go to, say Costa Rica, where there are good facilities and offshore US doctors. For truly major medical it is cheaper to buy that airplane ticket and rent a hotel room in Thailand than to pay for the same thing without insurance and you have access to the best doctors England used to have before England ran off all the talent with ever more onerous rules. There are a lot of Canadian doctors offshore now, and a stream of American doctors that got going with the advent of obamacare.
A big part of the problem is the public perception of health “insurance”. It is nothing of the sort and hasn’t been for awhile.
Most people see it as a type of third party coupon discount. Don’t even know what may be charged before they get treatment. End user is completely out of the loop, and hence out of market pricing.
Going to the doc should be like going to the mechanic. Posted up front charge for estimate. Take it from there.
But folks want their freebies and gov funded charity.
To me, repeal is ok. But you still have plenty of state statutes and medicare left.
I don’t have much hope for the insurance/medical bit in this country. I only see it getting worse.
The gov will ultimately play the balancing game for as long as it can, trying to toe the line of total insolvency, just like they do w/Social Security.
Good luck w/that.
In the first decade after WWII, “Made in Japan” on a product was the equvalent of labelling that product schlock.Edward Deming, an American management consultant, went to Japan after World War II to rebuild its infrastructure. Deming’s signature point was that quality tended to reduce cost. He persuaded Japanese manufacturers that “el cheapo” production was a dead end, and that they had to put priority on quality first, and on a bottom-up model for developing more efficient production. Over time, the resulting incremental improvement in quality and efficiency produced the situation we saw later, where “suddenly” American autos were schlock compared to Japanese imports of similar price.
This article compares the top-down Obamacare model to the dead-end top-down, cost-first (“If you can save a dollar on each car, and you are making a million cars, you just saved a million bucks”) approach to manufacturing which the Deming-led quality model overwhelmed in the automobile production business. A very interesting comparison.
“buffet plan”
If you don’t buy “veggies”, your subsidy amount for “veggies” would vanish.
Having subsidies vanish like that is one way to keep subsidy costs (and taxes) down.
Yes, you should have the choices coverage providers think are attractive.
However, if you want to go cheap then Uncle Sam will go cheap too.
“buffet plan”
If you don’t buy “veggies”, your subsidy amount for “veggies” would vanish.
Having subsidies vanish like that is one way to keep subsidy costs (and taxes) down.
Yes, you should have the choices coverage providers think are attractive.
However, if you want to go cheap then Uncle Sam will go cheap too.
“churches and other charitable organizations back to the fore”
Women don’t want to become nuns and work for free anymore.
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