Posted on 02/24/2019 7:04:23 AM PST by Theoria
Even before Democrats finish drafting bills to create a single-payer health care system, the health care and insurance industries have assembled a small army of lobbyists to kill “Medicare for all,” an idea that is mocked publicly but is being greeted privately with increasing seriousness.
Doctors, hospitals, drug companies and insurers are intent on strangling Medicare for all before it advances from an aspirational slogan to a legislative agenda item. They have hired a top lieutenant in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign to spearhead the effort. And their tactics will show Democrats what they are up against as the party drifts to the left on health care.
They also demonstrate how entrenched the Democrats’ last big health care victory, the Affordable Care Act, has become in the nation’s health care system.
The lobbyists’ message is simple: The Affordable Care Act is working reasonably well and should be improved, not repealed by Republicans or replaced by Democrats with a big new public program. More than 155 million Americans have employer-sponsored health coverage. They like it, by and large, and should be allowed to keep it.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
If you like your insurance, we Democrats will be sure to abolish your insurance. If you like your car and the freedom it gives you, we Democrats will soon make private car ownership illegal. In fact if you liked your country then we Democrats will be sure to destroy your country. Any other questions?
For whom? It must be the insurance companies, because the general public is getting shafted, paying ever-increasing premiums for coverage that only kicks in after thousands of dollars in deductibles...
The Constitution should be enough to kill Medicare, never mind Medicare for all.
Medicare for seniors, which is already under-funded and on track for insolvency given upcoming retirements, would quickly collapse with a socialist expansion to cover everyone.
Where is the AARP outrage???
On the one hand, the “affordable care act” is serving the insurance companies and the health care industrial complex very well; none of them have been financially pinched.
On the other hand, their nothing more “affordable” about the “affordable care act”. It has not made health insurance or medical care cost less, in terms of their total cost in what everyone is paying for insurance, out-of-pocket and in taxes for the insurance subsidies. Some individuals see nominal cost improvement for insurance, for them, due to subsidies, but when the subsidies are including the total and the average health insurance cost is not less.
Why?
The big winner has been the health care industry.
They insured that their party of record - the Democrats -kept the topic, the focus and the importance on “insurance”. But what does insurance pay for? It PAYS for health care. Ignored - by design, in the whole debate, was not why is health insurance so costly, but why is health care so costly.
The affect was the same as the mis-direction in terms of education, focusing on insuring students are supported in paying ever increasing tuition, but but questioning and challenging academia on that ever increasing tuition.
The Democrats’ agenda has been to “insure” the health care industry has “insured” payers for its ever increasing costs, just as they have worked to “insure” tons of government help to students to pay the exorbitant costly demands of academia.
Yet why would the health care industry be opposed to “Medicare for All”, “insuring” everyone has health insurance? Because the rates Medicare pays for health insurance has always been further below actual costs than what private insurance has paid. Medicare for all will become a de fact “single payer” system,
We are pinched from both sides.
Since health insurance is not individual centered, with each individual regardless of employer, or union choosing a health insurance plan they want, and keeping it or changing it when the move or change jobs (and yes with employers still helping to pay for the individual’s chosen plan, if they want to). And since that method is not what we have, and does not cross state lines - with one set of regulations regardless of state; and since most of the plans we have are allowed to restrict the individual’s choice of health care providers; and since health care providers are able to deny who it is they will accept any part of a payment from; and since the plans doe not have a big portion of the premium applied to health savings accounts; we do not have the individual in a better position to bring market choices to bear on health care costs.
In essence, since nothing has been done to put the market back into what the consumer is willing to pay for health care, the health care industrial complex has been told by the political class not to worry - they will force taxpayers to help cover their excesses, one way or another, by one means or another.
Meanwhile the diversion keeps working - everyone remains focused on making “health insurance” “affordable”, when the core problem is not “insurance”, it’s health care costs themselves.
Even the insurance industry is in on it, even though they know at the bottom of it all their premiums are primarily driven by the underlying health care costs, not their revenue or profit margins. Why? If health care costs could be contained, total dollars in premiums would not have to be what they are. Stockholders will see that as an aspect of declining value, even though costs will also be lower.
Neither industry, insurance or health care providers, have any self interest in being honest about the true problems.
They don’t want Medicare for all, and they don’t want the present system that is rigged in their favor to be messed with either.
The insurance companies were warned by conservatives that ACA was a step towards universal healthcare. They supported ACA anyway, their wall street performance has been fantastic with ACA, and now they fully deserve to be obliterated by medicare for all. Wish I didn’t have to live with the consequences.
Agreed. They are doing well at the expense of and on the backs of middle class Americans.
Fortunately frost in the good old US of A the demon cats already had the eight years of Obama care and all those promises which failed so it’s not like OH gee ! they haven’t tried it yet
Of course as we know some 40 something percent of the population will believe absolutely anything tgese idiots say even if it’s a bold face lie and they know it’s a bold face lie because they’re idiots And they think all Republicans are horrible and evil
so that’s what we have and so we just got to get out and vote
Oh well. Expect a lot of healthcare BS in this election
Your cigar should be in the mail soon.
You can bet the major players have no interest in revealing the true cost of health care and how to deliver better care at a cost that does not require insurance to acquire.
The question might start with how much so called preventative care is really necessary. Think screenings and testings, etc. We are told that the lower cost of such care offsets the cost of treatment if such care was not provided. But multiply that small cost by the number of people who hold to the belief of their absolute necessity and you find that is a rather large cost. I’m thinking of those who are in low risk groups and are asymptomatic. Might the health care monies involved be better put to use for treating actual sick people? In any case shouldn’t preventative care be part of normal maintenance (for lack of a better term) not requiring large budgetary outlays? Could it be that insurance coverage for such actually drives up costs? I think yes.
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