Posted on 03/17/2014 4:56:50 AM PDT by Kaslin
Republicans have voted more than 50 times to repeal or alter Obamacare as the popularity of the legislation continues to be nearly non-existent. In the process, Republicans have been criticized for failing to present an alternative piece of legislation to replace Obamacare. More than a dozen alternative plans have been crafted on the Hill, but Republicans haven't been able to rally around a single plan. Now, that's changing as Republican prepare to present Americans with an official alternative to the Affordable Care Act:
The plan includes an expansion of high-risk insurance pools, promotion of health savings accounts and inducements for small businesses to purchase coverage together. The tenets of the plan — which could expand to include the ability to buy insurance across state lines, guaranteed renewability of policies and changes to medical-malpractice regulations — are ideas that various conservatives have for a long time backed as part of broader bills.
But this is the first time this year that House leaders will put their full force behind a single set of principles from those bills and present it as their vision. This month, House leaders will begin to share a memo with lawmakers outlining the plan, called “A Stronger Health Care System: The GOP Plan for Freedom, Flexibility, & Peace of Mind,” with suggestions on how Republicans should talk about it to their constituents.
The timing for this legislation is great for Republicans who just came off of a special election win in Florida where Democrat Alex Sink lost by running on a fix, don't repeal platform. Not only can Republicans running for election in the fall run against Obamacare, a law that will only continue to make the lives of Americans worse and more expensive, they can run on a new alternative.
Shouldn't tort reform have lessened that risk? Eliminate the risk of a multi-million dollar payout from a malpractice suit then you greatly reduce the need for CYA medicine. So states like Texas should have fewer unnecessary tests and, consequently, lower insurance premiums. They do have lower malpractice insurance costs but healthcare rates have increased at the same rate as other states.
The problem is Mr. Romney and his RomneyCARE.
Romney and Rove and GOP will impose it, have imposed it,
will continue to impose BY WHATEVER NAME.
GOP = Give Obama Power
Your cartoon in Post #3 is spot on.
The kind of tort reform i’m advocating is much more radical than anything going on in Texas. Read that first section of my original post here again.
I don't deny that we might often pay more for pharmaceutical products in the US than other countries do. There are several reasons for that, but primarily, it's the country of region that sets the price. Pharmaceutical companies are ham-strung because they would like to sell their product for a reasonable price, but have to do so with many constraints. Pharma companies are usually left with one of two options: they can sell their products at a greatly-reduced price, or they can not sell their product at all.
If we could incent other countries to spend a little more on life-saving medicines, we might not have to spend so much here.
#2 - Promote competition, enable health care insurance companies to sell policies across state lines, just like car insurance.
#3 - STOP! Do nothing more, and get the hell out of the way of the American people and American Business'. They'll find the solution which will be MARKET BASED, driving down costs through competition.
It is a FACT that when businesses compete for customers, American's win.
Color me sad for those ‘progressives’ or whatever name they hijack to camoflage their true, evil intent.
If their hospitals shut down, too bad. Should have voted against obama-don’t-care.
And I hope they think about that when they are driving all over Oregon to find a hospital that has the resources to sew up a cut hand, treat a raging fever or admit their sick kid.
Votes have consequences.
What you said.
The Healthcare system we had before Barry and his socialist gang forced 0bamascare on us worked pretty well.”
Our healthcare system has not worked well since the inception of HIPAA regulations many administrations ago. There is a major change coming up this fall in the form of standardization of diagnosis codes. Already been postponed several times because Medicare systems, which are controlled by the Federal government and with which all must comply, weren’t ready. IMO once this piece is in place with the accompanying mandated electronic reporting and compliance our healthcare will be toast and more doctors will bail.
Bottom line - if your diagnosis is X, other factors are Y and Z, your age is A, your treatment will be approved and paid by an insurance carrier or denied. It is all going to be pre-determined.
And collides head on with the 7th Amendment.
Repeal Obamacare in it’s entirety
Then replace it with:
1 - A ban on all medical insurance - This will insert the free market back into pricing and will dramatically lower all medical costs.
2 - Pass a law stating that emergency rooms do not have to take people who can’t pay. - This will stop the abuse of emergency rooms, and will also drive down costs for those who actually are paying.
3 - Tort reform, limit liability claims on doctors - This will also help drive down costs to patients
4 - eliminate ALL liability on drug companies for drugs approved as safe by the FDA (should have always been the case)
5 - Give a one time payout equal to everything anyone ever paid into Medicare + interest and end the system.
6 - Reduce Medicaid down to only those in urgent need who are in desperate poverty.
THAT is how you fix this mess!
An alternate government healthcare system is not what we want; it’s what we want to kill.
Obamacare needs to be repealed with no government system in its place.
We had a working private system. Adding an alternate government system will be the same as keeping Obamacare. It will become a bloated bureaucracy with thousand of government union workers and the ability to tax and spend without limits. It’s primary mission will be self perpetuation and anything even remotely resembling healthcare will be incidental for appearances.
Parts of it will never be repealed. The “keep your kid covered till age 26” proviso, the ban on barring pre-existing conditions, all play too well with low-info voters. They will squeal like stuck pigs if you try to yank those away from them.
In reality we could have just bought every uninsured a policy for a small fraction of what this debacle has cost.
The second option also includes the fact that the governments of those price-fixing countries will also encourage and support counterfeit production of the pharma's products which erode the pharma's legitimate market share in neighboring markets. So it actually goes MUCH further than just "don't sell the product there at all".
Thank you, I agree totally.
The problem is these idiots only see the money this can generate for the ‘government’ and just can’t pass it up.
JB
Isn't this kinda like issuing Executive Orders to circumvent the laws? Couldn't the House use this to defund anything they disagreed with?
the president refused to sign anything that didn’t include funding for everything. The government shut down, the republicans caved.
We went that route.
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