President Trump Leads a Listening Session on Healthcare
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts_C_WivWGI
Three-Pronged Approach to Repeal and Replace Obamacare
https://www.whitehouse.gov/repeal-and-replace
Trump tweets on Health Care Bill - hoe to reconcile.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3534244/posts
The only way I’d be happy with a non repeal of Obamacare is if
ALL Public Servants and Public Employee’s were REQUIRED to Purchase their own Obamacare Plans and NO TAXPAYER FUNDS were used for Health Insurance of Any Kind for ANYONE except members of the US Armed Forces.
Why in the Hell should our Public Employee’s be stuck in these High Priced, Inferior Plans paid for by the Taxpayers. They should be FREE to purchase their own Low Cost, High Quality Health Insurance from the Obamacare exchange, in fact they should be REQUIRED TO DO SO!!!
Think you owe me a H/T on the free market proposal. But you are correct. This is about free market proposals which get government out of our healthcare. There will need to be tweaks to the system, but for the most part, plans that are good will be purchased, plans that aren’t need to be sunsetted, such as I suspect Obamacare being one.
This isn’t complicated. Use Obamacare as an option in the new plan and run it through reconciliation. Obamacare will then die a slow death.
Watch the cost of insurance take a nosedive because there is now a lot of real competition for health care insurance dollars.
ObamaCare.
Gut it like a fish. Defund it. Remove all the requirements, the mandates, the penalties for not having it. Remove all the illegal and unconstitutional aspects of it. Let it implode under the massive amount of fraud, lies and deceit the Rats threw at us and leave it be.
As a living testament to the brown-stained legacy of the Obama Regime. Impotent and useless. Just like all Rats.
If they don’t repeal it, they need to make darn sure there is NO WAY any Democrat president/Congress can resurrect the Beast or any of its provisions (taxes, mandates, etc.) that are SO onerous & objectionable.
That’s what makes sense.
If you have most everything else be market oriented, it will drive down the price of everything else.
Take anything in the super market, for example, eggs. A huge number of people buy eggs. A relatively small percent buy with food stamps those same eggs.
Where else can you get a dozen of anything, cleaned, packaged, shipped, shelved, priced, registered, and bagged for little more than a dollar?
That’s amazing DESPITE the food stamp portion.
Do that with health care. Make the vast majority of it market based, and then give the others “health stamps” to buy on the open market.
That'll work. Let Obamacare die under it's own weight of high cost and give Americans a Free Market choice to go to WITHOUT government mandates or interference.
…very carefully snip any mandate that says individuals must be covered by a government approved plan rather than a new free market plan of their choice.
In that vein, snip also any governmental/judicial mandate that directs health care providers to provide services for which the mandate will not reimburse losses in full.
So long as providers are left to raise costs to cover such fluctuating losses there is no free market.
If the mandates are funded and the costs then transferred to taxpayers, it more properly becomes a political issue.
The tail always wags the dog, however. For years now hospitals and clinics set themselves up to please the least cooperative insurance plans, Medicare and Medicaid, because most of their patients have those plans.
Any new plans would have to be able to get all the medical infrastructure (doctors, clinics, hospitals, etc) to buy in. Even if they buy in they are stuck still dealing with ALL the same crap that we are sick of! We want RID of it, we do not want to have to support all that and a secondary system too.
I say repeal completely.
Here are things to start with however:
(1) A Free Market requires feedback from PRICES. And yet no one knows how much ANYTHING costs in medicine until after the bills are done going around. And they price they charge is rarely the price that gets paid.
It is not even legal to post online a list of medical prices corresponding to CPT® codes (the list of 5 digit code numbers that the AMA “owns” that show what medical service was purchased. The AMA will sue you for a LOT unless you PAY them A LOT based on your web server’s traffic, etc. Why is there no advertising of prices in medicine except for “cosmetic” procedures?
We need a NATIONAL OPENSOURCE COPYRIGHT-FREE medical procedure code system, 5 digits also, so existing software does not have to be changed, that everyone can use to list and advertise prices without getting sued by the AMA. Maybe the AMA in the name of national interest will donate the CPT system and make it copyright free? (Nah — they make more money selling those codes than they do from their members dues.)
(2) It should be illegal to charge different people different prices for the same service. There is typically a “charge master” type price that is ridiculously high, and then there is a different price for virtually every insurance plan that will be accepted, and they vary a LOT. No one knows what things cost. No the patient, not the staff, not the doctor except maybe private doctors only on the things they charge for. You cannot even find out in advance, accurately, what something costs. “You have to buy it to find out how much it costs!” That does not work!
So also make it illegal to charge differently. Same price to any person, no matter how it is paid. An exception can be made for welfare-like plans, possibly even Medicare, to give discounts, but otherwise, no matter if you pay cash or an insurance company pays, the charges are the same for all people and all plans. Period.
This allows people to KNOW WHAT THINGS COST. Then the free market can kick in better, people will buy things that are worth it and avoid the garbage.
Encourage STATES to pass this. Illegal for the feds to do it. Develop model laws for states. States that do not use them will not reap the benefits, their loss.
(3) SPLIT insurance plan fees into a PREVENTIVE/WELL-CARE portion (”part P”), and an ILLNESS/INJURY portion (”part I”). No one has to buy the preventive portion “part P.” It’s an add-on people can buy extra, or else they just pay their own way, because it is all predictable expense for a certain age and sex. It dose not need to be insured. No rules for it, no arguments about free birth control, screening for depression, etc. You want that stuff, you pay for it.
The “part I” is the “taking care of the sick” part. That’s insurance.
That’s all the time I have to type right now. (1) and (2) are very important. Prices have to be KNOWN TO PATIENTS and really to their doctors also for a free market to work best, and we need all the benefit that we can get from that free market because it is much smarter that the Gruberized Bureaucracy.
I think priority number 1 has to be providing relief to those people that got totally hosed by Obamacare in the private insurance markets. Those are the people that pay full fare and have had their premiums and deductible triple in some cases. Subsidize everybody until they can sort it out.
The part of this that annoys me is that this concept apparently depends on the states being willing to permit such things.
As I understand it, the way things function now is that each different states structures their insurance regulations differently, which therefore prevents there being any competition across state lines. A person living in Florida simply can't purchase health insurance from a company in Georgia, because it's illegal for a company in Georgia to cover a Floridian with a Georgia health insurance policy.
It seems like there's a problematic federalism issue here. If the states can't be "convinced" to permit this liberalization of the insurance industry, then the federal government's hands are essentially tied, right?
So I'm not sure how "free market" principles can be imposed on states which aren't interested in practicing them.
In any event, it's certainly not the President's, the Congress', or the federal government's fault that the states, acting individually, create a situation which utterly prevents free markets in health insurance to exist.
Am I missing something, or is this a problem intrinsic to the way our Constitutional system is structured?
It doesn't seem like there are any easy fixes...
“Repeal every word of Obamacare.”
Only market solutions can fix this.
I don’t think Trump wants to kick those with preexisting conditions off their insurance by repealing ObamaCare. I think he’s made up his mind on this.
Jim, your proposal has merit and it might very well get adopted. I have an alternative.
First, those who have preexisting conditions would be grandfathered in, however after a set deadline those a preexisting condition would have to declare it. To stay covered they will have to continue to pay their premiums or lose coverage.
That’s why it would be wise for anyone after the deadline to buy insurance BEFORE they get sick. The transition period will spike insurance costs and subsidies that will be sunsetted should be used to offset the pain for voters.
This will provide political cover for the Republcans, which is what they want. In the end we can transition to a free market system but the transition is all important.
Graham and McCain won’t be happy even with this plan but all the pressure possible will need to be applied.
The Sixteenth Amendment (Amendment XVI) to the United States Constitution allows the Congress to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states or basing it on the United States Census.
and they passes this travesty as applying only to the top 2% of the RICH in America
where has that gotten us. Once a law is in place the Commies of all stripes will modify it as they see fit
And now we are being told to Bend over once more. God! it feels so good to get the shaft
That was me!
Even though US health-care is a huge expensive, corrupt, inefficient hairball of complexity, there are huge entrenched interests who feed from it - from millions of Americans who expect Fed.gov freebies, to crony-capitalist insurance companies, to government employees, to providers of all kinds who simply know nothing else. You can't attack this system head on. Continue to fund it, for the near future, as present
Therefore, simply incentivize and allow a parallel system to develop alongside. A system where doctors and patients negotiate direct payments themselves. Free-market clinics where providers have total freedom to decide which patients they see, and which insurance they accept, if any. Incentivize them through preferable tax regimes, establishment with tax-free "zones," reduced regulation, allowance of any group, church or social organization to establish a health co-op easily and with limited red-tape. In sum, let a free system develop.
You will quickly find that it will force prices lower for BOTH systems, as a free-market reference for price and quality is established.
Exactly.
Obama gave Obamacare waivers to certain unions as well as to certain Democratic politicians and their staff. Trump should give Obamacare waivers to everyone.
For example, they should gently snip any unconstitutional prohibitions on existing or new insurance companies from starting NEW free market plans to compete with existing government mandated plans.
Thank you for voicing this. May Trump read this most important workaround if we do get stuck with a Ryancare plan. Obama set the precedent for post-passing tinkering, and we want a free market opened up to compete with a government insurance deal.
This makes me a little happier about the whole thing.