Posted on 03/02/2016 8:46:57 PM PST by SeekAndFind
I’d like to see a Donald Trump administration go after the pharmaceutical industry’s purveyors of designer prescription medications that have disturbing side effects. What I’ve read about drugs like Meloxicam and my own negative experience with Prednisone for a minor inner ear infection really changed my mind about all these drugs handed out like candy by doctors working for pharma.
All you have to do is watch any cable network news channel during the election season to see five commercials an hour calling on you to “ask your doctor about Wackticrus, the night time sleep aid... (Side effects may include suicidal thoughts, bizarre behavior ending in Police gunfire, offspring drowning, and shooting up your community college)”. People should be in prison over this shit.
Slowly but surely they’re getting the entire nation strung out on experimental goo goo pills for every single little ailment under the sun. And you look around and wonder how America started acting so crazy all of a sudden. Check the number of Americans being administered prescription drugs and that might tell us something. Take the spree shooters of the last several years for instance. Every single one was on some kind of medication that profoundly modified their behavior. It wasn’t the NRA who gave them those goo goo pills. It was American medicine that did it.
The basic idea of the proposal is to repeal Obamacare and then open it up for better competition across state lines, ie, go back to market driven private insurance. Get the government out of the way.
OK, I will trust you on that Jim, I just don’t see it. Time will tell.
Yeah, for the poorest of the poor. Obamacare turned the problem upside down and forced us all into a government plan. This proposal dumps that.
Trying to get the last word in?
LOL!
What a boor.
Bookmark
And replaces it with another taxpayer anti-free market big government solution.
The fact of the matter is that this is still socialized medicine, its just that these days everyone, including conservatives, is looking to big government to solve all our problems.
If we are willing to admit the truth of Trump's pie in the sky solution, then I guess its just peachy. But it is not traditional conservatism and it is not constitutional.
But who cares? What it boils down to is: Its the wall, stupid.
"To reduce the number of individuals needing access to programs like Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program" - from Trump's plan.
That's not taking government out, that's just shrinking it somewhat. There shouldn't be a Federal Medicaid plan, period. Any such government health care for the poor and needy should be at the state and local level, as it was pre-LBJ. Return it along with the tax base paying for it. As a fourth generation physician, whose family started providing medical care in the McKinley era, I recall my ancestors being insulted by claims physicians hadn't provided good care to the poor prior to Medicaid. And there REALLY shouldn't be CHIP, which by definition is healthcare welfare for the non-poor, just not wealthy. We did fine before Bill and Hillary added that entitlement.
And although some of his points are good, needed, relatively standard GOP healthcare reform boilerplate: allowing health insurance to be sold across state lines (I wish someone would explicitly mention that's an appropriate use of the Interstate Commerce clause), HSAs and other tax code improvements Mr. Trump still managed to slip a new 'mandate' into his plan, "Require price transparency from all healthcare providers." The government shouldn't be 'requiring' that. Let the market regulate how much and what manner of 'price transparency' is provided. Trump saying 'require' and his repeated comments that he likes this or that aspect of socialized medicine, when I've despised for fifty years, at best earns a "trust but verify" from me.
A government requirement tends to be a one size fit all (poorly) solution. Administrative requirements promulgated by government and its insurance company cronies is making it very difficult for solo practitioners to survive compared to larger groups of physicians. But although larger groups make sense in some circumstances, they don't in all. My great-grandfather was a GP in a rural Iowa county seat. There wasn't, and still isn't there, the mass or density of population to support large groups of primary physicians, much less groups of specialists. I grew up in what passes for urban areas in Iowa with my father being one of only two solo practitioners in his specialty in town. Although economic growth eventually allowed more solo colleagues, Dad remained solo until I joined him. Solo practices were the norm in my field in Iowa and still are common. If only larger groups remain viable, access to timely care in non-urban areas will suffer.
Complaints over any lack of price transparency shouldn't be directed at the physicians, they should be directed at the government and the insurance companies that greatly increased billing complexity. When I joined Dad he gave me a one page typed sheet listing all of his prices as of a few years prior. But insurance mandates had force him to adopt the CPT coding system (instituted to buy off the AMA, which used to be a force for freedom) and soon its logic required a database program to maintain my price lists with hundreds of codes and multiple fee schedules for different payers. Its a royal pain to maintain as part of my government expanded job description. I'd love to return to Dad's one page price list, but the third parties won't pay me from it. A patient paying directly for his own medical care knows what value he's receiving just as he does eating out, buying clothes, etc. But a third party middleman doesn't know what they're paying for unless giving detailed information. They weren't there. Remove the third party payers for the vast number of routine medical encounters that should be relatively inexpensive and remove a vast amount of medically useless administrative costs. And having been personally cheated out of thousands of dollars for legit provided care by blatantly lying Medicare administrative incompetence in the past I have a very different take on 'Medicare fraud' than the politicians who brag they'll reduce it.
Never ceases to amaze me when “conservatives” argue for saving insurance companies, the ultimate progressive icon.
Insurance companies are a “progressive icon?” Who knew!
That is NOT politically possible, and not even practical in several respects.
What people forget is that health insurance costs were becoming exceedingly problematic for many people and businesses, even before ObamaCare. There was no way I could afford a private plan for myself and my family, so I stuck with the plan the company I worked for offered. But, the company I worked for was, after 1995 or so, forced to constantly jump from one insurer to another, to try each year or 2 to get the best offer. After a year or 2 with any given insurer, then the rates to our company would jump, and off they'd be trying to find the next (temporarily) lowball offer, all while the plan benefits gradually got worse, and employee contributions went up... By 2006, the company seriously considered dropping employee insurance entirely, but in 2008 everyone was laid off anyway because "China", regulations, etc., had killed us.
The government has no constitutional authority to be in the healthcare business.
Now, it is true that a lot of this problem was caused by gov't interference in the first place. But people are going to have to be shown real results that backing out properly can improve their situation. I see no way that it can be done all at once, or even 100% in 10 years. What DO you (you!) do for the 10-20% who cannot afford health care? What about those with pre-existing conditions, esp. if they change jobs?
Trump Ping
Yes. More people have skin in the game and they are incentivized to do so with the HSA and tax deductions.
Yeah, it’s shrinking it quite a bit. Like releasing ALL of us from a government program. And I do believe medicaid is a state program.
Allow individuals” And they say Trump communicates on a grade school level! Even a fool can understand it. Good luck
That, and more. They'll wring every cent out of you. It's one reason I'm struggling to keep my parents off Medicaid. The retirement homes that accept Medicaid call often, trying to get me to get my parents to sign up...
Yup. Sadly, most people are two dimensional and don’t understand the dynamics of multidimensional interactions among a variety of new programs. Trump does this every day when he’s working a deal, especially one overseas.
>Fools gold. every politician claims that they can reduce waste, fraud and abuse. It is a glittering generality.
Yes, I recall Obozo stating he would use a scalpel, not an Axe.
They all do talk about it at election time, but I have yet to see any administration in my lifetime address waste, fraud and abuse of our multitude of programs. It is not a small number, it might have been at one time, but today it is substantial.
You might not believe Trump based on the record of past administrations, but I happen to believe Trump would go after it hard. He has stated his intention to balance the budget, and that in no way should it take 25 years like most senators suggest.
If you don't like free markets and incentives, vote for Bernie.
“And replaces it with another taxpayer anti-free market big government solution.”
What big government solution would that be? Looks to me like it repeals obamacare and releases ALL of us from being required to have be on government insurance. And it removes the state line restrictions allowing competition.
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