CBO Score Released

[Minimalist]

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/06/twenty-t...-bill-cbo/

Twenty-two million Americans would lose health coverage under Senate bill: CBO

Oh, and add in 27 million more who won't have it for a total of 49 million by 2026.

The conservatards probably think 22 million is insufficient and the so-called "moderates" probably think "close enough."

Emergency rooms will be overcrowded except in rural areas where there will be no emergency rooms.

It earns its name:  WeDon'tCare.

[Court Jester]

Everyone is blaming the government and the insurance companies.

When are people going to start pointing at the medical companies and/or hospitals charging $6,000 for MS medication (as in a previous post) and 10 times high for a lot of other stuff?
Maintain and manage the problem or fix the problem? What's the goal?

[Alex K]

Everyone is blaming the government and the insurance companies.

When are people going to start pointing at the medical companies and/or hospitals charging $6,000 for MS medication (as in a previous post) and 10 times high for a lot of other stuff?
Maintain and manage the problem or fix the problem? What's the goal?

If you let the markets go underregulated, that's what you get. The blame is not to be shifted away from politics to corporations. If the people wants free markets everywhere, that's exactly what you get. Expecting corporations to become saints in order to preserve your libertarian pipe dream is childish.

[Astonished]

Everyone is blaming the government and the insurance companies.

When are people going to start pointing at the medical companies and/or hospitals charging $6,000 for MS medication (as in a previous post) and 10 times high for a lot of other stuff?
Maintain and manage the problem or fix the problem? What's the goal?

If you let the markets go underregulated, that's what you get. The blame is not to be shifted away from politics to corporations. If the people wants free markets everywhere, that's exactly what you get. Expecting corporations to become saints in order to preserve your libertarian pipe dream is childish.

Isn't Europe not having this kind of problem or at least not as bad? Would nationalizing things really be that bad?

[SteelCurtain]

Everyone is blaming the government and the insurance companies.

When are people going to start pointing at the medical companies and/or hospitals charging $6,000 for MS medication (as in a previous post) and 10 times high for a lot of other stuff?
Maintain and manage the problem or fix the problem? What's the goal?

If you let the markets go underregulated, that's what you get. The blame is not to be shifted away from politics to corporations. If the people wants free markets everywhere, that's exactly what you get. Expecting corporations to become saints in order to preserve your libertarian pipe dream is childish.

So much this.

When you try to play this game where government subsidizes healthcare instead of being its own provider, insurance companies will charge whatever the government will pay.

I just wish Republicans would put their money where their mouth is and let the free market decide. But become a player in the free market. Let's see how much people hate government provided healthcare.

[Minimalist]

Everyone is blaming the government and the insurance companies.

When are people going to start pointing at the medical companies and/or hospitals charging $6,000 for MS medication (as in a previous post) and 10 times high for a lot of other stuff?
Maintain and manage the problem or fix the problem? What's the goal?

You see, under a single payer plan the greedy corporate fucks can't get away with that.  As with medicare, they either deal with it or they can go out of business.  I had an overnight stay at a hospital last summer for "monitoring" and the bill was something like $16,000.  My Medicare insurance plan paid them about $3,000 and I paid $150.  And don't think the republicunts don't understand that.

Here's another aspect of the problem that they apparently can't stand, either.

http://time.com/money/4765443/obamacare-...y-decline/

As legislators and the executive branch renew their efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act this week, they might want to keep in mind a little-known financial consequence of the ACA: Since its adoption, far fewer Americans have taken the extreme step of filing for personal bankruptcy.Filings have dropped about 50%, from 1,536,799 in 2010 to 770,846 in 2016 (see chart, below). Those years also represent the time frame when the ACA took effect. Although courts never ask people to declare why they’re filing, many bankruptcy and legal experts agree that medical bills had been a leading cause of personal bankruptcy before public healthcare coverage expanded under the ACA. Unlike other causes of debt, medical bills are often unexpected, involuntary, and large.

Wow.  the Middle Class isn't being crushed by debt?  Can't have that can we, Mr. WLB?

[SteelCurtain]

If you let the markets go underregulated, that's what you get. The blame is not to be shifted away from politics to corporations. If the people wants free markets everywhere, that's exactly what you get. Expecting corporations to become saints in order to preserve your libertarian pipe dream is childish.

Isn't Europe not having this kind of problem or at least not as bad? Would nationalizing things really be that bad?

From my impression, there isn't a national system that is perfect, not even close. But to equivocate the problems of our system with those of the UK and Germany is ludicrous IMO.

Any bureaucracy is going to be fraught with problems, but the idea of people spending 20% - 50% of their annual income on healthcare, or being bankrupted by a trip to the ER after an accident, or getting cancer and having treatment meaning you have to put yourself in a lifetime's worth of debt, or, most damaging, not going to see a doctor at all because you don't have insurance in the first place which is where so many people in America are. That system is broken beyond repair.

Maybe the Republicans are doing us all a favor in basically nuking it. Kick everyone off, kill Medicaid, kill off the mandatory stipulations about mental health coverage, maternity, contraception, cancer screenings, addiction treatment. Let medical coverage be a thing only rich people can afford. Watch ERs fill up with people who "forgot" their ID and are dehydrated from the flu. See the opioid epidemic flourish. We'll see how the populism tone changes. I tend to think most Trump or Die-ers will just say, "It was fucked then and it's fucked now" and just keep the status quo. I highly doubt there will be too much political backlash about this at the polls, but one can hope.

[Divinity]

A proposal my son made:

Congress, the Senate, and their families shall only have the same level of insurance as the least insured American.

[Minimalist]

Uh-oh.....  McConnell cancels the vote.

[vorlon13]

The carnage won't be allowed to progress to the extent of, oh lets say, combined death toll of Union and Confederate soldiers in Civil War. And while grim to contemplate, but such carnage as does occur compared to great struggles in history to rid our planet of various and sundry evils might be viewed in the future as a noble sacrifice to consign US Conservatism to, as they say, the trash heap of history.

And a collateral and unforeseen (by the 'pubs) consequence is eliminating them from in the future impeding reductions and amelioration of manmade changes in atmospheric composition that are decreasing the alkalinity of sea water and far more benignly in comparison to that, affecting climate.

The pay off in reduced ecological disruption and lives saved will dwarf the numbers on the block now that should be sufficiently high to end the global menace of Republicanism.

Just need to look long term and big picture.