King vs Burwell, could this be a bad deal for republicans?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/05/15/republicans-brace-for-for-glorious-victory-over-obamacare/
Large GOP field has party leaders anxious about their chances in ’16
Republicans fear a long primary will pull candidates to the right and drain their funds before the fall election.
Interestingly, the government-run system was the subject of national scholastic debate when I joined my college debate team in my freshman year (1960). I heard many more reasonable suggestions during those debates (none of which found their way into the Democratic plan).
Since it was passed, it has had countless lawsuits against it. It has had countless attempts to have it revoked legislatively. Like motorcycle accidents, it's not if, but when. Let's not fool ourselves, the ACA is going away. It's just a matter of time, and both parties will blame each other for it.
Before anyone accuses me of playing party favorites. I don't actually care. From a pragmatic standpoint, it's just "Bad Law." Good Intentions be damned, it was Bad Law. It was doomed to fail. It was unsustainable, as written, and it was going to implode.
I'll happily debate why we should or shouldn't take care of people (no we shouldn't let people die in the streets. And We $#&# don't). I'll happily debate why this does or doesn't make anything more affordable (it depends on which side of the equation you are on). But when it really boils down to it, was this law (as written) sustainable? The answer to that is No. In very simple terms No. It had too many flaws, and if you pulled the wrong thread, it unraveled the entire thing.
King v Burwell just happened to be the most recent thread. It was almost the Individual Payer requirement a few years back. If it isn't King, it will be something else in a couple more years. This law is build on a foundation of sand, and it will crumble, because it's bad law.
As for needing a replacement before getting rid of it? Horsepucky. You should get rid of bad law as soon as you identify it. Don't let it fester. That's how you end up having people relying on bad law. Then it becomes "too big to fail" and we become reliant on broken #%^#%^ machines, much like we're reliant on the broken #%^^#$& Dept of the VA.
The law itself was "built" badly.
Regards
This doesn't work for everybody, but it is an illustration of a way to do things that do not involve the runaway costs of single or third party payer systems. At this point, billing and documentation eats up 30-40% of a doctor's income. Nobody knows what any given procedure will end up costing, and nobody asks. The patient doesn't ask, and if he did, the doctor wouldn't know what it costs. How screwed up is that?
I am just trying to point out here that there is an alternative between government paid health care ACA and death, as you alluded to above. These alternatives also have the benefit of NOT being unconstitutional.
Respectful regards.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/08/28/seriously-the-republicans-have-no-health-plan/
My question to you, if we are paying subsidies for people to afford it, is it really affordable?
Seriously? The Republicans Have No Health Plan?
It’s arguably the favorite myth of progressives, the oft-repeated claim that Republicans have no health plan. Hence, President Obama was fully justified in ignoring them and proceeding to enact a comprehensive health reform law on a strict party line vote—something completely unprecedented in American political history. Karl Rove last week did an excellent job of countering that myth in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. For those who may have...
All of #GruberGate in Two Minutes
Can't keep up with all the videos? Here is the ultimate compilation. (So far. The guy is a goldmine.)
Dem's want to blame the GOP for the subsidies SNAFU but it sits squarely on their shoulders, they wrote and passed a unilateral law without any idea of how it would be implemented. With the subsidies, the administration (on the face of it), was in violation of the law - the Supreme Court will be the final verdict on that.
The ACA as it is, is not sustainable. The formula the insurance companies presented showing lower insurance costs is a farce, it is overly dependent on a greater than available number of healthy insuree's premiums to offset the cost of those using the insurance in order to maintain profitability. It is also cheaper to pay the IRS fine than the insurance premiums for most young healthy single Americans and the evidence shows a lot are paying the "tax" penalty.
The state exchanges are folding after sucking in 100's of millions of dollars of tax payer money. Hawaii looks to be the 5th/6th state exchange to fail and fold.
The number of uninsured has only had a small improvement, depending on whose data you look at it is around 20-30% of the previously uninsured have gotten insurance. Number one reason for not getting it, is cost. Most of the people touted in the governments numbers as having gotten insurance through the exchanges (state and federal) are those that lost their insurance because of the ACA.
One long lasting fix would be to get away from the "business" of medicine run by administrators and insurance companies and turn health care back over to the doctor's to practice it.
When Hawaii's exchange folds that will leave 13 state exchanges still running
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2015/02/18/signup-slowdown-obamacare-exchanges-will-gain-only-3-million-enrollees-in-2015/
Hawaii's ObamaCare exchange in jeopardy
The state is scrambling a fill a massive budget hole and fix recurring IT issues.
The one thing everyone seems to forget that is the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) does not provide any plan for care and is not affordable. It is really only an additional tax for people not buying health insurance. The only people winning on the whole thing was insurance companies...and they are supposed to be evil right?
How about this for a plan. We expect adults to act like grown ups. You either get health insurance for yourself and family OR you shut up when you get sick or injured?
Cannot afford insurance...then let me see your cell phone, cable plan, nails, tattoos, ETC and if you are not bleeding out money for those, I will find you help.
From the libertarian perspective, it disturbs me that people assume gov't must have a "solution" to healthcare, or that gov't must put some sort of system in place. It worries me that so many people fail to see how many things function perfectly well without the gov't telling them how to do so, or how many complex systems develop out of business necessity rather than by central planning. That a great many systems function in spite of gov't involvement rather than because of it.
Personally, it would be my dream come true that there was no "solution" from Washington for our healthcare. It is one of the, if not the, most heavily regulated and interfered-with sectors of the economy. The enforcement of an insurance-based payment system shields the involved parties from market forces, incentivizing inefficiency. Demand is better expressed to providers via lawsuits rather than with where consumers take their money. Supply is thrust upon consumers based on whatever plan they have. Endlessly increasing regulations and Medicare pricing codes force providers to spend money on hiring lawyers and clerks whose entire jobs revolve around making sure the providers color between ever more convoluted lines. I'd bet that healthcare costs would come crashing down and quality would skyrocket over the course of a decade or two if the healthcare system was left to "regulate" itself, without any input from the gov't except provision of the judicial system for malpractice and the like. And that can be handled at the state level, definitely not the federal.
But speaking of needs, I don't think a "need" creates a right. Healthcare requires a provider, and no one has a right to a doctor's services...that would be slavery. None of us are entitled to healthcare, it's a privilege of modern times that we enjoy IMHO. As such I wouldn't even say anyone "needs" healthcare, rather I think that healthcare is a nicety. Of course I'm sure there's a good chance I'd be spouting a different tune if I had chronic heart disease or something, but then I'd be relying upon an appeal to emotion.
To say that we have a claim upon the labor and knowledge of another person is equivalent to saying we may rightfully force another person to perform a service for us. Force is nothing without the threat of violence or otherwise infringement upon an individual's ability to sustain their own life. As such, to argue that a right to live includes a right to healthcare is inherently contradictory, because the latter requires denying others the former. In any case, the interpreted spirit of anything be damned, I seek to only advocate/support/embrace/etc that which I consider to be rational rather than whatever the sentiment of a majority is. It is my very strong opinion that Nature defines our rights, not Law or emotion; and that they can thus be discovered via reason.
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