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ACA Running Thread

CHDeac said:
My posts on the ACA are crazy? Um, there is some irony here right? I mean there has to be. This can't be a serious post. Or maybe it can. Well, I got a chuckle form it.

And course Im not using the Onion as a source on Health Care reform....The article highlighted a truly ironic part of the American health care system.....Cant believe I just typed that
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Hold up. You're saying satire is an effective form of political and social commentary? Shut the front door!
 
So it sounds like Senate Republicans are going to try to push something through with no hearings and limited access to the bill before the vote. They are going to do everything they accused Dems of doing with the ACA.
 
Reading up about the republican plan. Actually makes a fair amount of sense. Don't think the 30% penalty for not having insurance will have any effect, and is a stupid penalty.

Doubling the HSA limit is smart. Everyone's better off getting a high deductible plan but socking away in an HSA account, anyways. Then just stop contributing once you got enough saved away.
 
 
The GOP lie that they doing the same thing as the Dems did during the passage of ACA is proven false by the fact that over 150 GOP written amendments were included in the bill that passed ( http://www.salon.com/2010/02/23/hcr_amendments/ ). They have been lying since 2009 about the fact that they weren't included in writing the bill.
 
This an interview with the author of a new book titled "An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business And How You Can Take It Back". She makes several good points about about how we got where we are and suggestions for fixing it. Watching what Congress is doing lately (and in the past with the ACA, too), I don't have much hope they, Congress, are listening or interested.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/big-business-health-care/?utm_source=kw_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2017-06-08
 
Some great quotes from that interview:

We developed this fiction that insurers are on our side, they are in our corner, which is kind of crazy. We don’t think our car insurer is in our corner. But we have this notion that health insurers promote, that “we’re here to help you.” No, they’re just pass-throughs. They take in premiums and they pay out claims. As long as they can raise premiums and deductibles, their response to paying out claims that have higher and higher prices is mostly just to pay it. They don’t care. As one insurance salesman says in the book, “They are too big to care about you.” It’s too much trouble if they get a bill, as one patient did, for $117,000. It was out of network. He said, “Why is my insurer paying this?” I called the insurer, which was Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, and asked, “Why are you guys paying this? It’s for an assistant surgeon.” And they said, “To not pay it, we’d have to investigate it. We’d have to figure out what was done in the operating room. We’d probably have to take the guy to court because we don’t have a contract with him. It’s easier for us just to write the check.” And they said to me, “Oh, are you going to write about this? Because we don’t want the other surgeons to know that they can get away with it.”

...

Instead of competition and a bunch of drugs bringing down price, you have this phenomenon in pharmaceuticals called “sticky pricing,” where everything just goes up to the highest price. That’s partly a flaw of our system, where we give the same patent to “me, too” drugs as we do to the really true innovators. It’s also a flaw of our philosophy that profit motives will give us the right answer. Because with all these companies making a lot of money from MS drugs, those drugs haven’t really been tested against each other and it’s in no one’s interest to know which one’s actually better because, hey, yours might not be the one that wins.
 
Republicans don't want the bill out in public for a few weeks because then people will have time to read it and see the bill's glaring flaws.
 
WFFaithful said:
Republicans don't want the bill out in public for a few weeks because then people will have time to read it and see the bill's glaring flaws.
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I would be very surprised if the Senate didn't intentionally put in a few things that will never pass the House. McConnell has no interest in running on a healthcare bill in 2018.
 
MBStretch said:
This an interview with the author of a new book titled "An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business And How You Can Take It Back". She makes several good points about about how we got where we are and suggestions for fixing it. Watching what Congress is doing lately (and in the past with the ACA, too), I don't have much hope they, Congress, are listening or interested.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/big-business-health-care/?utm_source=kw_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2017-06-08
Click to expand...

Good article. It basically says that health providers are gouging Americans, and health insurance is limited in its ability to do something about it. It is helpful when the providers are within its network - but out of network? - a lot less control, or negotiating position. Very similar article to Time's Bitter Pill regarding the price gouging.

Government's role here should be similar to its role in banking/lending - to police. There are usury laws to prevent loansharking. Healthcare needs a similar law. Factor the maximum price for a procedure to a percentage over Medicare, or an international price.

The article is correct in saying that having health insurance is inflationary - just like having govt backed, non-dischargeable student loans are inflationary to college education. Procedures not covered by insurance are relatively affordable - plastic surgery (boob jobs), LASIK, etc. In a free market, those prices have gone down over time. But who wants to go without their medical procedure waiting for prices to decline?

The article shows what companies are doing with MS drugs. This is why there should be a national holiday for Jonas Salk. He gave his cure away for the benefit of mankind. Terrible business decision, but he took the Hippocratic Oath seriously. If the polio cure occurred in our generation, it would be treated much like MS is now. Jonas Salk needs to be honored....because we don't even think about polio any more.
 
Yes, health insurance is inflationary...I think I suggested this earlier somewhere on this thread. Flip side is that the pooling of resources to provide payment has been a boon to research and development of both diagnostic and therapeutic tools and their availability. Also I agree the role of the government need/shouldn't be a "take over" of health care per se. But definitely we need the government to better regulate the market with the goal of affordable decent insurance for all citizens. And to reward value in the delivery of healthcare. Etc. The ACA was a step in the right direction.
 
Trumpcare removes regulations allowing for annual/lifetime limits even overruling state regulations. Employers providing health insurance see $$$$
 
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