The US Healthcare Mass Debate

[laklak]

Yep, which is why the solution is to make all health insurance premiums deductible, no matter what your employment status. Basically, the entire system is set up to make you a corporate or gummint drone. You want autonomy? That's gonna cost you, homes. Can't have none of that Free Man bullshit, that's just a hop, skip, and jump from Sovereign Citizens!

That's my argument against inheritance tax too - tax has already been paid on that money.

[Tero]

I want inheritance taxed. We end up with the situation where property gathers in few hands and work is less valuable.

[Scot Dutchy]

We have inheritance tax. You cant cut out your children as they are entitled to their child's share. They still pay 30% over what they get. Non relatives have to pay 70% tax. Capital is also taxed.

[Tero]

I wuould put a limit at 50%. If there is a will and no real heirs.

[laklak]

I'd scrap it entirely. Though actually if I had the kind of money that it would matter (the first 5 million or so is tax free) I'd already have it all moved offshore into tax havens, tied up in shell corporations and trusts and lawyers, and tell the IRS to go fuck themselves.

[Tero]

Yeah, tax the rich. Only first 300 000 is free in my plan.

[L'Emmerdeur]

A fascinating (I thought, anyway) article about CPAP machines, US health insurance companies, and the internet of things.

'You Snooze, You Lose: Insurers Make The Old Adage Literally True'

Last March, Tony Schmidt discovered something unsettling about the machine that helps him breathe at night. Without his knowledge, it was spying on him.

From his bedside, the device was tracking when he was using it and sending the information not just to his doctor, but to the maker of the machine, to the medical supply company that provided it and to his health insurer.

Schmidt, an information technology specialist from Carrollton, Texas, was shocked. “I had no idea they were sending my information across the wire.”

Schmidt, 59, has sleep apnea, a disorder that causes worrisome breaks in his breathing at night. Like millions of people, he relies on a continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, machine that streams warm air into his nose while he sleeps, keeping his airway open. Without it, Schmidt would wake up hundreds of times a night; then, during the day, he’d nod off at work, sometimes while driving and even as he sat on the toilet.

“I couldn’t keep a job,” he said. “I couldn’t stay awake.” The CPAP, he said, saved his career, maybe even his life.

As many CPAP users discover, the life-altering device comes with caveats: Health insurance companies are often tracking whether patients use them. If they aren’t, the insurers might not cover the machines or the supplies that go with them.

In fact, faced with the popularity of CPAPs, which can cost $400 to $800, and their need for replacement filters, face masks and hoses, health insurers have deployed a host of tactics that can make the therapy more expensive or even price it out of reach.

Patients have been required to rent CPAPs at rates that total much more than the retail price of the devices, or they’ve discovered that the supplies would be substantially cheaper if they didn’t have insurance at all.

Experts who study health care costs say insurers’ CPAP strategies are part of the industry’s playbook of shifting the costs of widely used therapies, devices and tests to unsuspecting patients.

[Tero]

Not Trump or his henchmen, an army of lobbyists:
The united front that helped Democrats save Obamacare just a year ago is falling apart over single-payer health care.

Deep-pocketed hospital, insurance and other lobbies are plotting to crush progressives’ hopes of expanding the government's role in health care once they take control of the House. The private-sector interests, backed in some cases by key Obama administration and Hillary Clinton campaign alumni, are now focused on beating back another prospective health care overhaul, including plans that would allow people under 65 to buy into Medicare.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/ ... re-1052215

[Forty Two]

Yep, which is why the solution is to make all health insurance premiums deductible, no matter what your employment status. Basically, the entire system is set up to make you a corporate or gummint drone. You want autonomy? That's gonna cost you, homes. Can't have none of that Free Man bullshit, that's just a hop, skip, and jump from Sovereign Citizens!

That's my argument against inheritance tax too - tax has already been paid on that money.

Oh, man, if they would make the entirety of my premiums tax deductible, I think I'd end up with refunds.

[Tero]

Rep. Richard Neal (D-Massachusetts), who has received more than $2 million from health insurers, will soon chair the committee that decides whether or not Medicare for All gets a vote.
https://gritpost.com/health-insurers-co ... cZh5zdkYmI

[Forty Two]

Good! What idiot wants "Medicare for All?"

[Tero]

(CNN) A federal judge in Texas said on Friday that the Affordable Care Act's individual coverage mandate is unconstitutional and that the rest of the law must also fall.

"The Court ... declares the Individual Mandate ... unconstitutional," District Judge Reed O'Connor wrote in his decision. "Further, the Court declares the remaining provisions of the ACA ... are inseverable and therefore invalid."

The Republican coalition is arguing that the change rendered the mandate itself unconstitutional. They say that the voiding of the penalty, which takes effect next year, removes the legal underpinning the Supreme Court relied upon when it upheld the law in 2012 under Congress' tax power. The mandate requires nearly all Americans to get health insurance or pay a penalty.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/12/14/poli ... index.html

[L'Emmerdeur]

Good! What idiot wants "Medicare for All?"

Hmm, if a recent poll is any indication the majority of Americans do. Idiots.

'Seventy percent of Americans support 'Medicare for all' in new poll'

A vast majority — 70 percent — of Americans in a new poll supports "Medicare for all," also known as a single-payer health-care system.

The Reuters–Ipsos survey found 85 percent of Democrats said they support the policy along with 52 percent of Republicans.

Medicare for all has been in the headlines after a study by the libertarian-leaning Mercatus Center at George Mason University found it would lead to $32.6 trillion increase in federal spending over a 10-year period.

The study’s author, Charles Blahous, wrote in The Wall Street Journal earlier this month that even doubling taxes would not cover the bill for a single-payer health-care system.

The policy’s proponents, however, point to a note in the study showing that health-care costs would also decrease by $2 trillion by 2031 if it became law.

[Tero]

Huff:
The Affordable Care Act could be headed back the Supreme Court for the third time after a federal judge in Texas ruled Friday that the law is unconstitutional.

Judge Reed O’Connor of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas issued the opinion in a lawsuit brought in February by Republican officials in 20 states led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Those officials contended that the entire law should be stricken because Congress earlier this year repealed the fines known as “shared responsibility payments” that people without health coverage had to pay under the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. O’Connor agreed.

Specifically, the law’s guarantee of coverage for people regardless of their pre-existing conditions, financial assistance for private insurance, rules establishing a basic minimum set of benefits insurance policies must cover and more would vanish. Since O’Connor’s ruling throws out the entire statute, the rest of the ACA, such as its expansion of Medicaid to low-income adults, also are stricken.

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5be0 ... fb1d047be2

[L'Emmerdeur]

(CNN) A federal judge in Texas said on Friday that the Affordable Care Act's individual coverage mandate is unconstitutional and that the rest of the law must also fall.

"The Court ... declares the Individual Mandate ... unconstitutional," District Judge Reed O'Connor wrote in his decision. "Further, the Court declares the remaining provisions of the ACA ... are inseverable and therefore invalid."

The Republican coalition is arguing that the change rendered the mandate itself unconstitutional. They say that the voiding of the penalty, which takes effect next year, removes the legal underpinning the Supreme Court relied upon when it upheld the law in 2012 under Congress' tax power. The mandate requires nearly all Americans to get health insurance or pay a penalty.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/12/14/poli ... index.html

That's the same lawsuit that was supported and/or joined by several Republicans who made campaign ads claiming that they really, really support protections for people with pre-existing conditions. If the ACA is abolished, so are any protections for people with pre-existing conditions.