The US Healthcare Mass Debate

[Tero]

The horrible bill has some chance of passing.(Other thatn the senate rule mess, see link below) If Cruz for instance stands for anything, this will be his only chance to repeal Obamacare. It does not repeal taxes, only cuts spending. What the Cruzes and libertarians have to think (to pass) is that this will be their only chance to repeal it. It will not be repealed after the 2018 elections. By voting NO, Cruz and pals vote for an opposition view that gets them nothing. They will never get much anything in this era.

The vote will need 60 votes to pass as the Senate rules would leave in abortion and planned parenthood as covered.

Another key provision for market stability — the funding of Obamacare’s cost-sharing reductions, currently in limbo because of an ongoing Republican lawsuit — was also said to be out of order under the Senate rules, according to a summary posted on the Senate Budget Committee website. The cost-sharing reductions are payments to insurers that help them meet a requirement that low-income people get help with their copays and deductibles.

Two provisions crucial for social conservatives, the defunding of Planned Parenthood and the restrictions on federal tax subsidies paying for health insurance that covers abortion, would also require 60 votes to overcome a filibuster and pass — and with no Democrats willing to vote for them, those provisions appear effectively dead. Without them, it could be even harder to win conservative support for the bill.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... le-rulings

[Tero]

Public Hospital, New York city. Not TV in the room.

[Scot Dutchy]

Well they speaking to each other.

[Tero]

Bill going ahead...maybe..by noon? Three routes outlined here. They really can't do everything they wanted such as dump Planned Parenthood
http://www.businessinsider.com/senate-h ... lls-2017-7

[Tero]

Back to throwing people off insurance at any excuse

As Chairman of the Energy and Commerce, Oversight and Investigations subcommittee from 2007-2010, I led several congressional investigations regarding abusive practices in the health insurance industry. During these hearings, I was surprised and disappointed to learn that health insurance CEO’s could neither explain nor define the medical conditions that disqualified policy holders. Even more disturbing was the unapologetic testimony of these CEO’s stating that they would continue to rescind health insurance policies without cause absent a federal prohibition.

The brazen policy of rescinding insurance after a citizen became ill led Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) to declare “…that if in fact there is a practice of going in after the fact and canceling policies on technicalities, we have got to do whatever is possible to prevent that…If a citizen acts in good faith, we should expect the insurance companies who take their money to act in good faith also.”

Prior to ObamaCare, health insurance companies did not act in good faith — they acted on good profits.

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/h ... -political

[Forty Two]

Bill going ahead...maybe..by noon? Three routes outlined here. They really can't do everything they wanted such as dump Planned Parenthood
http://www.businessinsider.com/senate-h ... lls-2017-7

It's all pretty much nonsense. Nobody will be thrown off anything. It's window dressing. The best they can do, unless they strap on a pair and repeal the monstrosity, is pretend to do something and try to get reelected.

Plus, whatever passes the Senate, probably won't pass the House.

So, don't worry. The Glorious beauty that is Obamacare is quite safe.

At this point, I just wouldn't mind if they could add a provision where I get a thank you card for paying for several other family's health insurance. I mean, it doesn't have to be, you know, soppy or lovey-dovey - just a "Thank you for your generous gift" standard thank you note. That and an empty promise to not make it worse would go a long way.

[Tero]

50 assholes and one head-asshole voted to go ahead and destroy healthcare in America. Whatever they approve, President Asshole will sign

But the BCRA amendment is likely to need 60 votes because neither the Cruz nor the Portman amendment have been scored by the Congressional Budget Office. That means it cannot pass under special reconciliation rules allowing a simple majority approval. Since it would need Democratic votes, it is likely to fail.

The plan after those two votes is for senators to proceed to votes on a series of amendments to create what leadership has called a “skinny” repeal, which is a watered-down version of repeal with nothing to replace it. The goal would be to eliminate Obamacare's individual mandate penalty, the employer mandate penalty, and the tax on medical devices. A broader repeal would also have ended Medicaid's expansion, get rid of or replace the Obamacare subsidies that help people purchase insurance and repeal more — or all — of Obamacare's taxes.

The Senate would then go to conference with the House of Representatives, where conferees would work out a final bill. Both chambers would then have to vote on the reconciled bill.

[Tero]

From the Trump perspective, the name Obama in the ACA is the main reason he has to "achieve" this repeal. Obamacare and hospitals are not going broke.

While Trump has often said that Obamacare is collapsing, the first part of that statement goes further to say that the law has broken the entire health care system. This is not accurate.

The reality is that much of the care people receive continues as before, and by some measures, the system is on better footing than before. Hospitals, for example, spent about $6 billion less between 2013 and 2014 on care for which they received no payment. So-called uncompensated care fell mainly in states that expanded the Medicaid program to all poor adults, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation. That bottom line improvement made hospitals more financially stable.

As for the individual insurance market, the part of Obamacare that Trump has said before is in a death spiral, we have rated statements like that False.

The latest assessment from the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan analytic arm of Congress, is that the overall market is stable and would remain so for the coming decade.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... re-speech/

[Forty Two]

50 assholes and one head-asshole voted to go ahead and destroy healthcare in America.

Whoa! Just wait a cotton-pickin' minute! We needed Obamacare because healthcare in America was already so god damn shitty that Cuba and the Dominican Republic kicked our capitalist running dog asses all over the map. People were dying for lack of healthcare ,and the healthcare we had was substandard, and it was way more expensive than any other country in the world. Obamacare did not kick in until 2013. So, your argument is that Obamacare fixed the abysmal healthcare system in the last 4 years, and now this new bill will "destroy healthcare in America?"

I mean, the fixing of American healthcare involved raising the cost of healthcare, limiting choices in health insurance and raising overall premiums across the board by like 300%, and by doing that, it insured like 12,000,000 out of 50,000,000 uninsured, and thereby "fixed" healthcare. Let's not "destroy" that!

[Tero]

Congress motivated to repeal ACA to get "old plan" back for their families. Low deductibles etc available to federal workers.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/25/heres-ho ... rance.html

[Tero]

Elsewhere:

According to the World Health Organization, the person person spending figures for 2015 were:

Italy $3,270 per peron.
Britain $4,000 per person
Japan $4,150 per person
France $4,407 per person
Canada $4,608 per person
Germany $5,267 per person
USA $9,450 per person.

Those other G7 nations all have single payer or other form of universal coverage, longer life spans, and they cover all their citizens. They also have more smokers and more elderly proportionally, plus many immigrants, legal and illegal, as do we.

We in the USA have more obesity, but fewer smokers and fewer seniors as we die sooner. And, of course, our health care system is different, essentially private with medicare and medicaid.
Looks like we spend about twice as much for health care than they do, but our health care is no better than what they have. We seem to be getting our butts kicked.

My response:

But we get cable TV in private rooms as we spend our final week in a hospital overstaffed with paper pushers filing our claim! Sorted out by lawyers and our heirs.

Much of the care in the last few weeks of life is useless. The doctors do it because they get paid for it. It helps the patient very little and may extend life only by days or a week. It runs up about half your lifetime healthcare spending. A week watching that cable TV? Not likely. None of that matters to you anymore.

[Tero]

Bait and switch:
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said Sunday the Senate will vote this week on a motion to proceed on a healthcare bill passed by the House of Representatives.

[Tero]

42 not getting his favorite " almost nothing covered" plan:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/07 ... -bill.html

[Tero]

More bait and switch ahead

“Make no mistake about it, skinny repeal is equal to full repeal. It’s a Trojan horse designed to get the House and Senate into conference where the hard-right flank of the Republican caucus, the Freedom Caucus, will demand full repeal or something very close to it,” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said ahead of the vote.

[Brian Peacock]

Skinny repeal debate: Live stream.