Health Care Reform

[Voronwë the Faithful]

A pretty good (though slanted of course) summary of GOP efforts from 2014 to the present to come up with a replacement for the ACA from the Huffington Post.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rep ... d304bf448b?

Slanted though the summary may be, it highlights the fact that finding a way to replace the ACA without devastating the lives of many is hard.

Very hard.

[Frelga]

Please someone tell me that this is not what the GOP is actually considering!
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues ... will-fail/

"This analysis is based exclusively on numbers from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, or CBO.

Although the congressional majority will claim that the emerging repeal bill represents a simultaneous replacement of the ACA, the math does not add up. Using CBO estimates, the Center for American Progress calculates that the repeal bill will cut the Medicaid expansion by $277 billion over 10 years. To finance new tax credits for health insurance, the repeal bill will likely cut Medicaid—including funding for nursing homes for the middle class—by an additional $370 billion over 10 years.

Even with these massive cuts, the repeal bill will still fall $171 billion short of the funding needed to fully replace the ACA’s exchange subsidies—a shortfall of 26 percent. The average subsidy per recipient could fall from $6,314 under the ACA to $2,703 under the repeal bill—a drop of 57 percent.

To reduce this disparity in subsidy levels, the repeal bill will likely need to increase taxes on tens of millions of workers in the middle class. It would do so while immediately cutting taxes for the wealthy by more than $346 billion over 10 years—giving millionaires an average tax cut of more than $50,000 in 2017 alone. But even with this harsh financing, because the repeal bill will extend tax credits to higher-income individuals, subsidy levels would still be 42 percent lower than under the ACA."

[yovargas]

I read through that and while it's an article focused on the money aspect, it is not clear at all - what is the actual intended replacement? What would the proposed bill offer?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Who knew?*

Trump: ‘Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated’


*Pretty much everyone other than the new leader of the free world.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

One person who knows a little something about the fractiousness of the GOP caucus doesn't think they will be able to "repeal and replace" the ACA.

Boehner: Republicans won't repeal and replace Obamacare

[River]

I suspect we're going to end up with a massive and anxiety-inducing rebranding exercise. Hopefully with a better ACA at the end, but I won't keep my hopes up.

[Primula Baggins]

The fact that the committee is deliberately voting on it before the CBO score comes out is very, very telling. The word is that the score is devastating, and they want to be able to say, "But we didn't know it would be that bad!"

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Dr. Trump

[yovargas]

Love it.

[Frelga]

uploadfromtaptalk1489160376893.jpg (73.08 KiB) Viewed 5724 times

[yovargas]

Gay space communism is the best kind of communism.

[Primula Baggins]

All the kewl kids know that, yov.

[Frelga]

Only if it's fully automated luxury. Otherwise it's just StarTrek.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Setting aside the Space Jam portion, those top three pictures and their captions remarkably well capture my opinion about health care coverage.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I don't always agree with Paul Krugman, but man does he nail it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/opin ... share&_r=0

[yovargas]

Which makes you wonder, what’s the point?

Yes, that is exactly what I've been wondering watching this debacle. Far as I can tell, the only answer is "to say that we did something".

[Frelga]

Their mantra is "that's what we were elected to do." Does no one remember Contract with America anymore?

[Sunsilver]

Damn, I'd sure vote for him!


https://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/it-is- ... -woodshed/

Scroll down to watch video.

[yovargas]

To my knowledge, there's no way to get Facebook videos to play on the board. You'd have to send it as a regular link, not a youtube link.

[Primula Baggins]

If Tom loses his job again, I'm going to have to resign myself to going without medical insurance for six years. That is no joke.

And, of course, if Trump is reelected in 2020, there's no guarantee at all that Medicare will still exist in its current affordable form when I do reach 65.