Posted on 04/05/2017 12:10:41 PM PDT by GIdget2004
The leader of the conservative group Heritage Action on Wednesday accused moderate House Republicans of blocking a deal on a new ObamaCare replacement bill.
Heritage Action CEO Michael Needham said in a call with reporters that prospects for a deal this week have fallen apart and proposed that lawmakers go back to their districts over the recess to regroup.
He blamed the moderate Tuesday Group for standing in the way of a deal.
"I think the Tuesday Group clearly wants to keep ObamaCare in place," Needham said, adding that "pressure needs to be put on the Tuesday Group to get to yes." Needham even listed some of the lawmakers in the group, accusing Reps. Leonard Lance (R-N.J.), David Joyce (R-Ohio) and Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.) of going back on their word after previously criticizing ObamaCare.
He also blamed House Republican leadership for what he said was a failure to push to get through a deal proposed by Vice President Pence on Monday night.
That proposal would have allowed states to apply for waivers to forgo ObamaCare regulations that mandate which healthcare services an insurer must cover, as well as prohibitions against charging people with pre-existing conditions higher premiums or denying them coverage.
Allowing states to repeal those protections has drawn pushback from more moderate members, whom Needham criticized.
Needham said that the original proposal from Pence was modified on Tuesday to narrow the regulations for which states could get a waiver. The newer proposal would only have allowed states to get a waiver from the regulations on what a plan must cover, not the pre-existing condition protections, he said. That idea, however, was not conservative enough, Needham added.
"There's not momentum at this point and it's because of the intransigence of the Tuesday Group," Needham said.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Most cases of the type you describe are covered by Medicaid already. Many are covered by charity, both big foundations, appeals on TV, religious groups...and more recently go-fund-me type charity.
To go further could be a special expansion of Medicaid. Most states have a special Medicaid budget item for special situations.
High cost items come in 3 big blips.
1. Babies as you mention.
2. Senior Citizen end of life. It costs a lot of money to keep a dying person alive. Should we have death panels that decide when to stop keeping the elderly near death alive “just a little longer”? My mom was in that situation. While on the edge of death the doctors made a mistake and could have kept her alive a week longer than they did. Some of my siblings sued and got money for that mistake. That kind of stuff increases the cost of medical care bigly.
3. People aged between the two extremes with chronic extreme disabilities. Most of these are bad lifestyle choices. This is the part that is increasing rapidly. How much should we subsidize a repeat attempted suicide of a druggie?
no mandates, state or federal
Don’t stick some white-wearing thief’s greedy hand into my bank account or that of any insurance company I might choose to buy from.
I’ve always been an “at-will” employee.
I want and demand legal equality.
Governments need to get out of the way of companies trying to offer me affordable coverage.
We don’t need Rhine River style robber barons each empowered by “mandate” law to grab my premium money and yours.
(Matrix Reloaded scene of duplicate Smiths fighting Neo) - MORE!
Get rid of the employer mandate by Easter.
Let people work 40 hours a week instead of 28.
I’m sure lots of involuntary part-timers would like more money.
“That proposal would have allowed states to apply for waivers to forgo ObamaCare regulations that mandate”
Do these RINOs not understand the word ‘repeal’?
No state should have to beg to free its people from the shackles of Democratic slavery.
If we mandate skydiving as part of any addiction treatment, wouldn’t that help clear out the high risk pool over time? Statistically speaking of course.
“Taking this case as an example, why should I pay bigger premiums for him?”
My answer would be, for the same reason his parents should pay premiums to cover *your* care if you you slip on the ice and experience a head injury that requires a six month hospitalization and further months of rehab.
This infant (and his parents) were not at choice about his condition, any more than the rest us are “at choice” about the possibility of catastrophic medical bills and/or or lifetime medical costs - we can’t know our future actual risk except in an actuarial sense that is meaningless or misleading to most people.
A lot of people are unclear about this, believing for example that a “healthy life-style” will reduce the likelihood that they will experience high lifetime medical costs, and meanwhile complaining about the cost of insuring others who appear to be taking greater risks with their health.
In fact, the opposite is true: the better your general health in youth and middle age, on the average the *greater* your lifetime medical costs as you are more likely to to live long enough to develop dementia and/or expensive multiple chronic conditions!
On this basis Obamacare (or any insurance scheme which spreads risk across the entire population) is the best deal, long term, for people in good general health as they are the most likely to otherwise face the likelihood of medical bankruptcy in old age (and such costs at the end of life are the real “Death Tax” on average Americans, BTW).
These kinds of concern are IMO the most frustrating problem when it comes to thinking realistically about politics and health insurance: lots of things which are “obviously” true are not, and many things which are true are deeply counter-intuitive.
No young person is benefited by having their money taken away by a government mandate.
If they invest that money privately, they will be able to cover the health insurance they need when they are sicker and older. And have much more money to do so than they would get by paying into a pot now for some expected, hoped-for, future government benefit.
What new health “deal”? Ryancare was simply obamacare with a twist, what President Hillary was given by the insurance companies because she, Ryan, the insurance companies and 99.99999999% of everyone else thought Hillary was going to be President.
The enemedia and RINO NeverTrump articles about this so-called “failure” are all delusional, and the best part is that they actually believe their own delusions.
I heard President Trump himself say a few weeks ago that his administration wouldn’t be addressing obamacare repeal and replace until late 2017 to early 2018 (basically when obamacare would be facing complete collapse), so I can’t wait to watch these fools freak the F out when his administration introduces a REAL repeal and replace bill 9 months from now.
As far as President Trump is concerned, I surely hope RyanCare was nothing but a red herring intended to take Paul Ryan out of all future equations about everything.
RyanCare was a real abortion of a bill, written by the insurance companies who were the only ones who were going to benefit from its passage. The insurance companies clearly had this bill already in hand, and I feel certain had cut a deal with Paul Ryan BEFORE the election, fully expecting (exactly like the rest of the entire world) that HILLARY CLINTON would be President, but believing that some Pub House votes would be needed to get the bill through the House.
RyanCare was actually SUPPOSED to have been HillaryCare, which was why the original RyanCare bill preserved 99.9% of obamacare, and it was supposed to have been Hillary’s gift to the insurance companies, while simultaneously shafting Trump’s voters, who are the people who would have suffered the worst under HillaryCare/RyanCare, with even higher premiums than we pay now, all the while with President Hillary proclaiming to the public that she had “fixed” obamacare.
Ryan went ahead with HillaryCare anyway, thinking he could bulldoze the House into screwing their own constituencies even worse than happened with obamacare. If this had passed, Ryan also knew that it would totally sink Trump’s ship before four years were out, which was another major goal of Ryan’s, namely, to try to destroy President Trump before 2020.
The Freedom Caucus saved Trump’s bacon whether he knows it or not.
Obamacare was designed to implode right when Hillary was elected so she could be the hero by ‘fixing’ it.
Her first “fix” was the bill that the insurance companies’ had already written, and this bill was supposed to be her gift to the insurance companies, as well as screwing Trump’s voters who were the group that would have had the biggest premium increases with her “fix”.
That too was designed to eventually fail as well, with single-payer being her ultimate “fix”, with her throwing up her hands and saying, “Well, folks, we tried EVERYTHING possible and nothing worked, so looks like single-payer is all that’s left”.
But that all exploded when President Trump was elected. Paul Ryan tried to introduce the HillaryCare/InsuranceCompanyCare bill anyway, since he had already cut a deal with Hillary and the insurance companies, but that exploded too.
If President Trump was smart, he’d just drop the whole obamacare thing for 9-10 months, and bring back real repeal/replace after obamacare had totally failed, at which point he’d have a mandate for doing practically anything he wanted to do.
Wrong, the best deal is for each INDIVIDUAL to save up for their own long-term health care. Any scheme where young people pay for old people’s bills is completely dependent on certain levels of population growth.
And at the same time it DISINCENTIVIZES the very population growth it needs. Suddenly a child cannot bring as much income into his family or to support himself because the tax burden on him is so high. So the parents are facing supporting the kid in their basement far into adulthood and not being able to look forward to the kid helping them much if at all with their bills in their old age.
As we’ve seen, that dynamic is killing the welfare states in most western countries, most of which are further ahead in the death spiral in that regard than we are right now.
Greatand thoughtful post.Your example is bad. The difference is I don’t walk in with a $million immediate expense.Pre Existing mean PRE existing. Not Post existing. The best solution is just to go back where we were in 2007 and beef up the ER with better service if you don’t want to apy for insurance. Midicaid already covers the poor and Midicare is an insurance that the elderly paid for years and still pay premiums. That being said— what are we doing paying for other middle class people to have an insurance policy. The premise is what? If you don’t want or won’t buy insurance go wait in the ER.
Last I checked the Repubs voted to repeal Obamacare for the last 8 years. Now they suddenly revealed to their constituents that those were just show votes all along.
Trump promised to repeal it on day one, or close to it.
If it isn’t repealed before the next election, the GOP majority in Congress is history.
I also don’t see how they can continue on to other agenda items and expect to get any support or momentum while this failure to keep their promise is hanging over their heads. It’s not going to be any easier to pass in a year than it is now, so why delay? Obamacare isn’t going to “collapse on its own.” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapsed in any real economic sense of the word, but then they didn’t, because the government bails out their own programs EVERY SINGLE TIME.
Frankly, it doesn’t matter how bad the bill they pass is. They have to keep their promise to repeal it out of sheer electoral realpolitik. No matter what they pass, there is no way people are going to suddenly think their health care is cheap and affordable. The reality is we have a doctor shortage and no bill can fix that quickly.
Yes, if you don’t prepare for your bills by buying insurance, you need to be punished for it by going broke and/or bankrupt. Last I checked, this is how every other form of insurance operates. If you don’t buy it, Uncle Sam isn’t waiting around the corner to write off your bills from a car accident or home fire free of charge for you.
Thank you . Great analogy. I some times think I am the lone wolf here but I really don’t care but we don’t have communism here, We have free market and personal responsibility. Obtain an education. Go to work, Buy what you want. I will not buy you a car. I will not buy your shoes and I will not pay your insurance policy. BUY Your OWN!!
“Frankly, it doesn’t matter how bad the bill they pass is”
yes it does. It matters a lot.
“The best solution is just to go back where we were in 2007 and beef up the ER with better service if you don’t want to pay for insurance.”
To the extent that the ER is treating people able but unwilling to pay for insurance, and is unable to recover the cost of treatment from the patients, that amounts to massive cost shifting from irresponsible takers unwilling to purchase insurance to the rest of us.
I’m willing to pay taxes to subsidize someone - and especially the person working two jobs that between them barely pay for gas and rent - as long as they pay *something* based on their ability to pay anything.
The person who pisses me off is the guy who can find the money for payments on a new Harley but “can’t afford insurance” or “don’t want the government stealing *my* money”, has a few drinks, and ends up in the ICU with extensive neurological damage - on *our* dime.
I don’t like an insurance mandate, but unless and until we start doing “wallet biopsies” to check for insurance, and tossing the voluntarily uninsured back out on the curb to bleed out (which ain’t gonna’ happen), IMO a mandate is fairer than sticking the rest of us with the entire bill.
I don’t want to subsidize anyone except the very needy but I thought they were on Medicaid? Am I wrong? The rest of them can go to the ER and Wait 10 hours.I DON’T CARE!!
“The rest of them can go to the ER and Wait 10 hours.I DON’T CARE!!”
Problem is, if the indigent use the ER as their Primary Care Physician, the rest of us DO PAY!!
I’d rather subsidize 75% of someone’s premiums and co-pays, which leaves them with at least some skin in the game, than subsidize 100% of their care, and have it be a complete freebie they use without a thought for the cost.
______________________________________
“I thought they were on Medicaid?”
If you mean the *very* poorest, yes, most are eligible.
But especially in states which are not accepting Medicaid expansion, *lots* of people who are working jobs which leave them barely living from paycheck to paycheck make too much for Medicaid, but too little for Obamacare (ACA).
IMO, this is a *really* dangerous situation politically: these are the sorts of voters who elect left-wing populist demagogues in places like Venezuela.
Governments which *really* screw the middle classes to “buy” the votes of the desperate poor with handout programs and government “jobs”, often accompanied by very high levels of corruption and nepotism.
And IMO it “could happen here” if the people working one-and-half low-paying jobs to ends meet have to wait 10 hours in the ER to deal with their son or daughters strep throat.
And that’s especially true if they become convinced that *both* the Democrat and Republican parties “DON’T CARE” that they are risking their job by taking time off while waiting in the ER with a miserable child.
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