The AMERICAN HEALTHCARE ACT is Replacing the Affordable Care Act - aka Obamacare.

The solution to the healthcare problem is too expesive for any one generation to invest their political capital in....

It comes down to cost of education (which btw is another great example of what happens to infinite government cash injection.)
Another huge part is regulation.
Cost of licensing, HIPAA, malpractice, other insurance held by administrators. If getting some stitches and a breathing treatment were as easy as visiting the nearest taco truck the market would see realistic pricing.
Another problem are the etrenched intrests with their billions and lobbyists.

The Obamacare saved the day line is crap, there have always been avenues for very poor people to get treatment. What it did is lower the bar for poverty much like food assistance in this country which is now approaching ridiculous percentages of Americans...
I agree with leaving the issue up to states when at all possible. Every time the will of the people is expressed democratically in a novel solution its usually positive and always informative.


All of that said i havent read the TrumpCare bill, but agree with doing something about ACA as it stood. It looked to me like the ultimate special interest bill for the insurance companies, and a gross exaggeration of federal welfare via medicaire... And this is coming from a guy who uses ACA and saw a dentist for the first time in a decade because of it. But I was young, and things get better, and recently before Obamacare i was recieving care via clinics at $40 a pop, paying 90% less on prescriptions as a cash customer, or was ordering from overseas for just a bit more....




Regulation and powerful intervention from government and legislation (often via payoffs) [the best investment you can make as a company is to buy a law, who needs innovation] is ultimately the entire problem, but its so much bigger than just the cost of an asprin or the hourly wage to pay a nurse....

a reply to: Kali74

Can anyone tell me what a 14,000 dollar tax credit is supposed to do towards that?

$14,000! HAHA! That's not for you! That's the maximum family allowance! You'd only get, depending on your age, up to $4,000!

Tax credits are age-based, but limited to a total of $4,000 each for the oldest taxpayers, $14,000 for a family.

Premiums for older people would increase substantially, because instead of the oldest being charged 3 times what the youngest pay, the rate would be 5 times what the youngest pay.
crooksandliars.com...

a reply to: carewemust

Exactly... They are tackling the problem as if we the people who carry health insurance were the problem all along...when in fact it is the industry that needs to be tackled swiftly and forcibly and without mercy...bc that is what they are doing and have been doing to those of us who have always carried health insurance.

The costs need to come down, both the medical organizations and the insurance industry need to be forced into changing their rates into affordable and reasonable. There need to be caps, and neither party can fray from those caps and it is equal between the two of them. For example... lets say the charge for seeing your PCP is capped at $50, the medical organization where you went to see your doctor gets $25 and the insurance gets $25 and thats it... done deal.

& if they get caught denying coverage or breaking the rules... they get kicked out of the industry for life b/c they are now considered a risk.

leolady

a reply to: windword

$4k is a respectable chunk.... that would have paid to have my son born damn near.... now hes almost 3 and we are making our last payment next month....
But the lady down the road with a "bad back" on section 8 with 3 kids making more on her pain meds every month than i do busting my ass for 50 hours a week hasnt paid a dime EVER

a reply to: JRedBeard

$4k is a respectable chunk....

Maybe for a healthy, employed middle class Gen Xer. But $4,000 a year in tax deduction for a financially struggling individual with a medical condition that costs more than $333.00 a month for health care, is not a very good deal. Many people will spend more than that on premiums, not to mention deductibles, lab work and prescriptions.

People like Kali74 will once again be looking at a choice between life saving medical care and having a place to live, bankruptcy, foreclosure, eviction, etc.

Kali74

My brother in law never smoked in his life and died of lung cancer. Not even one cigarette. His last year he was paying 10,000/month just for one pill. That doesn't include the chemo and other treatments he went through. It wasn't his fault he got cancer...and I'm sure it isn't yours. And it didn't matter how many times my sister asked why or who was to blame..it didn't change the fact that he was sick and needed treatment. Sometimes bad things happen to good people.

Anyhow, I just wanted to say to keep fighting and forget about who is at fault...it doesn't matter, it doesn't change what is happening to you. Just concentrate on getting better.

As for the health insurance..I think once people start to really look at it...they will find it is not much different than the ACA. Which is concerning. Anything that penalizes you for not being able to afford coverage is not a good thing..

Thanks,
blend57

Another big tax break for the wealthy. A death sentence for everyone else. Congrats Mr and Mrs rich.

The whole point for me to use 4k a year would be to completely forgoe premiums, deductions, and get a cash break on everything. Whatever is left after that i will probably take to my grave and so be it. Insurance is basically a terrible financial decision for anyone very healthy or very ill.

And im not REALLY here to count beans about the cost of a pill. The point is that its broken from the ground up, and just having the fed keep you alive isnt an answer. Everybody will do what they can and will to survive and there are many mechanisms in place to do so today. Frankly far more than ever before in the history of humanity...
I guess my point is that its stupid to complain about the temperature of your tea if theres poison in it...
if you want to discuss humanitarian idealogy go for it... its easy to say yes everyone should have a chance at life and it shouldnt kill you trying... IDEALLY.. even though its completely unrealistic from every angle of the cosmos and nature.
The point for me, is that our conversation is completely wrong and we need to look way deeper than premiums and tax breaks and bullsh and get to some actual meat of the issue, which I believe is too much intervention already. And i hope there are some gems and loopholes in the new bill to start letting populations slip through the cracks of the current system and innovate something greater.

Looks like it also doesn't need to cover maternity.

a reply to: JRedBeard

obviously you had insurance helping you pay the bills also?? which, by what I've read, the republican plan removes the mandated coverages, prenatal care and child birth included... so next time you might find that your insurance doesn't cover pregnancies, especially if it's a pre-existing condition.. then you will be talking about closer to $10,000, unless of course, there's complications then it will be much more.

the affordable care act also capped how much of the upper managers' salaries an insurance company can claim for a tax deduction, according to what I read, the republican plan ends this cap and well, yous can expect to see more and more of your premium going into the pockets of the upper managers instead of paying for your healthcare.

at the moment, I am going just by what has been reported to be in the bill, I have the draft downloaded and sitting on my computer waiting for my brain to wake up enough to be able to tackle the wacky way that they tend to write these things.

The problem is there is most definately a moral debate around Healthcare.

I think a good American style compromise is that Healthcare must operate in a non profit system.

The ethical moral dilemma isn't really discussed and it's the very first debate Americans and Congress should have.

However lobbyists are so strong they study public opinion and how to manipulate it, so the terms of the debate are contrived with propaganda.

There is a difference in Healthcare that should separate it from the free market. Healthcare needs ethical regulations other idustries do not and throwing into the free market may have the unintended consequence of making us think other things should also be heavily regulated.

The debate is what is the moral and ethical impact of having share holders and profit derive from treating illness.

Since your customer is in a life or death choice this is not a normal ethical area of making profit.

Medical journals are said to contain about 50 percent innacurate peer reviewed articles do to conflict of interest. That is to say when tech and methodology is available for retesting and retryING the results they come back false.

This can be seriously reduced if the scientists doing the tests are looking for a cure first and not to recoup the spending on the trials by fabricating results to sell a drug that may not work as good as it should or at all.

Health care in a free market needs extensive ethical regulation because of human nature of greed. This regulation ideology in the free market may cause the belief that other industries also should be so regulated.

Maybe by trying to put things I the free market that don't belong there we are actually making the market weaker.

If you don't think health care should be regulated to stop people from creating say lifelong drug treatments rather than cures, well, you are either a twisted person or underestimate human greed.

This is a superb plan, a really great plan! The positive effects are going to be Yuuuuuge!

Now you won't have that pesky mandate, or government subsidies keeping the cost low. Low income individuals now have the remarkable and self sustaining privileged of saving up for their own healthcare instead of relying on Uncle Same like a bunch of liberal leaches (conservatives taking advantage of government programs are the only one righteously worthy of them)! Imagine a person making 35k a year (at practically 0% tax rate) will get to put the entirety of their income into an HSA account that will then be deducted from their taxable income! Win Win! Granted, 35k won't cover much serious healthcare, but that's not important. Here in America, your right to live is based on how much money you have. Money = Righteousness, isn't that what Jesus taught? If you made bad choices (or were just unlucky) its god's will and you should honestly just get on dying to make way for people who are smarter and richer and luckier than you. What the hell is it with all these selfish low-middle income people? Don't they understand rich people need to eat (caviar) as well? If i'm only making 20 million a year, finally I can stop being taxed to cover poor people and only cover my own health care, which free's up several hundred thousand a year for me to double my yearly new car purchase.

America is Made Great Again, Huzzah!

125 pages down from 2000?

That's a start.

Another drop like that would get it down to what, about 9 pages?

I might actually sit down and read it if we got it below ten pages...


For everyone bitching that they need free money because healthcare costs too much... Fix the problem. No procedure should cost 30k. It doesn't make sense- where does that money go? I'd bet that same procedure costs less than 2500 bucks in mexico. It's not that we need free money and mandatory insurance, it's that we need to cut back whatever regulations are forcing and/or allowing costs to get that far out of hand in the first place.


Looking forward to having time to read the summary of the 125 pages. Hopefully next time around they can get it down to a reasonable length- but great start!

What is the difference in mandates and a 30% penalty if you don't have continuous coverage? And 30% of what?

a reply to: MOMof3
I kind of think that it means that the insurance company can add on 30% of the normal premium to your bill if you found yourself unable to afford their normal premium the year before??
thus making it so you won't be able to afford the new premium also.

For those saying the ACA is the cats meow and using personal incidents as proof, let me tell a bit about the other side of the coin.

My sister made just enough she did not qualify for subsidies, also her previous health care plan went the way of the dodo thanks to the ACA... (previously she never had a problem paying for or using her health care)

2 years ago she had to take her youngest to the hospital, and now 2 years later they still do not know what is wrong with her she has been in and out of the hospital for 2 years, it has destroyed her credit, cost them her home because she had to choose pay the people trying to help her child or the bank, thats an easy choice. thankfully our father prepared well enough for retirement he has been able to help her quite a bit, but not everybody has that option.

Neither party is willing to do what needs to be done to fix the real problem (insurance industry), so can we please stop with the party X is trying to kill me, when the elephant in the room is not being addressed by either party.

a reply to: Irishhaf

How would this have been any better under her previous healthcare plan? So she takes her kid in, has a bit more available functional 'pay-time' in her cheaper plan, but eventually the medical cost over-run her coverage and she's dropped. End result, she's in the same situation she's in now only 6 months further along.

You are partially correct insomuch as the insurance industry and their collusion with each other and the medical industry has created the artificially inflated values in American healthcare, however it is disingenuous to imply that both Democrats and Republicans are equally to blame when in fact it has been primarily the Democrats fighting to increase low income coverage, and the Republicans fighting to reduce low income coverage and cheapen high income coverage. Likely you fall in the latter camp (ergo why you feel the conservative republican's represent you better) but make no mistake you are advocating a selfish path without regard for your fellow citizen. I don't believe being selfish for one's own healthcare above others is functionally wrong, but I think its important to own it rather than dress it up behind working healthcare and non-functional healthcare. In conclusion, your sister benefits more when its the low income folks suffering instead of her.

a reply to: Bone75

That is disgusting..here is a member with cancer speaking of how the new system may well affect her..not a sob story- a personal concern of hers,regarding her life threatening disease and how her situation pertains to the new healthcare system.

That being said what the hell is the matter with American healthcare in general??

I live in a third world banana republic and we seem to have a better system.We have free clinics in every city and town,where women can get free contraceptives like the Pill,Depo Provera injections etc.

There are lots of medical insurance companies and although the state hospitals have deteriorated much since 1994 Kali could in my country get her cancer treatment for practically free.

A few years ago my oldest daughter suffered a severe reaction to something she ingested-she was treated for 20 bucks-with the exchange rate it means less than 2 American dollars.They kept her overnight to make sure she was ok.Had she been sick enoug to stay there for a week that 20 bucks/less than 2 dollars would have covered that too,as well as any medications/tests etc.

originally posted by: Bone75

originally posted by: Kali74
I was diagnosed with Lung Cancer in Feb. 2016... I've been unable to work since then. My FMLA has run out and it is unlikely that I will ever be able to return to work. Luckily, my state has amazing state healthcare that I really hope won't be effected by this nonsense, because I will literally die without it.

During my 1st treatment last year, I was put on 4 rounds of chemo... each round consisted of 3 days of infusion, the 1st day was 1 6 hour drip of Cisplatin and Etoposide plus steroids, anti-nausea drugs and the fluids the chemo had to drip through. Day one of each round was 30,000 dollars... not a typo. Can anyone tell me what a 14,000 dollar tax credit is supposed to do towards that?

Are/were you a smoker?

I'm just gonna say it straight up, "WHAT AN ASS wHOLE!"

Un friggin believable!!!

The mother of the guy that won last season's "Survivor" died from lung cancer, like a day or two after her son won the show.

She never smoked a day in her life! What about her!

Her cancer was more than likely caused by industrial environmental pollution. Whose fault is that and who should pay?

Why is placing blame so important to you?

It does nothing towards alleviating to problem.