House Speaker Paul Ryan’s attempt to replace Obamacare was sheer madness.
Left alone, Obamacare was imploding anyway.
Republicans should have waited for Democrats to beg them to “do something”.
Bloomberg reports Insurer’s Obamacare Exit Could Leave 300,000 Without Options.
Anthem Inc.’s decision to quit Ohio’s Obamacare market will leave 13,000 people without any coverage option under the program next year. That number may rise to 300,000 if the health insurer follows suit in the rest of the states where it sells.
Anthem, which currently oversees Affordable Care Act plans for about 1.1 million people in 14 states, is one of the largest of the multistate insurers that hasn’t pulled back sharply from selling individual plans in the ACA. In April, it said it was “assessing our market footprint in 2018,” and on Tuesday the company said it would leave Ohio.
Currently, there are more than 30,000 people with Obamacare plans who are projected not to have an insurer under the program next year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. An Anthem exit would raise that number to 300,000 people in seven states.
“Planning and pricing for ACA-compliant health plans has become increasingly difficult due to the shrinking individual market as well as continual changes in federal operations, rules and guidance,” Anthem said of its exit from Ohio. “The lack of certainty of funding for cost sharing reduction subsidies, the restoration of taxes on fully insured coverage and, an increasing lack of overall predictability simply does not provide a sustainable path forward to provide affordable plan choices for consumers.”
Anthem’s Ohio exit will leave 20 counties in the state without an Affordable Care Act coverage option in 2018. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City said last month it will pull out of the exchange in Missouri, leaving 25 bare counties and about 18,500 people without an ACA coverage option. Humana Inc. said earlier this year it would pull out from all 11 states next year where it currently sells ACA plans. Aetna Inc. said in May it would do the same, also announcing plans to abandon the few remaining states where it had been selling ACA coverage. UnitedHealth Group Inc., the largest U.S. insurer, has already exited ACA exchanges in most of the states where it sold plans. Some small and regional insurers have pulled out of states or counties as well.
If Anthem decided to leave the exchanges nationwide, another 310 counties could be without ACA plans in Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Nevada and Virginia in addition to Ohio, bringing the total number of bare counties to 355. Anthem did file a rate request in Virginia for next year but could still decide not to sell there.
What if They All Pull Out?
As it stands huge portions of Missouri, Georgia, Nevada, and Kentucky may have no insurance. Smaller, but substantial, portions of Virginia, Ohio, and Colorado may have no insurance.
What would happen if the map was half red?
The New York Times explains in Bare Market: What Happens if Places Have No Obamacare Insurers?
The Obamacare marketplaces can be thought of as a government-run store. The government gives many customers subsidies, like gift cards, that they can use to buy insurance. But what happens if no companies want to sell their products in the store?
If all the insurers start leaving some stores, consumers there will find their options dwindling, and then their subsidies will become worthless. Most would end up uninsured. The problem could affect as few as dozens of customers — or spread more broadly to affect a substantial fraction of the approximately 11 million people currently enrolled in Obamacare coverage.
The markets created by the Affordable Care Act have always relied on the voluntary participation of private companies. If the government set up the right conditions for the market, the thinking went, insurers would want to jump in. But, as Sarah Kliff at Vox.com has reported, the law contained no real backup plan if that vision didn’t work out.
In theory, the bare market problem shouldn’t be a big worry. The federal government pays a large fraction of Obamacare premiums for most customers, and a single insurer can essentially name its price. Economists like Mr. Garthwaite see the situation as a happy circumstance for an insurance company. Who wouldn’t want a monopoly market where the government pays the bills?
“Why be at zero — why not come in and charge a freaking outrageous price and be the one?” said Jonathan Gruber, a health economist at M.I.T who advised the Obama administration when it was developing the Affordable Care Act. Then he answered his own question: “Many mysteries of life can be answered with the statement: Insurers are bizarrely risk-averse.”
If insurers do all decide to exit a market, no one is exactly sure what will happen next. Some experts have brainstormed about possible workarounds, but all would entail uncharted legal territory.
Officials at Covered California, the California state marketplace, produced a white paper outlining a series of options to fix the problem of so-called bare counties. But the top bullet point for nearly every option was: “Very difficult, if not impossible, to implement for 2018.”
Theory, Practice, Gruber
Jonathan Gruber, a health economist at M.I.T who advised the Obama administration, on Obamacare is back at it with his lies, formed innocuously in the form of a question.
“Why not come in and charge a freaking outrageous price and be the one?” asks Gruber. He knows the answer.
If insurers got to name their price, Anthem would not be requesting a hike in Virginia. Rather, Anthem would state it’s new price in Virgina.
If insurers got to name their price, major portions of at least 15 states would not be down to a single insurer.
Gruber on Voter Stupidity
Please consider Obamacare Depended on ‘Stupidity’ of Voters, Its Architect Says.
“Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber said that lack of transparency was a major part of getting Obamacare passed because ‘the stupidity of the American voter’ would have killed the law if more people knew what was in it,” according to the Caller.
Gruber served as a technical consultant to the Obama administration and is widely recognized as the law’s architect.
But as challenges to the law have surfaced, the administration has sought to distance itself from Gruber, who acknowledged during the panel discussion that the legislation was purposely written in a confusing way to make sure that the Congressional Budget Office did not score the individual mandate as a tax, a part of the law the Supreme Court upheld on the assertion that it was, in fact, a tax.
“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that,” Gruber said.
“In terms of risk rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in — you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed… Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage.
“And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really, critical to get the thing to pass… Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not,” he said.
The National Review reported in July that Gruber was paid nearly $400,000 to consult with the administration, and that in 2012 he told an audience at a technical management support organization that tax credits were only available in states that set up their own exchanges.
In August, Breitbart News reported that the White House and ranking Congressional Democrats began distancing themselves from Gruber, after a federal appeals court ruled that people who bought their insurance from healthcare exchanges administered by the federal government in 34 states were not eligible for billions of dollars in tax subsidies.
Lies, Deception, Gruber, Obama
We have this tortured mess known as Obamacare thanks to purposeful lies and deception by Gruber and Obama.
Now, thanks to Republican silliness from House Speaker Ryan and Trump with their push for a replacement that no one is happy with, Republicans took sponsorship of the mess.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
“Republicans should have waited for Democrats to beg them to “do something”.”
I think they may still get their chance. 😜
Democrats would never beg to fix it. They would just quietly subsidize it to death with sweetheart deals to insurance companies on a cost plus basis.
remember Trump said that teh day teh repeal replace was pushed back-he is it was going to implode anyway.
The problem is most of the people do not believe that-they think the govt has a bottomless pit of money.
We are FUBAR
Democrats want it to die and be able to blame Republicans. Then they can finally bring up single-payer saying they’ve tried everything else.
The House passed something, but not the Senate, no?
Still no replacement for OCare.
What is down right silly is the notion that regardless of what republicans do or don’t do that democrats…progressives, will accept blame or BE blamed by anyone other than conservatives who have been saying this all along.
IT DOESN’T MATTER
It is the MEDIA that decides who is to blame and we already know who the media WILL blame.
This constant banter about what they SHOULD do or NOT do is completely irrelevant as all options are POLITICALLY MOTIVATED and therefore NOT a solution.
The left and its sycophantic media constantly frames the debate and then promptly announces the debate is OVER and anyone who disagrees wants people to die or at the very least is racist.
From the start, Obamacare, combined with expanded Medicare, was designed to implode. Together they were designed with with a single goal in mind, to increase the number of people dependent on government. It has accomplished that goal, perhaps not to the extent hoped, but still sufficiently that there can be no going back to a free market, and well enough that no Republican plan will ever pass.
Remember that historically, whenever government action messes up a market, the answer is never to go back to a free market. The “solution” is always more government action. So, now that the market is a mess, there is only one solution that can happen, and that is a single payer system. Will it happen next year? The year after? It’s hard to say, but there is no other possibility, once you factor in the political realities:
1. All people currently dependent on government must have full coverage
2. The solution will obviously have more government involvement, not less
3. While private insurers and their lobbyists designed this mess, their long term profitability is a concern to no one.
So, we need to accept our destiny. It is unavoidable. The only remaining question is whether we go with the Canadian variation or the British one.
‘“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that,” Gruber said.’
This is what passes for “statesmanship” in this manurehole these days. What some incompetent, harebrained Newspeakers arbitrarily call something, or “score” something as, is of great importance. The rabble will steal billions on behalf of their favorite lobbyists, yet the illiterate indoctrinati are so utterly devoid of even traces of intelligence, that they think that’s just a-ok; as long as some tax feeding nothings “scores something” as something else…..
And yet here we are, being told ISIS “winning,” would amount to some sort of loss of anything meaningful. Heck, some are even dumb enough to believe it.
Don’t forget ACA went to the Supreme Court and Chief Justice Roberts decided to legislate from the bench.
“The Affordable Care Act’s requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/us/supreme-court-lets-health-law-largely-stand.html
Good history of health care at http://files.libertyfund.org/econtalk/y2017/Chapinhealth.mp3
Worth the listen. Explains why this market is so fragmented.
I think the assumption that the democrats or republicans care is faulty.
I wish they didn’t care. Stay the F— out!
Pretty sad that someone would sell out their country for $400,000. Oh wait, how much do congressman get paid? (Less than half that)
“Why be at zero — why not come in and charge a freaking outrageous price and be the one?” said Jonathan Gruber.
…
Sure, why not? It’s ONLY taxpayer $$s … MY taxpayer $$s.
The reason the insurers are pulling back is that the Republicans have threatened to pull the subsidies from the system and it cant exist without them. They have continually introduced uncertainty into the situation and the insurers who are not sure what is going to be done stop writing business. Ask the insurers themselves why they pullled back from these areas and they will cite this uncertainty. Dont let a fairly honest website and an honest man like Mish be turned into fox news east.
Insurers started exiting under Obama, before Trump was in the picture.
April 29, 2016: United Health Will Dump Obamacare Offerings in 29 of 34 States: Death of Obamacare?
https://mishtalk.com/2016/04/20/united-health-will-dump-obamacare-offerings-in-29-of-34-states-death-of-obamacare/
There were others.
@john wetherhold — You also seem to have conveniently forgotten that those subsidies have been ruled illegal in three separate courts, and are on their way to being ruled illegal by the supreme court.
Obama allocated funds (which is unconstitutional) from FNMA “profits” and other slush funds. The Constitution is crystal clear that only Congress can allocate funds, not the President. Obama broke the law (one of *MANY* times that corrupt loser made Nixon look honest in comparison).
No one cut off the subsidies — they were illegal from the beginning.
STOP LYING. Send Obama to prison for stealing taxpayer money. Send him again for spying on Americans. Send Obama to prison for murdering an ambassador and lying about that too.
And stop pretending like Obama’s ponzi scheme insurance scam is anything but pure fraud
Well said.
or people forget the US cannot afford teh subsidies. Heck, We do not even know how much debt is being racked up now–while the debt ceiling was pushed out to 9/30/17, and apparently the debt ceilign was raised by about 1.1 trillion, debt to the penny shows no change since March 15.
Whats wrong there?
The whole mess of who pays for it is pointless until focus is on getting costs down.
We all have our stories. Here’s my (minor) one. Had to get stitches (after hours) so went to ER. You can’t leave until attending physician signs off. The nurse practitioner did all the work. After she left they forgot about me. Finally, after 45 minutes wandered to nurses station. Oh, the doctor will be with you soon. Finally, showed up to the door of exam room. Remained there. Asked how I felt. Said fine. He said good and walked away. That “exam” was $200 on my bill.
Injured my nose in a freak pole saw accident (don’t ask). Went to the ER looking pretty bloody. The Nurse Practitioner had me x-rayed (no bone damage), washed out the wound, put the skin together with basically duct tape and super glue. The bill: $3200. Never saw an MD. I payed about $400 out of pocket.
I told my personal physician about the situation. He said I should have called him. He would have charged me $75, or a good bottle of Scotch.
“I told my personal physician about the situation. He said I should have called him. He would have charged me $75, or a good bottle of Scotch.”
That’s pretty much the Ron Paul approach too health care: Trust physicians, nurses and other practitioners; over ambulance chasers, “administrators,” claims adjusters, bureaucrats, politicians, lobbyists and other pointless, expendable rabble.
Thing is, for it to work, a physician’s, (or nurses…..) judgement must be taken seriously. It can’t be open to second guessing by members of the above rabble, out to make a name and a pile of bucks for themselves. Your physician couldn’t treat you for a bottle of scotch, if that opened him up to lawsuits from all kinds of trash on the make, if he didn’t do exactly the same for everyone else on the planet.
Of course, in anything resembling a free society, this wouldn’t be an issue. As being free includes being able to decide what to do when and for what reason. Including who to help out, for what and what reason. But far gone, terminal, progressive dystopias like this manurehole, is of course anything but free. Instead being no more than a dump, existing for no no other reason than to maximize the ability of worthless rabble to rob and harass everyone else.
“Left alone, Obamacare was imploding anyway. Republicans should have waited for Democrats to beg them to ‘do something’”.
Exactly, whereas the problems can now blamed on Trumpcare or Ryancare since the brain dead Reps were stupid enough to even TOUCH the doomed program and there are plenty of people dumb and/or biased enough to buy that. Who determines the Reps’ “strategy”, always snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
The Republicans have passed nothing thus far. There is no new law of the land to replace Obamacare. I think they democrats will still come crying to the republicans to help them.
Too late. Headlines from top Google hits on “Trumpcare” keyword search:
Senate supposedly closing in on its Trumpcare plan to take your health insurance away
Jun 6, 2017 – DailyKos
Trumpcare Could Screw Millions With Employer Insurance
Jun 6, 2017 – Mother Jones
Trumpcare 2.0 is a death bill
Jun 5, 2017 – Salon
Even a site:
https://trumpcare.com/
Like I said, the MORONIC Reps now -OWN IT-.
Serioously, you cite DailyKos, Salon and Mother Jones as your evidence that republicans now own this mess? Those three would have blamed Republicans regardless.
This is why we fought it so hard….because we ALWAYS knew it would be OURS. Since when has the left EVER accepted responsibility for ANY of their disasters. Any failures are ALWAYS presented as the result of REPUBLICAN interference, preventing them from spending more, borrowing more, taking more rights….to protect us from ourselves.
“Serioously, you cite DailyKos, Salon and Mother Jones as your evidence that republicans now own this mess? Those three would have blamed Republicans regardless.”
Correct. And who will the mainstream media and their political party, the Dems, echo?
Consider also that 6 out of 10 Americans only read and then pass along headlines, partly thanks to using smart phones for news. Perfect fodder for easy propaganda via the engineering of headlines with the disclaimer about possible inaccuracy due to “unnamed sources” MAYBE buried somewhere in the article they DIDN’T read.
Like I said. It hasn’t passed yet. Only the house version has passed. The senate version has to pass. Then it has to go back to the house to so that a version of the bill that both the house and the senate can pass, then it goes to the president. No chance of this happening this year. The rules are still Democrats and Obama’s.
“The lack of certainty of funding for cost sharing reduction subsidies, the restoration of taxes on fully insured coverage and, an increasing lack of overall predictability simply does not provide a sustainable path forward to provide affordable plan choices for consumers.”
Nope, that is all Republicans. Obamacare specifically had the federal government provide “cost sharing reduction subsidies” to insurance companies who pick up a bigger share of high-cost patients. The Republican Congress refused to fund it and sued the Obama administration to stop payment. They won. No way Obamacare works without it.
But Democrats want Obamacare to die because of Republican actions. It’s an albatross around their necks and Republicans get to be the bad guys.
“Nope, that is all Republicans.”
…
A bit too strong a statement.
A couple of things 1) insurers misjudged the number of healthy younger people who would sign up (fewer actually did) who were counted on “to pay” for the unhealthy people coming on board and 2) insurers just can’t name their price:
“When health insurance companies announce rate hikes, most states have laws that require some steps to be taken before the new rates take effect for state-regulated health policies. Over the past 25 years, about two dozen state legislatures and governors gave the state insurance department or commission the legal power of prior approval, or disapproval, of certain types of rate changes.
The statutes typically grant authority similar to Connecticut’s example: “The commissioner may refuse such approval if he finds such amounts to be excessive, inadequate or discriminatory.” Some require the use of “actuarial principles.” However, most of these laws do not specify dollar amounts or percentage changes.”
http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/health-insurance-rate-approval-disapproval.aspx
The ACA’s failure is a big reason Trump won. To think Republicans are going to be blamed for its collapse is silly.
Democratic indoctrinees will blame Republicans for withholding subsidies, interferring, not holding hands and singing kumbaya with them.
While their GOP dittohead colleagues will blame the Democrats since, well, it’s called Obamacare after all, and Obama was one of the others…
While all reasonably intelligent people will, rightfully, blame generations of Americans at large. For not following Jefferson’s advice to have themselves a revolution a generation; in the process ensuring Washington DC permanently resembles Kabul, rather than some gilded city built on centuries of unchallenged looting. As none of those who has held court in Kabul, has ever even considered enacting anything as monolithically idiotic as Hekmaytarcare or whatever; given that the governments there have been more properly limited and all….
“The ACA’s failure is a big reason Trump won. To think Republicans are going to be blamed for its collapse is silly.”
Your failure to recognize the general stupidity/gullibility of the “almost paying attention to any details whatsoever” American public (despite the evidence otherwise from the 2016 popular vote) confuses me.
The Reps DID NOT, HAVE NOT, and WILL NOT —REPEAL— Obamacare because they are owned by many of the same concerns that own the Dems and it was a REPEAL that voters wanted, NOT just enough changes to it so that it can now, in the eye of the MAJORITY low information voter, be blamed on the Reps when it fails.
When they DON’T repeal it and it inevitably fails, not only will the Dems and their brainless minions blame it on the Reps, many Reps will realize that the majority-RINO Rep party is the brave opponent to Dems when NOT in power, and spineless when IN power, a PHONY opposition party which raises funds and is elected to office based upon their CHARADE.
If we only had the House…
If we only had the House AND the Senate…
If we only had the House AND the Senate AND the executive…
Oh… never mind…
@jon sellers — ““The lack of certainty of funding for cost sharing reduction subsidies, the restoration of taxes on fully insured coverage …”
Bull shit.
The cost sharing subsidies were never funded. Obama illegally allocated funds from other departments, and at least three appelate courts have already ruled Obama’s tactic was and is illegal.
Only Congress can alocate funds — it says so in writing in the Constitution. If Obama had actually read the Constitution when the losers at Harvard Law appointed him to their joke Law Review, Obama would have known what was obvious even to judges he appointed. Under US law — Congress allocates funds, not the President.
STOP LYING and learn to read the Constitution. Obamacare is fraud.
Dems sing “Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye” to Republicans After “Trumpcare” Vote
The Republicans are getting what they deserve for claiming for years that they had a great plan ,when they hadn’t a clue. For decades the US has been constructing a gnarly inefficient healthcare system that can’t be fixed with bandages, and neither party is willing to fight the hand that feeds them. The healthcare racketeering should be stopped.
Imagine for a moment that Mish’s dream of electric driver-less vehicles is here today. Imagine that congress has passed legislation that demands every adult purchase such a vehicle. Imagine that congress decides to allow collusion and monopolistic pricing, deceptive practices, and restraint of trade behavior by these vehicle manufactures.Imagine that new features are constantly added even if neither wanted nor needed and the prices of these vehicles continue to rapidly rise. Imagine that congress makes it a crime not to buy one of these vehicles publishable by a severe tax upon such individuals. Now imagine that this is healthcare. What the hell is the difference?
Imagine the Supreme Court rules that corporate money is free speech. Imagine Libertarians rejoice in that decision. Imagine an entire industry (health) colludes to fund the elections of corrupt officials who will line their pockets with taxpayer money. Imagine the general population sitting around bitching about the end result and never mentioning the cause.
Free speech means free speech. By anyone, for any reason. Up to, AND INCLUDING, racial slurs, divulging “state secrets” blah blah, and yelling fire in crowded theaters. Once the latter was banned, speech was no longer free. And America went down the drain into a pointless dystopia. Not because any of the above exercises of free speech is necessarily all that laudable, but simply because any government asymmetrically powerful enough ban those exercises of speech, is also powerful enough to ban any other exercise able to limit it’s powers. Attempting to cover up this with petty obfuscations like corporate vs not so speech, is nothing but opium for an ever more thoroughly indoctrinated mass of uncritical sheep.
What the hell is the difference?
It seems to me William Bean needs serious help in logic. The difference is Ford, GM, Google, Apple, Toyota, Uber, Lyft, etc etc etc are all betting their money, and billions of it, on this technology. No one in Government forced them to do that.
What the F about that do you fail to see?
It is beyond idiotic to compare Obamacare to driverless vehicles
Mish
I said imagine. If you had been following health care since the nineties would would have seen some very serious patterns develop. the information is out there, so search it out. But what we have in a nutshell is not a crisis of health insurance but a crisis of healthcare monopoly run for the benefit of the healthcare participants. For decades hospitals charge the high prices, then the insurancers negotiate the bill down. the patient pays the copay and the difference between copay and insurance pay is declared uncollected debt and charged to the Federal government. Yes, there is such a program, And we the tax payers then give some portion of the debt back to the hospitals. I didn’t take courses in Healthcare management for nothing. Go to the doctor with a health complaint and if you ask what the charge will be no one knows. Oh just wait until we bill the insurance company and then we will bill you. That, by all standards of the Wright-Pittman Deceptive Practices Act is a felony. But no one is charged and no one goes to jail. Mish, you are the one who fails logic. I am not saying that the introduction of driver-less vehicles will become much like healthcare is today, but given the track record of our political fools, it is foreseeable in the future. when Congress lets one industry run what is essentially a monopoly without government supervision (like the telephone industry which had its FCC and state regulatory commissions) then what is to prevent allowing another industry to do the same? Not saying it’s going to happen, just saying it can.
I know this is a “health” care thread, but being in the tech industry for over 25 years, the only thing I disagree with Mish on, with respect to self driving cars, is the time line.
It is going to be much sooner…..
Thanks Henry
I have noted that possibility myself
Mish, see highlighting below. Also, the quotation marks go after the period, not before it.
Hope this is helpful.
w.
The new thing is concierge medicine. The rich pay private practices and private hospitals to give them Cadillac service. Doctors are on retainers. Average doctor looks after 50 families average. The rest of us will get third wold care or worst. All going according to plan.
Well, we’d better give them tax cuts to pay for that service. Otherwise they won’t have money to create jobs for us.
Trump’s hand in weakening of Obamacare
To some extent, Trump is contributing to that failure. Anthem, for instance, said uncertainty relating to government policy was one of the factors leading to its withdrawal from Ohio. The biggest concern for insurers right now is the status of subsidies the government pays to insurers to reimburse them for cutting costs for lower-income subscribers. Trump can kill those subsidies outright if he wants to, and has suggested he might. Since the fate of those subsidies directly affects insurer profitability, it’s no wonder some firms don’t want to wait and see what Trump decides.
Yes, Trump is contributing, but Obamacare was going down the tubes on its own merits. Started well before Trump
+1000
I blame Putin 😉
Yes, clearly this is Putin’s fault.
Benefits for the Few at the Expense of the Many. Trump is making a political compromise, and “preserving” Obamacare by continuing to pay the subsidies to health insurance companies, though the courts say it is illegal. The GOP House of Reps took the issue to the courts, which ruled that the subsidies should not be paid as they were unconstitutional and not authorized by Congress. A hiatus of sorts exists at the Appeals Court level, allowing Trump to do like Obama and ignore the law/court for now. The logical thing is allowing insurers to sell product across county, state and even country lines. What does it matter if your insurer is based in Puerto Rico, Guam, an adjacent state or even outside the USA at Lloyds in the City of London, if they payoff.
Bottom line: Obamacare is mathematically impossible without massive taxpayer subsidies weakening the financial structure of USA.gov, private businesses (fewer jobs), and collectively lowering living standards of individual taxpayers (less take-home pay after Obamacare mandates). Perhaps that is the whole point, to bring down the system with a collective health insurance scam that is unsustainable and will collapse like the classic Ponzi. It is simply a mathematically impossible equation that cannot be solved without collapsing government, business and individual financial health. In other words, it is theoretical health care (insurance) in exchange for real poverty; some deal.
There is no “big beautiful plan” that lets you go to any doctor, for anything, at low expense and small premium even if you have a preexisting condition. Five years ago, these problems didn’t exist as a national debate. Most, but not all, people could get insurance on their own. Now they have been convinced it is their Constitutional right to healthcare/health insurance, just like welfare, food stamps, Obama-phone, subsidized apartments, 3 meals a day, etc, etc.
The Democrats’ wet dream.
Not only do republicans own healthcare, they will own the next financial crisis if they do too many favors for Wall Street, despite the fact that Obama’s inaction allowed the TBTF banks to overstretched themselves even more. If Obama had been doing his job, there’s no way he would have been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for a speech to the financial industry. Hopefully, Obama will be the last of the Wall Street democrats, since Hillary is unable to continue his legacy.
Pure stupidity, but excellent propaganda, to equate insurance or its loss with good health. Very Pavlovian. Crony capitalism at its finest. Or worst, depending on your perspective, freebie recipient versus payer through the nose. Gruber et al. are textbook Poli Sci for “Lobbying and Corruption 101” classes for wannabe socialist activists. Health insurance was Obama’s biggest industry, in terms of political campaign contributions as an Illinois state politician. The health insurance industry’s “horse” (Obama) captured the White House race, and paid off big odds. Obamacare made Obama rich, $400,000 speeches to Wall Street and $50 million book advances; a success for the One, a loss to the Many. Right out of George Orwell’s novel, Animal Farm.
Obamacare, which has cared extremely well for Mr. Obama, is predicated on government subsidies to the health insurance industry via what Justice Roberts correctly called taxes (e.g. individual mandate to be part of the collective, or else face IRS punishments). Maybe FBI needs to investigate Obamacare from perspective of Russian or commie involvement in dumbing down Americans to the point where half of the USA is good Marxists (dba Dems, socialists, etc.) acting out as mathematically illiterate automatons bent on overeating, obesity and varied addictions contributing to health industry profits. But like so-called DNC hacks, Obamacare is a DNC inside job. USA needs a truly free press that is not a DNC/CIA/NSA united propaganda front; until then there will be no truth on anything.
My guess is that these GOP faux pas are not unintentional.
How could Paul Ryan be so stupid to fall right into the Democrat’s trap?
Had he left well enough alone he could’ve pinned the entire blame on Obama and the GOP would pick up more seats in the House and Senate in 2018.
As it stands now they risk losing the majority in the Senate and having their majority cut in half in the House.
I contend that the 2 parties actively work together behind the curtains to trade power seats to maintain full control over the populous.
I’ve lived long enough to see a pattern.
Paul Ryan is not a stupid man. He knew where the trap was located and purposely fell into it face first.
Come on. Let’s all be adults. This should be as obvious as the nose on your faces.
It’s not for nothing that the GOP is called The Stupid Party
They’re not “stupid”, they’re just OWNED by many of the same concerns who own the Dems, so it only seems like they’re acting stupidly. As has finally been revealed to all, I hope, they are the mostly phony opposition party, promising to make all kinds of NEEDED radical changes… until they actually control all three branches of government at which point the charade is revealed. They are the “not as bad as the Dems” party, but they ain’t saviors.
You are describing the upper elite of the party. I’m describing the morons who vote for them,
What same person would vote for Insane McCain?
The little kiddie fiddler Linda Graham?
“You are describing the upper elite of the party.”
No, pretty much anyone who wants funding for their too long by design campaigns.
The Reps are the slower road to ruin than the Dems, so it’s vote for them or no one.
Third parties are a complete joke. For example, the Libertarian Party has earned ONE electoral college vote in it’s entire 33 year history. Why? Because they don’t have enough funds to get their message out in the way the average voter will find it and the MSM doesn’t even bother to cover them unless they might take votes away from a Rep candidate. Why no funds? Because their message is AGAINST the way our crony system normally functions and no one in the buying of politicians game is willing to fund them. As a minor factor, they haven’t had a decent prez candidate since Harry Browne died. Johnson was both a moron and NOT a libertarian.
Change 33 year history to 43 year history.
The ACA (Obamacare) is clearly the Democrats. The reason why health insurers are dropping out is because they cant increase the premiums as much as they would like. The only other thing that could fix this is to raise taxes for healthcare again, which is unpalatable. Even the the house version passed, no chance the republican version becomes law this year.
As for the republican version, they aren’t blameless in all this. They had 7 years to put together a better bill. What they put forth is garbage.
“They had 7 years to put together a better bill.”
No, they simply had 7 years to pretend they would repeal it when they couldn’t, not intending to do so when they could. The mostly phony opposition party.
Wanna’ know EXACTLY what would fix our entire health care mess for good and save huge sums of money, wiping out the deficit through those savings? THIS:
The Bill To Permanently Fix Health Care For All*
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231949
Why won’t that free market SOLUTION or even a tiny part of it be implemented? Because BOTH the Dems and Reps are OWNED by the people who fund their campaigns and that ain’t you or me. What we have, amusingly, is a clear and continuing case of “taxation without representation.”
For a 60 year old:
$300 annual premiums for health insurance in the Philippines.
$16,000 annual premiums for health insurance with the GOP plan.
Huh?
It’s way past time to just repeal and forget about it. We had good medical care without this stupid program; all we have done is waste a lot of taxpayer money for what?