On May 4th, the House passed a bill to Repeal and Replace Obamacare.
“Yes, premiums will be coming down; yes, deductibles will be coming down, but very importantly, it’s a great plan,” Trump boasted at the White House Rose Garden victory ceremony. “We want to brag about the plan,” Trump said, after asking those assembled how he was doing in his debut as a politician. “Hey, I’m president!”
Today, Trump described the healthcare replacement bill as “Mean, Mean, Mean“.
President Donald Trump told Republican senators Tuesday that the House-passed health care bill is “mean” and urged them to craft a version that is “more generous,” congressional sources said.
The president’s comments, at a White House lunch with 15 GOP senators, came as Senate Republican leaders’ attempts to write their own health care package have been slowed by disagreements between their party’s conservative and moderates.
One source said Trump called the House bill “mean, mean, mean” and said, “We need to be more generous, more kind.” The other source said Trump used a vulgar phrase to describe the House bill and told the senators, “We need to be more generous.”
Trump On Obamacare
I’m sure glad we cleared that up.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Is there a winner here….?
Sometimes I think we need to let OBAMA! care bankrupt all the insurance companies and raise the rates x3 for everyone out there……maybe THEN, we could agree to change it…?
That was the Dems plan – and it’s working.
The california senate passed a bill to go to single payer at a cost double of health care costs now, adding 200 billion to cost, and will pay for that with a 3% business tax on revenues.
So yes, let obamacare implode. But let people know the real cost of single payer and remind people they all were promised lower cost healthcare from obama and the dems and that was one of the biggest lies ever.
The ca single payer covers all undocumented immigrants, including the felons
Anyone who thinks a collapse or economic calamity will create a POSITIVE opportunity for change, JUST HASN’T BEEN PAYING ANY ATTENTION!
Let us all recall that Obamacare is the direct result of what democrats claimed was a healthcare crisis…..and what did we get?
Also recall that all of our current economic themes currently playing out were the result of an economic CRISIS…..and what did we get?
And above all, Trump is the result of our confidence in government CRISIS, and regardless of good intentions, our body politic is using it for further destruction.
Sorry to be so pessimistic but all we have is our delusions and denial to preserve the remnants of our society. When (and if) we do awake from our dreamy slumber, no telling what we might find.
Your California numbers are incomplete. Total cost of single-payer in California would be $400 billion and exceed the rest of the state budget. $200 billion is the amount individuals and businesses would pay, and the federal government would be expected to pay $200 billion (but not likely). Besides the 3% tax on “gross” business revenues, which would hit restaurants and high volume but low margin business very hard, a 15% payroll tax is also needed. That is what passed the California State Senate.
The Ins companies will not go BK. They will adjust while the poor slobs paying the premiums pay either way. The EU Single payer plans = 10.1% of GDP. The UK’s NHS is 8.8%. Our current system is 17.8% as of 12/2016. The EU & UK health care is excellent. The downside is that they have a chronic shortage of beds, nurses & doctors while the infrastructure is mostly old & shabby. If you want “non-essential” care, be prepared to get in a long line. The wait times in emergency in the UK average more than 4 hours and the politicians regularly get elected by constantly campaigning to bring them down (and fail). Heaven forbid there’s a major emergency like a flu outbreak as the system becomes a zoo. Patients on trolleys in hallways and housed in ambulances, which leads to a shortage of emergency response vehicles etc. Then there’s the bureaucracy; two years ago it was discovered that it hatched a plan to save money by allowing the terminally ill to be warehoused in facilities where they got no care, meds or in many cases, food. 66,000 died via this cost cutting strategy which was secret until the press got hold of it. The bounty paid per patient treated this was £ 30,000. BTW, the relatives were prevented from finding out where their relatives were kept during this. The recent hack into the NHS computer system resulted from very out of date software making it easy. The paperwork to get the “free” services is diabolical. So, it’s a trade off either way. Tax funded single payer or a freer market system. In either case there are winners and losers but the insurance companies, who insure the private system, have adjusted and prosper.
My friend’s mother came under the care of the NHS after a stroke. Doctor did NOT come by on rounds. She had no ability to swallow, but the nurses (none English speaking) shoved the pills in her mouth and shut it. He got her to the US in a matter of two days. EXCELLENT!
Watch the Rep Senators – they are planning something nasty – of cause 🙁
I’m through being kind. I only vote for meanies. Repeal. Cut the subsidy. Don’t look back.
I agree! Moreover, I propose that people who get insurance from their employer pay taxes on the portion that the company “subsidizes” . After all that is income. Isn’t it? Also, lets eliminate the tax break the corporations get for the cost of that “benefit”. There you are lets see how long insurance companies last when there are no subsidies to anyone and all have to pay the full price of their insurance with after tax money! Let me make a prediction: Just like in Obamacare the young will drop out completely. Insurance companies sale a product that has no market. They want the young and healthy but the young and healthy don’t want to pay. They don’t want the old and sick but that is the demographic that wants them. In a real market driven economy without any tax shielded benefits insurance companies will go under in no time
How about we simply pay for that which we consume rather than creating an expensive and complex scheme that attempts to make us believe that someone else will pay for the things we believe we need or deserve?
This IS really ignorant.
The ONLY reason why ANYONE buys insurance is because they believe it will be less expensive than paying for their healthcare outright. If not, we would simply SAVE for our healthcare expenses….like we used to. The fact that insurance (and government….the BIGGEST insurance company in the world) are redistributing income from the healthy to the sick and the rich to the poor should come as no surprise. The only thing to empower that notion with the people at large is to convince them they are poor and thus on the receiving end of this scheme. But as we see there just ain’t enough “rich folk” to pay the tab so they impose the demand that we must ALL pay into it. As they say you eventually run out of other people’s money….unless….you can find more “other people”. Of course there is a limit and once the population in total has been fenced in, and costs continue to ratchet upwards, we will again run out of other people…and their money. We see the same exact thing going on in Europe, but of course as their healthcare is PERFECT, it is only the social entitlement system going broke after they already forced everyone in….so now they NEED immigrants for some fresh added “blood”.
It is the same game everywhere. Sell the notion of entitlement and then seek out the victims of entitlement….the payers.
Health insurance….health care, is just one of the means of taking control, of creating dependency.
As with everything else, there is now no solution because what is at issue is not cost or availability, but expectations that cannot be met. What we want is what we cannot, SOCIETY cannot afford in the long run. Taken in total, looking at combined spending as compared to our actual productivity, we are sinking. And GDP is NOT the Gross National Production, it is our gross national consumption.
“The ONLY reason why ANYONE buys insurance is because they believe it will be less expensive than paying for their healthcare outright. ”
That is probably true in our current totalitarian dystopia, but only on account of our progressive dystopia peddlers having, as the good newspeakers they are, redefined what the meaning of is is. And what the meaning of insurance is.
Formally, if you take out insurance, you pay “more” than if you pay as you go. If you didn’t, there would simply be no incentive for anyone to provide insurance. But you pay more, in order for your cost to be less volatile, more predictable. I’m sure 100+ years of progressive indoctrination has resulted in a mass of yahoos who don’t even understand anything so obvious, but that doesn’t make it any less inevitable: When you take out insurance, you expect to pay more, but increase the predictability of what you’ll pay.
Are we back to “sources”?
Trump would set any legacy he wants in stone IF he can get a universal healthcare bill passed. He hinted at in in the beginning. I also wondered if the current dud scheme was a deliberate ploy to defang republican opposition to such a bill. Let’s hope so.
Paying for it is just so easy. Just mark up relevant accounts as bills fall due. The Fed did exactly that with the bailout for the GFC banks. It’s off the budget current account agenda so it’s not a weight on either side of the ledger.
So, just print the money to pay for it. It’s working so well in Venezuela. There is no end to lunacy.
Trump can be nice with his own money
“vulgar phrase” coming up:
“…according to the Associated Press, (Trump) told a group of senators today that the AHCA bill, which he loved and helped pass, is “mean,” and called it a “SON OF A B*TCH.”
Read more: http://therightscoop.com/trump-tells-senators-the-gop-health-care-bill-is-mean-and-calls-it-a-vulgar-phrase/#ixzz4jw0vpFiZ
Describing THAT as a “vulgar phrase” is F-ing stupid.
Average cost to have a baby at an elite private Indian hospital ranges from $240 to $400. Indians can also opt to have a baby for free at a public hospital.
Average cost to have a baby at a US hospital ranges from $30,000 to $50,000. Yet the US ranks 30 out of 34 among OECD countries on quality.
First give the bottom 60% an affordable cash option, and then the safety net can be modified responsibly. They can’t afford megabucks.
The first paragraph of any bill, should be to remove all and any restriction on insurance co’s writing bills that mandate their policy holders go to India to give birth. And buy their drugs from India. And import doctors and nurses from india. Ditto for all and any other country. The only way to bring costs down, is to open up for more efficient providers to compete.
Dicking around with misunderstood “insurance” schemes, which the idiots have been told by their progressive overlords is what is wrong with “the system,” are nothing yet another obfuscation of good old fashioned theft; will do exactly nothing to lower the cost of care.
And cost of care is what matters. Exactly what kind of childish, harebrained “system” is put in place to pay for it is, again, just more obfuscation.
So, as in any free market, let anyone buy anything from anyone anywhere at any time for whatever price the two of them agree to. Completely unimpeded. And watch costs go the way of all costs in all unmanipulated markets: Down to where the world’s lowest cost provider, is barely (in reality not even that) breaking even.
YEP!! Can ANYONE at ANYTIME show me ANYWHERE that price controls has worked?
GTFO of the way with the private enterprise. Let prices automatically come down – as they always will….
After the first attempt at health care reform failed the GOP should’ve retreated and let well enough alone. Attempting to tinker with a failed system will only come back to bit them once it collapses. Leaning into a left hook was never a sensible strategy going into a fight. When Obamacare implodes the GOP proposal will fly though congress. Even the dems will vote for it. Genius is patience.
There was an interview in 2009 or so with a former Lehman Bros employee. I can’t remember his exact quote — it wasn’t unique in sentiment but it was well phrased. He said something to the effect of: “You cannot imagine what bull$(%& you can fool yourself into believing when your paycheck and lifestyle depend on believing those lies.”
Few Americans really understood the level of pay on Wall Street, and I suspect even fewer comprehend how much our “DC public servants” make. Or the perks and benefits they give themselves at our expense.
Congress doesn’t pay for Obamacare. Or travel costs. Or lodging. Or the 5-star meals they get breakfast, lunch and dinner. They don’t pay for hotels or limos or tickets to entertainment events. They are allowed, by the laws they wrote themselves, to engage in insider trading. They can expense absolutely everything from their dry cleaning to the cost of their mistresses (plural) to their campaign funds.
Wall Street has their $2000 / head dinner at Luger’s Steak House after closing a big deal. Congress has that EVERY NIGHT.
Congress believes the party will never stop, because their lavish lifestyle depends on believing it. They have gotten so good at lying, they are now able to deceive themselves.
YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES
Cab’t the R’s see how f’ed up it already is….it needs to GO….NOT BE TINKERED WITH
What is “compassionate health care”?
When do I pay for myself and my family?
When do I pay for “less fortunate”?
What is less fortunate?
Do the less fortunate need to be citizens?
Mish, please lead us to a concensus and solve this problem. I really want to do the “right thing” but I keep arguing with myself.
Thank you.
I would not trust a single thing written about Trump in Bloomberg. Not one thing.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter what anyone in Washington DC says, and even less what the libtards say. Even if the US military budget was completely eliminated (good luck with that!) it wouldn’t pay for universal care in California, never mind the other 49 states.
Obamacare has destroyed the Democrat party — it will never come back, it will never regain majority in its current form.
Perhaps Trump now has some warped idea of letting Obamacare destroy the Paul Ryan branch of the Republican party too? Seems a little twisted, given the collateral damage to the US tax base ( ya know: all us mud covered people outside the beltway).
I am sure the libtards think this will be a stepping stone to universal insurance — in theory in might be. But in practice, too many states are already teetering on bankruptcy, and the federal government is hardly on sound footing either.
I think there are too many infants in Washington DC for the institution to survive in present form. Too many members of Congress (and their staffs) have such a vast array of special privileges that they don’t know what is going on outside the beltway.
And we have a disturbing number of “voters” (especially in California) who simply cannot do simple accounting. Like balancing a checkbook. I am sure you losers will take offense to that statement, but take a look at your own state’s finances. You can’t balance a checkbook — the proof is right under your noses.
Washington DC is probably going the way of Athens — into irrelevancy — unless Trump can save them…. Think about that for a moment: Washington DC’s only hope is the man they hate.
However this ends, I don’t trust Bloomberg “news”. Its Mike Bloomberg’s political agenda, not any facts
Medex Man,
Socialism always ends in economic collapse and or famine. We’re going there. Remember wheat to USSR, Mao’s Cultural Revolution, hunger in Cuba, N. Korea, Zimbawbwe? The stats started to go the wrong way in the ’70s when government got really big. It’s only a matter of time, unless the trend to bigger and more invasive government is reversed. No version of universal health care will help to achieve that. We are a failing empire. This is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
I don’t believe we are going to get to socialism… not because the country isn’t filled with brainwashed college weenies who demand endless free sh!t. I think the socialists will fail because they don’t appreciate just how many freeloaders already exist.
If you look at Illinois or Connecticut — two states that had it all and implemented socialism behind closed doors… they can’t pay their bills. Everyone (both Dems and Reps) are fleeing both states. Without a tax base to exploit, socialism collapses. (the problem with socialism is sooner or later they run out of other people’s money — this isn’t a new thing).
Morons voted for Bernie Sanders and socialism, but Sanders got himself a million dollar book deal. Sanders doesn’t believe in socialism, he believes most voters are stupid — and he is right on that count.
I don’t know if the country will continue drifting socialist or not — but I am sure we won’t make it as far as Venezuela did before collapse. The millennials don’t have the skill set (or the work ethic) to keep society plodding along, and the baby boomers were never ones to contribute on net. There just aren’t enough people willing and able to contribute to keep the charade going.
But the short term — as socialism fails to function — its going to be painful. As more people realize the level of socialism that was pushed through behind closed doors… we are going to see more and more liberal leaning voters rebel against the democratic party.
If the political class was functional, Trump would not be president. The media can cry and whine all they want — but Trump is in the White House because their corrupt system isn’t working.
Obamacare is failing all over the country — doctors are not going to spend 12+ years in medical school so they can be paid like social workers. Nurses won’t bother either. There is no free lunch, and no majority of voters (if such a thing existed) can make a free lunch possible.
And no — other countries do not have universal care… some have higher taxes and energy royalties funding a much much more limited primary care system. But no country offers the unlimited “free” system that Congress gets and socialists want. It might exist on paper in some countries, but not in reality.
Socialism, even though it will be a still birth in the USA, is going to wreck the US economy just in time to ruin the baby boomer’s retirement.
Capitalism also always ends in economic collapse and or famine as does everything, nothing new there.
Everyone should realize a person can get lost, disoriented or even drown in a swamp. The DC swamp is especially vicious.
Trump wouldn’t be president if the swamp had a viable alternative.
Trump is Washington DC’s last hope… and being the idiots that they are, they are fighting him.
The swamp cannot “beat” Trump, because he isn’t their opponent. Trump is the guy holding a mirror up in their faces, and they don’t like what they see.
Simple solutions. Stop the ” onerous federal reserve loans funded to finance Middle East Wars. Close all the military bases not paid for by foreign countries. Bring all troops home. Put the troops to work guarding our airports, seaports. Have them the troops walk the streets in our communities and enforce laws like traditional police to reduce crime and drug use or selling and end paying for illegal alien use of taxpayer funded health care.
1. Gets us out of paying to support economies of Europe
2. Fights inner city crime
3. End illegal aliens ripping us off.
Kinder, gentler? Or is he cracking? After today’s shooting I worry about his mental health. The guy is getting beaten up worse than anything we have ever seen. It’s at unprecedented levels. How much more can he take? How much more could any of you take?
For me, Twitter trolls and my FB “friends” have driven me to drink. I could never stand the levels that Trump is dealing with. If his health survives his entire presidency, I’ll get a Trump tattoo, simply because he’s an animal.