Big Lies

[Bob Butler 54]

(02-15-2017, 12:56 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(02-15-2017, 07:33 AM)Odin Wrote:

(02-14-2017, 09:07 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Obama care was passed to provide free or highly subsidized healthcare for the poor and the working poor. The free market principles and other cost lowering measures like tort reform and so forth were completely left out of Obama. The Democratic party basically fucked everyone who had healthcare by not addressing the cost of healthcare for those who already had it. The Democrats don't ever speak to us. The Democrats tend speak to their own and that's it.

This is a lie. There were plenty of cost-lowering stuff, it was blocked by the Republicans along with Joe Lieberman and Max Baucus.

The bill wasn't blocked. The bill was passed. Where was/is all the cost lowering stuff? I didn't see any. I didn't have free (nation wide) access to affordable healthcare. I had limited access to healthcare and I was forced to pay for coverage that I didn't need like birth control pills and so forth.

Yes.  There is a basic difference in the philosophy of the two parties.  A young male with a well paying job with decent benefits is going to prefer the Republican Plan.  If you don't need health care to speak of, the Republicans provide just the health care you want.  I think I went a 20 year stretch in my prime, working for the Military Industrial Complex, full benefits, and the largest health care call I made during that time was for a hyperextended knee acquired playing ultimate frisbee.  If that's your life style, "I've got mine, up yours" seems like a wonderful plan. 

Not so wonderful if you're the one responsible for carrying the babies, if one is an aging diabetic, if one is juggling multiple no benefit part time jobs, etc...

There might be two extremes in health care.  One can go single payer, government funded, universal health care.  One can go pay as you go.  Obviously a healthy young male is more apt to want to pay as you go.  Any other scheme, one way or another, the healthy young male is paying into a pool of funds that others will draw more from than him.  The single payer government funded universal scheme might be fair in the sense that everyone kicks in according to some supposedly fair tax scheme.  No matter what, though, the poor abused complaining healthy young male ends up kicking in more money than he would under a pay for what you need scheme.

I think that's the basic tension.  I lean towards the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Everyone has a right to access health care.  There has got to be a reasonable access to a solid plan.  I don't know how one gets there without the healthy young males contributing more, and this poor abused class whines and cries whenever this is proposed.  The other problem is that the insurance companies are demanding to stay involved so they can take a certain percentage of profits off the top.

I'm open to all sorts of suggestions.  The current scheme doesn't please me at all.  However, "I've got mine, up yours" pleases me less.

Right after the inauguration, Trump promised to propose a scheme where more people got better coverage while cutting costs and not mandating participation.  Dream on.  Has anyone seen a scheme like that that has a snowball's chance of getting through a Republican Congress?  Is it my imagination, or has health care gone on a back burner with all the other stuff happening in the White House?  The first baby step was taking towards repealing the ACA, but as there is nothing even vaguely resembling a passable replacement, there has been no second baby step?

I would love it if folks from both sides sat down with good will and tried to work things out, but health care has been turned into such a political hot potato that I'm doubtful that it will happen.  There are so many other stories filling up the front pages that the calls for 'repeal Obamacare now' seem muted.  The problem of proposing an acceptable replacement seems difficult enough that such calls might well remain muted indefinitely.