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Author | Topic: Republican Healthcare Plan | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
JonF Member (Idle past 196 days) Posts: 6174 Joined:
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They have insurance now but they're having problems finding people who take it
That is an issue. But no insurance is worse. From what I can see the people who have been subsidized are screwed. (High-risk pools have been tried; they are expensive and never received sufficient funding. I doubt the Republican government will be allocating huge funding.)
contributions to the HSA be tax-free
Thus alleviating the burden for those who can afford to contribute to an HSA. Those who cannot afford it or don't have Federal income tax liability to be offset (the famous 47%) will not be helped at all.
The plan is to block-grant Medicaid to the states. Then they can utilize the money however it best fits their citizens.
I.e. like all previous block grant programs cut back funding greatly and hope the states decide to use it to provide health care.
Also, the plan for price transparency of procedures and the cross-state insurance options would allow individuals to shop around for the best prices for both insurance and procedures
There are several states that already allow out-of state insurance companies to operate. There are exactly zero insurance companies taking advantage of that. It's horrendously expensive to expand into a new state and it takes quite some time to realize a return. Of course state governments are not interested in giving up their regulatory functions. Likely there would be a "race to the bottom" as with credit cards. Insurers will find the state with the most flexible and limited regulation and move there.
On the other hand, people are going to have to start taking responsibility for themselves rather than relying on big brother to take care of them
Yes, and since health care isn't amenable to a free-market solution, many many of those people will be screwed.
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JonF Member (Idle past 196 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
allows companies to use the worst regulations from the worst state across the entire country,
Does it? If state X has more regulations than state Y, then does state Y really have to accept State X's stuff? Yes. It's now legal for states to allow out-of-state insurance. Some do. The only way to change the situation Federally is to make it mandatory on all states. If there's an opt-out then a lot of states will opt-out (few want to give up their regulatory power) and the situation won't change. "Allowing sales across state lines" will be meaningless and ineffective.
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JonF Member (Idle past 196 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
I'm not sure I recognise the big brother reference. It's US right wing dogma that aid to the needy harms them by encouraging them to avoid working and rip off the taxpayers. Ayn Rand stuff. The data shows otherwise, which appears to have no effect on the belief. Healthcare would be no problem if those people would park their welfare Cadillacs, turn off their 75" TVs, and buckle down.
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JonF Member (Idle past 196 days) Posts: 6174 Joined:
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Having the government in charge of something makes it cost more money and take longer. Plus they're notoriously incompetent and careless. Medicare is much more efficient than many duplicated bureaucracies in private hands. And it has purchasing leverage no private company has. All sweeping claims are wrong.
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JonF Member (Idle past 196 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
cut the peoples' taxes and give them the money The people who can't afford insurance without subsidies won't get any of that. Many of them pay no Federal income tax so tax rates are irrelevant, and the proposed tax cuts will reduce the payment by those who do pay tax by about 1%.
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JonF Member (Idle past 196 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
The plan is to have the insurance premiums be deducted from your taxes and the contributions to the HSA be tax-free I know and suspect others do too. If you pay no Federal income tax where do the premiums come from? If you desperately want to contribute to an HSA but have nothing left after food, housing, and clothing what do you do? Do you think there are ignorably few people with those problems?
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JonF Member (Idle past 196 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
Ok, what laws inhibit sale of insurance across state lines and what side effects will getting rid of them have?
Will anyone do anything to make the economics more favorable?
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JonF Member (Idle past 196 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
And it has purchasing leverage no private company has.
And still, it requires supplemental insurance... SFW? Congress made the decision not to cover everything. Medicare has purchasing leverage no private company has. The firsts does negate the second.
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JonF Member (Idle past 196 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
Medicare is not that great because you still have to buy additional insurance.
You don't have to buy additional insurance. You can pay out of pocket. You seem to think everybody has enough disposable income. Would you be in favor of making Medicare better by allocating additional government funds to make copays and limits equivalent to private insurance?
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JonF Member (Idle past 196 days) Posts: 6174 Joined:
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The ACA isn't all that bad. But the Republican "plan" is guaranteed to be far worse for the consumers. They've made many promises that nobody will lose insurance. A pathetic lie. The leadership is being very careful to say everyone will have access to medical care unless, of course they can't pay for it.
Plus back billing. That's a sweet deal for hospitals and will significantly increase health care bankruptcies. My late wife's care was probably in the 2-2.5 million range. Back billing would have wiped me out even though I have first-class health insurance
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JonF Member (Idle past 196 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
I notice your reply has no connection with the points I made.
Are you in favor of back billing? Given that the Republicans will not initiate or raise any taxes, do you think they will produce a plan under which nobody loses meaningful insurance? (I'm not including meaningless plans that guarantee bankruptcy if you get any moderate to severe illness).
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JonF Member (Idle past 196 days) Posts: 6174 Joined:
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Again I notice your reply has no connection with the points I made.
Are you in favor of back billing? Given that the Republicans will not initiate or raise any taxes, do you think they will produce a plan under which nobody loses meaningful insurance? (I'm not including meaningless plans that guarantee bankruptcy if you get any moderate to severe illness).
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JonF Member (Idle past 196 days) Posts: 6174 Joined:
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Again I notice your reply has no connection with the points I made. Are you in favor of back billing? Given that the Republicans will not initiate or raise any taxes, do you think they will produce a plan under which nobody loses meaningful insurance? (I'm not including meaningless plans that guarantee bankruptcy if you get any moderate to severe illness). My reply does have more to do with than you think. Immediately followed by a long post in which there is no mention of the issues my questions raised. Quite a performance. You make it clear you are in favor of bankrupting poor Americans by back billing and unaffordable meaningful health insurance. Pretty vile.
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JonF Member (Idle past 196 days) Posts: 6174 Joined:
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Back billing (AKA balance billing) is incredibly despicable.
Say a hospital's standard charge for a procedure is $10,000. But your insurance company has negotiating power and forces them to accept $8,000 when they do the procedure on you. Back billing allows the hospital to bill you for the "missing" $2,000. Makes the hospital happy. Ensures that any major illness will bankrupt you whether or not you have health insurance.
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JonF Member (Idle past 196 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
That was "clear" to you?
Your intentions are clear. Your posts are not.
Thanks for admitting that I am "clear" anyway. ObamaCare had lots of changes. There is an issue of the hospital "chargemaster" fees (where all of those $500 aspirin pills come in) which hospitals charge those without insurance, but insurance companies never ever pay (if I remember the issues correctly).
You do not remember correctly. The ACA made it illegal to charge chargemaster fees in some cases . However that portion was never implemented because rules were never published in the Federal Register. There's a lot of disagreement as to why.
Tax-Exempt Status For Nonprofit Hospitals Under The ACA: Where Are The Final Treasury/IRS Rules?:
quote: Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), in the Max Baucus (D Montana) Committee, got an amendment passed that enabled people to get the "chargemaster" fee eliminated and reduced to the same level insurance companies pay. I forget the exact details (I'll look into it and see if I can get my phone to do long posts on EvC) but it would have eliminated most health care bankruptcies from previous years.
The only such reference I can find is to the America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009, not an amendment, which never passed and was not associated with the ACA. It was intended to be a comprehensive health care reform bill. Obama refused to endorse it because it would add $900 billion to the deficit over the next ten years. The ACA eliminated most medical bankruptcies.
Grassley won re-election in 2016, so he would control the Senate Finance Committee, unless he moved somewhere else. He would raise hell if anybody wanted to do this "back billing" issue.
VP Price wants to do just that. Neither of us know what Grassley would do. Would he fall into line? Maybe.
The Republican plot to devour retirees' nest eggs quote:
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