“Give us control of the White House and Congress, and we’ll repeal and replace Obamacare” we were told since 2010. Well, Republicans have it, and yet
House Republicans claim a major victory with passage of health-care overhaul
House Republicans on Thursday narrowly passed a controversial bill to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, claiming a major victory even as the measure faces an uncertain fate in the closely divided U.S. Senate.
Under intense pressure to show they can govern and to make good on their promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, Republicans pushed through the bill after adopting a last-minute change that earned it just enough votes to pass. However, the House version fell significantly short of the GOP’s long-held goals, making major dents in large portions of the current law but not outright repealing it.
That’s all you really need to know. It’s not repealed. For all their machinations, they might as well have simply modified Ocare. This bill was simply the same as the last bad one, with a few minor additions.
The measure proceeded without the benefit of an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office of its cost and impact on insurance coverage, and it did so after many Republicans openly acknowledged that they hadn’t read the bill. President Trump also promised “insurance for everybody,†which the measure will not achieve.
They read it the other month when they tried to pass this garbage. On the plus side, the Senate claims it has no intention in taking up the bill. Perhaps they’ll take up one of the plans by Senators like Rand Paul, which actually repeal Ocare and replace it with something that works. But, then again, perhaps not, because there are too many squishes in the Senate, once who like to use government power, because it helps their own power. And the House plan does not reduce government involvement in our health insurance and health care decisions.
The political positioning over the bill started immediately, with the GOP claiming that it would lower premiums and increase access to health insurance and Democrats casting it as a huge transfer of wealth because it would eliminate many of the taxes imposed under the Affordable Care Act, including on wealthy Americans.
Maybe it does the first, lowering premiums (and hopefully, deductibles) and increasing access. What the Democrats are whining about is the Cadillac Tax, which wasn’t scheduled to start till 2018, before it was pushed off till 2020 in a bipartisan fashion, and, unless Speaker Paul Ryan made a big change, is now pushed off till 2025. And that tax would hit regular employers, including ones with less than 50 employees, and would mean that employers would reduce their offerings in order to avoid that 40% surcharge on plans with a yearly cost of over $10,800. Heck, even left leaning unions hate it. Also, it would kill the investment tax. But, you know, the party which relies on The Rich can’t avoid trotting out their typical tax cuts for the rich, even when they aren’t being charged yet.
It really shouldn’t be this difficult. And it may very well cost the GOP the Senate in 2018, and the possibility of a massive sea change for the House is now not out of bounds. Why do we want to keep voting for this liars?
Crossed at Right Wing News.
It harms citizens, increases overall healthcare costs, rewards the wealthy and helps the Dems win the House in 2018. But it gave trump another chance to spread his feathers and strut.
Jeff,
No, wrong again, and again. The ACA is a horrible law. Patients can see me as their physician, but the bill stops me from obtaining critical test and procedures as the patients can not afford the deductibles and the insurance companies stop me from doing indicated procedures and testing. Always remember that the high cost of medical care is secondary to the involvement of the Federal government. Now, Jeff likes to compare correlations, as in his ridiculous CO2 crap, so lets compare some correlations. In the 60’s, medical cost were well within the limits of the average individuals income, then the government got involved and look what we have, I can’t even afford a simple MRI due to excessive expense caused by the government.
Further to what you’ve written david, is this comment left at Ann Althouse’s blog.
“Everyone likes to pretend that Obamacare is wonderful and loved by everyone, but I swear it seems I have more patients who can’t afford healthcare since it was passed. They pay large premiums then have to pay large deductibles, so they go without care. And some of them just skip insurance all together because they figure why should they give an insurance company their money in premiums if they have to pay for everything themselves anyway.”
dave,
Every other first world nation has government regulated universal healthcare and spend less per capita than we do in the US, in many cases about one half what we spend. Our system derives profit from human suffering. Americans compensate doctors above free market, pay for pharmaceuticals above free market, and pay billions to insurance executives, salesmen, adjusters, pharma and medical device executives that add little value to the system. Healthcare is profitable in the US.
Jeff,
So if everyone jumps off the bridge are you, please? Doctors in the US have had there charges regulated by the Feds since the mid 80s. Sure that is medicare, which you will point out, but insurance is indexed in medicare, same for hospitals. Repeating your carp over and over does not make it true.
dave,
We agree that the federal law has increased costs.
It’s a fact that every other advanced nation delivers quality healthcare to ALL their citizens for MUCH less than we deliver healthcare to only SOME of ours. It’s a fact that ALL these nations use a variety of mixed government/industry systems to do this. In America, we worship at the throne of government protected profits for folks like you and me.
The US patent office (at the tip of a spear) protects me and my company from foreign and domestic competition for decades, ostensibly to foster innovation. Immigration and other federal laws limit the number of foreign doctors that can practice in the US, driving up costs.
In the US, the healthcare delivery system squeezes double out of patients and the insured what a free market would, the equivalent of over a $1 trillion “tax” so that doctors, insurers, hospital execs and drug developers can profit. Developing a blockbuster drug like Zoloft, Celebrex, Viagra or Lipitor is like winning the lottery times 1 million, thanks to government protections.
The ACA was flattening the cost curve. trumpKare will reverse that, while shifting more of the costs to the poor and delivering tax cuts to the wealthy. Listen, trumpKare will cut MY taxes and increase the value of my corporation but I still oppose it.
Jeff,
Wrong.
Gotta start somewhere.
http://www.atr.org/americans-tax-reform-will-rate-vote-ahca-hr-1628-0
Agreed DP.
Funny we haven’t heard about all those taxes before.
Just look at how Obama care handled what they called devices. They made all dermatological products devices. That resulted in huge increases in medications which are not covered by insurance. An example is steroid lotion used for the scalp it went from about $75 to $800. Note also that Jeff makes drugs and so he is very interested in high drug prices.
Or so the little guy claims.
Claimed he joined the Army also.