Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[froot loops]

Da Geezer certainly was complaining post election demanding to find out who deleted a non-existent post calling him a racist.

[froot loops]

Let's point this out, the AHCA isn't a solution that taxes people more to fix any problem. It is a huge tax cut, the poor are much worse off than they were pre-ACA.

The old with pre-existing conditions will have much, much higher premiums. If we stripped medicare from the Da Geezer he would be charged a lot more for premiums because the AHCA allows the insurance companies to charge more.

It's rich that Da Geezer accuses other people of being on the dole while getting medicare. He is the proverbial man in the glass house throwing stones. Benefit for me, no handout for thee.

[entropy]

[ame]https://twitter.com/amazing_maps/status/860939731571486720[/ame]

For something different... which states google penis enlargement the most


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[froot loops]

That shit makes me cringe.

[entropy]

Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

Dems will win the presidency in 4 yrs. I know it's not through the senate, but Ryan is leaving a stain that can be leveraged. And should be..


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[Da Geezer]

I just heard a FOX info-babe get all huffy because (she claimed) pregnancy is not covered in the AHCA as a pre-existing condition. It turns out that it IS covered. But as a pre-existing condition?

IMO, the best part of the ACA is guaranteed issue. But do you progs actually view pregnancy as a pre-existing condition? So under both laws, a woman can get pregnant and then purchase insurance so her delivery is covered? Really? Why would anyone buy insurance in the first place then?

[Jeff Buchanan]

I don't think the AHCA will survive the Senate in its current form ..... not even close.

I'm not going to whine and hand wring about it. But republicans who voted for the AHCA might start thinking about mid-term elections. My bet is they'll get swept or close to it for crafting this garbage and then voting to pass it on to the Senate.

[froot loops]

You are getting essential health benefits and pre-existing conditions mixed up. This bill cannot get rid of the pre-existing condition part of the ACA. That part cannot get passed under budget reconciliation. But they can gut essential health benefits. States can opt out of making sure their plans contain the EHBs, they just have to meet one of three conditions, one being that it would lower premiums.

Maternity care was one of the essential health benefits under the ACA, prior to that something like 80 percent of the private plans did not cover maternity care.

So theoretically the states can get a waiver to eliminate EHBs, but they couldn't turn you away from covering you for insurance. They just don't have to provide that care or any of the other EHBs.

I didn't see that segment on Fox News, but that huffy female might be right depending on the state they are in.

[Dr. Strangelove]

[ame]https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/860987464114110465[/ame]

[ame]https://twitter.com/nmeyersohn/status/860986685009653760[/ame]

[Dr. Strangelove]

Jared Kushner's sister is in China trying to raise $150M for a building project in NJ. She's pushing the EB-5 Visa program, in which Chinese investors can effectively 'purchase' US citizenship at $500k a pop. This is exactly the type of immigrtion program that Trump supposedly ran against. She also boasted of her family's ties to the Presidency as part of the pitch. When it became known there were American reporters in the room, they were thrown out.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/06/world/asia/jared-kushner-sister-nicole-meyer-china-investors.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/world/in-a-beijing-ballroom-kushner-family-flogs-500000-investor-visa-to-wealthy-chinese/2017/05/06/cf711e53-eb49-4f9a-8dea-3cd836fcf287_story.html

[froot loops]

She is complicit. They will be making so much money off of the taxpayers in these 4 years. Just think of how much money he is making off of these trips every weekend. It's obscene.

[Wild Hoss]

It has been my opinion for a long time now that his entire presidential run was a ploy designed to re-energize his failing brand and stave off a final, comprehensive bankruptcy. As such, I expect them to glean every penny they possibly can from the presidency. With zero shame.

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[Da Geezer]

I didn't see that segment on Fox News, but that huffy female might be right depending on the state they are in.

So you are saying that a person without insurance can find out they are pregnant and then go to their purveyor of health insurance, purchase health insurance, and be covered for prenatal care and for the delivery? Why, then, would anyone carry health insurance until they find out they have a need for it?

[froot loops]

Under then ACA you have a mandate to have insurance or pay a 1,000 dollar penalty. That scenario you painted isn't supposed to happen, because you should already have insurance because of the mandate.

Under the AHCA, there isn't a mandate, so you could actually do what you are saying. You don't have to have insurance, if you don't have continuous coverage the insurance company would have to take you but they can charge you 130 percent for a year as a penalty for not having continuous coverage.

This has the potential of making things worse for premiums, it incentivizes the healthy to opt out and make your insurance pools much sicker. The biggest issue of the marketplaces was that a lot of young and healthy opted out and paid the 1,000 dollar penalty. The opt in is less punitive so logically more young healthy people could wait until they need health care.

[Jeff Buchanan]

In trying to understand the ACA v. AHCA to me, there are two central issues and a few ancillary ones that I?ll deal with later, that must be resolved. These are:

(1) Because I believe the Congress has a majority view that government has a role in providing some level of health care to all citizens, the concept of the Public Health Insurance Exchanges has to be revitalized. This concept is, fundamentally, controversial and is and should be at the heart of the debate.

(a) In this debate there are essentially two outcomes: you either have HC Insurance Exchanges as conceived and defined through law in the ACA or you don?t.
(b) If you have them, an insurance market place is at play where market forces, to a certain degree, affect pricing.
(c) If you don?t have them you have either a net return to pre-ACA circumstances (and these exchanges were present but in a different form) or you replace those ACA conceived exchanges with a single payer HC deliver system. Understanding the concept and history of these HC Exchanges is important to understanding the ACA and the AHCA. I?ve provided a link to do that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health...ce_marketplace

(2) In my view of the existing political circumstances, mandates are going to be a tough sell. They are however, essential to make a US style, universal HC concept as it was first conceived in the late Clinton and then the Obama administrations functional. IMO, if mandates (e.g., everyone has to play), in some form, are not on the table, why bother .... and I think that outcome is both disheartening and possible.

Ancillary issues:

(1) Medicare and Medicaid will remain but to what degree they are funded is going to be key in establishing the degree to which congress is willing to pay for HC for the poor (Medicaid) and elderly (Medicare). See comment on taxes below.

(2) The ACA was flawed to begin with because to get the bill passed in 2010, the democrats had to water down mandates. What does this mean? In its original form, the ACA required everyone to have HC Insurance. This requirement is so fundamental to the ACA conceived HC Exchanges being functional that to not require HC insurance of everyone under the ACA is to guarantee the failure of it (pretty much what the Rs wanted to happen and it has).

(3) Further weakening the effectiveness of the ACA in achieving the Obama administrations goals for US HC were the amendments to the bill that allowed states to opt out of Medicaid expansion. This isn?t affecting those of us who are talking about HC in this forum. But in states that opted to not expand Medicaid coverage, for the poor, the impact on the health of this population is substantial.

(4) Costs: Frankly, and at this point, I think the discussion about the affordability of universal HC in some form is secondary, albeit an important one. The primary discussion for Congress is the central question that I?ve previously asked everyone in this discussion to answer for themselves. Is the government responsible for insuring its citizens have access to health care? If your answer to that question is, yes, then it becomes a matter of degree and Federal budgetary priorities. And this is on both sides of the ledger ? taxes and spending. If it is no, then legislators should make that clear to their constituencies.

How elected Congressional reps would fair by coming out against any kind of Federally funded HC program is complicated though and the facts on that illuminate why the answer to my essential question may or may not have political costs and how that is going to influence future HC legislation:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/03/27/how-do-americans-feel-about-single-payer-health-care-its-complicated/

The AHCA is much, much worse than the ACA in both concept and execution. See the link below:

http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-na-pol-obamacare-repeal/

IMO, and obviously I am a supporter of the role of government to insure HC access for its citizens, it is and should be an embarrassment to the Republican Party and those Rs in the House who voted for it. It demonstrates, I think, the impact of the Freedom Caucuses? political stranglehold on any legislative process involving HC.

The AHCA not only obliterates the concepts inherent in the ACA (what the Freedom Caucus R?s and Trump apparently want if only for political purposes ) but also it creates, implemented in its current form, a shifting of the tax burden to pay for a degree of universal HC that is inconsistent with how US Federal taxes are designed.

Taxes ?.. that?s a separate discussion and probably one that ought to be taking place ? how to distribute the costs of paying for universal health care fairly. Not starting that in this post.