Donald Trump and US politics

Ryancare is a mess. I hope the bill doesn't pass and Trump reconsiders.

The problem with healthcare, particularly emergency care, is that the free market isn't allowed to apply.

The fundamental underpinning of the free market is the ability to refuse any particular offer and seek alternative offers elsewhere. Individual consumers cannot have any bargaining power while unconscious, are under duress while threatened by potentially fatal injury, and have reduced bargaining power while their mobility is limited. This means individual consumers are at the mercy of arbitrary pricing, controlled by providers.

The solution for this should be insurance. An insurance company isn't under duress and can negotiate properly with providers, inciting price competition and keeping costs reasonable. However, just because they can doesn't mean they will. US anti-trust laws do not apply to healthcare, allowing health insurers and providers to work in tandem instead of competition, seeking to drive prices up instead of down.

Therefore, the solution to fix the broken solution is rather simple, actually: antitrust law needs to be reformed to stop granting the healthcare and insurance industries the same immunity to antitrust enjoyed by utilities and frequency-band media. (Also banks, while we're at it.) We need health insurance to act properly as an antagonist to provider overpricing and encourage real price competition within the market.

It's not complicated. But instead, the US has a history of legislating excessive regulation designed not to promote competition within the industry, but precisely to stifle it. Imagine trying to start a new business as a healthcare provider; you'd be utterly drowned in red tape.

This won't happen until people wake up and realize socialized medicine isn't the answer. Government monopolies are monopolies.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

The problem with healthcare, particularly emergency care, is that the free market isn't allowed to apply.

The fundamental underpinning of the free market is the ability to refuse any particular offer and seek alternative offers elsewhere. Individual consumers cannot have any bargaining power while unconscious, are under duress while threatened by potentially fatal injury, and have reduced bargaining power while their mobility is limited. This means individual consumers are at the mercy of arbitrary pricing, controlled by providers.

The solution for this should be insurance. An insurance company isn't under duress and can negotiate properly with providers, inciting price competition and keeping costs reasonable. However, just because they can doesn't mean they will. US anti-trust laws do not apply to healthcare, allowing health insurers and providers to work in tandem instead of competition, seeking to drive prices up instead of down.

Therefore, the solution to fix the broken solution is rather simple, actually: antitrust law needs to be reformed to stop granting the healthcare and insurance industries the same immunity to antitrust enjoyed by utilities and frequency-band media. (Also banks, while we're at it.) We need health insurance to act properly as an antagonist to provider overpricing and encourage real price competition within the market.

It's not complicated. But instead, the US has a history of legislating excessive regulation designed not to promote competition within the industry, but precisely to stifle it. Imagine trying to start a new business as a healthcare provider; you'd be utterly drowned in red tape.

This won't happen until people wake up and realize socialized medicine isn't the answer. Government monopolies are monopolies.

Insurance is not a good solution, because insurance companies, like any private business, have the right to reject customers. And they are strongly incentivized to:

A) Reject any customer likely to be a net loss for them
B) Dispute any claims the client has as harshly as possible

This was the situation we had, where you could easily be turned away by insurance companies for any number of conditions. Athsmatic? Had pneumonia as a kid? Suffered cancer but got better? Old, obese, diabetic, HIV-positive, busted thyroid, et cetera? There is not an insurer in the country that will take you. Neither of these incentives are removed by reinstating antitrust laws.

Alternatively, you guys could join the modern world and the dozens of countries that have implemented government-run universal health care to much greater effect than the USA. For a great many countries, socialized medicine is the answer, and works great. Why shouldn't it be? Health care is just not something the free market serves well, you said as much yourself. So why not turn to the government to solve it? It doesn't even need to be a monopoly. Private insurance does exist in Germany and the UK. But even if it were a monopoly, it would be a monopoly whose primary goal is not "turn a big profit" but rather "provide the best, cheapest service for our customers"; a monopoly who answers to the will of the voting public rather than the will of a handful of investors. Those incentives which make insurance such a terrible idea disappear. Additional benefits: a single, combined front for much greater bargaining power in the face of medical suppliers, a single, combined bureaucracy rather than a large number of disconnected ones.

Seriously, there's a reason people in Europe are pointing and laughing. This shit ain't that hard (okay, it is pretty hard, but it's not hard in this way), Americans just pretend it is because "MUH SOCIALISM!"

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

Insurance is not a good solution, because insurance companies, like any private business, have the right to reject customers. And they are strongly incentivized to:

A) Reject any customer likely to be a net loss for them
B) Dispute any claims the client has as harshly as possible

A) How would they be a net loss for them? I think what you really mean is "high-risk situations tend to have more expensive insurance than low-risk." If there are laws capping insurance premiums and/or deductibles, then yes, rejection happens, because the true market price cannot be offered. But in the absence of such caps, they can just offer expensive insurance.

The best way to drive all costs down is to increase competition. "Considerable more expensive than the average plan then" doesn't necessarily mean "more expensive than plans now."

B) This is why courts exist. I'm 100% behind tort reform that would allow everyday citizens to take their claims to civil court more cheaply and easily. Too many are essentially stripped of their rights, not because they lack legal standing, but because they cannot afford to participate in the system. For example, I'm against any up-front court fees; instead, fees should be paid after verdict, assuming the petitioner doesn't owe the court from a previous case.

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

Seriously, there's a reason people in Europe are pointing and laughing.

IKR?

Like I said before, the terms 'health insurance premium' and 'health insurance deductible' make as much sense to us as 'right to bear arms'.

It's crazy.

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TheAnuhart wrote:

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

Seriously, there's a reason people in Europe are pointing and laughing.

IKR?

Like I said before, the terms 'health insurance premium' and 'health insurance deductible' make as much sense to us as 'right to bear arms'.

It's crazy.

We also have deductibles, they are just well hidden and only there in specific cases.

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Xavderion wrote:

We also have deductibles, they are just well hidden and only there in specific cases.

Well we don't. You are obviously bad Europeans over there.

Don't make me move this podium, now.

The emergency room issue is stupid. Fine their asses when they show up there with a freaking cold. My wife was admitted to hospital a few years ago and I went to visit her and accidentally walked through the emergency room and nearly lost it. Morons sitting around with the flu (this was in winter).

Just a reminder why Trump is taking this option on healthcare:

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Raycheetah wrote:

Why ObamaCare Cannot Simply Be Repealed…

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/03/07/why-obamacare-cannot-simply-be-repealed/#more-129661

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A clean repeal bill, meaning a law to repeal the entire ObamaCare construct only, would require another 60 vote hurdle in the Senate.

Republicans, while in the majority, only control 52 seats. Without 8 Democrats voting to approve a “repeal bill”, any House (Or Senate) bill that repeals ObamaCare cannot pass the Senate.

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The only bill that can pass the Senate is a bill that can utilize the process of reconciliation, which has a lower vote threshold of 51 votes. A reconciliation bill is a budgetary bill designed around the financial drivers of ObamaCare. This is what HHS Secretary Tom Price, Speaker Ryan and President Trump are attempting to do.

A reconciliation bill cannot add substantively to the existing law. It can only modify the financial structures and retain the same 10-year budgetary impact. If you want substantive adds or removals of the law, beyond the financial structure, it is no longer a reconciliation bill.

If it is no longer a reconciliation bill, it requires 60 votes. 52 Republicans + 8 democrats. Democrats have already stated they will not support any substantive changes that undermine the key ObamaCare provisions.

Accepting the Democrats will not vote to repeal their signature law… The only way to fully repeal ObamaCare as an independent bill, and overcome the 60 vote threshold, would be to eliminate the filibuster rule (3/5ths vote threshold or 60 votes) in the Senate and drop the vote threshold to 51 votes, a simple majority, for all legislation.

However, if the Senate was to drop to a simple majority vote for all legislation the entire premise of the upper chamber minority party protection is gone. Forever.

There would no longer be any difference in the House or Senate for vote thresholds, and as a consequence there would no longer be any legislative protections for the minority positions. What this means, in combination with the previous passage of the 17th amendment, is the constitutional republican framework is gone.

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♦ Option #1 – We can do nothing – and allow ObamaCare to collapse on it’s own. In the interim many Americans will be negatively impacted and the more vulnerable and needy will be worst hurt. Premiums and co-pays continue to skyrocket while the insurance system tries to preserve itself.

♦ Option #2 – We can Repeal and Replace using the three-phase approach being proposed by Tom Price, Paul Ryan and Donald Trump:

1. Pass reconciliation legislation targeting the financial mechanisms.
2. HHS rewrites rules.
3. New laws are proposed by a full congress to adjust ObamaCare and add to it, and laws debated/passed.

Yes, this has it’s risks. No guarantee you’ll get the cookie you want in phase three.

♦ Option #3 – Pass futile structural repeal bills in the House, and watch them pile up in the Senate without the ability to pass and earn 60 votes. Shout and holler some more, gnash some teeth, and wait for 2018 when Republicans will attempt to win the other 8 seats needed. Again, even less of a guarantee on the outcome.

It's a mess, alright. ='[.]'=

Or, y'all can just operate from the assumption that Trump could wave a magic wand and make Obamacare go away, but is just trolling us. =9[.]9=