The GOP rolled out their ‘plan’ to ‘replace’ the Affordable care Act with something ‘better’ and ‘cheaper’. Of course none of them know what they are doing as Trumpcare would force people to pay upfront for their health insurance and they might get that money back from a tax credit that would of course not cover their premiums. The main point is that the GOP is focused on ‘access’ to healthcare not actual coverage. As one blog editor put it: Access is bullshit!
I’m not planning on debating the minutia of the GOP “replacement” plan, aka “Trumpcare” for the ACA except for a couple of points and to share my general thoughts using the words of the editor for Talking Points Memo blog. The shortcut is that the replacement plan is crap and just another way to screw over those most vulnerable and to try and go back to the days when poor people were trapped getting medical care in expensive emergency rooms while Wall Street celebrated over the bones of those who didn’t need to die.
“Here is the simple secret of health insurance and health care provision policy: You can create efficiencies and savings by constructing functioning markets. But at the end of the day, more money equals more care. Or in the proxy we judge these things by, more money means more people are insured. If you see a plan that costs a lot less money than Obamacare, it means many fewer people will be covered. It’s as simple as that. You may have to look closely at the details to see just where the care reductions are made. But it’s there, just as certain as night follows day.
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The number of people with usable insurance is the only measure that counts. “Access” is bullshit. I’m sorry to put it in such a raw fashion but that is the fact. The number of people who lose their insurance is the only legitimate measure. And it doesn’t really matter whether they lose their care in 2017 or 2020. That’s just political gamesmanship.
This is the reality. The real issue is access to quality medical care. In our system, you only have true access to medical care when you have a health insurance policy. Access to health insurance is a meaningless concept. Coverage is all that matters. “
I do want to point one thing out to also show what the agenda of the GOP is at this point. They want to turn healthcare back into a revenue stream it was before the ACA.
“Concealed within the 123 pages of legislative verbiage and dense boilerplate of the House Republican bill repealing the Affordable Care Act are not a few hard-to-find nuggets. Here’s one crying out for exposure: The bill encourages health insurance companies to pay their top executives more.
It does so by removing the ACA’s limit on corporate tax deductions for executive pay. The cost to the American taxpayer of eliminating this provision: well in excess of $70 million a year. In the reckoning of the Institute for Policy Studies, a think tank that analyzed the limitation in 2014, that would have been enough that year to buy dental insurance under the ACA for 262,000 Americans, or pay the silver plan deductibles for 28,000.”
Here’s the secret payoff to health insurance CEOs buried in the GOP Obamacare repeal bill
Not to mention one Congressman who thinks healthcare insurance costs the same as an iPhone.
So when people like Paul Ryan talk about death spirals and putting healthcare choices back in the people’s hands what they mean is your death spiral when you can’t afford your healthcare because the CEO of your plan needs another house.
Healthcare shouldn’t be a profit making enterprise or treated like a widget factory and you shouldn’t have to choose between eating and getting treatment.
