Senate Version of Trumpcare Leaked – Contains Ted Cruz’ “operation clusterfuck” amendment
Vox has this summary document provided by a lobbyist:
The Senate Republicans’ revised health care bill will keep Obamacare’s taxes on high-income Americans in place and allow the sales of bare-bones health insurance plans that wouldn’t pass muster under the Affordable Care Act, according to a summary of the bill obtained by Vox.
The bill will include a provision based on a proposal by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), which allows health plans to offer skimpy coverage options so long as they have at least one plan that covers a robust set of benefits. The insurance industry opposes the policy, calling it “infeasible” and fearing it would create “greater instability.”
The new bill is also expected to include an additional $70 billion to offset insurers’ bills for high-cost patients, in addition to $112 billion in the original bill. It will also allow individuals to use tax-advantaged health savings accounts (HSAs) to pay their health insurance premiums, and for the use of tax credits to purchase catastrophic coverage plans.
I think the Ted Cruz amendment which would throw the market into complete diassary may be ablative in nature. Intended to burn off through the process while safeguarding other heinous bullshit.
I don’t think the skimpiest, cheapest healthcare insurance should be for “catastrophic” coverage. It seems to me that if you wanted to offer cheap insurance, it should be for primary care. I believe the Canadian system is skewed more toward preventive medicine or well-care than is our system. Surely talking with a physician can be done more cheaply than expensive curative medicines or machine tests such as MRI. Since costs are well contained by such an approach, why not offer that as the one everyone gets, no matter what? Is it really such a bad thing to provide what people really need?
Agreed, if everyone had some sort of base coverage, the hospitals wouldn’t go bankrupt and people wouldn’t need to go to the ER for primary care
See, you’re thinking about this healthcare debate within the context of delivering decent medical care to people. That’s clearly not the Republican rubric.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/07/11/donald-trump-jr-s-emails-about-meeting-a-russian-government-attorney-annotated/?utm_term=.4ff17bbdff0e
Inasmuch as we seem to agree, let’s push.
Interesting to note that the insurance industry doesn’t like Killer Cruz’s amendment, sounds like a plan to cull the herd of the sick and dying. Regardless of the games I think the bill is headed the way of the house bill, widespread hatred and contempt from the American people. I consider this the prelude to the famed “tax reform” that consists of massive tax cuts for the rich followed by the traditional exploding federal deficit.
The greed factor has to be reduced in all factions of healthcare.
Some greed is good as it produces competition which fosters innovation, but it has gotten out of hand in the healthcare industry, and it has to be reined in.
Publicly traded for profit health insurance companies should be a thing of the past.
Find some option for the shareholders of these insurance behemoths as they transition into 501- c-3 status, and pave the way for many small non profits to compete with them.
We need to go back before the 1973 HMO Act which made it legal for these healthcare profiteers to operate in this destructive fashion.
Pre existing health problems will have to be taken care of through welfare programs like medicare or something because at that point it’s a charity case and not an insurance issue.
The industry and their lobbyists will squeal like stuck pigs , but that is to be expected, and in the end they will all get paid just like any lucrative “not-for-profit” corporation does.
Put that on the table, Senator Coons.
Yeah, tens of thousands of people who actually know the field have worked on this for decades. Guess they forgot to just ask some rando on the internet what to do instead.
Also every other modern advanced nation. We already know the best system. Some pretend they don’t know. They generally do this for money.
Democrats: We want to help people.
Republicans: That’s not government’s job.
“Pre existing health problems will have to be taken care of through welfare programs like medicare or something because at that point it’s a charity case and not an insurance issue.” FBH, the discussion of pre-existing has evolved to the point that almost every one has one or more. In this, you need to extend your point about welfare to include almost everyone. Once you do that, you’re at Medicare for all. Let’s just start with Medicare for all and be done with it once and for all.
My bride developed a bit of PIH in the last two weeks of her final pregnancy so was briefly prescribed an antihypertensive ya know for two weeks, 19 years ago. She was just rejected for a measly $50k life insurance policy by my companie’s carrier for her pre-existing condition. Crazy times we live in. Note that I said life not health insurance, but still.