Who wrote the 2,000 page Affordable Care Act?

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Specific Problems with OC

This is criminal and needs to be addressed immediately in the new Congress.

vt, you and I share this lovely dream, but I doubt it will come true.

A new republican congress is not likely to impose huge new regulations on big pharma to control their prices and reduce their profits.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Specific Problems with OC

Vermont gives up on single payer:

http://dailycaller.com/2014/12/17/ve...looning-costs/

Healthcare was, is, and will continue to be the single most glaring failure in American politics.

We already each spend as much as Canada does to insure everybody in Medicaid and Medicare costs alone.

They insure 100% of their citizens, and we pay more to only insure 30-40%.

And the rest of us pay through the nose. A 9.5% payroll tax makes sense in the context of the US. Doesn't seem shocking to me when I look at what private health insurance costs. I mean, I guess I'm saying that whether I paid 9.5% of my income to the State of Vermont or to United Healthcare wouldn't make a huge difference to me.

But it's just galling that the majority of all state sales and income taxes are already right now going to healthcare. And there's already a federal payroll tax for healthcare. And the feds are already going into debt over healthcare. And yet they'd still somehow "need" another 9.5% payroll tax to get everyone healthcare. Or millions of people "need" to be uninsured or go without healthcare.

So stupid. Every single other country can insure everyone at less than half the cost.

Americans need to zoom out, and stop thinking in terms of the left/right debate, or the "socialized vs. private" debate.

We need to simply ask 2 questions:

Question 1:

"Why can every other similar country insure everyone for so much cheaper than it costs us to insure 30-40% of our people?"

Question 2:

"How much money exactly, in dollars and cents, are we each willing to piss down the drain to maintain this political stalemate / charade we have now?"

Healthcare's weird because somehow it's special to us, and it plays of uniquely American sensibilities. You don't want anyone lazy getting anything for free, but you also don't want to just let sick people die in the streets. So you pay for it no matter what anyways, but you also make it hard for people to get coverage. You have a defacto socialized system where the ER can't turn anyone away until they're stabilized, and the bulk of the poor get Medicaid which is better than most private plans, and there are community health centers offering free or subsidized care in every congressional district in the country. But you insist that it's not socialized and that it be private and that the profit motive get shoved in. So poor people get free care, everyone gets emergency treatment, but the the middle class have to pay through the nose, $10,000+ per year often times to private companies on top of payroll taxes and sales and income taxes, to keep the charade of a private system going and to keep the insurance companies fat in their downtown glass towers. And now everyone has a different plan with different rules and different laws and different premiums and different riders and different coverages and so on and so forth to the point where nobody at all can tell you what anything costs and a determined series of phone calls can change prices ex post facto by thousands and thousands of dollars. It's the most absurd thing I've ever dealt with. The reality of the private employer / private insurance / private hospital / private doctor / private patient combination trying to figure out pricing puts anything Kafka ever imagined to shame. And the fact that they're all the while each paying more for government healthcare than people do in Canada - where all of these players actually get government healthcare in exchange for their contribution - never strikes anyone as beyond the pale.

I mean, think of it this way. Imagine healthcare was roads.

And say you didn't want socialized roads, you wanted them to be private. A toll for every road.

And say that it wasn't practical, people couldn't afford it, so 30-40% of people got to travel on private roads for free because they were poor or old.

And say that the middle class had to pay taxes to cover the 30-40% of the people who couldn't afford the tolls. So now they have to pay the tolls and they have to pay the taxes too.

And say it turns out that America pays 3 times more for roads than any other country. That in other countries where roads are public, it costs each citizen less to build and maintain roads.

And say that since everyone has to make profit - from the toll booth operation company to the street sweeper company to the traffic light operating company to the road building company - the tolls are excessively high.

And say covering the cost of the tolls for the 30-40% of the people who can't afford it ends up actually costing more to cover their bills on the private roads than it would have cost to just have a municipality or a state build the road in the first place.

And say people think it's cruel to ban the poor from roads, so if they happen to drive on them and not pay, all that will happen is their credit will be ruined. But they're still allowed to use them whenever.

And say it actually is really expensive, and people can't afford it, so employers start offering 'toll coverage' as a benefit to employees in middle class jobs. But now 'toll coverage' companies have to make a profit too.

And say lots of people are arguing that you had the best roads in the world, but it takes forever to get through all the toll booths, and you never know what the tolls will cost due to variable pricing schemes, and reports show you have more potholes and longer commute times than other countries.

Would it still be worth arguing that it's not worth at least trying the public road system that seems to work everywhere else? At least passing a bill to allow one little state that wants to to give it a shot?

And how much would it be worth to you - how much more would you pay - to have a private road system instead of a socialized road system?

Would you be willing to have to sign up to in-network plans of roads, where some roads you can go on far more cheaply than others?

Would you be willing to buy toll insurance to act as a payment middle-man and figure out how much the tolls should actually cost after you've already driven through all of them?

Would you be willing to insist that your system was better, despite not ever knowing what it will cost to drive anywhere and the fact that figuring it out always makes you a nervous wreck?

Would you be willing to let these tolls become the #1 cause of bankruptcy for the American middle class?

Were socialized roads really so awful compared to the expensive, nasty mess this whole scenario creates to maintain the charade of a 'private, free-market' road system?

And at what point do you throw your hands up in the air and say, "It's not working. It's super expensive. The roads aren't really that great. Nobody knows what anything costs. We can't afford to piss away 6%+ of our GDP into nothing other than maintaining a lie any more. This system sucks."

[Woodsman]

Re: Specific Problems with OC

This is criminal and needs to be addressed immediately in the new Congress.

They'll get right on it as soon as they catch their breath.

[don]

Re: Specific Problems with OC

Great shot, Woody.

[vt]

Re: Specific Problems with OC

Even though I'm older than dirt and take just one very cheap pill, these price gouging actions on people who need this for health cannot be allowed.

I personally will go to Congresswoman and Senators, plus local and national press; and urge others to do so. There are senior groups, retirement organizations and other organizations that can lend their weight.

[aaron]

Re: Specific Problems with OC

It has been the U.S. equivalent of "stimulus" like the Chinese and their cities. It is designed to be expensive so the government must borrow and spend ever greater sums. If I am not mistaken, several hundred billion dollars has already been borrowed and spent into the economy. This is high-power money (remember when government spending had multiples), that leads to extra jobs and U.S. economic growth.