Obamacare repeal. AKA: 7 years and THIS is what you come up with?!?!

[Irvine511]

everyone knows this "plan" is total bullshit and not meant to go anywhere? that it's only meant to fulfill the "repeal and replace" commitment/crisis that they've been screaming about for 7 years, and not intended to actually repeal and replace since this isn't going to go anywhere -- but they will say they've made an attempt, but Obamacare is still the law of the land, and it's the Democrats' fault (or still Obama's, or something). it's impossible to come up with a market-oriented "better than Obamacare" solution that will cover as many people, cost less, and cut taxes at the same time. it can't be done. coverage of any sort of quality costs money.

the ACA will probably remain mostly intact. i don't think Trump has the attention span to push this through.

[anitram]

The only thing that makes me doubt that this is just a dog-and-pony show is how early they trotted it out. Now I know Trump promised Day 1 but nobody with 2 brain cells to rub together believed that.

If Ryan has accepted that this is going nowhere and his longterm plan is to blame the Democrats, he has a problem when it comes to the 2018 midterms because you'll have a substantial Freedom Caucus following emboldened by the idiot in chief who will be more than happy to mount even more primary challenges. These are mouth breathers expecting a full repeal and I can see how the current ones in Congress will go home to tell their constituents that it's the RINOs who fucked this up, but what I don't get is how the RINOs expect to survive a number of primary challenges. It would be one thing if they rolled this out in a year, then you could actually campaign on the premise that "something is in the works" but rolling it out this far in advance takes away any excuse for not getting something done.

[corianderstem]

From the ACTUAL BILL:

(a) SHORT TITLE.—This Act may be cited as the
4 ‘‘World’s Greatest Healthcare Plan of 2017’’.

https://www.congress.gov/115/bills/h...15hr1275ih.pdf

Was that Trump's one contribution to the language?

[elevated_u2_fan]

Jesus Christ

[corianderstem]

I just showed it to the head of employee benefits. He didn't believe I was serious.

[bono_212]

I'm so embarrassed.

[BVS]

This era in US history will be accompanied by an asterisk.

* Contrary to some historian's theories, this was actually written by Republicans considered to be of adult age at the time.

[KhanadaRhodes]

Originally Posted by DreamOutLoud13

To hear people talk with such disdain about mooches makes me wonder if I am one.

exactly. to me, people aren't mooches. i'm not going to try to paint people with broad strokes and say shit like "well if you work you're not a mooch" or "it's okay if you don't work as long as you're disabled/in school/etc." because i don't know each person and their situation. all i know is the amount of money spent towards medicaid, food stamps, all aid in general is a drop in the bucket, really. the real mooches, as you said, are the companies that manage to get these insane tax breaks so they pay little to no taxes. i'm not pissed at some random person on food stamps with an iphone, i'm pissed at the people who run walmart.

and this repeal thing is a joke, ftr. world's greatest healthcare plan of 2017? why stop there and not say ever?

[Axver]

Originally Posted by corianderstem

From the ACTUAL BILL:

(a) SHORT TITLE.—This Act may be cited as the
4 ‘‘World’s Greatest Healthcare Plan of 2017’’.

https://www.congress.gov/115/bills/h...15hr1275ih.pdf

Was that Trump's one contribution to the language?

I still don't believe this is real, despite checking sources. Nobody is this dumb.

Originally Posted by corianderstem

On the other end of the "this is bullshit" spectrum, consider how much work goes into employers setting up all the requirements. We changed our eligibility (it's still more generous than ACA called for, but we had to change the timing of it) - that was huge. Don't even get me fucking started on the work involved with setting up the reporting requirements for the IRS.

And then it's like "eh, we're getting rid of that." Fuck you, how about that? Can we have the time and money back we spent trying to sort out that nonsense?

Of course, employers shouldn't be at top of the list of who is kept in mind when these things are being planned, but when stuff like this is implemented, employers are left hanging onto crumbs of detail until the very last minute when the gov't finally decides what they meant by x, y or z, or how Q will work at all. Or they just delay it 10 times when they realize they have no idea how the details will work.

Could you assholes in charge PLEASE, for once in your silly little lives, plan out the details for employers, insurers, doctors, whoever is impacted, before you rush this shit through? (Yes, that goes retroactively for Obama, too.)

#EmployerBenefits4Lyfe

There are many things I find completely and utterly mad about the US approach to healthcare, but perhaps the maddest to me is that my employer would have any involvement whatsoever in my healthcare. The idea that Mr Capitalist Moneybags or Ms Small Business Hack or Mx Soulless Contractor would be able to determine what healthcare I get, or even know anything about my personal health requirements, strikes me as a gross breach of privacy.

[corianderstem]

It's like they accidentally used a jokey placeholder title in the final version.

[corianderstem]

Depending on how your company's coverage is set up, your HR person may have visibility to your health stuff. If the company pays for the bills themselves, they have more visibility. Less likely they would see anything if it's the other arrangement, in which the insurance company is paying the actual bills.

But there are privacy laws in place regarding your health information. And honestly, when our plans were in the first example, the only time we might know "Axver is having his legs replaced" is if something went sideways about billing and we got involved. Generally it was more "we spent $148,735,847 on one surgery this year" and not "we spent $4 on Axver's new legs and $3 million on Bono's hair plugs."

[corianderstem]

But yes, it is very weird that your place of employment is expected to be the best/cheapest way to get coverage. It has to do with what's called "group coverage" rather than buying it on your own.

I mean, it's crazy stupid complicated and ridiculous.

[Axver]

Even with privacy laws, I just struggle to conceive how or why something so personal as my healthcare should be handled by an employer, of all people. What next - it makes economic sense to get my electricity and water through work too?

[corianderstem]

Yeah, the idea of it is bizarre to be sure.

[bono_212]

Well, since health insurance isn't a right in this country, or at least it hasn't been, it makes sense when you realize that health insurance is a perk of employment. Obviously growing up outside of such a system, it might not make sense, but it makes perfect sense in this context.

[corianderstem]

Possible false alarm re the WTF title. I'm told this is the actual bill. https://housegop.leadpages.co/healthcare/

[Irvine511]

I think the reason some Americans are so indifferent/cruel to the poor comes down to the idea that there's no reason you can't make it in America *if* you work hard enough. That you're doing something wrong if you're poor. It's kind of how we want to met out blame for when unfortunate things happen, instead of acknowledging that sometimes bad things just happen, or, more terrifying to some, that people are worthy of more than just what they've made of themselves. It's the notion of rugged individualism taken to an absurd degree. It ties back to the makers/takers framing we saw with Romney in 2012. That there are mooches out there, and having to support them is the reason why you're not doing as well as you might. There's racial overlap, too, as the crux of the Tea Party understanding of the world was that Obama was taking from nearly poor whites to give (health care, Obama phones) to poor blacks/browns via taxes, which no one likes since you see them on your pay stub every month and think you're putting out more than you're getting back, and everything is going to hell anyway. When I'm in Red America (which is more often than someone in here might think based upon how I'm sure I come off) I hear a lot of disillusionment and depression and nostalgia for the way things were. I find it a fairly grim place, and I live in a (rapidly gentrifying) inner-city neighborhood where I walk past homeless drug addicts everyday. And these are people who are kind and loving toward their families, and strangers. But they can't figure out why they can't get ahead, or can't live off what they could 40 years ago.

I'm not sure what I'm trying to say, exactly, but it feels like the notion of the American Dream -- something powerful and inspiring and at least partially true for a great many people -- has come off the rails these past 20-30 years. I'd say that it's the fleecing of the nearly poor by the very rich via tax cuts and policies implemented by the infusion of money into politics. If you have money, wouldn't you seek to protect it however you can? A tax cut is not always bad, and deregulatuon is not always bad, nor is the US the same as Denmark. I don't buy a left wing totslizing narrative any more than I buy a right wing narrative (even if my values are much more left).

It's complicated, but it seems to me that this health care plan is basically a tax cut, and Obamacare was redistribution. And, somehow, those who would benefit most from redistribution have been convinced that taxes are the real problem. My hope is that the threat of losing the real, tangible benefits of the ACA will provide incentive to reframe and not allow for sideshow distractions like "religious freedom" or "build a wall" -- as if that will improve anyone's life.

Just some late evening thoughts.

[digitize]

Originally Posted by Axver

Even with privacy laws, I just struggle to conceive how or why something so personal as my healthcare should be handled by an employer, of all people. What next - it makes economic sense to get my electricity and water through work too?

I believe this is a somewhat accidental consequence of the fact that employer health plan payments are not counted as taxable income, thereby creating a channel for employers to compensate employees tax-free, benefiting both employers and employees.

[Vincent Vega]

A handy guide to calculating your health care costs:

Employer-provided health insurance costs 25 iPhones for the average family, although the employer pays most of that. The family is only on the hook for about seven iPhones.
High deductible plans are common, and the average deductible for employees is two iPhones. If you have a smaller employer, you will probably pay more iPhones than that.
If you get your insurance from the Marketplace (in other words, you have what some call an “Obamacare plan”), your out-of-pocket cost is much lower. Here’s an example for a 40-year old non-smoker who makes $30,000 a year; depending on where this person lives, their premiums could be anywhere from
three to 12 iPhones per year.

[...]

If you twist your knee in New York City and need an ACL repair surgery (as I did a few years ago), Health Care Blue Book says that a “fair” charge is 24 iPhones.
If you decide to have a baby—or if you don’t have that choice thanks in part to the bill’s defunding Planned Parenthood—pushing it out will cost you an average of 12 iPhones. This varies by location, of course, with some San Francisco hospitals charging 38 iPhones. Oh, and this isn’t counting prenatal care, anesthesia, c-sections, or complications that you or the baby might develop.
If, instead, you choose to have cancer, chemotherapy is also going to set you back quite a few iPhones. We’re looking at 113 to 218 iPhones for a typical course of breast cancer chemo, not counting other care or procedures you might end up needing. Or, to put it in simpler terms, a stack of iPhones two-and-a-half to five feet tall.

https://vitals.lifehacker.com/here-s...for-1793056384

[PhilsFan]

Revision.

Revision.

The Democrats will blow the 2018 election.

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