Republican Healthcare

Here's a breakdown of what the republicans have been proposing to expand healthcare.


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the GOP does have ideas -- big and transformative ideas designed to energize the free market to target many of the problems that plague our health sector.

The leading Republican candidates all have announced plans that would give more power and control to individuals over their health care and health insurance, breaking the employment-based coverage lock.

The GOP candidates want to boost options for individually-owned health insurance, and they would change federal tax policy to create new deductions and/or tax credits for health insurance. Lower income people, especially the uninsured, would get new subsidies to purchase private insurance.

The candidates would allow people to purchase health insurance across state lines, and they would give states new incentives to fix problems, especially regulations and mandates, that have helped make health insurance so expensive in the first place. They believe that bringing millions of new buyers into the health care marketplace will expand competition and force insurers and providers to offer more affordable options.

While the Republican presidential candidates don't want to blow up the employment-based system, they all want to give people the same tax benefit when they purchase a policy on their own as when they get it at work...

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I'd be curious to see how effective this would be for making individual healthcare policies more affordable. If prices for similar policies vary from state to state then I can see how being able to purchase across state lines could end up causing insurances companies to have to compete more bringing down the costs of their policies.

 

The leading Republican candidates all have announced plans that would give more power and control to individuals over their health care and health insurance, breaking the employment-based coverage lock.

Translation: We will offer tax breaks to companies that refuse to offer employee group health benefits, while we suck up a rich benefit package from the Congressional health plan.

The GOP candidates want to boost options for individually-owned health insurance

Leave it to a god damned Republican to cheer for free contracting, yet have a problem with concepts like bulk purchase discounts and economies of scale.

they would change federal tax policy to create new deductions and/or tax credits for health insurance. Lower income people, especially the uninsured, would get new subsidies to purchase private insurance.

Yeah, don't worry about your sick kid, at least your taxes are lower. Hell, they may even let you keep your deduction if the kid dies!

The only good thing about Republicans is that just like human beings, those bastards eventually DIE. And the only good one is a dead one.

 

It isn't the Govt's responsibility to take care of you.

 

Insurance companies do nothing but shuffle money,take a cut off the top and try ,in many cases,to refuse care to people .Their job is to make $ for themselves and their stockholders.They are important to politicians for their massive contributions to political campaigns,but are anachronistic in this day and age.Analogically,8 tracks=gone when cassettes came.Ferriers=almost gone when autos became the main way to travel.Maybe a weak pair of analogies,but when new or better ideas come along,old ways of doing things fall by the wayside.Insurance companies need to go.The attitude should be"we're all in this together",not "I can afford insurance-too bad you can't".Republican health care is an oxymoron of the highest order.Real health care(like our politicians have voted for themselves)should be something for all--it's life itself,after all.WE are supposedly in charge of the politicians--aren't they smart enough to figure out how to get this done?That's OUR money they are squandering on everything but help for people here that are hurting.

 

That's all rhetoric, Motion. It's no better than what the Democrats are proposing. It's just more of the same.

 

Because we have 300 million Americans. That has to be taken into account when dealing with healthcare in America. There are very few countries with "free" healthcare that don't have waiting list problems and most have populations way smaller than America's. Plus those "free" system are expensive. Eeven though France is considered to have the best healthcare system it's a very expensive system to keep going.

 

Every universal type system i have seen has cost much, much more than originally thought.

 

Death and destruction are much more expensive.But let's just keep it the way it is.You guys win.Humans aren't smart to get it done efficiently.And it would be moral equivocation to cover everyone,especially the poor,who certainly don't deserve it.

 

I worked most of my adult life for HMOs, and so I've sat through countless classes and lectures about medical costs and effective healthcare delivery. It's a complex issue where in many instances even the most basic laws of economics no longer apply- even supply and demand. The only politician I've ever encountered that had a good understanding of the issues was Bill Clinton. So with a Hillary presidency possibly on the way, there's hope yet.

I had lunch once with a physician who was nationally famous for his knowledge of health care financing issues. He said that his father was a family physician in a small town, and "back in the olden days" doctors did a very large part of their work for free. He said his father would never think of charging a poor family for care. It was just part of what people did back then. Now, physicians form corporations and they have to answer for every penny, and find someone to beat it out of.

And to the conservative whiners who object to making health care a public issue, I can only make one suggestion: be sure the gun is loaded and lodged in your mouth before pulling the trigger, that way you'll be sure to not screw up and survive as a vegetable, using up even more of those precious public resources that you're so worried about.

Me? I'm out of that business, I found a much more honest career selling stolen car stereos.

 

Waiting list problems?? How much lead time do you need to get a doctor's appointment today. "My kid is throwing up" /"We have an opening next Tuesday" is common in the current system.

Its true that if you have can afford it , you can go to a non-HMO Dr. and get an appointment sooner.

"Rich folks get seen quicker" sounds like a lousy heath care system.
"Rich folks get better health care" sounds like a lousy health care system.

 

Not only that.
Rich folks can establish better connections.
There are instances when an appointment or a referral with a healthcare specialist is very difficult to get. The demand can be high, not to mention the shortage of many professionals specializing in the treatment of certain healthcare issues.

Rich folks clearly have an edge when it comes to healthcare as money talks.
Once again, in our society, the little guy gets shafted.

 

In Canada, the poor and the young still get treated for free by physicians. The government picks up a large part of the tab, and most physicians won't let you walk out of the door untreated for minor conditions. They don't prescribe narcotics or certain hard drugs but they will treat you for something that is no longer covered by OHIP.

My good friend's parents write me scripts when I go over to her house. I'm sure a family physician in Canada will treat a patient without charging them every day.

 

Obviously the Canadians are smarter than the Americans.They even treat the poor??That's just not right.It's not the american way,dammit!!

 

Some clarity on U.S Healthcare.



" Wouldn't want anyone messing up Moore's fantasy with . . . facts.

The American health-care system undeniably has serious problems, and Moore effectively dramatizes the suffering of people caught up in them. Yet he often exaggerates those problems. For example, he frequently refers to the 47 million Americans without health insurance, but fails to point out that most are uninsured for only brief periods, or that millions are eligible for programs like Medicaid but fail to apply.

Moreover, he implies that people without insurance don't get health care. In fact, most do. Hospitals are legally obliged to provide care regardless of ability to pay, and while physicians don't face the same requirements, few are willing to deny treatment because a patient lacks insurance. Treatment for the uninsured may well mean financial hardship, but by and large they do get care.

Moore talks a lot about life expectancy, suggesting that people in Canada, Britain, France and even Cuba live longer than Americans because of their health-care systems. But most experts agree that life expectancies are a poor measure of health care, because they are affected by too many other factors like violent crime, poverty, obesity, tobacco and drug use, and other issues unrelated to a country's health system. Americans in Utah live longer than those in New York City, despite having essentially the same health care.... "

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I know several people who have been to the hospital with no insurance and were treated, one was in a serious car wreck. I think the notion people without insurance receive no health care is skewed on purpose to push a certain agenda.

 

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I wish the news media would do a better job clarifying the healthcare situation in America.

 

Republicans like to point to the "COBRA" legislation (Conolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1986) as the cure for the problems of the uninsured. However, the law itself is designed to ensure that insurers can collect premiums while refusing to pay claims. In theory, it allows a person who lost their insurance for reasons other than "gross misconduct" to continue that insurance at the same rate as the employer gets via their "bulk purchasing power." So instead of paying the $50/week or whatever as an employee, you pay the whole cost, but the employer's rate. Rates varied drastically, with the most expensive being about $3,000 (this was over ten years ago, I'm sure it's a lot more now) for two people for three months; extremely large employers (like Fortune 500's) had much better rates.

It's been at least a decade since I worked in the industry, but COBRA allows employers to use a TPA, meaning that you pay that money to your former employer. They can sit on it I believe for 90 days, then they pay the TPA, who can sit on it for I believe 90 or 180 days. So if you continue paying that huge premium for six to nine months, your coverage finally takes effect once again (retroactively, at least supposedly). However, most major procedures required PPA ("prior plan approval") in writing, so I saw a great many people pay out every dime they could scrounge while unemployed and fighting cancer or whatever, and get almost nothing in the way of benefits for it. The insurers say "CHING!" and happily pocket the money and thank their Republican helpers.

One guy was just trying to get his pysch meds, as he had a serious mental illness, but most employers and TPA's hold onto funds and paperwork until literally the last day, so he was screwed. He finally gathered up weapons, and killed a whole bunch of people in a nationally famous mass-murder. I'm sure prison supplies his meds now.

The rich get richer, and they have jails for the poor and middle class. But not enough jails, they're building jails faster than schools and hospitals.

We're doomed. And will remain so until we as a nation give the Republican Party the same treatment we claim to direct at other murderous terrorist groups.

 

The system is far from perfect and someone will get screwed in every system you can come up with. I disagree with a system that caters to the extreme minority at the expense of the majority.

 

Ditto...not the government's responsiblity to take care of you.

I'm of the ideology that government is the problem, *not* the solution.

The Capitalist system works it out. The general free market can't have all their employees sick, and dieing, and have a low national average life span. So the natural scheme of things would never let health care costs get to far out of hand.

And the capitalist health care breeds innovation in technology, treatment, medicine, because of the drive to earn money.

Universal systems (and Canada's archaic one that bans private operation, and forces the equality of misery onto us) cover everyone, but force everyone to wait at the same pace, many people die up here in Canada from the waiting lists.

I personally support a capitalist system, where low income people are covered under a gov. health plan built into welfare.