GOP's AHCA aka Trump-RyanCare

[Pio1980]

Originally Posted by donquixote99

The next-poorest bunch.

In any case, you think reasonable objections like that cut any ice? Remember the old saying about cutting off parts of yourself to spite other parts? Reasonable is not what's driving policy here.

It's about erasing the Obama administration and Progressive policies, and ending handouts to those deemed undeserving (entitlements). To flail the equine corpse further, a return to 19th Century industrial feudalism.

[bobabode]

'How Healthy Are You? G.O.P. Bill Would Help Employers Find Out' NY Times

"A bill in Congress could make it harder for workers to keep employers from getting access to their personal medical and genetic information and raise the financial penalties for those who opt out of workplace wellness programs.
House Republicans are proposing legislation aimed at making it easier for companies to gather genetic data from workers and their families, including their children, when they collect it as part of a voluntary wellness program.
The bill, the Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act, introduced by Representative Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina and the chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, would also significantly increase the financial costs faced by someone who does not join a company wellness program.
The bill, which is under review by other House committees and has yet to be considered by the Senate, has already provoked fierce opposition from a wide range of consumer, health and privacy advocacy groups, as well as by House Democrats. Critics claim it undermines existing laws aimed at protecting an individual’s personal medical information from use by employer and others.
“We strongly oppose any legislation that would allow employers to inquire about employees’ private genetic information or medical information unrelated to their ability to do their jobs, and to impose draconian penalties on employees who choose to keep that information private,” a group of advocates, including AARP, the American Diabetes Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Epilepsy Foundation, the March of Dimes and others wrote in a letter this week to Ms. Foxx."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/h...T.nav=top-news

So much for the conservative mantra of keeping gubmint out of people's personal lives.

[Rajoo]

The WH does not want this 'Best Healthcare Plan' to be called Trumpcare.

[nailer]

Originally Posted by bobabode

'How Healthy Are You? G.O.P. Bill Would Help Employers Find Out' NY Times

"A bill in Congress could make it harder for workers to keep employers from getting access to their personal medical and genetic information and raise the financial penalties for those who opt out of workplace wellness programs.
House Republicans are proposing legislation aimed at making it easier for companies to gather genetic data from workers and their families, including their children, when they collect it as part of a voluntary wellness program.
The bill, the Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act, introduced by Representative Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina and the chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, would also significantly increase the financial costs faced by someone who does not join a company wellness program.
The bill, which is under review by other House committees and has yet to be considered by the Senate, has already provoked fierce opposition from a wide range of consumer, health and privacy advocacy groups, as well as by House Democrats. Critics claim it undermines existing laws aimed at protecting an individual’s personal medical information from use by employer and others.
“We strongly oppose any legislation that would allow employers to inquire about employees’ private genetic information or medical information unrelated to their ability to do their jobs, and to impose draconian penalties on employees who choose to keep that information private,” a group of advocates, including AARP, the American Diabetes Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Epilepsy Foundation, the March of Dimes and others wrote in a letter this week to Ms. Foxx."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/h...T.nav=top-news

So much for the conservative mantra of keeping gubmint out of people's personal lives.

They've said little to nothing about keeping corporations out of our private lives though.

[bobabode]

Originally Posted by nailer

They've said little to nothing about keeping corporations out of our private lives though.

True dat.

Welcome to the Corporate States of Amerika.

[donquixote99]

"America has become a storefront for a corporate mob." --some anonymous person back before 1999.

Voices have been raised every step of the way. But they most don't get on the talk shows....

[nailer]

Originally Posted by donquixote99

"America has become a storefront for a corporate mob." --some anonymous person back before 1999.

Voices have been raised every step of the way. But they most don't get on the talk shows....

The media is corporate. DotCom and a bunch of other Coms are corporate. The Federal bureaucracy is corporate as is our political system. This country has always been about the right to own property and live your life as you please within the law (to varying degrees). To be free is to be greedy. In his way Tocqueville observed this. He also noted the following:

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.

And,

In other words, a democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.

[whell]

Originally Posted by finnbow

You're countering a news piece with a partisan opinion piece, Kellyanne. I guess you feel duty-bound to defend whatever shit Trump or Ryan throw up against the wall, no matter how much it breaks der Trumpenfuhrer's campaign promises, leaving 10 million without health care, stripping mental health and drug addiction services, and actually worsening the death spiral of the individual market. Being that this plan comes from the GOP, these issues are probably considered features, not problems.

Your WaPo past was barely a news piece. It is an attempt to take news or fact and sensationalize it. You fell for it, like you always do. You linked to it with a typical smarmy comment about "compassionate conservatism", expressing horror that folks would lose their drug addiction coverage....thus proving you're an idiot.

In fact this highlights the difference in approach between the ACA and the Repub proposal. Rather than write an entire column about something that hasn't happened yet, may not happen, and won't happen until at least 2020 if it happens at all, the Post could have left it at this single paragraph:

Beginning in 2020, the plan would eliminate an Affordable Care Act requirement that Medicaid cover basic mental-health and addiction services in states that expanded it, allowing them to decide whether to include those benefits in Medicaid plans.

Thus, in 2020, the states - who have always run their own Medicaid programs, including the 30+ states that expanded those programs just to gain access to Federal funds - would get to decide if the want to continue this coverage or not.

Frankly, this is as it should be. While the states and the Feds jointly fund Medicaid, the increased Federal funding for the ACA's Medicaid expansion was always going to be short term. States who expanded Medicaid under ACA rules were going to benefit short term from increased Federal funding, but under the terms of the expansion were always going to have to figure out how to fund those costs long term. In fact, enrollment in state Medicaid programs have been higher than original CBO estimates, adding to the concerns about long - term state funding.

Your hyperbole about 10 million losing healthcare is just that - hyperbole. No one is losing access to "health care". At least try to get your facts - as wrong as your version of them often are - correct. The number is 15 million, not 10 million, and it comes from those unhappy little lefties at the Brookings Institute. The Brookings report doesn't even reflect actual findings: it estimates what the CBO might determine after a study of the GOP bill. A bill, by the way, which will likely undergo additional revisions JUST LIKE THE ACA DID before it was finally signed.

As far as a "death spiral" in the individual exchange market, we're likely already there. Going into 2017, there was already great instability in the exchange marketplace, and members of both political parties recognized it. Carriers were dropping out of exchanges in many markets, and some markets were down to a single carrier.

And this is where the proposed plan is a big improvement over the current ACA set up. Today, if you wanted any federal /state assistance with premium costs, you HAD TO purchase insurance through the exchange, which also means that your choice of carriers - including participating doctors and hospitals - was limited. Under the proposed rules, individuals / families get a monthly tax credit, not a subsidy. This is an important difference because the tax credit is not subject to a purchase of a predefined list of carriers / health plans. Folks can purchase insurance from whatever carrier they wish, under whatever terms meet their needs, in a competitive marketplace.

Keep reading WaPo though. It makes you much more fun talk to, and laugh at.

[whell]

Originally Posted by bobabode

'How Healthy Are You? G.O.P. Bill Would Help Employers Find Out' NY Times

"A bill in Congress could make it harder for workers to keep employers from getting access to their personal medical and genetic information and raise the financial penalties for those who opt out of workplace wellness programs.
House Republicans are proposing legislation aimed at making it easier for companies to gather genetic data from workers and their families, including their children, when they collect it as part of a voluntary wellness program.
The bill, the Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act, introduced by Representative Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina and the chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, would also significantly increase the financial costs faced by someone who does not join a company wellness program.
The bill, which is under review by other House committees and has yet to be considered by the Senate, has already provoked fierce opposition from a wide range of consumer, health and privacy advocacy groups, as well as by House Democrats. Critics claim it undermines existing laws aimed at protecting an individual’s personal medical information from use by employer and others.
“We strongly oppose any legislation that would allow employers to inquire about employees’ private genetic information or medical information unrelated to their ability to do their jobs, and to impose draconian penalties on employees who choose to keep that information private,” a group of advocates, including AARP, the American Diabetes Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Epilepsy Foundation, the March of Dimes and others wrote in a letter this week to Ms. Foxx."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/h...T.nav=top-news

So much for the conservative mantra of keeping gubmint out of people's personal lives.

BS. The key to this entire article -and the bill - is buried in this single paragraph:

Employers would be generally governed by rules established by different agencies. The bill “is trying to streamline the regulatory scheme,” said Kathryn Wilber, a senior official at the American Benefits Council, which represents employers’ interests.

One of the keys to improving healthy outcomes is preventative care, patients getting info about their health, and employers (who pay for the coverage, by the way) able to provide incentives to employees for engaging in healthy behaviors. Large employers have the resources to manage these plans, which require a lot of health and legal expertise. Legal expertise - which doesn't come cheap - because the laws that govern how wellness plans operate are administered currently by different agencies, some of which had competing rules.

For example, under current ACA rules administered by the IRS (yes, the IRS currently has a HUGE rule in administering Obamacare), if an employer had a plan that encouraged wellness by offering lower premiums to employees who met certain health goals, the employer might face increased tax penalty risks under ACA Shared Responsibility rules.

So, to your point, the IRS (the "gubmint") is already injecting itself into the health care arena under the ACA.

[icenine]

Originally Posted by whell

Your WaPo past was barely a news piece. It is an attempt to take news or fact and sensationalize it. You fell for it, like you always do. You linked to it with a typical smarmy comment about "compassionate conservatism", expressing horror that folks would lose their drug addiction coverage....thus proving you're an idiot.

In fact this highlights the difference in approach between the ACA and the Repub proposal. Rather than write an entire column about something that hasn't happened yet, may not happen, and won't happen until at least 2020 if it happens at all, the Post could have left it at this single paragraph:

Beginning in 2020, the plan would eliminate an Affordable Care Act requirement that Medicaid cover basic mental-health and addiction services in states that expanded it, allowing them to decide whether to include those benefits in Medicaid plans.

Thus, in 2020, the states - who have always run their own Medicaid programs, including the 30+ states that expanded those programs just to gain access to Federal funds - would get to decide if the want to continue this coverage or not.

Frankly, this is as it should be. While the states and the Feds jointly fund Medicaid, the increased Federal funding for the ACA's Medicaid expansion was always going to be short term. States who expanded Medicaid under ACA rules were going to benefit short term from increased Federal funding, but under the terms of the expansion were always going to have to figure out how to fund those costs long term. In fact, enrollment in state Medicaid programs have been higher than original CBO estimates, adding to the concerns about long - term state funding.

Your hyperbole about 10 million losing healthcare is just that - hyperbole. No one is losing access to "health care". At least try to get your facts - as wrong as your version of them often are - correct. The number is 15 million, not 10 million, and it comes from those unhappy little lefties at the Brookings Institute. The Brookings report doesn't even reflect actual findings: it estimates what the CBO might determine after a study of the GOP bill. A bill, by the way, which will likely undergo additional revisions JUST LIKE THE ACA DID before it was finally signed.

As far as a "death spiral" in the individual exchange market, we're likely already there. Going into 2017, there was already great instability in the exchange marketplace, and members of both political parties recognized it. Carriers were dropping out of exchanges in many markets, and some markets were down to a single carrier.

And this is where the proposed plan is a big improvement over the current ACA set up. Today, if you wanted any federal /state assistance with premium costs, you HAD TO purchase insurance through the exchange, which also means that your choice of carriers - including participating doctors and hospitals - was limited. Under the proposed rules, individuals / families get a monthly tax credit, not a subsidy. This is an important difference because the tax credit is not subject to a purchase of a predefined list of carriers / health plans. Folks can purchase insurance from whatever carrier they wish, under whatever terms meet their needs, in a competitive marketplace.

Keep reading WaPo though. It makes you much more fun talk to, and laugh at.

Actually Whell you are full of crap as usual. Ryan does not see his Chumpcare plan as some sort of improvement in the delivery of health care. He sees it as a way that the government gets out of taking care of sick people, period. That is why he is scrambling to get Chumpcare shoved down the throat of the American people because he knows it is the only chance he has to get his Ayn Rand agenda passed. And he knows that Pussy Grabber loses all credibility if he can't get sign a bill repealing it

So we are in danger of it actually passing.

But the death spiral lie is just that. Death spiral is an industry term that has three components and the ACA has not met all of them yet. And if it does has problems that is because the GOP has refused to improve or fix deficiencies in the law for the last 7 years.

Oh by the way if you get cancer and need chemotherapy, radiation and surgery just how does a health saving plan work?

Ryan enjoys the idea of destroying the ACA and the safety net so much he probably doesn't mind losing his speakership or not getting re-elected.

I knew this would happen when Trump got elected he would become a tool in Ryan's hand.

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare...a-death-spiral