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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alighieri who wrote (41395)	3/10/2017 11:17:02 AM
From: i-node	Respond to of 42652

>> The ones who needed it most, yes? I am proud of the dems for this...they took unprecedented incoming and stood their ground for the greater good. I would not try to characterize who "needs" coverage the most. But these people were mostly being fairly well served without Obamacare. Any improvement in their service by virtue of Obamacare would have been marginal, I expect, given the provider shortage. It does make hospital beds more readily available to them. But at tremendous cost. Many of these people chose not to pay for coverage so our damned fool government just gave it to them. Not exactly a policy achievement.

To: Alighieri who wrote (41395)	3/10/2017 1:06:16 PM
From: John Koligman	Respond to of 42652

So this moron thinks it's a 'beauty contest'? All the older people that may lose insurance will get 'access' under his plan? I see by his comment at the bottom of the article that he is apparently smacking his lips at the prospect of cutting 'hundreds of billions' from medicaid. Of course what he doesn't say is that states have to balance their books so if this comes to pass the cuts will be severe.... Ryan On Millions Losing Care: 'Never Going To Win A Coverage Beauty Contest' J. Scott Applewhite By Matt ShuhamPublishedMarch 10, 2017, 10:10 AM EDT House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) admitted Friday that the Congressional Budget Office will likely estimate that millions of people would lose health insurance under the GOP's proposed health care bill. But he said that the the bill wasn’t meant to address the “beauty contest” of increasing coverage. “We always know, you’re never going to win a coverage beauty contest when it’s free market versus government mandates,” Ryan told radio host Hugh Hewitt, after Hewitt floated the possibility that the CBO would estimate 15 million people will lose health insurance because of the American Health Care Act. He was referring in part to the Obamacare's mandate that individuals purchase insurance, and the tax penalties it imposes on those who don't. But the law also provides more government assistance to buy care than the Republicans' alternative, which provides tax credits based mostly on age. “If the government says, ‘Thou shall buy our health insurance,’ the government estimates are going to say people will comply and it will happen. And when you replace that with, ‘We’re going to have a free market and you buy what you want to buy,’ they’re going to say not nearly as many people are going to do that,” Ryan continued. “That’s just going to happen. And so you’ll have those coverage estimates. We assume that’s going to happen. That’s not our goal. Our goal is not to show a pretty piece of paper that says, ‘We’re mandating great things for Americans.’ “We’re not going to get into a bidding war with the left about how much we can mandate, or put entitlements out there for people,” he said later. Paul isn’t the first to discredit the CBO’s coverage estimates as a legitimate measure of the success of health care legislation. The director of the Office of Management said Wednesday that “insurance is not really the end goal here.” “So we’re choosing instead to look at what we think is more important to ordinary people: Can they afford to go to the doctor?” he added later. And Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, the White House’s point person on the legislation, granted later that day that it was the legislation’s “goal” to provide insurance for all at a lower cost – Trump’s promise of the bill – but said the priority was cost. “I would suggest to Martha that what our desire is, is to make sure certain you are the individual that is able to select the physician and the treatment that you desire for yourself, not that the government dictates to you,” Price said, responding to a woman who stood to lose thousands of dollars in government health care subsidies. In his interview with Hewitt, Ryan also agreed that the ACHA’s eventual capping of Medicaid was the largest change to federal entitlements in his lifetime. “We’re talking about hundreds of billions of dollars a year,” he said. “This is so much bigger, by orders of magnitude, than [the] welfare reform [of 1996].”

To: Alighieri who wrote (41395)	3/10/2017 1:21:28 PM
From: John Koligman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

However, when it comes to tax cuts for healthcare CEO's, Ryan says 'I'm not concerned'... What a tool... "Mr. Carlson questioned the new bill’s elimination of a tax on wealthy investors. “Looking at the last election, was the message of that election really, ‘We need to help investors?’ I mean, the Dow is over 20,000. Are they really the group that needs the help?” Mr. Ryan answered that the tax had been imposed by ObamaCare. “The trillion-dollar tax cut that this bill represents—that is part of the trillion-dollar tax increase that was in ObamaCare to finance ObamaCare.” It deserves repeal: “It’s bad for economic growth.” Mr. Carlson: “But the overview here is that all the wealth, basically, in the last 10 years, has stuck to the top end. That’s one of the reasons we’ve had all the political turmoil, as you know. And so, kind of a hard sell to say ‘Yeah, we’re gonna repeal ObamaCare, but we’re gonna send more money to the people who’ve already gotten the richest over the last 10 years.’ I mean, that’s what this does, no? I’m not a leftist, it’s just—that’s true.” “I’m not that concerned about it,” Mr. Ryan replied. Republicans promised to repeal ObamaCare, and they are. Maybe he should be concerned."