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posted by on Saturday January 21 2017, @05:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the or-we-could-have-the-coverage-congress-has dept.

Trump Signs Executive Order That Could Effectively Gut Affordable Care Act's Individual Mandate

The Washington Post reports:

President Trump signed an executive order late Friday giving federal agencies broad powers to unwind regulations created under the Affordable Care Act, which might include enforcement of the penalty for people who fail to carry the health insurance that the law requires of most Americans.

The executive order, signed in the Oval Office as one of the new president's first actions, directs agencies to grant relief to all constituencies affected by the sprawling 2010 health-care law: consumers, insurers, hospitals, doctors, pharmaceutical companies, states and others. It does not describe specific federal rules to be softened or lifted, but it appears to give room for agencies to eliminate an array of ACA taxes and requirements.

[...] Though the new administration's specific intentions are not yet clear, the order's breadth and early timing carry symbolic value for a president who made repealing the ACA — his predecessor's signature domestic achievement — a leading campaign promise.

[Continues...]

Congressional Budget Office: Obamacare Repeal Would Be Catastrophic

U.S. Uncut reports

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released its official analysis of the Republican plan to repeal Obamacare, and top Republicans hate it.

The CBO based its findings[1] on H.R. 3762 (the Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act), which was the 2015 Affordable Care Act repeal bill that passed the House of Representatives. The nonpartisan budgetary agency determined that within one year of President Obama's signature healthcare reform law being repealed, roughly 18 million people would lose their health insurance. In following years, when the expansion of Medicaid codified into the Affordable Care Act is also eliminated, the number of uninsured Americans would climb to 27 million, then to 32 million.

Additionally, for those remaining Americans who didn't lose their health coverage from the initial repeal process, health insurance premiums would skyrocket by as much as 25 percent immediately after repeal. After Medicaid expansion is taken away, premiums costs would have gone up by roughly 50 percent. The costs continue to climb, with the CBO estimating a 100 percent increase in premium costs by 2026.

CBO analysts particularly focused on H.R. 3762's repeal of the health insurance mandate that requires all Americans to have health insurance, and the bill's elimination of subsidies for low-income families that make health insurance more affordable. The CBO found that pulling out those cornerstones of the Affordable Care Act would "destabilize"[2] the health insurance market, leading to a dramatic increase in premium costs.

[1] PDF Google cache
[2] Duplicate link in TFA.

House majority leader says no set timeline on Obamacare replacement

The republican party still has no plan to put into place as a replacement for the ACA. In fact:

Asked how soon House Republicans could unite behind a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, McCarthy said Friday in a "CBS This Morning" interview, "I'm not going to put a set timeline on it because I want to make sure we get it right."

But McCarthy promised that an ACA substitute will be "one of the first actions we start working on."


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @06:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @06:16PM (#457030)

    Otherwise, we might actually see the ACA allowed to continue while the stability in the system develops. This year was really the first year where the insurance companies knew what the costs of providing care would be. And thanks to all those dick shit GOP governors, the rest of us have to suffer. The individual mandate is the only reason that they can afford to cover pre-existing conditions without the premiums being extremely high.

    But, no, we can't have that, because the DNC chose to run the most corrupt candidate ever over somebody who could have won.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by fishybell on Saturday January 21 2017, @06:29PM

      by fishybell (3156) on Saturday January 21 2017, @06:29PM (#457036)

      Not the most corrupt, the one that the GOP has fine-tuned their message on the most. The fact that you believe that is part of the problem.

      The GOP has had thirty years to convince you she's a bitchy, soulless, corrupt, treasonous murderer. If any of the millions of talking points they've used against her stuck at all, it was enough to convince people it she wasn't a good candidate.

      Were her hands 100% clean? Probably not; she is a politician's politician after all. But the most corrupt? Hardly.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:16PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:16PM (#457059)

        "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged."
        — Cardinal Richelieu

        A favorite quote of soybeans.
        Too bad so many of us are utterly blind to it in action.

      • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:45PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:45PM (#457067)

        No, she's the most corrupt, her and her husband made over a hundred million dollars for themselves in speaking fees, not to mention the nearly $3bn they raised for the Clinton Foundation. Name another American politician that's received that much graft money for telling the people to go fuck themselves.

        • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:00PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:00PM (#457111)

          Trump would say that's just good business.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:06AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:06AM (#457161)

            He's smart.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by isostatic on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:46PM

        by isostatic (365) on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:46PM (#457091) Journal

        But the truth was, and is, irrelevant. Trump is a man of the people (ignore his golden penthouse), Clinton is a traitor who needs locking up (why hasn't trump done that yet?)

        Arguing the truth is laudable, but sometimes you have to be pragmatic. The DNC gambled that the truth would win. And it did, the majority voted for Hillary. That wasn't enough.

        Another candidate may well have been better than Hillary, but couldn't have been worse.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:00PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:00PM (#457112)

          Another candidate may well have been better than Hillary, but couldn't have been worse.

          Don't fool yourself. It can always get worse (a slogan many hold-their-nose Trump voters failed to realize).
          And sometimes the reality of winning creates the opposite effect.
          Consider Jimmy Carter.

          A guaranteed minimum income plan had passed the House, and universal day care had passed both houses of Congress only to be vetoed by Nixon. Momentum was growing for the Humphrey-Hawkins Act, a proposal to guarantee a government job to anyone who wants one so long as unemployment is above 3 percent. Carter endorsed it during the campaign, as did the leading figures and institutions of the civil rights movement (including Coretta Scott King) and the labor movement.

          And then Carter blew it all because he couldn't work with congress despite democrats having a super-majority in the senate a majority in the house.

          Would Sanders have been another Carter? Who knows. But being significantly to the left of his own party in congress would not have helped.

          Sometimes you win by losing. Today's march is seeing crazy turnout levels. Not just in DC but other cities too - Chicago expected 20,000 they got 150,000. Trumps craven degeneracy may be the motivation to actually unite the democrats in a way they simply could not do with a democrat in the oval office, keeping the people complacent.

          • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday January 22 2017, @01:29AM

            by isostatic (365) on Sunday January 22 2017, @01:29AM (#457207) Journal

            I'm finding it very hard to accept that a trump presidency with a GOP congress, senate, about 2/3rds of states and an open Supreme Court space, probably another one opening before 2020, and pence waiting in the wings even if there was an impeachment, could possibly be worse for anyone leaning towards the centre-right, centre, or left.

            • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @02:36AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @02:36AM (#457226)

              If trump gets impeached pence will be useless anyway.
              The party will have zero political capital at that point and everybody left will be so busy trying to distance themselves from the scandal that it will be circular firing squad.

              Think of it this way. Today is peak popularity for the republicans. And trump has only a 37% approval rating. [thehill.com] And today they called their first official whitehouse press conference - to whine about reporters on twitter posting photos about inaugural attendance levels. You can't make this shit up.

              Obama had an 80% approval rating at this point.

              Unless they engineer a 9/11 to wag the dog, its all downhill from here.
              Enjoy the show. [areyousorryyet.com]

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by shortscreen on Saturday January 21 2017, @11:01PM

        by shortscreen (2252) on Saturday January 21 2017, @11:01PM (#457131) Journal

        She was not the most corrupt candidate ever. She was the most blatantly corrupt candidate ever.

        With the amount of time she has been in the game, the number of scandals, the leaks, and the wonders of modern communications technology, everyone knew that this particular candidate was corrupt. Not to mention that the woman herself is not a very convincing speaker (watch her being asked repeatedly on camera if she "tried to wipe the server").

        Electing someone like that would have been just embarrassing. Sorry.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:24AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:24AM (#457172) Journal

        Not the most corrupt, the one that the GOP has fine-tuned their message on the most. The fact that you believe that is part of the problem.

        You keep believing that, buttercup.

        The GOP has had thirty years to convince you she's a bitchy, soulless, corrupt, treasonous murderer. If any of the millions of talking points they've used against her stuck at all, it was enough to convince people it she wasn't a good candidate.

        I doubt she's murdered anyone or committed treason, but a bunch of those points do stick.

        Were her hands 100% clean? Probably not; she is a politician's politician after all. But the most corrupt? Hardly.

        Who's been running a pay-for-play scheme on the scale of the Clinton Foundation? Who has a track record of blatant corruption stretching back to the late 70s? (Turning $1k into almost $100k in 1978-1979 in commodity trading; Whitewater; speaking fees since her husband left the presidency; becoming senator for New York on the strength of a very short residency and her husband's contacts; and of course, the Clinton Foundation stuff).

      • (Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Sunday January 22 2017, @04:27PM

        by linkdude64 (5482) on Sunday January 22 2017, @04:27PM (#457358)

        "The GOP has had thirty years to convince you she's a bitchy, soulless, corrupt, treasonous murderer."

        Actually, all I needed to learn that fact was an internet connection to Wikileaks.org and about an hour of spare time.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Saturday January 21 2017, @06:47PM

      by bradley13 (3053) on Saturday January 21 2017, @06:47PM (#457040) Homepage Journal

      ACA is a mess. It isn't going to stabilize.

      The ACA was thrown together from the wishes of a bunch of do-gooder progressives who didn't understand the health care industry, plus a bunch of inputs from lobbies, plus a bunch of pork and special-interest stuff that had no business being there. Congress held their collective nose and passed it under political pressure, kinda, sorta hoping it might accidentally make sense. Remember Nancy Pelosi? "Wwe have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it"? Can you spell "malfeasance"?

      Stop throwing good money after bad. Nuke ACA from orbit. Replace it with something - anything - that someone has actually thought through.

      --
      Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by jmorris on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:12PM

        by jmorris (4844) on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:12PM (#457057)

        You are ascribing stupidity where malice was clearly documented. Original designers (see James Hacker for example) of ObamaCare said, with TV cameras rolling, that ObamaCare was intended to fail. The votes were not there for single payer so the idea was to build a system to extend coverage to damned near everyone under the existing system, knowing it couldn't possibly be paid for, knowing it would stress an already broken system to the point of disaster. At which point the people would cry out to Washington for them to "Fix it!" Removing an entitlement is thought impossible, so the only solution would be.... Hillary's original proposal from her failed attempt: Single Payer. And she was supposed to be President.

        Not one Republican voted for ObamaCare. Not one, not even a RINO. What did you people think would happen if Republicans captured the House, Senate and White House? It is going away, and since the system it replaced was also seriously flawed, hopefully to be replaced with something more free market based. Can Trump end employer based healthcare? Not betting on it. Can we get closer to HSA type care for enough people to bring the price mechanism back to the medical industry? Perhaps. Can we get enough deregulation and tort reform to bend the cost curve? Perhaps.

        • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:49PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:49PM (#457069)

          Original designers (see James Hacker for example) of ObamaCare said, with TV cameras rolling, that ObamaCare was intended to fail.

          He (Jacob Hacker) did not say anything like that.
          You just make up shit that pleases you.
          At best you wholesale misrepresent facts to be the opposite of what you claim.
          Its like you think your enemies are all hypocrites and thus you have the moral right to be the biggest damn hypocrite in the building.

          Why does anyone ever believe a single damn thing you say anymore?

          • (Score: 2, Troll) by jmorris on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:57PM

            by jmorris (4844) on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:57PM (#457094)

            He (Jacob Hacker) did not say anything like that.

            Thanks for the correct on the name, now people can quickly Google up the video. "Jacob Hacker trojan horse" will get plenty of hits. Yes he was speaking specifically about the "public option" which didn't exactly (wink wink, nudge, nudge) get into the final bill but the idea is still valid, Obamacare was explicitly designed to collapse into single payer. To get final passage even the public option had to be obscured because too many voters had figured out it was obviously the beginning of single payer. But since anyone who doesn't get anything else gets stuffed onto Medicaid it is basically the public option stand in.

            If you have been politically aware for long it isn't exactly a secret that every God damned Democrat / Progressive considers single payer the end goal. It was the goal when FDR wanted it, it was the gpal when Hillary Clinton tried, it was the goal when Obama tried. It is the shining future held forth by every Proggie when problems with Obamacare are discussed. The ones in positions of political leadership also know that saying it is toxic so they lie every single time the public notices and reacts with horror at the prospect of bringing the failed NHS model here and reassures everyone that "of course they aren't proposing Socialized medicine".

            Its like you think your enemies are all hypocrites

            No. I think Progressives are liars because they lie without regret. Because they do not consider lying to be wrong if it advances the cause of Progressives. If one actually reads their writings, the stuff intended for their own use in developing proper Progressives, they freely admit this. There is a word for their moral philosophy: Evil. Which is why they also teach that good and evil are outdated concepts, we should adopt moral relativism and other sophistry of Cultural Marxism to conceal the fact they are Evil. No. They are Evil. There can be no compromise, no bipartisanship, no middle path. Good must destroy evil or allow itself to be corrupted and itself destroyed.

            • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:09PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:09PM (#457115)

              Obamacare was explicitly designed to collapse into single payer.

              Man you are adept and restating the facts to say the complete opposite of their meaning.

              The idea IN THE VIDEO [youtube.com] is that single-payer is better for patients and that people would naturally migrate there if they had the choice because its better for them. There is absolutely nothing in it about intending for obamacare to "collapse." Only that people who had a choice would choose single-payer over a long period of adjustment as they saw the results.

              Since single payer did not make it into the obamacare all of that is moot anyway.

              No. I think Progressives are liars because they lie without regret. Because they do not consider lying to be wrong if it advances the cause of Progressives. If one actually reads their writings, the stuff intended for their own use in developing proper Progressives, they freely admit this. There is a word for their moral philosophy: Evil. Which is why they also teach that good and evil are outdated concepts, we should adopt moral relativism and other sophistry of Cultural Marxism to conceal the fact they are Evil. No. They are Evil. There can be no compromise, no bipartisanship, no middle path. Good must destroy evil or allow itself to be corrupted and itself destroyed.

              I don' know why you started off saying "No," you just agreed 100% with my characterization of your beliefs.
              And all of that justifies you lying your ass off.

            • (Score: 2) by shortscreen on Saturday January 21 2017, @11:39PM

              by shortscreen (2252) on Saturday January 21 2017, @11:39PM (#457150) Journal

              If you have been politically aware for long it isn't exactly a secret that every God damned Democrat / Progressive considers single payer the end goal. It was the goal when FDR wanted it, it was the gpal when Hillary Clinton tried, it was the goal when Obama tried. It is the shining future held forth by every Proggie when problems with Obamacare are discussed. The ones in positions of political leadership also know that saying it is toxic so they lie every single time the public notices and reacts with horror at the prospect of bringing the failed NHS model here and reassures everyone that "of course they aren't proposing Socialized medicine".

              This sounds like a contradiction to me. First you say that the Dems all want single-payer, have wanted it for a long time, and promote it at every opportunity. Then you say that it's a dirty secret which they dare not admit in public. Which is it?

              I'm also not sure why you imply that the public is overwhelmingly against this. If Dems are for it, Reps are against it, insurance companies are against it, and sick poor people are for it, I'd expect the polls to show a 50-50 or 60-40 split like they do for other partisan shouting matches.

              • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:16AM

                by jmorris (4844) on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:16AM (#457168)

                You have to listen to Progs when they are talking among themselves. They even write their plans down, in boring books they don't expect the masses to read. They will even do it on C-SPAN since they know nobody but political junkies are watching. It isn't exactly a State secret that Progs are Socialists with the one difference of opinion being they believe the Sunny Uplands can be reached without rivers of blood through slow "Progress" vs a Revolution. When they are addressing a general audience they are never honest. They are only now realizing that the Internet is changing the rules, that what they say at Netroots or a university conference among like the minded can and will be used against them. Before their control of the media kept their private thoughts safely private, no more.

                The establishment Republicans aren't guiltless, they too have policy preferences they speak of when they don't think their base is listening. They are in total agreement with the typical Davos Man of the left on many issues. Which is why we just got Trump, the Republican base finally got smart to the game and kicked over the table.

                The difference is the left must conceal their policy goals from the middle and the right and the Republican Party has to conceal their actual beliefs from their own base. This is what "No Enemies to the Left" is all about. Now we have adopted a mirror policy on the Alt-Right of "No Enemies to the Right." We shall see if this is actually workable, whether it scales and what results from it.

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @03:07AM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @03:07AM (#457233)

                  Ya the cons don't ever do anything like that... You are one bad day away from being a nutjob in a tower trying to kill people...

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:37AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:37AM (#457184)

                > Which is it?

                Its the same logic he uses to say that Obama was both a feckless incompetent and a ruthlessly efficient dictator.
                Long ago jmorris traded in all of his logic for righteous sanctimony
                The guy just admitted to believing he's warrior at battle with pure evil. He's obviously more a few marbles short.

        • (Score: 1) by ncc74656 on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:10PM

          by ncc74656 (4917) on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:10PM (#457079) Homepage

          ObamaCare was intended to fail. The votes were not there for single payer so the idea was to build a system to extend coverage to damned near everyone under the existing system, knowing it couldn't possibly be paid for, knowing it would stress an already broken system to the point of disaster. At which point the people would cry out to Washington for them to "Fix it!" Removing an entitlement is thought impossible, so the only solution would be.... Hillary's original proposal from her failed attempt: Single Payer. And she was supposed to be President.

          A textbook application of the Cloward-Piven Strategy. Too bad for the Dems that the voters rejected it by rejecting them in most elections since 2010.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @04:11AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @04:11AM (#457254)

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            Voters rejected Hillary for who she is, and the dems for betraying the people by shifting so much to the right, they became essentially Reaganites. The strategy, if any, may well still pan out. Assuming that ACA was indeed passed with the intention of torpedoing the republican party, it may still work, if the repealing of the ACA produces the clusterfuck predicted by the congressional budget office. I am assuming, of course, that no (fiscally sane) replacement will be worked out by the republican lawmakers, since a workable replacement would look a helluva lot like non-profit single-payer insurance for absolutely everyone. In a way, republicans are getting baited into codifying an actual regression in terms of individual rights and effecting a mass suffering, and they won't be able to shift any blame for anything that happens in the next 2 years.

            I also disagree with jmorris when he/she calls this intention (if there was any intention) malicious. Looking at the cost, quality, and subjective satisfaction metrics worldwide, it is impossible to argue against single-payer insurance over what US has right now or had before ACA. If this was the only political way to put single-payer on the table, then what exactly is the evil? It's not like these 20 or so million of people who are about to lose insurance had it before ACA. It's not like costs weren't rising anyway. And it's not like more than half of people about to lose ACA didn't vote themselves out of insurance. If anything, this seems like a hack a bit too clever for the dems :)

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        • (Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:10PM

          by sjames (2882) on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:10PM (#457080) Journal

          Texas tried tort reform. It didn't fix a damned thing. Part of the problem is that medical mistakes can easily result in astronomical expenses (particularly when medical costs are so overpriced in the first place) and their consequences can leave people unable to earn a living.

          There too is the root of temptation to sue even when it is not really the doctor's fault. It's their one last chance to avoid a life at the poverty line. It's an act of desperation by an often sympathetic plaintiff.

          Naturally, there are also greedy out and out scammers. Their numbers tend to be exaggerated by people calling for tort reform.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:35PM

        by sjames (2882) on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:35PM (#457063) Journal

        The ACA was modeled on Romneycare in hopes it might squeek past the GOP.

        That said, it totally fails to address the actual problem and it did create a bunch of unnecessary problems. Not the least of which is that it's not all that affordable. I fully agree that it needs to be replaced, but I was kinda hoping we could perhaps remove it in the same bill that implements it's replacement rather than jumping out of a plane with a bedsheet, some rope, and an old sewing kit while hoping for the best.

        Any real solution will need to address the total lack of a functional market in healthcare as well as predatory pricing (ACA failed miserably on this point). It needs to acknowledge that insurance is for large catastrophic costs, not for routine costs. Those routine costs need to be contained.

        As much as the GOP is likely to hate it, they will need to acknowledge that one natural condition of healthcare is that some aspects of it can never form a healthy market. The pre-conditions cannot be met.

        • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Saturday January 21 2017, @09:58PM

          by bradley13 (3053) on Saturday January 21 2017, @09:58PM (#457110) Homepage Journal

          "Any real solution will need to address the total lack of a functional market"

          If Trump has the guts and the vision, that is dead easy to address. If you want a functioning marketplace, get rid of corporate cronyism, which specifically means ending nearly all government regulation. You need government regulation only to ensure that (a) insurance contracts are fair and understandable, for example, an insurance company cannot terminate your policy because you got sick, and (b) to prevent monopolies, including attempts at the state level to reinstate cronyism.

          Leave insurance companies and hospitals to compete for healthcare dollars, in the absence of the government interference. Allow people to decide whether or not they want insurance. Some patients and doctors may prefer to work on a direct payment basis. Others will work with various insurance companies. It would all shake out nicely in a very few years.

          It's anecdotal, but I have some reverse evidence for this: Before Switzerland put in place it's version of the ACA about 10-15 years ago, it had a perfectly fine, functioning healthcare market. But - oh noes - some people chose not to buy insurance, and some of those got sick. So they put in place something not so far from the ACA. Insurance costs doubled instantly, and have risen at 2-3 times the rate of inflation ever since. It's now to the point that the government is having to implement subsidy programs, because many people can no longer afford health insurance, plus they are now debating about limiting coverage.

          Government is not your mommy. Go back to a lightly-regulated free market solution, and watch costs plummet.

          --
          Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
          • (Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday January 21 2017, @11:28PM

            by sjames (2882) on Saturday January 21 2017, @11:28PM (#457144) Journal

            It's going to take a lot more than that. Your suggested fixes were the case for years before the ACA and we didn't have a functional market. Simply returning to the previous dysfunctional state (from the current dysfunctional state) will do nothing.

            We will need hospitals to post fixed prices paid by one and all. No imaginary price they bill the uninsured while billing 10% of that to insurer A and 15% to insurer b. No more slamming where after the fact they say that didn't include the $1000 consultation from the doctor you never met. And those prices will have to be sane. $8 aspirins and $2 tongue depressors are unacceptable.

            The FDA is going to have to stop handing out exclusivity in exchange for knob polishing. Paying others to not produce a generic has got to go as does evergreening.

      • (Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:30PM

        by Thexalon (636) on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:30PM (#457083)

        The ACA was thrown together from the wishes of a bunch of do-gooder progressives who didn't understand the health care industry

        No it wasn't.

        Many of the key elements of the ACA were developed by Stuart Butler at the Heritage Foundation in 1989 [amazonaws.com] as a conservative market-based solution to getting all Americans access health care. The same approach was implemented, more-or-less successfully, by Mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts. So it was not only a fairly conservative plan, it had been tested at the state level and seemed like it would work.

        The wish of the do-gooder progressives, as you call them, is something along the lines of the British or Canadian NHS. By all available measurements, those systems are cheaper, easier to manage, and leave the population healthier than the US's hodgepodge of a "system" both before and after the ACA, which is why progressives think they might be worth a shot. That said, by those same measurements, the US was probably better off after the ACA than before it.

        --
        The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
        • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:53AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:53AM (#457194)

          Yup. That would be the typically-Reactionary Heritage Foundation.
          I'm shocked that I had to get this far down the thread before someone mentioned this.

          ...and, decades before that, the Nixon Administration was kicking around the notion of public healthcare for all.
          Nixoncare & Obamacare compared [umich.edu]

          Nixon's proposals were far more "liberal" than what passed under the Affordable Care Act
          [...]
          After the first plan failed, [Nixon tried] it again three years later.

          -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @03:10AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @03:10AM (#457235)

            Today's democrats are yesteryears republicans, and today's republicans are so far out in left field we should probably just institutionalize the lot of them. Facts don't matter, reality is subjective, only profit matters. Insane and dangerous to us all! Which means the Democrats are probably one trump presidency away from going nuts themselves

      • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @09:57PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @09:57PM (#457109)

        We can name the replacement after The Donald. DonTCare.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 23 2017, @04:44PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 23 2017, @04:44PM (#457682)

          My father told me the other day the new plan will be named the "Republican Insurance Plan" or RIP

    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 21 2017, @06:50PM

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday January 21 2017, @06:50PM (#457043) Homepage Journal

      The individual mandate is the only reason that they can afford to cover pre-existing conditions without the premiums being extremely high.

      You have a very odd definition of "extremely high". Me, I'm exempt from that nonsense but my friends who aren't have seen their premiums and deductibles go through the roof. Some even dropped insurance all together and paid the tax because it was a whole lot cheaper.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @06:54PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @06:54PM (#457047)

        Anonymous hyper-partisans telling stories that sound great to other hyper-partisans online don't count as friends.

        • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:01PM

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:01PM (#457075) Homepage Journal

          You're projecting. Believe it or not, my life does not revolve around you lot or even around the Internet in general. I have a larger circle of friends and family than I even want sometimes. Which is why cute little flamebaiters like you are utterly incapable of getting my goat.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:44PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:44PM (#457090)

            > I have a larger circle of friends and family than I even want sometimes.

            One person does not make a circle.

            > Which is why cute little flamebaiters like you are utterly incapable of getting my goat.

            Which is why you were compelled to write a response that was nothing but goat.

            Denying you have a problem that nobody actually accused you of having is a dead giveaway that you have that problem.

            • (Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Saturday January 21 2017, @09:05PM

              by q.kontinuum (532) on Saturday January 21 2017, @09:05PM (#457096) Journal

              One person does not make a circle.

              Some persons do ;-)

              --
              Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
              • (Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Sunday January 22 2017, @02:09PM

                by TheGratefulNet (659) on Sunday January 22 2017, @02:09PM (#457332)

                you must be referring to Girthers... ;)

                --
                "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
            • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 21 2017, @11:39PM

              by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday January 21 2017, @11:39PM (#457151) Homepage Journal

              Awe, look at the cute little AC trying to play with the big boys. Golf clap, everyone.

              --
              My rights don't end where your fear begins.
              • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:41AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:41AM (#457187)

                And you still can't help yourself.
                Look at you defending your ego to an anonymous coward.
                What an utterly pointless exercise for you.
                Just how insecure are you?

                It is great though, just like your god emperror you've made it all about yourself as a way to deflect from the fact that these "friends" of yours who had to cancel their obamacare are complete fiction.

                • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:10PM

                  by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:10PM (#457310) Homepage Journal

                  I reply to pretty much everyone who speaks to me. It's a thing I do. Don't get to feeling special; you still gots lots of dues to pay and an account to create if you want to props for good flaming/trolling.

                  --
                  My rights don't end where your fear begins.
                • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 22 2017, @01:25PM

                  by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday January 22 2017, @01:25PM (#457327) Journal

                  Look at you defending your ego to an anonymous coward.

                  You could always get an account, if you're so concerned about Buzz's poor overinflated ego. But I guess that would make sock puppets a bit of a pain to maintain.

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:01PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:01PM (#457052)

        Second that.
        Last year the cost for silver tier for me and my wife was around $450 after our great $40 or so deductible, we had to cancel it around August/September because we could just no longer afford to pay it every month.
        This year, the cheapest, lowest tier bronze HMO plan would have cost us about that same amount, plus an increased $6,300 deductible before insurance even kicked in, so my plan this year is to hope and pray.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @09:43PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @09:43PM (#457103)

          For a family of 3 from ~2000 to 2010 (4th went off it at the 22 year old cutoff a year or two before the 24 year old extension happened)

          For reference the rates were ~150 each upon retirement, and rose to 750 and 350 alternating first on risk based on existing conditions, and then moving to age based.

          Just paying the premiums severely impacted the family. This was a sole provider household, but even factoring in 4 minimum wage jobs that would have been a huge cost, before factoring in other living expenses. Anyone low income would have had a hard time affording the 350 dollar a month insurance even before actually needing a doctor's visit or urgent medical care. The 750 would bankrupt almost anyone since that is as much as rent was in the area, before utilities.

          The system *WAS* broken before ACA, ACA DID make it worse rather than better, but both republicans and democrats are to blame for letting it happen. And I can only hope both groups and their voting constituents get held over the fire for it in the future.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:18AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:18AM (#457170)

          > my plan this year is to hope and pray.

          Funny, that's the same plan the Republicans have in store for you.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:17PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:17PM (#457060)

        I suppose it is a matter of perspective. The point of insurance is to pool risk, such that the actuarial value of the entire pool in dollars is less than the amount of premiums coming in. The problem with pre-existing conditions is that they increase the risk of the pool and the amount of money it has to pay out. This means that the only way to decrease the risk is to expand the pool to include more people of low risk. The point of the individual mandate is to increase the pool by making it so that either the low risk people enter the pool directly or pay the costs of the higher premiums indirectly with the penalty. The only real way to fix this entire thing is by creating one giant pool that includes everyone, which every pays into and to decouple routine care from emergency or life-sustaining care.

        One free market solution to the problem of rising costs is to require medical providers post prices in advance. Sure, not everyone will comparison shop for everything, but some people, like the poor and those getting elective or expensive procedures might. Plus, with prices more public, there can be other incentives for shopping around. For example, my father got a $500 check in the mail for using a cheaper provider for his colonoscopy.

        • (Score: 2, Flamebait) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:05PM

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:05PM (#457078) Homepage Journal

          The only real way to fix this entire thing is by creating one giant pool that includes everyone, which every pays into and to decouple routine care from emergency or life-sustaining care.

          Damned fine idea, that. I don't do routine care visits. If I'm healthy, I do not need to see a doctor. If I'm ill or injured and it's not going to kill or maim me, my immune system will take care of it for free. So why should I have to let others waste my money?

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by RedBear on Sunday January 22 2017, @02:19AM

            by RedBear (1734) on Sunday January 22 2017, @02:19AM (#457222)

            The only real way to fix this entire thing is by creating one giant pool that includes everyone, which every pays into and to decouple routine care from emergency or life-sustaining care.

            Damned fine idea, that. I don't do routine care visits. If I'm healthy, I do not need to see a doctor. If I'm ill or injured and it's not going to kill or maim me, my immune system will take care of it for free. So why should I have to let others waste my money?

            Um, ok. Meanwhile, back in reality, providing free routine preventative health care ends up saving billions of dollars in avoidable emergency care costs. Soooo... helping pay for other people's routine doctor visits is kind of like the exact opposite of "wasting" your money, since it will significantly decrease the overall costs of paying for health care in general.

            And let's not even talk about the total quagmire of attempting to decide exactly where to draw the line between "routine" care and "emergency" care. In the end, once you go round and round in infinite circles between physicians and bean counters, health care is health care. Period. In the real world, it is actually much cheaper to provide the sort of healthcare that certain macho morons seem to think is "frivolous", wasteful and unnecessary.

            --
            ¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
            ... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @06:16AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @06:16AM (#457273)

              In the real world, it is actually much cheaper to provide the sort of healthcare that certain macho morons seem to think is "frivolous", wasteful and unnecessary.

              If that were true, then prices today would be lower than they were back in the day when catastrophic-only coverage was a pittance affordable by those working for minimum wage.

            • (Score: 3, Informative) by bradley13 on Sunday January 22 2017, @09:05AM

              by bradley13 (3053) on Sunday January 22 2017, @09:05AM (#457292) Homepage Journal

              "Meanwhile, back in reality, providing free routine preventative health care ends up saving billions of dollars in avoidable emergency care costs."

              You have auto insurance, at least, if you have a car. Your auto insurance does not pay for routine oil changes. If you fail to change your oil, you will destroy your engine. Yet people still change their oil regularly.

              Why is it so difficult to create a similar mentality for health care? It's your body, you only get one - take care of it. If you fail to take care of it, it's your problem and no one else's. Insurance is for the case when "shit happens" that you cannot control.

              --
              Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @03:33PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @03:33PM (#457346)

                Because some people are poor and can't even afford routine physicals. Healthcare is another arena where it takes money to save money.

                I'm even seeing commercials for auto coverage moving in the health insurance direction where people pay a small monthly fee and then the company collecting the fee pays for any service.

            • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:25PM

              by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:25PM (#457318) Homepage Journal

              Meanwhile, back in reality, providing free routine preventative health care ends up saving billions of dollars in avoidable emergency care costs.

              Only if you waste money on doctor visits you do not need thinking it is an emergency. Being sick is not an emergency unless it actually threatens your life or limb. Man the fuck up, take some Robitussin or Pepto, and carry your ass to work.

              --
              My rights don't end where your fear begins.
            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 22 2017, @01:20PM

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday January 22 2017, @01:20PM (#457325) Journal

              Um, ok. Meanwhile, back in reality, providing free routine preventative health care ends up saving billions of dollars in avoidable emergency care costs.

              If that were true, then health insurance would be all over it. But maybe finding expensive problems to treat is not the cost saving measure it is purported to be?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:37PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:37PM (#457064)

        No, I don't have a weird definition of extremely high. The rates had been increasing by 12% per year, if you were lucky, previous to the current system. Under the current system, the increases have been less than what they were previously.

        Paying for health insurance is expensive. I was paying nearly $300 a month when I was in my late 20s, so that $450 a month is not nearly as high as you're suggesting. What's more, the current premiums are restricted to being used for the purposes of health care activites with no more than 20% of the premiums for individual policies being allowed for overhead. As a result the rates have been leveling off, which meant that at some point, the between the cost dipping from the efficiency incentives to the inflation devaluing money, that the real rates were going to be much lower than they have been.

        Just because you don't understand how the economy works, doesn't change how it works. Bottom line is that the rates are already increasing at a decreasing rate due to the ACA and yes, there are people that still can't afford to pay the rates, but you're a liar if you're saying that ACA has anything to do with that. Because it doesn't, the rates were already increasing by more than what they're currently increasing.

        If you think the current rate increases are bad, just wait until the healthy folks are able to just opt out until they get sick.

        • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:54PM

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:54PM (#457074) Homepage Journal

          Wow, that is the biggest load of stupid I've read all week. Congrats.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:42PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:42PM (#457127)

            This is why nobody takes you seriously. You don't have any idea what you're talking about, and rather than do some research and learn something, you insist upon making an ass of yourself.

            Your friends would have dropped the coverage either way. Rates were increasing by double digit percentages every year and without any guarantee that you'd be able to get a new plan if the current one lapsed. They have the luxury of paying the tax now because of Obamacare. If they get sick, they'll be able to buy back in. However, under the previous system, if they waited too long to buy back in, they'd be out of luck. The care wouldn't be covered.

            Either, we're going to have pre-existing conditions covered, in which case everybody needs to be in the pool or we're not going to force people to buy coverage and the whole system will implode. You're ability to deliberately ignore that reality is rather stunning. This isn't a matter of speculation, the system was well on the way to collapse prior to Obamacare and removing the individual mandate will cause it to implode without a few years, if we're optimistic. If we're not optimistic I give it 2 years.

            • (Score: 2, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 21 2017, @11:48PM

              by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday January 21 2017, @11:48PM (#457155) Homepage Journal

              Rates I've seen didn't increase by double digits. They increased by triple digits. Nobody I've asked is paying under double what they were and their deductible may be as much as 10x what it started out as.

              --
              My rights don't end where your fear begins.
              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @01:08AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @01:08AM (#457200)

                That's a load of crap. Obama care has been on the books long enough that those double digit increases have compounded to a doubling. You're completely full off shit to suggest that wouldn't have happened anyways.

                What's more, the quality of coverage is better and they have to spend the money on health care related activity. Jesus you're retarded.

        • (Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:33PM

          by sjames (2882) on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:33PM (#457086) Journal

          $300/month is way too high for a person in their late 20s. $450 is simply outrageous. We must address the problem of simple medications that cost $0.03 to make costing $10. Do that and insurance premiums can be more like $45 a month. THAT is affordable healthcare.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:58PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:58PM (#457095)

            The high cost of insurance isn't paying for the $0.03 pill or the $100 EpiPen. It's paying for the $50,000 a year state of the art biologics or $16,000 a year Truvada.

            • (Score: 3, Insightful) by KiloByte on Saturday January 21 2017, @09:51PM

              by KiloByte (375) on Saturday January 21 2017, @09:51PM (#457107)

              or $16,000 a year Truvada

              From Wikipedia:
              The wholesale cost in the developing world is about 6.06 to 7.44 USD per month.[5] In the United States, as of 2016, the wholesale cost is about 1415.00 USD per month.[8]
              And here is everything you need to know about United States' medicine problems. You do have way more efficient manufacturing (modern technology, benefits of scale) and insanely better distribution network (reliable electricity everywhere, good road network, etc) so the cost should be a small fraction of what it is in the developing world, not 200 times as much.

              But then, who would pay for marketing, congresscritter campaign donations, lawyers and stock price manipulation funds? Second point alone makes any reform unlikely.

              --
              Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:45PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:45PM (#457128)

            I completely agree. But, the other plans weren't that much cheaper.

            Medication is a large part of the problem, as is excessive testing. Tort reform won't make much of a dent, however, if people are no longer forced to sue in order to have coverage for their injuries, you may see that part of the bill come down somewhat.

            Around here, the people voted for something like Obamacare or Romneycare back in the early '90s, but the health insurers had their bribes in and the legislature removed the portions necessary for it to function. Eventually the whole system collapsed requiring that things be put back sort of like they were before hand.

            I wonder what all these people supporting the repeal of Obamacare would do when they no longer can buy health insurance and their company can't afford to pay for it either.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @09:36PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @09:36PM (#457101)

        I share your experience. No insurance, exempt from the mandate. All plans I looked up are over 200/mo or just catastrophic care for $120-150. Not a deductible under 2200, bad ratings. Still pay for doctor's visits out of pocket. Don't meet the 16k maximum for medicaid, either. Subsidy ends at like 30k/y and its still the same shitty plans. IRS sending letters that this is the year for the fine and to sign up now. Thanks trump, you saved me $700 the first day.

        Insurance should be forced to cover those pre-existing conditions anyway, they're rich. They don't need to make it off of my back and act like they're doing me a favor.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @06:57PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @06:57PM (#457048)

      You know, whether or not your complaints are true, it doesn't fucking matter any more.
      Bitching about hillary is for cry-babies. The past is now officially the past.

      If you care about the problem focus on what you are going to do about it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:34PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:34PM (#457087)

      The individual mandate is the only reason that they can afford to cover pre-existing conditions without the premiums being extremely high.

      By focusing on health care coverage and the payment system, we focus on the money going into the system. Another approach would be to account for where the money goes. Medical billing advocates have for years been sounding the alarm over inflated health care prices, like eight dollars for a single tylenol administered in a hospital. Accounting and pricing in hospitals is opaque, and the recent epipen pricing controversy shows that it's not just in hospitals but systemic in the medical field. Reforming medical pricing and billing to reduce most healthcare to a reasonable and affordable level that the average consumer could afford without insurance would allow the legitimately expensive (taking immense labor or special materials) procedures to be covered by a single-payer government-run (omg socialist!) system that would cover emergency costs.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:17PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:17PM (#457119)

      > where the insurance companies knew what the costs of providing care would be.

      The exact cost of providing care varies from patient to patient. The insurance companies don't give a shit about cost, since they just pass those costs on to you, the premium payer. Insurance companies only care about FRAUD.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @06:04AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @06:04AM (#457271)

        They care because they have to take in enough to cover their payments, overhead and possibly profit. They dobthis based upon actuarial tables, but without more information about who would be signing up and how healthy they were they couldn't know what to charge.

        And you're an idiot if you think they can just charge more money mid year if they mess it up. Rates only change when policies are renewed or every year.

        And yes, they do care about costs as if they don't keep the prices in check nobody is going to pay 20k a month for their premiums.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @06:19AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @06:19AM (#457274)

          What makes you think people are going to pay $750+ per month?

  • (Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Saturday January 21 2017, @06:23PM

    by opinionated_science (4031) on Saturday January 21 2017, @06:23PM (#457031)

    There was a forbes article suggesting that DJT was going to propose medicare for everyone.

    Anyone have some objective ideas how likely this is?

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnwasik/2017/01/20/trumps-stealth-health-plan-could-be-medicare-for-all/#1754843f165b [forbes.com]

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @06:35PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @06:35PM (#457038)

      It would totally fullfill his recent twitter promises to "cover everybody" with "lower deductibles."

      But the GOP would blow their top.

      It also does not fit with his nomination of Price to run Health and Human Services. It also doesn't fit with the massive tax-cuts the GOP has already started pushing through congress. You simply can't reduce revenues and maintain current coverage levels, much less expand them. The tax cuts are widely seen as a back-door way to prevent an Obamacare replacement - repeal it, de-funded it and then any replacement would also have to fight for 'increasing' taxes again to pay for it.

      If you pay attention to Price, he's the one guy from the GOP who has had anything remotely close to a detailed obamacare replacement. Furthermore, before Obamacare he proposed to push it out to the states. [vox.com] If Trump de-federalizes healthcare he gets to pretend he's keeping his promises and that any problems are due to the states screwing over their people. It would be great for California which would probably go single-payer. But the parts of the country that need healthcare the most are the poor ones - the deep south, appalachia, etc. And those states would just screw the poor like they have always screwed the poor.

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:09PM

      by Thexalon (636) on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:09PM (#457054)

      There was a forbes article suggesting that DJT was going to propose medicare for everyone.

      Anyone have some objective ideas how likely this is?

      Propose it? Maybe. Actually happen? Absolutely not: He'd never be able to get that through Congress. On the Republican side, they'd oppose it because they generally want to cut Medicare, not expand it (Paul Ryan in particular is quite clear about this in his budget proposals). On the Democratic side, they'd oppose it as much as they thought they could get away with, because they'd want credit for doing it and don't want Trump to succeed in anything. And of course, both major party's politicians are bought off enough by the health insurance, hospital, medical device, and pharmaceutical industries that single-payer would be a complete non-starter.

      That said, it would be entertaining to see DJT try it, just to see the Congresscritters squirm explaining why they oppose it.

      What I'm reasonably certain the real Republican health care plan for poorer people is at this point is what was most succinctly described by Alan Grayson:
      1. Don't get seriously sick.
      2. If you do get seriously sick, drop dead quickly.
      This will save a lot of money no longer caring for completely replaceable poor people, which will be good for both the federal budget and the GDP.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by opinionated_science on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:21PM

        by opinionated_science (4031) on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:21PM (#457082)

        Seriously, the lack of evidence based policy is most disturbing.

        But then I remember that lack of education is not considered a deficit for politics...

        Only the ability to lie on demand to get elected.

        Ironically, DJT might turnout to be no worse than any of the others, because the competition is so strong...

        I'm a glass 1/2 full type of guy, and soon it will be beer because there is *awesome* weather in this part of the USA...

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:47PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @08:47PM (#457092)

        On the Democratic side, they'd oppose it as much as they thought they could get away with, because they'd want credit for doing it and don't want Trump to succeed in anything.

        So basically no opposition at all.
        If Trump came out with a plan that was literally "medicare for all" there is absolutely no way the democrats could oppose it in the slightest.

        Now, if he said one thing, but the details were something else - like gutting medicare to do nothing but still expanding it to cover everybody - then that would be something else.
        But that wasn't the question.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:11PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:11PM (#457056)

      Here [reuters.com] is a better article on the same topic. Since Trump has won I think his messaging has become more clear and consistent. He's going increasingly populist and has shown himself happy to rip billions of dollars of value away from companies that don't play ball, but also simultaneously to reward companies that do. So I don't think medicare for all makes sense, but something that does and also aligns very well with what he's been saying is mimicking the system [wikipedia.org] they use in Switzerland.

      In a nutshell:

        - providers are all private
        - providers must provide a basic level of insurance that cannot be profited off of or refused to anybody. the required treatments and standards of this plan are strictly laid out.
        - everybody must purchase this minimum plan. in Switzerland you pay up to 8% of your total income for this plan. if you don't meet the cost with 8% of your income, the disparity is subsidized.
        - providers can and do offer supplemental plans for profit. for example somebody might want more regular dental care than the minimum standard dictates.

      I think I would prefer single payer for the sake of simplicity and overall cost, but this system fits Trumps ideals and is a vast improvement over Obamacare. It would also make sense on his suggestion of creating a bidding system for pharmaceuticals who currently take advantage of the heavily lobbied for limitations of medicare/medicate to negotiate on drug costs.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @09:29PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @09:29PM (#457099)

        everybody must purchase this minimum plan

        Ah, yes - pointing guns at people to get them to comply makes everything easier...

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @07:50PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @07:50PM (#457406)

          There's a practical reason for this.

          If somebody goes to a hospital in urgent need of care but with no money they're not going to be turned away because of lack of insurance. Even in the US emergency rooms cannot turn away anybody. So this creates an undesirable scenario where people who aren't poor enough to have everything subsidized, but not wealthy enough that it doesn't seriously 'sting', have a strong incentive to not buy a plan if it was optional. But in spite of not purchasing they would still be given at least roughly comparable care to those who do purchase it.

          Again all these sort of issues make me really prefer single payer, but I think it's very likely that Trump's system will strongly resemble that of Switzerland.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @06:23PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @06:23PM (#457032)

    All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.

    As Republicans in Congress move to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Washington state’s experience in 1990s with health-care reform may offer a lesson. Repealing unpopular parts of the state’s health-care law led to the collapse of the insurance market.

    Washington has long been on the national vanguard, be it in aerospace, software, e-commerce or wide-ranging health-care laws undone by subsequent Republican electoral victories.

    As congressional Republicans look to repeal the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), Washington’s experience with health-care reform in the 1990s offers an illustrative example of the possible consequences of repealing only the unpopular parts of a law designed with many interlocking pieces.

    What began as the most ambitious health-care overhaul in the nation was hacked away to the point where it became impossible to buy individual health insurance anywhere in the state.

    Here’s what happened:

    The Legislature passed a comprehensive health-care law in 1993, after several years of study and debate.

    More than 15 years in advance, it looked a lot like the ACA.

    It required most employers to provide health insurance to employees. It required individuals to get health insurance or pay a penalty. It required insurance companies to sell policies to anybody — whether they had pre-existing medical conditions or not. It required those policies to cover a set of basic benefits — things like prescription drugs and maternity care. It expanded Medicaid to give insurance to those who couldn’t afford it.

    Like the passage of the ACA, the 1993 law led to huge Republican victories in the next election.

    In 1994, Washington Republicans won their biggest victory in nearly 50 years, winning back the state House and coming within one seat in the state Senate.

    They campaigned on ditching the unpopular parts of the health-care law, most specifically the mandates.

    And they followed through.

    The 1993 law, unlike Obamacare, never went into full effect.

    The 1995 Legislature repealed most of it, including the individual mandate to carry health insurance. But they kept the ban on denying insurance for pre-existing conditions, known in insurance-speak as “guaranteed issue” — you’re guaranteed to be offered insurance, regardless of your health.

    “Republicans came in, and they decided to gut the bill, not dissimilar to right now,” said Dr. Bob Crittenden, an aide to Gov. Jay Inslee, who, working for then-Gov. Booth Gardner, wrote the original version of the health-care bill. “They took out the mandate and left the guaranteed issue. The market went into a tailspin one-and-a-half years later.”

    The defanged health-care law cratered the market for individual insurance policies (as opposed to employer-provided insurance or government-provided insurance, like Medicare and Medicaid, which was largely unaffected).

    By 1998, three years after the changes to the law went through, 17 of the 19 insurers selling individual policies in Washington had left the state, according to a study by an insurance-industry group.

    By 1999, it was impossible to buy an individual policy in Washington. Every insurer had pulled out.

    ...

    [full article at the seattle times] [seattletimes.com]

    (That page needs javascript to view by default, but if you have firefox, reader-mode fixes that without enabling javascript.)

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @04:11AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @04:11AM (#457255)

      Technical question: if it becomes impossible to buy insurance, will it drive the healthcare cost down? IMHO, current high cost is because doctors know they can charge more to insurance companies.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @04:55AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @04:55AM (#457258)

        No. Healthcare costs will go up even more.
        All the uninsured will end up in emergency rooms which are the most expensive form of treatment and are mandated by law to treat people.
        Those people will go bankrupt and hospitals will eat the costs which will then end up on the bills of the people with insurance.

        That is what had been going on for decades before obamacare.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @05:16AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @05:16AM (#457261)

          So... as always, the problem is government.

          Take your dictates and GO AWAY!

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @05:29AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @05:29AM (#457262)

            > Take your dictates and GO AWAY!

            Where "go away" means die in the gutter.
            Man you are a fucking asshole.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @06:21AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @06:21AM (#457275)

              What, do you think you're going to live forever?

              Everyone dies, man. Accept reality.

              • (Score: 1) by Chrontius on Tuesday January 24 2017, @10:07AM

                by Chrontius (5246) on Tuesday January 24 2017, @10:07AM (#458022)

                Do you really think that people won't, when the choice is die in a ditch or rob a bank, won't try to rob a bank?

                Worst case scenario, they die of a gunshot wound, and either die relatively quickly and cleanly, or they die in a warm, comfortable hospital bed on a morphine drip. Second-worst scenario, they go to prison, and receive treatment for the duration of their incarceration on the taxpayers' dime.

                If we're going to pay to treat them anyway, it's cheaper if we don't pay to rent them a room in a fortress, too.

  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday January 21 2017, @06:54PM

    by Bot (3902) on Saturday January 21 2017, @06:54PM (#457046) Journal

    The problem with healthcare in USA is that the prices are insane.
    The prices are insane because insurance companies are allowed to arrange deals with hospitals.

    Make those conventions illegal,
    if an operation costs 1000$ everybody must pay 1000$.

    It should be legal to stay uninsured, else insurance companies make a cartel.
    Poor people get billed and they pay back or work for the state (part time) till they repay the debt.

    Insurance is cheap only when it is not mandatory. Insurance is mandatory because that is the normal stage of capitalism devolving into statalism, not because the state ever cared about your health. If they did soda and sugar added food would be illegal.

    --
    Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:01PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:01PM (#457051)

      > Insurance is cheap only when it is not mandatory.
      > It should be legal to stay uninsured, else insurance companies make a cartel.

      Should and can are two different things.
      Maybe it should be.
      But it certainly can't be. Health insurance does not work unless the healthy subsidize the sick.
      Basic economics. Sorry, the world simply does not work any other way.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:41PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:41PM (#457065)

        Exactly, we've seen the rates start to increase at a decreasing rate because of a few things, but the big thing is the individual mandate. Barring people from waiting until they get sick reduces cost by ensuring that they're paying in while healthy, but it also ensures they have preventative care available.

        The other thing was limiting the amount that health insurance companies could spend on things other than health care to either 15% or 20% depending upon whether it's a group or individual policy. Health care, shouldn't be an industry where investors look to make huge amounts of money. At best, it should be a slow trickle of funds.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @09:45PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @09:45PM (#457104)

          Except most of us "healthy" people got screwed out of the good jobs, owning homes, etc. How much else do you think you can get out of us?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:35AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:35AM (#457183)

        But it certainly can't be. Health insurance does not work unless the healthy subsidize the sick.

        WRONG. Health insurance works, just as other insurance does, when those who pay for it but end up not needing it subsidize those who also pay for it but do end up needing it. Nowhere in here must people be strongarmed into paying for insurance.

        Should we require people to pay for car insurance simply because everyone needs a car? Ridiculous. Can't believe this nonsense made it to score 3.

        My right not to pay for insurance trumps your desire to be able to afford a contract with a private insurance entity.

        • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:53AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:53AM (#457192)

          > Should we require people to pay for car insurance simply because everyone needs a car?

          We DO require that everybody who has a car buy car insurance.
          Exactly like requiring everybody who has health buy health insurance.

          If you would prefer not to purchase health insurance you are welcome to completely dispose of your health in any way you see fit.

          • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @01:01AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @01:01AM (#457196)

            We DO require that everybody who has a car buy car insurance.

            Wrong again. We require people to have liability insurance. This insures others against damage done by your vehicle. It does not insure your vehicle.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @02:09AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @02:09AM (#457219)

              A distinction without a difference.
              The point is that the insurance is mandatory for car ownership.

              But you do you. Take whatever solace you can in being triumphantly righteous rather than logically consistent.

              • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @10:18PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @10:18PM (#457457)

                You're a retarded little nigger, aren't you?

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 23 2017, @05:53PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 23 2017, @05:53PM (#457713)

              The problem with your analogy is that those who do not buy this "liability" health insurance still cost others for their care when they get to go to the emergency room for care. (thus equating to your liability)

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @05:30AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @05:30AM (#457263)

            We DO require that everybody who has a car buy car insurance.

            While at the same time failing to strictly regulate the same companies that people are forced to buy from. What a lovely system.

      • (Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday January 22 2017, @09:45AM

        by Bot (3902) on Sunday January 22 2017, @09:45AM (#457297) Journal

        The fallacy I detect is the axiom that health insurance works. USA have the worst performing healthcare if we take into account the resources poured in.

        Also, replying to another guy, the point is not the determination of the cost of an operation, let the market or whatever work there. The point is that the price must be equal for everybody. No conventions. Those make costs balloon for the uninsured.

        The only upside I see with mandatory insurance is that, by getting money no matter the health status, the insurance/pharma beast has less incentive to poison you.

        Abstract

        This analysis draws upon data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and other cross-national analyses to compare health care spending, supply, utilization, prices, and health outcomes across 13 high-income countries: Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These data predate the major insurance provisions of the Affordable Care Act. In 2013, the U.S. spent far more on health care than these other countries. Higher spending appeared to be largely driven by greater use of medical technology and higher health care prices, rather than more frequent doctor visits or hospital admissions. In contrast, U.S. spending on social services made up a relatively small share of the economy relative to other countries. Despite spending more on health care, Americans had poor health outcomes, including shorter life expectancy and greater prevalence of chronic conditions.

        http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2015/oct/us-health-care-from-a-global-perspective [commonwealthfund.org]

        --
        Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:18PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:18PM (#457061)

      The whole point of a market is to figure out what something should cost; nobody knows whether that operation should be 1000$—and though it should be that much today, the value/cost/whatever might change by next month!

      The key is to open up health care to the market forces, and this can be done by marketing prices for such services, rather than keeping them hidden away behind a wall of inscrutable bureaucracy.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @09:34PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @09:34PM (#457100)

        Exactly - as demonstrated by the Surgery Center of Oklahoma [surgerycenterok.com], where there is a literal menuboard of available procedures with their price listed up-front.

        Worked so well that the US fedgov changed laws to make any new similar outfits illegal.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @09:54PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @09:54PM (#457108)

        And a split between parts and labor with labor taxed at a flat rate based on the number of people required for a particular operation on the vehicle...ahem, person!

        This won't keep all cheating out of the system, but California's Bureau of Automotive Repair is a bunch of dickholes who do exactly that. If you're cheating the system they get up in your face. If you've been honest, but haven't been following the rules, they get up in your face. If you've dotted your i's and crossed your t's and they can't find anything else wrong, they will probably get out of your face and if a complaint was made find against the complaintant. (Latter doesn't happen very often, but only if you didn't cover your ass suitably.)

        Healthcare is already like this, it had been getting worse by the year. If people don't want humane care, then it is time we give them industrialized care.

        Let us see how they feel about it after this.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:12PM (#457118)

    Why is there no link to the actual document this discussion is about?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:19PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:19PM (#457120)

      So you can practice using google.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:22PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:22PM (#457123)

        Found it soon after:
        http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=122251 [ucsb.edu]

        It did take a bit, a lot of the sites were those crappy ones where not everything loads unless you update your browser every hour.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:51PM

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:51PM (#457129) Homepage Journal

    I have medicaid now but will have to cancel that as I have work now.

    At that point I'll be fucked - I won't be able to afford my medicine, and I'll be denied insurance due to my preexisting conditions.

    The only way I can see to keep insured is to avoid taking new contracts. Quit my job, effectively.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    • (Score: 2) by chewbacon on Sunday January 22 2017, @03:01AM

      by chewbacon (1032) on Sunday January 22 2017, @03:01AM (#457232)

      I believe Trump said that part of Obamacare would remain: you can't be refused for preexisting conditions.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @05:34AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @05:34AM (#457264)

        That doesn't do a whole lot of good for the people who can't afford decent insurance at all.

  • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday January 21 2017, @11:03PM

    by butthurt (6141) on Saturday January 21 2017, @11:03PM (#457133) Journal

    Mr. Trump had said:

    [...] day one – which I will consider to be Monday as opposed to Friday or Saturday. Right? I mean my day one is gonna be Monday because I don’t want to be signing and get it mixed up with lots of celebration [...]

    -- http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/314498-trump-monday-will-be-day-one-of-administration [thehill.com]

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday January 21 2017, @11:12PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 21 2017, @11:12PM (#457136) Journal

    The bull in the china closet is subsidies. People who never had insurance, people who could never afford insurance, now have SUBSIDIZED insurance. And, the subsidies are going to run out anyway. Congress isn't going to subsidize insurance forever. Among the figures I've heard, 1 1/4 million Americans who could never pay for insurance now have insurance, thanks to Obama care. But, pretty much all of those people are going to be unable to pay for insurance of any kind when the subsidies run out. And then? The law punishes them for not having insurance? FFS, we still can't wring blood from a turnip.

    As others have noted, ACA was never meant to succeed. Single payer was the ultimate goal.

    BTW, medicare/medicaid isn't exactly a "good thing". The only reason people believe they are good, is that they've been around so long now.

    I almost believe that single payer is the way to go. It's kinda sucky, but every other "solution" that has ever been offered really sucks ass. Do single payer, put the insurance companies out of business, and just let gubbermint run the whole thing. But, THAT won't happen because the insurance industry is huge, and extremetly wealthy.

    Besides, gubbermint is so corrupt, they can't be trusted to run it, so we'll have corrupt corporations still running it, skimming all our money.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by RedBear on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:34AM

      by RedBear (1734) on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:34AM (#457182)

      I almost believe that single payer is the way to go. It's kinda sucky, but every other "solution" that has ever been offered really sucks ass. Do single payer, put the insurance companies out of business, and just let gubbermint run the whole thing. But, THAT won't happen because the insurance industry is huge, and extremetly wealthy.
      Besides, gubbermint is so corrupt, they can't be trusted to run it, so we'll have corrupt corporations still running it, skimming all our money.

      Such an interesting comment. It's like you're on the verge of a breakthrough, but haven't quite made it through the haze of anti-commie ideology yet. You're still insisting that government represents nothing but corruption and literally can't do anything without handing the task over to even more corrupt private for-profit corporations. But your mind can't actually truly believe this, and you should be fully capable of acknowledging that government can do a great many things far more appropriately and effectively than private corporations can.

      Or would you really vote to completely shut down the government and privatize the nation's military, police forces, health care, libraries, schools, fire departments, public utilities (water/power/sewer), all public infrastructure creation and maintenance, and law-making?

      We started with for-profit private fire departments early on in this country. It was a disaster. They wanted to be paid before they put out your fire. They didn't care about poor people's houses burning down and ended up letting fires go wild, causing untold damage. Every sane person should be capable of understanding that there are some things that just shouldn't be handled by private corporations, because the end result is massive, pointless, avoidable human suffering.

      The following link may be an article on the very liberal-leaning HuffPost, nevertheless they are reporting on a real event that happened in this country. An independent fire department responded to a house fire and then billed the owners $20,000 because the owners failed to pay a $474 subscription fee (which they AND ALL THEIR NEIGHBORS say they didn't know about). If you find it insane that someone could be billed $20,000 for the privilege of having their house burn to the ground, you should find it equally insane that someone could be billed half a million dollars for the privilege of not dying of a heart attack. The government is fully capable of running a single-payer health care system that will work far better than what we have now, just as they are capable of effectively running fire departments and police forces. Seems like everyone forgets that the government here is just, you know, us. 99% of the people who work for the government are just perfectly normal fellow citizens, many of them quite civic-minded and doing their best to do their jobs effectively and efficiently without wasting taxpayer funds.

      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/08/justin-purcell-fire_n_4242734.html [huffingtonpost.com]

      Here's an article about how lovely it was having private profit-motivated fire responders in the 1800s:

      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tina-dupuy/firefighting-in-the-1800s_b_247936.html [huffingtonpost.com]

      Here's an article about a city fire department that let a man's house burn down because he hadn't paid an optional $75 fire protection fee to the city (but they totally saved the neighbor's house because he'd paid his $75 fee):

      http://www.salon.com/2010/10/04/libertarian_fire_department/ [salon.com]

      I'm waiting with bated breath for the Republicans to collapse the private health care market so that we can finally move to single payer. If Canada can do it, so can we.

      --
      ¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
      ... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
      • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:53AM

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:53AM (#457193) Journal

        "insisting that government represents nothing but corruption"

        I'm an American, on the planet Earth, in the Milky Way galaxy. I can't name my space-time continuum, or reality matrix, but maybe you'll recognize it from my planet name?

        We just had an election, in which the court fool narrowly defeated one of the most evil women known to history. That court fool has his own different brand of corruption, in that he apparently often fails to honor his contracts. He likes to cheat the people who work for him, it seems.

        Government should be trusted?

        Maybe in your world, in your own space-time continuum, governments are actually trustworthy. Is there any chance that some of us from Earth can immigrate?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @03:37AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @03:37AM (#457242)

          Try emigrating to a failed state. I heard they have no goverment, or at "best" the goverment can't control anything.

          • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 22 2017, @03:48AM

            by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday January 22 2017, @03:48AM (#457247) Journal

            I believe that failure can be measured in degrees. So, we have a 30% failed state, which looks great in comparison to a 100% failed state. But, it looks like pure crap beside a successful state.

            Now, do we want to try to define a successful state? They probably all fail, to greater and lesser degrees. Do you know of any that have no faults? And - please, please, PLEASE don't suggest that the United States is such a state! How many countries have we bombed in the past 16 years? How many innocents have we killed? No - don't even go there.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 23 2017, @09:15AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 23 2017, @09:15AM (#457576)

            Try emigrating to a failed state.

            As I recall, Runaway1966 does live in Arkansaws. So he already lives in one? What did the Gov. of Ark do about the Medicare expansion in Arkansas?

  • (Score: -1, Troll) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday January 21 2017, @11:16PM

    by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Saturday January 21 2017, @11:16PM (#457137) Journal

    While I'll never prove it, I'm certain I was retaliated against when a women's health program I was basically coerced into liaising with went under because of the ACA. I lost access to the pharmacy I had been purchasing my meds from after a woman at my bank lied about the status of my account, and now I have to drive to the big city 150 miles away to see a doctor.

    So, when women start screaming again about their access to health care, am I going to get retaliated against again? I'm also expecting retaliation when Roe v. Wade gets overturned.

    I'm never going to forget how the women at work were celebrating Trump and Devos of all people yesterday. This is what women wanted. How fucking hypocritical are women going to be now?

    How goddamned evil can women prove to be? In the words of one woman who felt it was appropriate smalltalk to share—no fucking idea what prompted this but there it was—, all women need to do to control their bodies is keep their damned legs closed. What women face is nothing goddamned like what I face when somebody decides to get me fucking blacklisted thanks to feminist objection. Not religious objection. Feminist objection.

    Oh, and I'm still waiting for my fucking freebies from the government. Sorry folks, this is 100% my own earned money from WORKING, you know, DOING SHIT I'D RATHER NOT BE DOING SO I HAVE MONEY—something women wouldn't fucking understand if it grabbed them in the pussy. So that makes it FUCKING PERSONAL when somebody fucks with my access to healthcare.

    tl;dr I don't need the ACA because I earn my way in life and pull my own weight and then some. Why should I care about the ACA at all after so many women voted for this to happen, especially after women retaliated against me when the ACA made one of their health programs redundant?

    Go get a fucking husband if you can't afford your own healthcare.

    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:26AM

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:26AM (#457173) Journal

      Again: for someone who wants to be a woman so bad, you really seem to hate us. You think I fucking wanted DeVos, whom I see as THE single most dangerous person in the cabinet next to Pence himself, anywhere near the White House? Screw you. I've had it with your bullshit drama. You make all MtFs look bat-shit insane, you know that? I know better because I have almost half a dozen of them as friends, but ye gods, you are a hot mess of a person.

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:46AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:46AM (#457190)

        us

        MtFs [...] I have almost half a dozen of them as friends

        Oh....so that's why you're fucking nuts.

        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday January 22 2017, @01:20AM

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Sunday January 22 2017, @01:20AM (#457204) Journal

          Oh, kiss my ass. They've got some kind of birth defect; their bodies and brains don't match up. The correct, humane, and least expensive thing to do is to treat the defect, which means reassignment surgery and hormone therapy. I'm not a fucking TERF, and being a lesbian myself I am damn well not going to piss on a group of people who are in an even worse position than I am in this society.

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
          • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @02:41AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @02:41AM (#457228)

            > I am damn well not going to piss on a group of people who are in an even worse position than I am in this society.

            Liar.

            • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday January 22 2017, @03:27AM

              by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Sunday January 22 2017, @03:27AM (#457240) Journal

              Excuse me? In case you hadn't seen the zillion or so posts mentioning this, I do anti-human-trafficking work in addition to my normal jobs. Jobs. Plural. Two of them. What the hell do you do? You haven't even got the guts not to post AC. MY balls are bigger than yours and they're ovaries!

              --
              I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @05:54AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @05:54AM (#457270)

                Just because you are decent some of the time does not make you decent all of the time. [theatlantic.com]

                • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday January 22 2017, @06:24AM

                  by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Sunday January 22 2017, @06:24AM (#457277) Journal

                  Oh, it's you again. Why are you so afraid of registering an account and challenging me face to face?

                  And, once more: not that this makes any difference to you, since you either can't or won't understand this, but Islam != Muslims. Islam is to Muslim as disease is to patient. Do you get it now? Incidentally, s/Islam/Christianity/ and s/Muslim/Christian/ and that works too. The Abrahamic religions are memetic poison, but that does NOT mean their victims are bad people. Is this too subtle a distinction for you?

                  --
                  I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @06:35AM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @06:35AM (#457278)

                    but Islam != Muslims. Islam is to Muslim as disease is to patient.

                    Ugh I literally get sick to my stomach seeing you parrot that horrible talking point straight out of stormfront

                    Why are you so afraid of registering an account and challenging me face to face?

                    You are not special. I respond to everyone as an AC.
                    Never mind that a nym is a barely a millimeter of the kilometers of distance to "face to face."

                    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday January 22 2017, @10:00AM

                      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Sunday January 22 2017, @10:00AM (#457298) Journal

                      Well, hell, if Stormfront says that, all it means is some things are so blindingly obvious that even a damn Nazi can get them right. Sorry if that hurts your feelings, AC. Oh, wait, no I'm not.

                      --
                      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @03:21PM

                        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @03:21PM (#457342)

                        Something else that is also blindingly obvious to the damn nazis is:

                              Gay sex != Gay people. Gay sex is to Gay People as disease is to patient

                        and of course their greatest hit:

                            Judaism != Jews. Judaism is to Jews as disease is to patient

                        You are actually worse than the nazis. Nazis are honest.
                        Nazis don't deny that they piss on a group of people who are in an even worse position than they are in this society.

                        > Sorry if that hurts your feelings, AC. Oh, wait, no I'm not.

                        Why don't you just call me a snowflake while you are at it?

                        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday January 22 2017, @08:31PM

                          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Sunday January 22 2017, @08:31PM (#457414) Journal

                          Oh, you're right that gay sex doesn't equal gay people. Even if I were utterly celibate I'd still be a lesbian. That's not the point. You're focusing on the first half of the analogy, not the second. Assuming the necessary precautions against violence, disease, etc are taken, people having sex are not harming anyone; it's a personal, private decision people make. Whereas dangerous religious and ideological miasmas like that ead to

                          And you know, sometimes even gay people have straight sex. I'm told there were a lot of gay men who married women and even had kids to keep up appearances. Doesn't make them any less gay. Now I personally wouldn't ever have sex with a man, but it's not as if, for example, getting raped by one would suddenly make me bisexual.

                          You are also correct that Judaism works just as well in the above substitution as Islam and Christianity. I give no quarter to ANY of the Abrahamic religions; in my eyes they are all equally bad.

                          Did you have a point somewhere, or did you just want to see how many people reading this would fall for your abuse of the idea of tolerance and your constant category errors?

                          --
                          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @08:44PM

                            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @08:44PM (#457419)

                            > Whereas dangerous religious and ideological miasmas like that ead to

                            Funny how you are able to treat gay people as smart enough not to spread disease but religions people are automatically assumed to be disease carriers.
                            Its standard tribalism: in-group are fully human with complexity, nuance and self-determination but out-group are sub-human animals.

                            > You are also correct that Judaism works just as well in the above substitution as Islam and Christianity.

                            Just take a step back and look where your ideology has lead you - you are now supporting nazis against jews.
                            There is literally not a more obvious wrong side to be on, the consequences of that position are inarguable and indefensible.

                            You have stared into the abyss far, far too long.

                            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @10:25PM

                              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @10:25PM (#457460)

                              My cock is staring into your anal abyss as we speak.

                              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @11:10PM

                                by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @11:10PM (#457468)

                                Sorry, you don't have enough self-determination to put a condom on that so you'll just have to go to the concentration camp.

                            • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 23 2017, @01:02AM

                              by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday January 23 2017, @01:02AM (#457497) Journal

                              What in fuck's name makes you think I support the damn Nazis in their campaign to eradicate ANYONE? This is a scummy guilt-by-association tactic; you could as easily say all vegetarians are Nazi supporters because of Hitler's supposed vegetarianism, or all people in favor of non-smoking laws are for the same reason. If a neo-Nazi told me the sky is blue I'm not gonna start believing it's orange with green and purple paisley just because the guy telling me it's blue is a scumbag.

                              The Abrahamic religions ARE a disease. Sorry that hurts your feelings (wait, we've been over this...). Christianity and Islam are particularly dangerous strains of it because they instruct the followers to proselytize, i.e., spread it. There are so few Jews left, and they have such weird hangups about conversion, I'm amazed they've survived this long...though if you wanna get technical, Islam and Christianity are Judiasm 3.0 and 2.0 respectively, so who the hell knows *shrug.* And hey, you know what? The sort of bullshit peddled by the "alt right" is an even OLDER disease, and I'll fuckin' fight THAT too!

                              But, again...the disease is not the patient. No one is born a Muslim or a Christian or (except in the ethnic sense) a Jew.

                              Regarding gays, I know about the Castro district, etc. Did you know it was a bunch of lesbians, invisible as always, providing a lot of care for the stereotypical "skinny gay AIDS patients?" Believe me, I've heard the horror stories about promiscuous gay men, and to this day facepalm hard enough to turn my face red when I hear about what some gay guys do.

                              ...notice that this is gay MEN though? Lesbians have about the same number of partners as straight women do, IIRC. I've only ever had two, was a virgin for my first, the second one was herself a virgin with me, and we ALL got STD tested beforehand. Gay women have lower rates of almost every STD on the planet than any other group; I think the one exception is some strain of chlamydia, and would bet my shiny gold star some bisexual girl spread that one around. What you're describing is more of a problem of male sexuality, regardless of orientation, than anything. As the joke goes "it's two guys deciding when to have sex, what do you THINK the answer's gonna be?!"

                              Step. Up. Your. Game.

                              --
                              I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 23 2017, @03:00AM

                                by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 23 2017, @03:00AM (#457523)

                                > What in fuck's name makes you think I support the damn Nazis in their campaign to eradicate ANYONE?

                                And that is how cognitive dissonance manifests.
                                You are the one who said the nazis got it right about islam and then you agreed that substituting judaism for islam is totally correct.

                                Unable to deal with the plain as day contradictions of your words you go ranting about how your bigotry is actually 100% justified because reasons.
                                Exactly like every bigot ever in modern history.

                                What's even worse is that you used the exact same fig-leaf that christian extremists use for their homophobia - "hate the sin, love the sinner."
                                Its hypocrisy when they say it and its hypocrisy when you say it.

                                Go back and read the post you just wrote. Read it out loud. Listen to how hysterical and borderline incoherent it sounds.
                                Maybe get a friend to read it, an honest friend, not someone looking to stay on your good side or get inside your pants.
                                Ask them if those really sound like the words of someone who is being honest with themselves.
                                Or is it someone throwing up every excuse they can to avoid an unflinching self-examination?

                                • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 23 2017, @06:43PM

                                  by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday January 23 2017, @06:43PM (#457734) Journal

                                  *siiiiigh* Man, this is getting boring...

                                  What part of "category error" do you not understand? Ideas are not people. Evil people can still be correct about some things. Someone who holds evil ideas can point out that someone else who holds a different set of evil ideas is also in the wrong, and s/he will be correct, despite having his/her own set of evil ideas.

                                  And strictly speaking, "love the sinner, hate the sin" is entirely correct. It's not hypocritical at all IF YOU ACTUALLY ADHERE TO IT. Fundies, of course, do no such thing, so they are hypocrites because they are unable to truly make this separation.

                                  What angle do I need to turn this at to jam it through your head?

                                  --
                                  I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 23 2017, @08:22PM

                                    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 23 2017, @08:22PM (#457780)

                                    > What part of "category error" do you not understand?

                                    I understand it and I dismiss it as denial of the implications of your own position.
                                    You argue that holding the same premise as a nazi does not lead to the same actions as a nazi.
                                    That's not how humans work. We are not robots. Its all shades and influences.
                                    Just because you aren't personally putting muslimas in gas chambers does not make your opinions about muslims OK.
                                    You just aren't as far down that path. But its your inherent bias that shades your choices and your actions.
                                    It reduces your empathy for muslims, weights your judgment of the severity of circumstances.
                                    Not unlike how black people routinely receive less pain medication from doctors who sincerely believe they hold no prejudice because they have subconscious beliefs about black people being tougher than whites.

                                    > It's not hypocritical at all IF YOU ACTUALLY ADHERE TO IT.

                                    Its not just fundies who fail to adhere, its everyone who uses it. Because you can not hold a belief that someone is practicing evil and still be unaffected in your actions towards that person. Anyone who says otherwise is lying, to themselves first and to everyone else who calls them on their bullshit.

                                    You know how you feel when you read me calling you out?
                                    That's exactly how fundies feel when you call them out.

                                    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 23 2017, @10:58PM

                                      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday January 23 2017, @10:58PM (#457841) Journal

                                      Actually, I can and have made that separation. Do you think there were no Muslim victims in the anti-human-trafficking stuff I've done? If anything I was probably TOO careful with the one I met. Just because you are incapable of making this distinction does not mean I am.

                                      And the way I make the distinction is simple: the idea is not the person. In theory, at least, any person with any evil idea may be brought to a state wherein s/he no longer has that idea. Now in practice that may not be possible, but there's nothing logically preventing it. If you remove the idea, the person remains, but not vice versa. Therefore, the idea is contingent on the person for its continued existence.

                                      I am getting very tired of you repeating the same baseless claims over and over and over. You very clearly have some sort of axe to grind. Let's face it, ideas are destruct-tested by reality and some of them are inferior to others. That does not mean the people holding them are inferior to other human beings; it just means they are going to have a harder time with objective reality, sometimes in ways that make OTHER people have a harder time too.

                                      Do you have anything to actually add to this or are you going to just sit there and whine? You've said nothing new for almost half a dozen posts.

                                      --
                                      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                                      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @09:02AM

                                        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @09:02AM (#458011)

                                        Yay for you, you weren't an asshole to one muslima.
                                        Put a fookin medal on you.

                                        Just like when a fundie bakes a cake for a gay wedding.
                                        And then goes to the polls and votes against gay marriage.

                                        > I am getting very tired of you repeating the same baseless claims over and over and over.

                                        Just like every fundie everywhere is so damn tired of being baselesslly accused of bigotry.
                                        Just like you, they have reasons why their bigotry isn't actual bigotry.
                                        Why they are good people who do volunteer work too!
                                        And they are fully capable of loving the sinner while hating the sin. Just ask them!

                                        Tell you what, I will never call you out again...
                                        If whenever you talk about how you are such a good person who believes the weak deserve respect and protection you explicitly add "except for religious minorities."

                                        As long as you are honest I won't have a problem with you.

                                        Runaway doesn't get a pass from me when he claims to have no problem gay people
                                        Buzzard doesn't get a pass from me when he claims not to be racist
                                        All you gotta do stop pretending you don't piss on *all* categories of people who are more vulnerable than you

                                        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 24 2017, @05:21PM

                                          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday January 24 2017, @05:21PM (#458157) Journal

                                          So it's not possible to have an honest discussion with you then, is what I'm getting from this :/

                                          Once more: it is entirely sound and moral to "love the sinner and hate the sin" *If you are actually capable of doing this.* Most people who use the phrase are not; it's a level of abstraction very few people are capable of even imagining, let alone putting into practice.

                                          Second: being opposed to an idea is not the same as being opposed to the person who carries it. I want to see Islam, Christianity, and Judaism gone. I do NOT want to see Muslims, Christians, and Jews dead, any more than a doctor who wants to see polio eradicated wants polio victims dead. These people are victims, sufferers in the grip of a memetic plague. That the "disease" is virulent does not change this, but it DOES mean that sensible precautions (education, secular government structure, free access to information) must be well-established before engaging with them.

                                          You're not gonna like this, but not all ideas, cultures, and beliefs are equal. Using "human flourishing" as an objective watermark, or as close to objective as you can get since this is going to vary somewhat among people, some ideas are better than others. Most of Europe, but not all of it, has a superior culture overall to most of the US, but not all of it. This does not mean we Americans are inferior; it means we're culture-bound to bad habits and bad ideas. See how that works?

                                          You are making leftists look very bad here, to the point I am beginning to wonder if you aren't some sort of Poe provocateur. No one your age should be this naive.

                                          --
                                          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                                          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @05:54PM

                                            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @05:54PM (#458174)

                                            Once more: it is entirely sound and moral to "love the sinner and hate the sin" *If you are actually capable of doing this.* Most people who use the phrase are not;

                                            Anyone who relies on it to preserve their moral integrity is incapable of doing so.
                                            Its a moral escape hatch. Using it makes it invalid.

                                            I do NOT want to see Muslims, Christians, and Jews dead,

                                            And yet you embrace the precepts that are a necessary step on that road..

                                            Using "human flourishing" as an objective watermark

                                            Really? You just took a completely undefined idea and called it an objective benchmark.
                                            Cognitive dissonance makes people say the craziest things.

                                            You are making leftists look very bad here,

                                            When your own arguments are so obviously self-contradictory, fall back on that old tactic of delegitimizing the argument that you can't win.
                                            Straight out of the bigot's playbook.

                                            • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 24 2017, @07:59PM

                                              by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday January 24 2017, @07:59PM (#458230) Journal

                                              Okay, we're done. You're deliberately extracting small sentence fragments instead of entire sentences and taking strawman potshots at them. Go away and don't come back till you can read for comprehension.

                                              --
                                              I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @11:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @11:36PM (#457149)

    The US healthcare system is broken:
        Cost is >2x of other developed nations.
        Quality (life expectancy) outcomes are poor compared to same nations.
        Payment system is incomprehensible.
        Drug companies are out of control.
        The AMA monopoly is not sheparding the knowledge base it exists to do.

    Instead of addressing any of these, ACA just put more fuel (cash) on the fire.

    Politically, the 26 year limit for kids and no pre-existing conditions are widely liked.
    But the resulting rising costs of insurance premiums are not.

    Given where we are today, no ACA is probably the worst of all options.
    A better ACA is needed, hopefully addressing some of the lost opportunities above.
    No doubt the AMA, and drug, hospital, and insurance industries will lobby heavily against real reforms.
    Kind of a who's government is this situation.

    I should be interesting to see what the new President does (as opposed to says) in this take back the government for the people situation.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @01:26AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @01:26AM (#457206)

    We have endless budgets when it comes to war and foreign aid, perhaps we need a shift in our national priorities. Don't get me wrong, we can keep droning and bombing abroad but maybe just order fewer F35 jets or drop 25,000 bombs in the middle east instead of the 27,000 we dropped last year. Those things are expensive and would cover a lot of health care. Or maybe cut some foreign aid and spend that money on our own people. I know, crazy...

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @03:12AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @03:12AM (#457236)

      > We have endless budgets when it comes to war and foreign aid,

      Nearly all foreign is actually spent at american businesses who then ship products to those countries.
      Its a jobs program for americans.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @06:10PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @06:10PM (#457394)

    i think the rest of the world just calls the american system "fail2care" system ...
    -
    universal free health care NOW!