President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

No shit. All we need is universal coverage.

 

So you think the federal government should prohibit health insurance from employers' consideration for the package of benefits they offer to attract the best employees? Why exactly should the government be involved in that?

 

A couple bucks a month more? Get the fuck outta here. Try a couple hundred.

 

Now that Trump has officially appointed the wealthiest cabinet ever (you know, swamp-draining) in U.S. presidential history,
including the very people he not only once forcefully berated, but whom his supporters blame for the mess they find themselves in ...
When will it become apparent to those neckbearded, slack-jawed supporters that he's sold them a phony Power Squeegee, and he's simply using the office to advance Trump Inc.?

 

Having lived under both systems (America: birth until 23, the UK: the next half of my life,) I'd say the NHS has its advantages and disadvantages. In Britain, there's no financial hit - at all - but you have loooong waiting lists for a lot of things. (You can also buy private health insurance.)

That being said, if the United Kingdom spent as much as the USA on health care, the average person over here would live until they were 98, despite their relentless boozing.

 

No, that's not what he thinks.

What he thinks is that the federal government's subsidization, via the tax code, of employer-provided health insurance has led to a terribly fucked up sustem.

 

It absolutely shouldn't, and the only reason it is comes from vestigial structures of employment baby boomers and their parents got to enjoy that don't really make much sense.

The downside is this: we have a system that goes halfway, and we have to go one way or the other. We'll either have a system in which middle class and above buy from markets, which will have to be set up with a boat load of regulations, and the government takes the burden of the uninsurable (poor, old, probably some with chronic conditions). Or we'll have universal healthcare. Both will most likely be shitty in their own ways.

 

That's probably true, but it also means the system has been fucked up for decades and whatever sort of "market" system existed before has never been used to handle a health care landscape like we currently have. There's not much of a road map if you want to go heavily market-driven.

It also leads to a larger issue, which is that health care is really hard to build a market around. The consumers are rarely rational. The asymmetrical information issues are massive. You have to find places where you can create good incentives, but the consumer-supplier relationship simply does not function in any way close to a standard market.

 

Meh, we don't really have health-care policy debates 'round here. We just convene prayer meetings of the First Church of The Sacred Sanctimonious.

 

So, tax it as income then.

 

The old system was bad, with skyrocketing costs. The new system has major problems, and does squeeze some with higher rates, etc. It's also helped millions of people.

It was always going to be an incremental process. And ugly sometimes. But if only one thing comes out of it, making sure you can't be denied coverage for a pre-existing condition, then it's a good first step.

Republicans are about to steer the ship, after about 60 years of not doing anything to address health care in this country. So far the only plan is: "What we have is bad."

So do something. And see how popular it is if you tear up ObamaCare and cut Medicade, Medicare and Social Security.

It's a complex, messy problem that democrats have tried to address. Show me something.

 

I am sorry about your daughters problems. But I humbly suggest that Obamacare might improve the system for your daughter. Under Obamacare you had three imperfect options. If at some point you an no longer afford an off the exchange carrier because of business reversal, etc. your daughter always has the ability to get coverage. Is that not a benefit?