Health care

[JohnR]

So I should work 60 hours a week to pay for my Buick health care plan (can't afford the Cadillac plan) AND contribute to someone else's Buick health care plan?

I contribute both with my plan (that also pays into Hospitals that assist the uninsured) and with my taxes that are "redistributed" for me.

The money should have no issue re quality of health care is wrong and frankly unicornrubyslipper talk. Money HAS to be taken into account. Otherwise people will continue to take money out of other people's piles. And more and more and take money from our kids and your kids futures as debt. That should be unacceptable. It is not a bottomless pit.

Should there be more inexpensive ways to distribute health care? More clinics? More community center based medicine? What responsibility lies with those that are receiving this no cost / low cost health care (let alone the full plans)?


FTR - I am for some type of AFFORDABLE care for those that cant afford it and those that are taxed for it - but this is not affordable nor sustainable.

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by JohnR

So I should work 60 hours a week to pay for my Buick health care plan (can't afford the Cadillac plan) AND contribute to someone else's Buick health care plan?

I contribute both with my plan (that also pays into Hospitals that assist the uninsured) and with my taxes that are "redistributed" for me.

The money should have no issue re quality of health care is wrong and frankly unicornrubyslipper talk. Money HAS to be taken into account. Otherwise people will continue to take money out of other people's piles. And more and more and take money from our kids and your kids futures as debt. That should be unacceptable. It is not a bottomless pit.

Should there be more inexpensive ways to distribute health care? More clinics? More community center based medicine? What responsibility lies with those that are receiving this no cost / low cost health care (let alone the full plans)?


FTR - I am for some type of AFFORDABLE care for those that cant afford it and those that are taxed for it - but this is not affordable nor sustainable.

Great last line. There should be some quasi public plan for those that can't afford to get it in the private sector, and I have absolutely zero issue with paying taxes to support such a plan...heck, that's one of the things I WANT to pay taxes for. And we have that today with Medicaid. We just need to try to improve it, but don't ask me how. I know fraud and waste drive up costs, let's start there and see how much it saves.

I also don't think people should pay for pre-existing conditions (and I don't have any, not advocating for my own wealth). We don't get to choose whether or not we are born healthy, and those that are unlucky enough to be born with issues, should not endure a lifelong struggle to pay for them. Just my $0.02.

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by wdmso

America is number 50 out of 55 countries that were assessed.

.

How many of the 49 countries that were ahead of us, have an open border with Mexico, and millions of poor blacks living in horrible poverty? Answer - zilch.

When you are Norway - a tiny, isolated nation where everyone has an oil well in their backyard, and you don't allow any immigration - it's easy, for a while at least, to score well on those surveys. We allow millions of penniless immigrants to come here, most countries don't.

Move Mexico to the southern border of any of those 49 countries, make it a wide open border, and see how that country scores in 25 years.

[wdmso]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

How many of the 49 countries that were ahead of us, have an open border with Mexico, and millions of poor blacks living in horrible poverty? Answer - zilch.

When you are Norway - a tiny, isolated nation where everyone has an oil well in their backyard, and you don't allow any immigration - it's easy, for a while at least, to score well on those surveys. We allow millions of penniless immigrants to come here, most countries don't.

Move Mexico to the southern border of any of those 49 countries, make it a wide open border, and see how that country scores in 25 years.

yea ok its the immigrant's that ruined health care you need to find a new Horse to beat

[wdmso]

Originally Posted by detbuch

By all means, let us keep chipping away at the benefits of a free marketplace. Let us keep squeezing the life out of it.

Venezuela! Pfft! Nothing there to see. Cuba is the paradise which we keep missing to notice as such. China and Russia trying to move toward capitalism in order to sustain their economies--just a little tick, a little glitch on the road to the final equal, fair, and politically righteous societies controlled by government edict.

A Free market and for profit model hospital's are why health care is where it is today not obama care ... a free market wont fix a problem created by a free market system Heath care isn't a product... it was turned into 1

look at Oklahoma... Free market limited regulations has given them earthquakes their 2nd in the country

[scottw]

Originally Posted by wdmso

Heath care isn't a product... it was turned into 1

it's a service...you have to pay for those too..

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by wdmso

yea ok its the immigrant's that ruined health care you need to find a new Horse to beat

Sigh...immigrants don't ruin the survey scores, but poverty does. We let a lot of poor people into our country. Most places, don't. That means if you just look at national averages, we are at a disadvantage. You need to compare apples to apples.

[JohnR]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

Sigh...immigrants don't ruin the survey scores, but poverty does. We let a lot of poor people into our country. Most places, don't. That means if you just look at national averages, we are at a disadvantage. You need to compare apples to apples.

Yes - lets keep filling the low wage brackets with more and more low wage earners - ya know for the jobs others don't want to do - and keep growing the bottom third of the pool. There will then always be poor to champion for. Automation and AI are going to blow the whole thing open anyway and we'll have even LESS people to tax and rerdistribute.

We are out of balance now and have been for some time, this will get drastically worse in the coming 2-3 decades (plus things like GDP/unfunded liabilities) and our kids and GKs will pay for it.

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by wdmso

A Free market and for profit model hospital's are why health care is where it is today not obama care ... a free market wont fix a problem created by a free market system Heath care isn't a product... it was turned into 1

Hospitals and health care have been highly regulated for many decades. And the regulations have steadily grown over that time. Neither hospitals nor health care have been operating as free market models for a long time. The costs have steadily risen in that time. As well, the freedom in the market has steadily fallen. "Where it is today," as you put it, is the result of the decades of rising regulations and government intervention in general during that time. The costs, under the increasing regulatory system have not gone down. They have constantly increased. That you don't see the connection that stares you in the face, and blame the condition on something that doesn't exist is indicative of how well Progressive propaganda works.

Ultimately, the failure or success of any political or social or even economic system depends on the willingness of the people to make it work, no matter what the personal costs may be. Whether it is free market or communism, or any variations and gradations in between, the commitment of the people is required to make it all work.

Free markets are not responsible for the distortions imposed on them. They are not responsible for criminal abuses of them. They are certainly not responsible for government regulations which weaken their effectiveness and, worse, diminish their freedom. Freedom, with all the personal responsibilities and virtues which truly enable us to freely interact without diluting the freedom of others, is required to make a free market work. And a free market is the most dynamic way to truly "progress" from primitive poverty to wealthy nations, and thus to have access to the riches that humans are capable of creating and producing.

If we all commit to a free market and practice that commitment with the responsibility and virtue that freedom requires, we will create the wealth and technologies required for a maximum distribution of a good life for all, and that virtue will freely, without dictatorial coercion, provide for those not capable of doing so for themselves.

The fault does not lay in the free market. As Shakespeare would say: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings." When we surrender our freedoms to Caesar, to unlimited, dictatorial government, we degrade and ultimately destroy the free market and make the market a slave to tyrants.

That is why those who love liberty, with its unalienable rights, over security and unearned comforts, prefer free market systems rather than communistic, socialistic, fascistic systems. Those who prefer the comfort of government granted rights and securities tend to favor the socialistic, communistic, fascistic systems. All systems would work if we were all the same and we all committed to one of them. We are not all the same. If we are to live together, we must choose a system to which we all can commit. The Founders created a pretty good one to that end. But those who don't trust the rest of us have been trying for a century to transform our system of limited government and the people's unalienable rights to one of some sort of benevolent dictatorship.

This notion of a free market being the cause of our ills has been discussed in several posts, including conversations with you. You have not refuted nor even responded to most of the content in them (post #7 in this thread for instance). It seems you keep bringing up the same arguments which have been answered and refuted, over and over again. So, wearily we have to keep giving you basically the same responses which you don't seem to have understood the many times before. Debating with you about the free market brings to mind what it takes to keep responding to your blaming it for our problems. It takes the persistence advocated by the phrase "illegitimi non carborundum"

look at Oklahoma... Free market limited regulations has given them earthquakes their 2nd in the country

Oklahoma has had regulations and imposed new ones in response. Nor has the reason for the earthquakes been totally established:
http://www.news9.com/story/24792205/...as-earthquakes

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by JohnR

Yes - lets keep filling the low wage brackets with more and more low wage earners - ya know for the jobs others don't want to do - and keep growing the bottom third of the pool. There will then always be poor to champion for. Automation and AI are going to blow the whole thing open anyway and we'll have even LESS people to tax and rerdistribute.

We are out of balance now and have been for some time, this will get drastically worse in the coming 2-3 decades (plus things like GDP/unfunded liabilities) and our kids and GKs will pay for it.

GREAT post.

The last crisis was the subprime mortgage crisis. The next crisis will be what I call the "sovereign debt" crisis. The feds and many states, thanks to the Baby Boomers aging (and living longer) are about to be up to their eyeballs in unfunded liabilities.

Here in CT, we jacked up the income tax last year, and tax revenue collected dropped like a rock (the opposite of what the Democrats said would happen). Just at the time when we need to start paying pensions to Baby Boomers. The Dems will respond, naturally, by raising taxes more, driving more people out. In the private sector, when an entity is stuck in a self-perpetuating cycle of declining revenues and increasing costs, it is called the "death spiral", and it is a perfect term for what is happening. Very tough to get out of.

[JohnR]

Jim. It drives me n#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&g futs how exposed we are. Big picture is we are forked, little picture is we are forked.

Roll in the high drug use, major addiction, and video gamers reduced from productive society and it is an increasingly smaller pool to provide for the masses.

20TrillBaby in 12 years. Goiing to be 50 trill in the not distant future. The Perpetual Motion machine IS the debt clock.

And we'll be lucky to live through it.

[wdmso]

Originally Posted by detbuch

Oklahoma has had regulations and imposed new ones in response. Nor has the reason for the earthquakes been totally established:
http://www.news9.com/story/24792205/...as-earthquakes

LOL One researcher, a Tulsa geologist, is now suggesting something else may be at work -- the weather and aquifers.

amazing nothing like keeping your head buried in the sand

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by wdmso

LOL One researcher, a Tulsa geologist, is now suggesting something else may be at work -- the weather and aquifers.

amazing nothing like keeping your head buried in the sand

I am not the one here who has his head buried in only one possibility. And I don't have an ideological investment in any of the possibilities. The cause of earthquakes in Oklahoma is not about the free market.

A free market is not free of government regulation. What it should be free of is regulation which restricts or denies freedom. In order to understand the reason for that in a social compact founded on individual freedom, you have to understand what social and political freedom essentially is. It is not license. It demands that those who wish to be free do not trample on the freedom of others. Interactions must be voluntary and honest. Coercing someone or cheating her is not voluntary interaction. Being cheated is not voluntary, agreed to, interaction. When you coerce or cheat, you are not free because you depend on someone else's involuntary submission to you. In effect, you become a slave to slavery. The slave owner cannot survive without slaves. He is not socially free in his interactions with those he cheats or coerces. His cheating and coercion destroys the intrinsic nature of freedom. Social freedom, in contrast, ensures that everyone is free to depend on his ability to do rather than depending on the submission of others to do for him. It requires the responsibility to assure that all in society are free. It requires the virtue to reign in personal desire to coerce and cheat. And that is the foundation for a truly free market.

License, on the other hand, comes in two forms. Breaking of the social contract by personally coercing or cheating others. Or complicity with government which gives you a license to have legal advantages over others.

So, given that society can impose regulations, what should be the nature of those regulations vis a vis a free market? Such regulations should be of the kind that assures the market is free. Such regulations should, on the one hand, penalize those who distort the market, those who coerce or cheat others. On the other hand, it should not grant license to some giving them advantages over others, and certainly should not give some the legal power or advantage that essentially eliminates competition from others who want to freely engage in the market.

If the people of Oklahoma want to impose regulations for well founded, correct reasons equally on all who want to drill for oil on their territory, they can do so. It can penalize those who violate the regulations. And it must not grant advantages to some at the disadvantage of others.

The health care system has been massively distorted by government regulations. At this point, the regulations have squeezed out competition. They have limited or denied the ability of individuals to freely trade with providers and insurers. They have made the costs for medical devices outrageously expensive. They have made, in general, health care so expensive that individuals cannot afford it. they have driven the system incrementally, and steadily, toward single payer government health care.

None of that is free market. When you blame the free market for those conditions, you have your head buried in the sand that Progressive government constantly throws in your eyes.

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by JohnR

Jim. It drives me n#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&g futs how exposed we are. Big picture is we are forked, little picture is we are forked.

Roll in the high drug use, major addiction, and video gamers reduced from productive society and it is an increasingly smaller pool to provide for the masses.

20TrillBaby in 12 years. Goiing to be 50 trill in the not distant future. The Perpetual Motion machine IS the debt clock.

And we'll be lucky to live through it.

It will likely be north of 50 trillion before you and I are gone. Some legacy we are leaving for the future.

[JohnR]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

It will likely be north of 50 trillion before you and I are gone. Some legacy we are leaving for the future.

That is the thing. At 50 trillion and such, massive debt alternatives are few: economic enslavement within the system or abolishing the monetary system and having Big Gov determine the trading standard.

StarTrek harmony it ain't going to be

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by JohnR

That is the thing. At 50 trillion and such, massive debt alternatives are few: economic enslavement within the system or abolishing the monetary system and having Big Gov determine the trading standard.

StarTrek harmony it ain't going to be

And no one is talking about it, because people somehow think that it's not 'real debt' when you're talking about a government. Here in CT, the city of Hartford's bond rating just got lowered to "junk", and the state isn't far behind.

[wdmso]

The health care system has been massively distorted by government regulations. At this point, the regulations have squeezed out competition. They have limited or denied the ability of individuals to freely trade with providers and insurers. They have made the costs for medical devices outrageously expensive. They have made, in general, health care so expensive that individuals cannot afford it. they have driven the system incrementally, and steadily, toward single payer government health care.





BIG Bad Goverment isn't the Problem Single payer is coming and heath insurance company's will be a memory they have already dug there own Grave with unsustainable rate hikes

health care will still happen hospitals doctors and nurses will still work medications will still be made the share holders will be the entire US not just stock holders look for a profit

[wdmso]

Originally Posted by JohnR

So I should work 60 hours a week to pay for my Buick health care plan (can't afford the Cadillac plan) AND contribute to someone else's Buick health care plan?

I contribute both with my plan (that also pays into Hospitals that assist the uninsured) and with my taxes that are "redistributed" for me.

The money should have no issue re quality of health care is wrong and frankly unicornrubyslipper talk. Money HAS to be taken into account. Otherwise people will continue to take money out of other people's piles. And more and more and take money from our kids and your kids futures as debt. That should be unacceptable. It is not a bottomless pit.

Should there be more inexpensive ways to distribute health care? More clinics? More community center based medicine? What responsibility lies with those that are receiving this no cost / low cost health care (let alone the full plans)?


FTR - I am for some type of AFFORDABLE care for those that cant afford it and those that are taxed for it - but this is not affordable nor sustainable.

John affordable heath car is not possible its lost ..These company's Love money they will never roll back prices .. not different then the airlines charging for baggage extra leg room even picking a seat . or a Hotel that charges you to park or charges you a resort fee cuz they have a pool once they knew they could charge it and get paid they all do it ... there all in on it its baked into the cake

Maybe the government should stop spending $100 million per F35 fighter "redistributed" some of the 57% of our national defense Budget and send a little to health care which is only 5% .... of the Budget

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by wdmso

The health care system has been massively distorted by government regulations. At this point, the regulations have squeezed out competition. They have limited or denied the ability of individuals to freely trade with providers and insurers. They have made the costs for medical devices outrageously expensive. They have made, in general, health care so expensive that individuals cannot afford it. they have driven the system incrementally, and steadily, toward single payer government health care.





BIG Bad Goverment isn't the Problem Single payer is coming and heath insurance company's will be a memory they have already dug there own Grave with unsustainable rate hikes

A free market dictum is "charge what the market will bear." Another way of saying that is to charge what a customer or given set of customers are willing to pay. Another version is to give equal value for value. Ignoring the dictum will eventually lead to businesses extinguishing themselves.

What you seem to be saying is that all health insurance companies are too stupid to do what works. That their greed blinds all of them to stupidly commit market suicide. One would think that some enterprising and bright health insurance business which understood the need to follow the dictum would come along and charge what you consider sustainable prices.

Of course, that would more likely occur in a free market.

A government controlled and regulated market might not be free enough, due to regulations, to charge what is both affordable and profitable. And a government controlled market would lead to cronyism, the cooperation of big businesses supporting regulations if they eliminated competition creating larger coerced profits for themselves. It is most likely that all the insurance companies are not too stupid and too greedy to charge what you consider sustainable prices, rather it is more than probable that government mandates cost them too much to do so. And that a few crony companies benefitted from the mandates.

One way to sustain the insurance companies, is for the government to "subsidize" (pay for) the price of insurance for those who can't afford it, and even to subsidize the big crony insurance companies for the losses due to government control and regulation. This all was done in Obamcare.

At what point does it become unsustainable for government to subsidize buyers for all the regulatory costs it imposes on business? In a for profit business sense, or even in a to merely break even sense, that point has already been reached. Health insurance companies have been forced by mandates to price themselves out of business if they're not subsidized, and more buyers of insurance can't afford to pay for it unless they are subsidized. And the national debt is unsustainable.

Now, that is clearly, definitely, obviously, not a free market situation. What should also be obvious to a reasonable person, is that insurance companies are not all so stupid that "they have already dug there own Grave with unsustainable rate hikes" as you put it. That is not a reasonable assumption. Perhaps a Progressive talking point assumption, but not a reasonable one. What is a reasonable assumption is that they have been regulated to the point of unsustainability. That it is coercion, not stupidity, that has dug their grave.

And it is no coincidence that, as you say, single payer is coming. It was already admitted by some Dems that single government payer is what they wanted all along. Government health care has been a Progressive dream and goal since the FDR era. It has been admitted that Obamacare is just another step toward that. It is not only reasonable, but obvious, that the government regulations on health insurance companies imposed by the ACA were meant to dig that grave for them. For them to be, as you say, "a memory."


health care will still happen hospitals doctors and nurses will still work

Of course all that will happen. It happens even in some of the poorest most dictatorial godforsaken countries. It is one of the items that those governments will at least minimally provide or risk revolution. And it will be provided in most, or all, of single payer systems at a level below what most of the population would get in a free market.

medications will still be made the share holders will be the entire US not just stock holders look for a profit

Sure, medications will still be made. But innovation will be levelled to a status quo. It takes a lot of motivation to strive for new and better stuff. The profit motive has been the strongest and most sustainable motivator in human history. We don't live in a fictional Star Trek world where most go where no man has gone before just for the sake of mankind. For most, it takes more than feeling good about yourself to go along for the ride. For most, it is easier to repeat than to innovate. But if we can get a lot more than we already have, a lot more are willing to take the trip.

And your notion that the entire US, the entire population will be the shareholder in single payer government run and paid healthcare is ridiculous. Shareholders invest for profit. Explain how the taxpayers all paying for the entire health care system creates a profit for them.

And how do they all profit equally? If the "profit" is healthcare and if all get the same healthcare but some pay more than others and some pay nothing, do all profit equally? Isn't the only way all could profit equally is if all had identical economic conditions--the same economic worth--same pay, etc. etc. Is that an attractive economic and social model for you?

Isn't investing a means to get more than you paid for the investment. Otherwise, just keep the money rather than investing it. Go ahead, build a car and pay the entire cost of building it, then buy the car from yourself for more than you paid to make it. Where, exactly, is the profit in that. Oh, you say no, no . . . the entire population will pay some groups of people to build cars for everybody. And then the cars, which will be identical, will be distributed, at no further cost, to the entire population. So there will be no profit. We shall all equally pay exactly what it costs to build a car and have that car for the equal amount of money we spent.

That sort of economic system has been tried several times in the past. The attempts have not been sustainable. Simply put, human nature doesn't fit into that box.

[JohnR]

Originally Posted by wdmso

Maybe the government should stop spending $100 million per F35 fighter "redistributed" some of the 57% of our national defense Budget and send a little to health care which is only 5% .... of the Budget

Sadly it is more like 140 million a pop on F35 (more actually as that number does not included engines). I could find plenty of waste in procurement and more than happy top debate the ills of defense procurement and Beltway Bandits.

But you do not underscore your seriousness on math or debate when you put out numbers like that : "57% of our national defense Budget and send a little to health care which is only 5% ". Those numbers are false, and at best highly misleading. The only time numbers are close to yours is when you are parsing discretionary spending. See image 1 below from CBO. This has Defense around 45% of discretionary spending and health around 23% (combined national health and Veteran/VA spending). But those numbers don't include most of Healthcare which is Medicare and Medicaid If you look at total budget (3.9 Trillion) then defense is down around 15% and health including Medicare / Medicaid are around 28%.

So argue your point but establish a consistent baseline for your numbers: You can't use gross numbers in one pie and compare to net numbers in the other pie

[detbuch]

How Government Regulations Made Healthcare So Expensive

A long article but brief summary of how government intervention incrementally over time helped to create excessively profitable monopolies of doctors, of hospitals, of insurance, etc. Somewhat tough and boring to read, but give it a try if you're interested in a basic understanding of the rise in cost of healthcare:

https://mises.org/blog/how-governmen...e-so-expensive

[detbuch]

A very, VERY, important video to watch regarding the high cost of health care, and why "health care is not really that expensive" according to the doctor in this video. And how it would not really be that expensive if health care was truly free market based:

[Slipknot]

Very informative
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

[wdmso]

Originally Posted by detbuch

A very, VERY, important video to watch regarding the high cost of health care, and why "health care is not really that expensive" according to the doctor in this video. And how it would not really be that expensive if health care was truly free market based:

you do love your you tube echo chamber


but not to worry Trumps going to blow up the whole thing up!! i hope nobody is buying open market .. He just bit the hand that feeds him

Right off the guys web site https://surgerycenterok.com/?procedu...y=urology#jump In an effort to make care accessible to all of our patients regardless of their financial situation, we’ve partnered with Parasail to find patient‐friendly payment plans Vasovasostomy $5,300.00* Total Knee Arthroplasty (Knee Replacement)i
$15,499*
not sure how thats less than Insurance

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by wdmso

you do love your you tube echo chamber

If you have nothing relevant to say about the video, why do you bother to reply with stupid, useless, junk?

[wdmso]

Originally Posted by detbuch

If you have nothing relevant to say about the video, why do you bother to reply with stupid, useless, junk?

stupid, useless, junk?

Happy to see that you feel prices from his web site are useless junk?

But your you tube videos are not stupid, useless, junk? produced to generates Views ... and promote his business model .. packaged as a cure for health care ...


nothing relevant to say about the video or do mean agree with the video because his prices are relevant

[PaulS]

Recent quote by our President "Take a look at who those insurance companies support and I guarantee you one thing. It’s not Donald Trump.” The Repub. lack of compassion and hate for "those" people is pathetic.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by wdmso

stupid, useless, junk?

Happy to see that you feel prices from his web site are useless junk?

But your you tube videos are not stupid, useless, junk? produced to generates Views ... and promote his business model .. packaged as a cure for health care ...


nothing relevant to say about the video or do mean agree with the video because his prices are relevant

Have you compared his prices to those that other Hospitals charge insurance companies. Point is that other mainstream doctors and their surgeons charge way more. If you think that insurance makes those surgeries cheaper, you're not considering overall costs. Major surgeries are not something a person has every month. The bulk of the surgeries on his list are once or twice in a lifetime. And many or most people will not require most of those surgeries. Insurance premiums with high deductibles occur every month. And the deductible will occur with every surgery. And the costs get higher every year. The overall cost of healthcare is far more expensive under our insurance/government paid system. We all pay for that. Add up all the insurance premiums you pay in a lifetime for a service and for the great majority of people who live the age of life expectancy will have paid far more in premiums than the actual price you paid for that which was insured.

His point was that health care is way more expensive than it would be in a free market based system. His free market based prices are way lower than the regulated system imposes on healthcare. That is what the debate should be about. Not out of context prices.

You didn't discuss any of that. You showed some numbers without context and made a snarky comment about me and a supposed echo chamber. For me, that was useless junk.

[scottw]

this is great...

Trump Faithfully Executes Obamacare; Media, Democrats Go Nuts

By Andrew C. McCarthy
— October 14, 2017

Why don’t the stories say: “President Trump Faithfully Executes Affordable Care Act”?

In report after sky-is-falling report, the journalism wing of the media-Democrat complex castigates the president over his decision to — as the New York Times put it — “scrap subsidies to health insurance companies that help pay out of pocket costs of low-income people.” These subsidy payments are “critical” to sustaining the “Affordable Care Act.” Without them, the Grey Lady frets, “President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement” could “unravel.” To add insult to injury, the paper implies that Trump’s “determination to dismantle [Obamacare] on his own” is a malign attack on the rule of law, coming only after Republicans reneged on their vow to repeal it by legislation.

It’s ironic. Notwithstanding the many outrageous, mendacious things the president says and tweets, the press is aghast that his “fake news” tropes against mainstream-media stalwarts resonate with much of the country. Well, if you want to know why, this latest Obamacare coverage is why. What Trump has actually done is end the illegal payoffs without which insurance companies have no rational choice but to jack up premiums or flee the Obamacare exchanges. The culprits here are the charlatans who gave us Obamacare. To portray Trump as the bad guy is not merely fake news. It’s an out-and-out lie.

Which is to say: It’s about as honest as the Democrats’ labeling of Obamacare as the Affordable Care Act.

The subsidy payments to insurance companies may be “critical” to sustaining the ACA, but they are not provided for in the ACA. The Obamacare law did not appropriate them. No legislation appropriates them. They are and have always been illegal.

These payments are blatantly illegal. The federal district court in Washington so ruled last year. For what it’s worth, I believe Judge Rosemary Collyer was wrong to grant the House of Representatives standing to sue the Obama administration. The Constitution gives Congress its own powerful tools to confront presidential lawlessness; the Article I branch does not need the Article III branch to do its heavy lifting. That said, Judge Collyer’s decision on the merits is unassailable.

The media-Democrat narrative that President Trump is imperiously flouting the rule of law has it backwards. In cutting off the insurance-company subsidies, Trump is enforcing the ACA as written, consistent with his constitutional duty to execute the laws faithfully. It was President Obama who usurped Congress’s power of the purse by directing the payment of taxpayer funds that lawmakers had not appropriated.

Finally, the claim that Trump is “unraveling” the ACA would be laughable were it not so cynical. You can’t unravel something by honoring its terms. Obamacare is unraveling because it was designed to unravel. This is not a bug, it’s a feature.

[wdmso]

Originally Posted by scottw

this is great...

Trump Faithfully Executes Obamacare; Media, Democrats Go Nuts

By Andrew C. McCarthy
— October 14, 2017

Why don’t the stories say: “President Trump Faithfully Executes Affordable Care Act”?

In report after sky-is-falling report, the journalism wing of the media-Democrat complex castigates the president over his decision to — as the New York Times put it — “scrap subsidies to health insurance companies that help pay out of pocket costs of low-income people.” These subsidy payments are “critical” to sustaining the “Affordable Care Act.” Without them, the Grey Lady frets, “President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement” could “unravel.” To add insult to injury, the paper implies that Trump’s “determination to dismantle [Obamacare] on his own” is a malign attack on the rule of law, coming only after Republicans reneged on their vow to repeal it by legislation.

It’s ironic. Notwithstanding the many outrageous, mendacious things the president says and tweets, the press is aghast that his “fake news” tropes against mainstream-media stalwarts resonate with much of the country. Well, if you want to know why, this latest Obamacare coverage is why. What Trump has actually done is end the illegal payoffs without which insurance companies have no rational choice but to jack up premiums or flee the Obamacare exchanges. The culprits here are the charlatans who gave us Obamacare. To portray Trump as the bad guy is not merely fake news. It’s an out-and-out lie.

Which is to say: It’s about as honest as the Democrats’ labeling of Obamacare as the Affordable Care Act.

The subsidy payments to insurance companies may be “critical” to sustaining the ACA, but they are not provided for in the ACA. The Obamacare law did not appropriate them. No legislation appropriates them. They are and have always been illegal.

These payments are blatantly illegal. The federal district court in Washington so ruled last year. For what it’s worth, I believe Judge Rosemary Collyer was wrong to grant the House of Representatives standing to sue the Obama administration. The Constitution gives Congress its own powerful tools to confront presidential lawlessness; the Article I branch does not need the Article III branch to do its heavy lifting. That said, Judge Collyer’s decision on the merits is unassailable.

The media-Democrat narrative that President Trump is imperiously flouting the rule of law has it backwards. In cutting off the insurance-company subsidies, Trump is enforcing the ACA as written, consistent with his constitutional duty to execute the laws faithfully. It was President Obama who usurped Congress’s power of the purse by directing the payment of taxpayer funds that lawmakers had not appropriated.

Finally, the claim that Trump is “unraveling” the ACA would be laughable were it not so cynical. You can’t unravel something by honoring its terms. Obamacare is unraveling because it was designed to unravel. This is not a bug, it’s a feature.

Just because the sky may not be falling on you or I. Means nothing to those who the sky is falling on


President Trump's decision Thursday to end subsidy payments to health insurance companies is expected to raise premiums for middle-class families and cost the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars.

"Ending the CSR payments is another sign that President Trump is doing what he can to undermine the stability of the individual market under the ACA," wrote Tim Jost, professor emeritus of law at Washington and Lee University

The decision will most directly affect middle-class families who buy their own insurance without financial help from the government. Consumers who earn more than 400 percent of the federal poverty level — an individual with income of about $48,000 or a family of four that makes more than $98,400 — will likely see their costs for coverage rise next year by an average of about 20 percent nationwide.

Ironically, the decision to end the $7 billion-a-year cost-sharing payments is likely to cost the federal government more than making them — nearly $200 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.




this guy was making sense until he went all conspiracy theory " The Democrats grasp this. They know they can accomplish The Grand Plan only by inuring the public to it incrementally. That is what Obamacare is built to do. It is intended to unravel, only gradually and with the right villains taking the blame, while the government — having actually caused the problems — emerges as the savior."
Each juncture of the ACA’s inevitable collapse is orchestrated to highlight greedy insurance companies who opt out, or ruthless Republicans — and now, of course, the monstrous Trump — who cut off desperately needed funds. The idea is that when the system finally implodes, the public will be so contemptuous of the insurers and the GOP, they will see the government — the Democrats’ panacea of “free” universal health care — as the only viable option.

This is why the role played by the Democrats’ media allies is so vital




.. this guy was making sense until he went all conspiracy theory ^^^^^ He thinks Democratic were that smart to plant this seed 8 years ago to get single player LOL