Healthcare – Page 2 – Rational Nation USA

Trump Told To Dump Ryan And Embrace Universal Health Care By Close Friend…

Vox – A key Trump friend and ally is urging the president to dump Paul Ryan’s Affordable Health Care Act and embrace something that sounds sort of like a lightweight version of a single-payer health care system. Christopher Ruddy, CEO of the conservative Newsmax brand, isn’t normally considered a major thought leader on policy issues, but he is a longtime friend of Trump’s, and counts as one of a relatively small number of conservative players who have closer ties to Trump than to congressional Republican leaders.

And he is warning loud and clear that Trump “could inherit the bad political baggage of both Obamacare and the House Republicans” if he insists on going along with Ryan’s version of repealing and replacing Obamacare.

Instead, Ruddy puts forward the rather radical notion that Trump should attempt to live up to his campaign promises on health care rather than signing on to legislation that betrays them all. To do it, he encourages Trump to ditch his effort to court the Freedom Caucus and instead come up with a bipartisan plan that accepts a large government role in providing insurance coverage.

WHOA! Finally. A sensible conservative voice who has El Presidente’s ear?

In an op-ed published Tuesday, Ruddy argues that Trump “should be sticking to his own gut on healthcare reform.” He did this during the campaign, which helped him “win Democratic states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.”

And he offers the following seven-point “game plan for Trump to regain the initiative”:

Ditch the Freedom Caucus and the handful of Senate Republicans who want a complete repeal of Obamacare. They don’t agree with universal coverage and will never be placated.

Find a few parts of Ryancare II [i.e., the AHCA; Ryancare I refers to Paul Ryan’s longstanding desire to privatize Medicare] that can win passage in the House and Senate with either GOP support or bipartisan support. Declare victory.

Rekindle the bipartisanship in Congress that President Obama destroyed. Impanel a bipartisan committee to report back by year’s end with a feasible plan to fix Obamacare.

Reject the phony private health insurance market as the panacea. Look to an upgraded Medicaid system to become the country’s blanket insurer for the uninsured.

Tie Medicaid funding to states with the requirement that each pass legislation to allow for a truly nationwide health care market.

Get Democrats to agree to modest tort reform to help lower medical costs.

While bolstering Medicare and improving Medicaid, get Republicans and Democrats to back the long-term fix of health savings accounts. This allows individuals to fund their own health care and even profit from it.

As a pure political strategy, the key elements here are probably the first three points. A commission probably won’t lead to any major changes, but that’s okay. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Affordable Care Act exchanges will probably stabilize in the next year or two even if nothing changes. Trump can do nothing and fix it.

But steps 4 through 7 do suggest a route to a possible future vision of American health care.

There’s more so do CONTINUE READING.

CBO Report On The Republican Health Care Plan Is Out. It Ain’t Pretty…

The CBO’s numbers are in. Projected savings through 2016 are 337 billion dollars and the number of insured Americans will decline by 24 million souls.

Premiums are projected to be 15 to 20 percent higher in the first year compared to the ACA. After 2026 premiums are projected to be 10 percent lower on average. The report says older Americans would pay substantially more (whatever that means) and younger Americans would pay less.

Under the republican plan there would be 52 million uninsured Americans in 2026 compared to the 28 million that would be uninsured under the ACA.

As expected the alternative facts administration of Trump spent the weekend trying to undercut the CBO.

The Washington Post – House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s proposal to revise the Affordable Care Act would lower the number of Americans with health insurance by 24 million while reducing the federal deficit by $337 billion by 2026, congressional budget analysts said Monday.

The report from the Congressional Budget Office underscores the dramatic loss in health insurance coverage that would take place if the GOP health-care plan is enacted, potentially contradicting President Trump’s vow that the plan would provide “insurance for everybody” and threatening support from moderate Republican lawmakers.

Fourteen million people would lose health coverage next year alone, the report stated. Premiums would be 15 to 20 percent higher in the first year compared to the ACA, and 10 percent lower on average after 2026. By and large, older Americans would pay “substantially” more and younger Americans less, the report states.

Proponents of the plan, led by Ryan (R-Wis.), have argued the total number of people covered is the wrong way to measure the law’s impact.

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The White House has spent the last week engaged in a charm offensive aimed at bringing those conservatives on board, as well as an effort to discredit the CBO before it released numbers that might cast the plan in a negative light.

“If you’re looking to the CBO for accuracy, you’re looking in the wrong place,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer said last week.

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The ACA has increased coverage by 20 million to 22 million – almost half of those through the insurance markets the law created for people who cannot get affordable coverage through a job, and the rest through an expansion of Medicaid in 31 states and the District of Columbia.

According to the CBO, an estimated 52 million people would be uninsured in 2026, compared with 28 million who would lack insurance that year under current law.

The Trump administration led a broad effort to undercut the CBO over the weekend, including pointing out flaws in its forecasts for the ACA.

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In January, Trump had promised to replace the ACA with a plan that provided “insurance for everybody.”

“There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us,” Trump said in a Jan. 15 interview with The Washington Post.

“It’s not going to be their plan,” Trump said of people covered under the Affordable Care Act. “It’ll be another plan. But they’ll be beautifully covered. I don’t want single-payer. What I do want is to be able to take care of people.”

A summary and the full text of the 37 page CBO report can be found HERE.

Nancy Pelosi’s Letter To Speaker Ryan…

Following is a letter to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan from Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. Questions she raises are reasonable and demand answers. With the GOP intent on railroading their replacement through the Congress and Senate calling your representatives and senators to express your concern might be something you want to consider.

March 7, 2017

The Honorable Paul Ryan

Speaker of the House

H-232, United States Capitol

Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Speaker Ryan,

This week, the Committees on Energy & Commerce and Ways & Means will be marking up Republicans’ long-feared bill to dismantle affordable health care. The GOP legislation will have life or death consequences for tens of millions of families across America, and extraordinary impacts on state and federal budgets long into the future.

The American people and Members have a right to know the full impact of this legislation before any vote in Committee or by the whole House.

Members must not be asked to vote on this legislation before the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation have answered the following questions about your legislation in 2018 and 2019, over the 10-year budget window, and in the decade after: How will this bill measure up to the Affordable Care Act and current Medicaid law on coverage, quality, and cost? And how will it impact Medicare solvency?

Coverage – How many fewer Americans will have health insurance coverage compared to current law in Medicaid and the Marketplace? Also what happens to coverage among Americans with pre-existing conditions?

Quality – What happens to the premiums, deductibles, out-of-pocket costs, and average value of insurance plans for those with coverage in the Marketplace and those Americans with pre-existing conditions as a result of letting states define essential benefits and change ACA protections?

Cost – How will the bill impact the federal deficit and the solvency of the Medicare Trust Fund? What happens to state budgets after the loss of federal dollars from both the expansion of Medicaid under the ACA and from the GOP’s Medicaid per capita cap? What is the impact on hospitals and other providers due to the increase in uncompensated care? Given the loss of insurance coverage and change in taxes, how many dollars are transferred from low and middle-income families to high-income families as a result of the bill?

Mr. Speaker, as a former Chair of both the Committee on Ways and Means and the Budget, you understand the importance of having the numbers as well as anyone. These are critical questions and I hope that Republicans will honor their responsibility to the American people both before the Committees vote and before the final bill goes to the House floor.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

best regards,

NANCY PELOSI

Democratic Leader

Via: MEDIAite

Senator Rand Paul Supports Stand Alone Bill Repealing The ACA…

On this Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is just another libertarian dunderhead. Repeal without a replacement first makes about as much sense as jumping out of an airplane without a parachute.

Not that the republican establishment’s replacement plan is a good one mind you.

Rand Paul is not backing down.

Hours after President Donald Trump exhorted the Kentucky senator to get behind his Obamacare replacement plan, Paul reiterated his opposition in an interview with POLITICO.

“Republicans across the country are unified on repeal, not on replace,” Paul said Wednesday morning, after Trump singled him out in a tweet. The libertarian-leaning lawmaker insisted that Republicans should vote on stand-alone legislation to repeal the Democratic health care law and figure out later what would replace it. He said he told the president as much in a telephone conversation Monday.

“The compromise that I … have represented to him is to separate the bill into two separate bills,” Paul said.

Trump’s targeting of Paul was a gift for Republican leaders trying to shepherd their health care legislation through Congress… (MORE HERE)

Senator Mike Lee’s Statement Today, More BS…

Mar 07 2017

WASHINGTON – Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) issued the following statement Tuesday in response to the release of the American Health Care Act:

“This is not the Obamacare repeal bill we’ve been waiting for. It is a missed opportunity and a step in the wrong direction,” Sen. Lee said.

“We promised the American people we would drain the swamp and end business as usual in Washington. This bill does not do that. We don’t know how many people would use this new tax credit, we don’t know how much it will cost, and we don’t know if this bill will make health care more affordable for Americans.”

“This is exactly the type of back-room dealing and rushed process that we criticized Democrats for and it is not what we promised the American people.”

“Let’s fulfill our Obamacare repeal promise immediately and then take our time and do reform right. Let’s pass the 2015 repeal bill that Republicans in both houses of Congress voted for and sent to the White House just 15 months ago. Once Obamacare has been properly sent to the dustbin of history then we can begin a deliberative, open, and honest process to reform our nation’s health care system.”

Folks like this dunderhead are indeed dangerous. Repeal he ACA, collapsing the system, and then diddle around figuring out what to do with healthcare. Something they have no real interest in, anymore than they give a crap about real people facing real life problems.

This bozo, and others like him, have had their head up their arse for so long they’ve lost touch with reality. As they continue to spread their fake facts in their efforts to dupe people into believing they are out to help them. Pathetic they are, right to their core.