Sunday, February 26, 2017

I Don't Get the Whole "Repeal and Replace" Bit

My version goes like this.  Picture your doctor telling you that you have a tumor that's destroying your {insert organ name here}.  Then he tells you the treatment is to remove it and replace with a different tumor.  Who wouldn't say "WTF???" to that?

Why should we want to replace it?  Why wouldn't we just want to burn it to the ground and do everything we can to create a free market in medical care?   From what I can see, the problem with healthcare is over regulation and a thoroughly broken market because of it.  This brokenness has been building for over a hundred years.  Naturally, anything that took a hundred years to break is going to be hard to unscrew. 
(Michael P. Ramirez cartoons). It's going to feel this slow no matter what, but the Stupid Party pulled a major stupid by passing House bills to end Obamacare over 40 times, but not bothering to have a backup plan ready to drop in place.  It's not like they haven't known since November 8th that Trump was going to be president and this was high priority.  Obamacare wasn't written after he was inaugurated, it was written in advance; parts of it years in advance.  It was deliberately and strategically made hard to repeal. 

The stunning reminder to me of how fubar everything is was in a short story about California Senator Kamala Harris on the Blaze.  There have been reports that the coming reform cuts federal payments for Medicaid.  It boils down to this astounding statement.
But according to Harris, the Medicaid rollback would be detrimental to Californians because “1 in 2 Californian children depend on Medicaid,” the junior California senator tweeted Friday.
Half of the children in California are on Medicaid?  Half?!?  I don't think you could find a bigger indictment of California or of Democratic policies than that.  Unlike Harris, I don't define success as having half the population on welfare.  Success is getting them off welfare. Something needs to be done for those children, but is the solution to enlarge the welfare state or direct efforts to getting them out of poverty? 

Few people alive today have any memory of a working healthcare market; even fewer than the number of people who can envision a world without constant inflation.  There was a great interview last week, on Tucker Carlson's show in which the guest, Steven Weissman, former president of Palm Springs hospital in Hialeah, Florida, was making this point about the market being broken and nobody being able to know the prices for procedures or tests.  Go watch that video. 

5 comments:

  1. 1/3 of Californians are on Medicaid - so yes, its not surprising that 1/2 of the kids are too. I love this state, born and raised here, but we have had terrible leadership since the weight- lifter was elected governor.

    The BEST thing that could happen is for the Medicaid grants to be cut bigly. This would raise taxes on the wealthy as well as the poor. Income taxes on one, sales taxes on the other. The middle class pays both and should finally see how stupid uncontrolled illegal immigration really is. And take out their anger on this Democrat- only state in 2018.

    My worry is that Trump will blink and listen to the Progs in the Republican Party. Lets hope not.

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  2. What you and the other long service .Gov employees/supporters don't seem to understand is that this is a symptom of a system that is broken beyond any possible repair. Only by herding up the scum that infest our once great nation then KILLING ALL OF THEM RUTHLESSLY can any hope for anything but the communist disasters of Europe and Africa be salvaged from the former USA. ANYTHING short of a "French Revolution" type event that EXTERMINATES the ruling "elite" and left will end in failure. Just like Africa and Europe. Kill. them. all. NOTHING ELSE can save us now.

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  3. Obamacare was a trap, a hand grenade. It was always intended to blow up and will simply blow up earlier if you rescind it. The congressional Republicans are wise to not want to touch it because it will blow up on them. There is a reason why Obamacare wasn't fully implemented until Obama left office.
    But here is the solution. Through executive action make a few simple changes. First remove the mandatory rule for both recipients and companies. That is regardless of the size of your company you are not obligated to participate in Obamacare. Second remove the taxes that were implemented with Ocare. Third, end all subsidies. That is; if you like your Obamacare you can keep it but YOU must pay for it. And last; suspend the sign up limitations for health insurance and allow people to leave Ocare today and sign up with another provider. Let the ACA die on the vine.

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  4. Democrats want to micromanage your life. Republicans also want to micromanage your life. This theory seems to match observations.

    Why wouldn't we just want to burn it to the ground and do everything we can to create a free market in medical care?

    Legislators and regulators don't work for you, they work for themselves and their financial investors.

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  5. As a side note, how much do you want to bet that the 50% of California children on Medicaid are illegals, or the anchor babies of illegals?

    Pre-existing conditions should be charged premiums at a rate consonant with what that care will cost, and the 21 to 26 year old "children" need to be cut loose. It's bad enough that their parents are already stuck with raising their grandchildren, without being stuck with the cost of continuing to care for their adult children as well.

    I was on my own at 17, and I'm sure some Boomers were taking care of themselves even younger than that. Several of my wife's (and my) grandparents had to take care of the whole family when they were in their teens, working several jobs to hold things together, due to the father or both parents having died, walked out, or been too ill/disabled to work.

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