The Republicans on TV defending Trumpcare this weekend have literally made me extremely nauseous. I've never seen such bull**** greed and lying in the face of so much pain and suffering.

When they decide not to completely lie it up, the arguments are as solid as "No way we're going to let Jimmy Kimmel tell us how to run our healthcare system."

Actual conversation with a Trumpkin I know. He drives a van for Medicaid patients who are like 75% recovering addicts going to methadone clinics and 20% mental health patients seeing their doctors or going to care programs.

Me: This new Trump healthcare thing sucks.
Him: Yeah, luckily it doesn't affect me. It's mostly women who get hurt.
Me: Ummmm no. It's gonna trash Medicaid, along essential care like mental health and the opioid crisis, etc. A lot of people you see every day will get sick. Many will die.
Him: I don't do drugs, and I don't have Medicaid.
Me: Wtf did you hear what I just said? (obviously he doesn't give a **** so I shifted gears) Besides, you'll be driving an empty van all day. Say goodbye to work.
Him: Oh well, I'll find another job.
Me: Wait, you're diabetic aren't you? That'll cost you $5500 a year on the new plan.
Him: (interested now) Extra? No way they'll let that happen! The bill won't pass. When does it kick in?

****ing jerkoff.

You obviously missed "Trumped up, trickle down" which caught on like wildfire

Republicanism in a nutshell. "But what's in it for me?"

****ing scum of the earth

This quote was referring to Megyn Kelly suddenly realizing after having a baby that mandated maternity leave might be a good thing, but it basically sums up people who vote Republican very well.

I had a random thought today that I haven't really fleshed out in terms of exactly what it would mean with regard to the policy, but what if the next time Democrats were in power they proposed single payer in a way that the rich didn't mind? Like what if they put in single payer but the benefits had some exclusions? Here's my crazy idea...

I'm not talking straight up high deductible/emergency stuff only being covered, and preventive care would be covered, but there would be non-essential benefits that weren't included that people could buy on the private market. I don't have the expertise to figure out what might fit in that, but unnecessary tests/treatments that are elective come to mind, so does erectile dysfunction. That's the obvious example, but I'm sure there are plenty.

While the rich WOULD be taxed more to pay for this plan, they would be able to get tax credits against the purchase of private coverage/Cadillac plans, and the poor/middle class would also be taxed approximately 10% of their income on it (this would be in lieu of their premiums obviously). Perhaps 10% for the first 50K, then an additional 5% up to 200K, then an additional 3% after that. Something along those lines, and obviously you'd have to get into the cost and make the math work. Companies with under ~200 employees might pay like $1,500 per full-time employee, so they should see this as a benefit versus providing the insurance itself.

People who were over the age of 27, unemployed (let's say work 20 hours a week or less), and not full-time students for more than a year could be forced out of this plan onto Medicaid, which would be trimmed down to more like liability coverage - yearly checkups and serious issues would be covered, minor ones would not. Perhaps they could stay on through volunteering for various forms of government service while proving they were conducting an active job search.

We'd be holding our nose on some of the provisions, but once it was in place it would be far easier to go from this to pure single payer than getting from where we are now to this type of idea. It also allows for really easy responses to some of the attacks...

R: The poor are mooching.
D: They're paying 10%.

R: The unemployed don't have to pay in. Freeloaders!
D: They get kicked off after a year. We already had Medicaid for those people, and now they're actually getting fewer benefits.

R: It takes away choice.
D: Those who can afford it can buy a plan to cover whatever they want with whatever doctor they want. Those who cannot will at least be covered and treated.

R: It's socialized medicine.
D: It's a government plan to compete with private plans. If the private plans can't beat the government that you're always calling inefficient, then I guess they're not very good, are they? The tax credits for private plans mean that there is still competition and the government plan is not at a distinct advantage.

R: This will kill jobs, especially in the healthcare industry.
D: It will shift jobs, it won't kill them overall. Businesses will not have to worry about paying as much for benefits, or any of the involved hassle, which should increase profit margins and allow them to hire more people. Many of the people working for health insurance companies could become government employees and run the government plan.

It could also be passed with a sunset provision to align with a presidential election year (because we want to make sure it's decided in a high turnout election), so that we'd have an additional talking point of, "We've tried the free market for years, we tried a market-based approach with regulation, it's worth a shot for 12 years. If it's unpopular, it won't be renewed in 2032."

Obviously the specifics are hazy and the details are lacking, but the basic premise is that if the Democrats can come up with an approach that doesn't slam the rich as much right away, they can get a form of healthcare through with less lobbying money being spent on the other side before and after it's passed. Once it's in place and widely popular, expanding it to full single payer is much easier than trying to go from 0 to 100 all at once.

How is he ever going to learn to be anything other than part of the moocher class? This is what you always talk about with your bootstraps BS when it's directed at actual poor people that actually have to worry about **** like this day to day. ****ing Mitt Romney "get a loan from your parents" bull****

Is he lying? I thought this was still true, but that your pre-existing condition might just place you in a high-risk pool where your premiums would wipe out most American households

Good thing COBRA is a a gift from God with zero government interference whatsoever.

Does pre-existing come into play if you maintain continuous coverage ?

I don't think so. But I can't get anyone to really confirm other than reading factcheck.org. http://www.factcheck.org/2017/05/pre...itions-debate/

The weird thing is even Republicans aren't pointing that out. Which means they're just as bad at messaging as Dems. It's like both sides are allergic to anything except hollow platitudes. But then again I haven't been listening to Republicans all morning on the talk shows.

In some ways it makes a little sense. One of the gripes against Obamacare was that you could just wait until you got sick to sign up. Either by waiting until next year enrollment, or create some 'life event' like quit your job or something.

No, but the question is whether or not being kicked off a plan due to a death spiral would count as a disruption. Do they define continuous coverage as being on the same plan? With the same insurer? If Aetna death spirals my plan, can Blue Cross charge me more for my pre-existing conditions? The coverage gap can be no more than ~60 days, right? How long can Blue Cross take to review my application? Is 61 days a standard processing length? "Whoops, looks like you juuuust missed it sir."

We don't have all of the information on this, so I think most of us are assuming the worst from the GOP because that's the prudent move.

Presumably you could quit a plan, then join another and not have health status be factored into your rate. I don't think the 61 days factors in as long as you apply soon enough.

CA had basically this provision pre-Obamacare.

One way you got ****ed under that system though - IIRC - is they forced you to take your full COBRA before getting private insurance guaranteed issue. So for me that was $650/month for 18 months before I could get cheap private insurance at $100/month. That sucked. I just went without for a while, then eventually got Kaiser - which I really liked.

I wouldn't be surprised though if the continuous coverage doesn't apply if you willingly quit a plan. So if your plan death spirals you have to wait until it literally dies. That's what happened to my uncle. He was in Kansas though - which might not have had the 60 day thing at all.

This should be everyone's default position whenever ignorant on a subject. It'll pay off bigly and you'd hardly ever look dumb. "Liberal of the gaps" argument FTW.

Yeah, I remember that issue with COBRA... Which, if you're making under 30K which more than 25% of households are, COBRA is 26% of your pay. That's for one person, and that income figure is for households. So even if you were paying half that before, it's still an enormous increase. So a lot of people would likely be forced off in that scenario.

The willingly quit a plan thing is interesting too - like, what if I sign up for one before I quit the next so that there's no gap. That should be okay right? Or are they only required to not discriminate if your plan was involuntarily taken away from you. Can they discriminate if you just choose to switch plans?

There are so many unanswered questions.

COBRA is of course only a thing because of liberals, lol Democrats letting the GOP get away with "see, healthcare sucks, look at COBRA, it's so expensive" when their plan is literally for those people to **** off and die.

Right, isn't essentially saying "You can have health care but it will bankrupt you" just a different way of saying you're being denied coverage?

No. It's FREEDOM

Or another way of saying, "You have access!"

The institutions, demography and cultural norms of the United States are not analogous to those of the WHO's top-ranked countries.

For example, in France#1:
The United States, of course, has a very low level of national solidarity, and even that seems to be eroding by the day.

I think your analysis (which is no doubt very common) just reduces to saying that:

1. Socialism is the proper ideology to use when designing a health care system; and,
2. This is supported by the outcomes in wealthy, homogeneous states whose healthcare systems were designed during the hyper-nationalist era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In a majority-minority post-nationalist state with strong anti-socialist norms like the US, I don't think this analysis is very actionable.

C.f. Our House's amazing anecdote above.

Sounds like 1. We admit that the left actually have the most effective policies and that 2. apparently we need to implement segregation in order to be the most effective possible.

Also kind of wierd that we hear a lot about comparing homogeneity and population size and economic make up when it comes to comparing Nordic economic systems or any left leaning implementation but the new Conservative shining star of heathcare policies we should imitate is an island city state of a few million and 720 square miles with the GDP of mid sized US city.

Subfallen- You are describing why we don't have single payer, not why it wouldn't work here. Also you are roughly the one millionth clueless right winger to try that "I'll hide my personal, normative opposition to health care for the poor behind a faux-intellectual descriptive charade!", and it has ~never fooled anyone.

Subfallen: You missed this part of Reasonable Guy's post.

I wasn't paying attention at the time, but no doubt similar "incompatible with our values" types of arguments were lobbed at Obamacare, but lo and behold, it is now favored by a majority of Americans.

CNN is the WOAT (warning autoplay): http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/07/politi...hca/index.html

They rightly call out this guy for saying "Nobody dies because they don't have access to health care". But then they proceed to just blather on about how this is politically toxic and he's going to pay - with not one iota about *why* it's wrong and disingenuous.