How To Achieve Single Payer Health Care

[HappyJoy]

I wish the Republicans would offer something. I'm more in the governmental single payer camp but what you posted looks like it could be viable and at the very least we could have an actual debate about ideas rather than just shitting on the other guy, like the post above mine.

Perhaps if you tried actually LOOKING to see what the GOP is offering, rather than just taking the media's word that there isn't anything, you might be a bit more informed and the debate could take place.

The gop is offering something other than health care savings accts?

Don't forget tort reform, that'll change everything.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Please don't get ahead of me and think you know where I am going and what I desire.

So I guess I should state up front what I desire.

I believe you should be buying your health insurance the same way you buy your auto, home, and life insurance. You should be able to pick up the phone and call any insurance company in the country and haggle for what you want. If you don't like what they are offering, you can hang up and call another company.

This would provide you with the maximum freedom and, more importantly, the maximum bargaining leverage.

Instead, you are hostage to whatever your employer offers you, if you are lucky enough to have an employer who offers health insurance.

In turn, your employer is hostage to whatever insurance companies are allowed to sell them insurance in their geographical area.

In turn, the insurance companies are hostage to whatever health care providers are allowed to operate in their geographical region.

The whole system is a mess, thanks to government interference in the market.

The government is the biggest player in the health insurance market, and gets to write the rules for its private sector competitors!

How's that been working for ya?

If you were able to buy your health insurance the same way you buy auto, home, and life insurance, you would get long time customer discounts, and bundle discounts, and all the other discounts you enjoy from those other forms of insurance.

As it is now, every time you change your job you start all over from scratch.

Bogus.

But...the Republican Party has demonstrated they have absolutely no intention of ever putting a plan on the table which will provide you maximum freedom, maximum leverage, and lower costs.

The Republican Party has totally abdicated their role in solving our health care problems. To distract you from this fact, they attack the other guys' plans. They cast blame rather than do the hard work. They are critics rather than problem solvers. Whiners rather than helpers.

So what good are they?

Oh, by the way. When Republicans talk about buying health insurance "across state lines", they are being very misleading. They are not talking about being able to buy health insurance from any company in the country.

Thought you should know that.


The road to serfdom, next post.

We already lived with republican health care policy. We had it before Obamacare.

Which caused 45 thousand Americans to die every year because they couldn't get health insurance.

The republican health care policy is to kick as many sick people off insurance as possible so that premiums stay low for young healthy people. The insurance companies could kick you off your policy for any reason using the "preexisting condition" clause. Brought to us by republicans.

The problem with that is that sick people die. Everyone gets older and sick at sometime in their life.

Medical bills were the leading cause of bankruptcy in those years. We saw boxes at check stands in grocery stores asking for change because someone has cancer and can't pay for the treatment. Or we saw pancake breakfasts or raffles to raise money to pay for someone's treatment so they won't die.

Meanwhile rich people could get all the help they needed or wanted.

The problem with letting "the market" determine rates is that those who need health care most have to pay rates that are so high, they can't afford insurance.

The problem with buying insurance from any state is that not all states have the same laws for insurance coverage. Insurance companies will go to those states so they can charge the most for the least coverage. While people die because they don't have the proper coverage. Or we the tax payer gets to pay the bill.

The problem with health care is insurance companies. All they do is pay the bills. Why give someone your money for decades for that company to take at least 30% off the top for themselves then when you need to use that money you paid them to pay your medical bills, they deny the claim and kick you off the policy. It's YOUR money. Yet they can legally deny you the right to pay your medical bills with it.

I say remove the insurance companies. Or highly regulate them so that they don't continue to cause people to die while the insurance company gets filthy rich.

What an utter load of horseshit. You think that half-assed, overly micro-managed mess before Obamacare was what Republicans wanted?

And these canards about "45 thousand died", etc. that you're spouting. Does the DNC just bypass the media and upload directly to your brain, a la The Matrix, or what?

 

[Rambunctious]

Don't forget tort reform, that'll change everything

Tort reform did help in California...I don't want to think about what the costs in CA today would be without it...We had people getting the wrong pimple lanced suing for millions....

 

[HappyJoy]

Please don't get ahead of me and think you know where I am going and what I desire.

So I guess I should state up front what I desire.

I believe you should be buying your health insurance the same way you buy your auto, home, and life insurance. You should be able to pick up the phone and call any insurance company in the country and haggle for what you want. If you don't like what they are offering, you can hang up and call another company.

This would provide you with the maximum freedom and, more importantly, the maximum bargaining leverage.

Instead, you are hostage to whatever your employer offers you, if you are lucky enough to have an employer who offers health insurance.

In turn, your employer is hostage to whatever insurance companies are allowed to sell them insurance in their geographical area.

In turn, the insurance companies are hostage to whatever health care providers are allowed to operate in their geographical region.

The whole system is a mess, thanks to government interference in the market.

The government is the biggest player in the health insurance market, and gets to write the rules for its private sector competitors!

How's that been working for ya?

If you were able to buy your health insurance the same way you buy auto, home, and life insurance, you would get long time customer discounts, and bundle discounts, and all the other discounts you enjoy from those other forms of insurance.

As it is now, every time you change your job you start all over from scratch.

Bogus.

But...the Republican Party has demonstrated they have absolutely no intention of ever putting a plan on the table which will provide you maximum freedom, maximum leverage, and lower costs.

The Republican Party has totally abdicated their role in solving our health care problems. To distract you from this fact, they attack the other guys' plans. They cast blame rather than do the hard work. They are critics rather than problem solvers. Whiners rather than helpers.

So what good are they?

Oh, by the way. When Republicans talk about buying health insurance "across state lines", they are being very misleading. They are not talking about being able to buy health insurance from any company in the country.

Thought you should know that.


The road to serfdom, next post.

We already lived with republican health care policy. We had it before Obamacare.

Which caused 45 thousand Americans to die every year because they couldn't get health insurance.

The republican health care policy is to kick as many sick people off insurance as possible so that premiums stay low for young healthy people. The insurance companies could kick you off your policy for any reason using the "preexisting condition" clause. Brought to us by republicans.

The problem with that is that sick people die. Everyone gets older and sick at sometime in their life.

Medical bills were the leading cause of bankruptcy in those years. We saw boxes at check stands in grocery stores asking for change because someone has cancer and can't pay for the treatment. Or we saw pancake breakfasts or raffles to raise money to pay for someone's treatment so they won't die.

Meanwhile rich people could get all the help they needed or wanted.

The problem with letting "the market" determine rates is that those who need health care most have to pay rates that are so high, they can't afford insurance.

The problem with buying insurance from any state is that not all states have the same laws for insurance coverage. Insurance companies will go to those states so they can charge the most for the least coverage. While people die because they don't have the proper coverage. Or we the tax payer gets to pay the bill.

The problem with health care is insurance companies. All they do is pay the bills. Why give someone your money for decades for that company to take at least 30% off the top for themselves then when you need to use that money you paid them to pay your medical bills, they deny the claim and kick you off the policy. It's YOUR money. Yet they can legally deny you the right to pay your medical bills with it.

I say remove the insurance companies. Or highly regulate them so that they don't continue to cause people to die while the insurance company gets filthy rich.

What an utter load of horseshit. You think that half-assed, overly micro-managed mess before Obamacare was what Republicans wanted?

And these canards about "45 thousand died", etc. that you're spouting. Does the DNC just bypass the media and upload directly to your brain, a la The Matrix, or what?

Maybe back up your points with sources. You sound bitter.

 

[HappyJoy]

Don't forget tort reform, that'll change everything

Tort reform did help in California...I don't want to think about what the costs in CA today would be without it...We had people getting the wrong pimple lanced suing for millions....

Neat. Glad our healthcare woes have been solved. Thank you.

EDIT: Btw, tort reform is mostly bullshit.

New study shows that the savings from 'tort reform' are mythical

The notion has lived on despite copious evidence that that the so-called defensive medicine practiced by doctors merely to stave off lawsuits accounts for, at best, 2% to 3% of U.S. healthcare costs. As for "frivolous lawsuits," they're a problem that exists mostly in the minds of conservatives and the medical establishment.

A new study led by Michael B. Rothberg of the Cleveland Clinic and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association aimed to measure how much defensive medicine there is, really, and how much it costs. The researchers' conclusion is that defensive medicine accounts for about 2.9% of healthcare spending. In other words, out of the estimated $2.7-trillion U.S. healthcare bill, defensive medicine accounts for $78 billion.

As Aaron Carroll observes at the AcademyHealth blog, $78 billion is "not chump change ... but it's still a very small component of overall health care spending." Any "tort reform" stringent enough to make that go away would likely create other costs, such as a rise in medical mistakes generated by the elimination of the oversight exercised by the court system.

Since it doesn't appear that "tort reform" would have any effect on this spending, Carroll says, "there seems little reason to pursue it as a means to dramatically reduce health care spending in the United States."

The prevalence of defensive medicine may be overestimated by doctors themselves, Rothberg and his colleagues found, because many procedures are ordered in part defensively, but partially or mostly for legitimate diagnostic or therapeutic reasons. "Tort reform" would only eliminate orders made purely because of fear of litigation -- that is, 100% defensively -- and that's a tiny percentage of the total.

THere's more, I suggest you read it but you won't.

 

[OldLady]

Please don't get ahead of me and think you know where I am going and what I desire.

So I guess I should state up front what I desire.

I believe you should be buying your health insurance the same way you buy your auto, home, and life insurance. You should be able to pick up the phone and call any insurance company in the country and haggle for what you want. If you don't like what they are offering, you can hang up and call another company.

This would provide you with the maximum freedom and, more importantly, the maximum bargaining leverage.

Instead, you are hostage to whatever your employer offers you, if you are lucky enough to have an employer who offers health insurance.

In turn, your employer is hostage to whatever insurance companies are allowed to sell them insurance in their geographical area.

In turn, the insurance companies are hostage to whatever health care providers are allowed to operate in their geographical region.

The whole system is a mess, thanks to government interference in the market.

The government is the biggest player in the health insurance market, and gets to write the rules for its private sector competitors!

How's that been working for ya?

If you were able to buy your health insurance the same way you buy auto, home, and life insurance, you would get long time customer discounts, and bundle discounts, and all the other discounts you enjoy from those other forms of insurance.

As it is now, every time you change your job you start all over from scratch.

Bogus.

But...the Republican Party has demonstrated they have absolutely no intention of ever putting a plan on the table which will provide you maximum freedom, maximum leverage, and lower costs.

The Republican Party has totally abdicated their role in solving our health care problems. To distract you from this fact, they attack the other guys' plans. They cast blame rather than do the hard work. They are critics rather than problem solvers. Whiners rather than helpers.

So what good are they?

Oh, by the way. When Republicans talk about buying health insurance "across state lines", they are being very misleading. They are not talking about being able to buy health insurance from any company in the country.

Thought you should know that.


The road to serfdom, next post.

I'll Trump you by saying If you don't want to buy health insurance you don't have to. Or if you're very healthy and want one with a large deductible, you should be able to purchase that too.

I agree. If you want to not buy health insurance, you should have the right to be that stupid.

But we are long past those days. Long past. The Republicans have completely abdicated and left you out to dry.

I just don't see medical insurance ever being affordable enough for a good number of people. Medical costs and medications are so high that no matter how much competition there is among insurance companies, you are still going to be paying astronomical premiums, I'm afraid. I don't think for a lot of people it would be about "having the right to be that stupid."
It is a little different than car insurance in that with health insurance, you're talking about a person's life and wellness. If you can't afford car insurance, you don't get a car. If you can't afford health insurance, you don't see a doctor? I dunno about comparing them.

 

[Wyatt earp]

Please don't get ahead of me and think you know where I am going and what I desire.

So I guess I should state up front what I desire.

I believe you should be buying your health insurance the same way you buy your auto, home, and life insurance. You should be able to pick up the phone and call any insurance company in the country and haggle for what you want. If you don't like what they are offering, you can hang up and call another company.

This would provide you with the maximum freedom and, more importantly, the maximum bargaining leverage.

Instead, you are hostage to whatever your employer offers you, if you are lucky enough to have an employer who offers health insurance.

In turn, your employer is hostage to whatever insurance companies are allowed to sell them insurance in their geographical area.

In turn, the insurance companies are hostage to whatever health care providers are allowed to operate in their geographical region.

The whole system is a mess, thanks to government interference in the market.

The government is the biggest player in the health insurance market, and gets to write the rules for its private sector competitors!

How's that been working for ya?

If you were able to buy your health insurance the same way you buy auto, home, and life insurance, you would get long time customer discounts, and bundle discounts, and all the other discounts you enjoy from those other forms of insurance.

As it is now, every time you change your job you start all over from scratch.

Bogus.

But...the Republican Party has demonstrated they have absolutely no intention of ever putting a plan on the table which will provide you maximum freedom, maximum leverage, and lower costs.

The Republican Party has totally abdicated their role in solving our health care problems. To distract you from this fact, they attack the other guys' plans. They cast blame rather than do the hard work. They are critics rather than problem solvers. Whiners rather than helpers.

So what good are they?

Oh, by the way. When Republicans talk about buying health insurance "across state lines", they are being very misleading. They are not talking about being able to buy health insurance from any company in the country.

Thought you should know that.


The road to serfdom, next post.

I'll Trump you by saying If you don't want to buy health insurance you don't have to. Or if you're very healthy and want one with a large deductible, you should be able to purchase that too.

I agree. If you want to not buy health insurance, you should have the right to be that stupid.

But we are long past those days. Long past. The Republicans have completely abdicated and left you out to dry.

How the fuck is saving money stupid? Jesus 12 hours a day people like me are working and covered under workmans comp.

Workman's compensation is insurance. You are contradicting yourself.

But I don't pay for it directly , I get hurt at work they pay and after work it's not like I am going sky diving. I don't need health insurance

 

[LoneLaugher]

Medicare for all achieves it. Takes the profit motive out of health care. The primary motivation needs to be keeping people healthy and caring for them when they are not.

Thanks, but I'd rather have doctors who are motivated by their own self-interest to be amazing, rather than the sort of altruistic sad sacks who go into social work "to help people", while the smart folks blow off med school and go do something that pays.

You want a glorified civil servant treating you, you just go on with your bad self. We'll send flowers to the funeral.

You are a very unhappy person. Travel a bit. You’ll find that doctors the world over lead very fine lives with respect from their community. They may not have a hundred thousand dollars of college debt to repay and they won’t have 6 homes and a dozen cars. But they are quite happy being lifesavers.

Please fuck off. I’ve never found you to be interesting.

 

[g5000]

The feds messed up our health insurance industry...people talked about rising costs in the 90's...shit... it would go up maybe $20 a year...Obamacare increased health insurance cost triple fold in 6 years and has sent many doctors into retirement...it was a sham....just a way for the government to force the haves to pay for the don't haves...that's not a healthcare plan...its a welfare plan...I can't believe congress sat back and allowed that bill through...something as important as your healthcare...Obama should be jailed for what he did to the best healthcare system in the world...that stupid Kenyan idiot...

Here's a quick refresher what it was like before ObamaCare.

 

[iceberg]

Please don't get ahead of me and think you know where I am going and what I desire.

So I guess I should state up front what I desire.

I believe you should be buying your health insurance the same way you buy your auto, home, and life insurance. You should be able to pick up the phone and call any insurance company in the country and haggle for what you want. If you don't like what they are offering, you can hang up and call another company.

This would provide you with the maximum freedom and, more importantly, the maximum bargaining leverage.

Instead, you are hostage to whatever your employer offers you, if you are lucky enough to have an employer who offers health insurance.

In turn, your employer is hostage to whatever insurance companies are allowed to sell them insurance in their geographical area.

In turn, the insurance companies are hostage to whatever health care providers are allowed to operate in their geographical region.

The whole system is a mess, thanks to government interference in the market.

The government is the biggest player in the health insurance market, and gets to write the rules for its private sector competitors!

How's that been working for ya?

If you were able to buy your health insurance the same way you buy auto, home, and life insurance, you would get long time customer discounts, and bundle discounts, and all the other discounts you enjoy from those other forms of insurance.

As it is now, every time you change your job you start all over from scratch.

Bogus.

But...the Republican Party has demonstrated they have absolutely no intention of ever putting a plan on the table which will provide you maximum freedom, maximum leverage, and lower costs.

The Republican Party has totally abdicated their role in solving our health care problems. To distract you from this fact, they attack the other guys' plans. They cast blame rather than do the hard work. They are critics rather than problem solvers. Whiners rather than helpers.

So what good are they?

Oh, by the way. When Republicans talk about buying health insurance "across state lines", they are being very misleading. They are not talking about being able to buy health insurance from any company in the country.

Thought you should know that.


The road to serfdom, next post.

you started off good - bashing an issue and the circumstances around it.

then had to go become your usual REPUBLICANS SUCK self.

if insurance is a work benefit, great. i have it. if i didn't then great, i could go buy it.

the problem becomes doctors have to charge more to pay for "insurance" and "insurance' will only pay up to X value. it's a bullshit stupid game that isn't really centered around right or left, just stupid.

we don't have a medical problem in this country, we have an insurance one.

The gop failed to do anything on HC despite Trump's promises. That's a fact.

yep. they pounced the pooch. but obamas 8 years of work didnt last long either n most people who already had insurance hated obamacare cause their rates went way up.

thats a fact too since both sides have screwed thiscup it seems a bit stupid to pick on one side. my point to the op.

 

[Rambunctious]

Neat. Glad our healthcare woes have been solved. Thank you.

Far from it HJ...the cost of Covered California are the highest in the nation...Doctors are getting harder and harder to find and when you find one you discover after a short while he or she will change the plans he or she will accept...pushing you out the door and on the hunt for another doctor...Meds are astronomical in California some not even being covered so people have to stop them placing their health in serious jeopardy...At least before Obamacare there was a government to keep Doctors hospitals and insurance company's in check...now the Government is calling the shots with no one to hold them to account...its getting worse every day...

 

[g5000]

I wish the Republicans would offer something. I'm more in the governmental single payer camp but what you posted looks like it could be viable and at the very least we could have an actual debate about ideas rather than just shitting on the other guy, like the post above mine.

Perhaps if you tried actually LOOKING to see what the GOP is offering, rather than just taking the media's word that there isn't anything, you might be a bit more informed and the debate could take place.

I have been on this forum since 2011. All through the Obama years right up to the present day, I have asked the following question countless times, "Repeal ObamaCare...AND THEN WHAT!?!?!"

Not once has anyone ever been able to present a GOP replacement. Not once.

Boy, did it piss them off when I asked that question, though!


The GOP "repeal and replace" is a massive hoax.

 

[LoneLaugher]

Please don't get ahead of me and think you know where I am going and what I desire.

So I guess I should state up front what I desire.

I believe you should be buying your health insurance the same way you buy your auto, home, and life insurance. You should be able to pick up the phone and call any insurance company in the country and haggle for what you want. If you don't like what they are offering, you can hang up and call another company.

This would provide you with the maximum freedom and, more importantly, the maximum bargaining leverage.

Instead, you are hostage to whatever your employer offers you, if you are lucky enough to have an employer who offers health insurance.

In turn, your employer is hostage to whatever insurance companies are allowed to sell them insurance in their geographical area.

In turn, the insurance companies are hostage to whatever health care providers are allowed to operate in their geographical region.

The whole system is a mess, thanks to government interference in the market.

The government is the biggest player in the health insurance market, and gets to write the rules for its private sector competitors!

How's that been working for ya?

If you were able to buy your health insurance the same way you buy auto, home, and life insurance, you would get long time customer discounts, and bundle discounts, and all the other discounts you enjoy from those other forms of insurance.

As it is now, every time you change your job you start all over from scratch.

Bogus.

But...the Republican Party has demonstrated they have absolutely no intention of ever putting a plan on the table which will provide you maximum freedom, maximum leverage, and lower costs.

The Republican Party has totally abdicated their role in solving our health care problems. To distract you from this fact, they attack the other guys' plans. They cast blame rather than do the hard work. They are critics rather than problem solvers. Whiners rather than helpers.

So what good are they?

Oh, by the way. When Republicans talk about buying health insurance "across state lines", they are being very misleading. They are not talking about being able to buy health insurance from any company in the country.

Thought you should know that.


The road to serfdom, next post.

you started off good - bashing an issue and the circumstances around it.

then had to go become your usual REPUBLICANS SUCK self.

if insurance is a work benefit, great. i have it. if i didn't then great, i could go buy it.

the problem becomes doctors have to charge more to pay for "insurance" and "insurance' will only pay up to X value. it's a bullshit stupid game that isn't really centered around right or left, just stupid.

we don't have a medical problem in this country, we have an insurance one.

The gop failed to do anything on HC despite Trump's promises. That's a fact.

yep. they pounced the pooch. but obamas 8 years of work didnt last long either n most people who already had insurance hated obamacare cause their rates went way up.

thats a fact too since both sides have screwed thiscup it seems a bit stupid to pick on one side. my point to the op.

Nope. Not a fact. Rates went up at a slower rate than before the ACA. That’s the fact.

 

[Rambunctious]

The feds messed up our health insurance industry...people talked about rising costs in the 90's...shit... it would go up maybe $20 a year...Obamacare increased health insurance cost triple fold in 6 years and has sent many doctors into retirement...it was a sham....just a way for the government to force the haves to pay for the don't haves...that's not a healthcare plan...its a welfare plan...I can't believe congress sat back and allowed that bill through...something as important as your healthcare...Obama should be jailed for what he did to the best healthcare system in the world...that stupid Kenyan idiot...

Here's a quick refresher what it was like before ObamaCare.

If that graph is suggesting costs went down after Obamacare its wrong...costs went up...I know.....I live in CA...

Above the rate of inflation? well that's a given...

 

[HappyJoy]

Neat. Glad our healthcare woes have been solved. Thank you.

Far from it HJ...the cost of Covered California are the highest in the nation...Doctors are getting harder and harder to find and when you find one you discover after a short while he or she will change the plans he or she will accept...pushing you out the door and on the hunt for another doctor...Meds are astronomical in California some not even being covered so people have to stop them placing their health in serious jeopardy...At least before Obamacare there was a government to keep Doctors hospitals and insurance company's in check...now the Government is calling the shots with no one to hold them to account...its getting worse every day...

Tort reform is mostly bullshit.

New study shows that the savings from 'tort reform' are mythical

The notion has lived on despite copious evidence that that the so-called defensive medicine practiced by doctors merely to stave off lawsuits accounts for, at best, 2% to 3% of U.S. healthcare costs. As for "frivolous lawsuits," they're a problem that exists mostly in the minds of conservatives and the medical establishment.

A new study led by Michael B. Rothberg of the Cleveland Clinic and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association aimed to measure how much defensive medicine there is, really, and how much it costs. The researchers' conclusion is that defensive medicine accounts for about 2.9% of healthcare spending. In other words, out of the estimated $2.7-trillion U.S. healthcare bill, defensive medicine accounts for $78 billion.

As Aaron Carroll observes at the AcademyHealth blog, $78 billion is "not chump change ... but it's still a very small component of overall health care spending." Any "tort reform" stringent enough to make that go away would likely create other costs, such as a rise in medical mistakes generated by the elimination of the oversight exercised by the court system.

Since it doesn't appear that "tort reform" would have any effect on this spending, Carroll says, "there seems little reason to pursue it as a means to dramatically reduce health care spending in the United States."

The prevalence of defensive medicine may be overestimated by doctors themselves, Rothberg and his colleagues found, because many procedures are ordered in part defensively, but partially or mostly for legitimate diagnostic or therapeutic reasons. "Tort reform" would only eliminate orders made purely because of fear of litigation -- that is, 100% defensively -- and that's a tiny percentage of the total.

That's why the suppression of malpractice lawsuits has remained part of Republican and conservative orthodoxy despite the evidence that its impact on healthcare spending would be minimal. Even in conservative healthcare pundit Avik Roy's supposedly objective proposed alternative to the Affordable Care Act (which we examined here), malpractice "reform" retains its pride of place.

Roy acknowledges the findings that defensive medicine accounts for only 2% to 3% of spending, but writes, "nonetheless, reform is warranted." He asserts, curiously, that "the U.S. health care system is uniquely vulnerable to frivolous malpractice lawsuits." But if the numbers don't validate that claim, what does?

The minimal impact of defensive medicine on healthcare costs demonstrates the injustice of the stringent limits on malpractice lawsuits advocated by doctors, insurance companies and Republican policymakers.

As we've pointed out in the past, "pain-and-suffering" damage caps and other stratagems to discourage malpractice lawsuits benefit mostly insurers. Their impact falls disproportionately on women and families with infants, because their economic damages, which remain subject to jury awards, are hard to estimate and typically underestimated.

As for "frivolous lawsuits," defined as cases that should never have been brought at all, they're a lot rarer than most tort reform advocates admit. Studies have documented that the vast majority of them don't yield a payment to the plaintiff. The converse is a bigger problem -- genuinely injured patients who can't get redress because the courthouse doors have been shut to them. The victims there are often lower-income or unemployed patients.

The quintessential tort reform law is California's MICRA, to the state's shame. The Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act capped noneconomic and nonmedical damages in malpractice to $250,000 in 1975. Inflation has eroded that sum to the equivalent today of about $57,000 in 1975 dollars.

To have retained its value, the MICRA limit would have to be raised to about $1.1 million today. That's the goal of Proposition 46 on the November ballot. Even though the MICRA increase has been yoked to a silly plan for drug testing of doctors, it's worth your vote.

Roy's proposal would impose the same $250,000 limit on noneconomic damages for any patient receiving a federal health insurance subsidy under the Affordable Care Act or enrolled in Medicaid, Medicare or any other federal program.

Why them? Apparently only because they're within the grasp of federal law. Roy all but acknowledges that there's no legitimate economic reason for this punitive approach. It won't save a significant amount of money. It won't change the direction of healthcare costs. It's just nastiness, and as is usual with conservatives approaches to healthcare, it punishes the most defenseless members of society. Healthcare policy should do just the opposite.

 

[g5000]

Nope. Not a fact. Rates went up at a slower rate than before the ACA. That’s the fact.

Um. See post 69.

 

[g5000]

Before ObamaCare, the majority of personal bankruptcies in America were the result of medical bills: http://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(09)00404-5/abstract

Background
Our 2001 study in 5 states found that medical problems contributed to at least 46.2% of all bankruptcies. Since then, health costs and the numbers of un- and underinsured have increased, and bankruptcy laws have tightened.

Methods
We surveyed a random national sample of 2314 bankruptcy filers in 2007, abstracted their court records, and interviewed 1032 of them. We designated bankruptcies as “medical” based on debtors' stated reasons for filing, income loss due to illness, and the magnitude of their medical debts.

Results
Using a conservative definition, 62.1% of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical; 92% of these medical debtors had medical debts over $5000, or 10% of pretax family income. The rest met criteria for medical bankruptcy because they had lost significant income due to illness or mortgaged a home to pay medical bills. Most medical debtors were well educated, owned homes, and had middle-class occupations. Three quarters had health insurance. Using identical definitions in 2001 and 2007, the share of bankruptcies attributable to medical problems rose by 49.6%. In logistic regression analysis controlling for demographic factors, the odds that a bankruptcy had a medical cause was 2.38-fold higher in 2007 than in 2001.

Conclusions
Illness and medical bills contribute to a large and increasing share of US bankruptcies.

 

[g5000]

The feds messed up our health insurance industry...people talked about rising costs in the 90's...shit... it would go up maybe $20 a year...Obamacare increased health insurance cost triple fold in 6 years and has sent many doctors into retirement...it was a sham....just a way for the government to force the haves to pay for the don't haves...that's not a healthcare plan...its a welfare plan...I can't believe congress sat back and allowed that bill through...something as important as your healthcare...Obama should be jailed for what he did to the best healthcare system in the world...that stupid Kenyan idiot...

Here's a quick refresher what it was like before ObamaCare.

If that graph is suggesting costs went down after Obamacare its wrong...costs went up...I know.....I live in CA...

Above the rate of inflation? well that's a given...

No one is saying costs went down. You need to learn how to read graphs.

The rate of growth in costs before ObamaCare was higher.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Amazing, but when you take the "profit motive" out of the private sector and give it to the public sector, it ends up COSTING MORE AND MORE AND MORE.


Government leftists are not altruists. They are KLEPTOCRATS who STEAL and LIE and HATE and DISCRIMINATE.

Nope. Sorry. Medicare costs less. Fact. Eat shit.

Costs less than WHAT, exactly? How are you measuring it? And oh, how's the quality comparison? You got that at your fingertips, too?

 

[g5000]

The very reason we have ObamaCare is because health care costs were skyrocketing for DECADES and the people were crying out for a solution.

The Republican solution was to do NOTHING.

If things were going hunky-dory before Obama, we would not have ObamaCare.