The Gop passed with Pence's vote to open debate. I am not really sure why McCain voted for it. They won't have 49 votes out of 52 to gut Medicaid. So I think in the end they can vote to end the mandate. THAT will give Trump something to say "I won." Of course it changes nothing substantively about the HC markets.
McCain correctly pointed out that the way to do this thing is negotiate in committee and on the floor to get 60 votes to pass something that everyone has some skin in so they have to make it work. I realize the vote keeps Trump off the Turtle, but I'm not sure I see it getting the country closer the end zone, as McCain sees the endzone.
Are you talking about Medicare or Medicaid? Because people often confuse the two. Most of the butt hurt is because people think Old people will lose their health insurance, and that is Medicare. medicaid is basically health care for those who can't afford health care, which has been around a long time, and gives lie to the whole "people will die" thing about repealing Obamacare.
Ryan's goal is to make Medicaid block granted and Medicare a voucher program. In the Senate, Collins, Murkowski, Portman, Heller, Coker, the lady from WV, and probably others really cannot vote to block grant Medicaid. Medicaid expanded under Obamacare to cover something like 20 million more than before Obamacare. Then there's the money going to subsidies, but that's another question.
But if they just leave most everything in place, beyond repealing the mandate, they don't really change much. I think that bipartisan they could probably kill the mandate, raise some money to cover preexisting in a separate insurance pool.
More importantly, it just doesn't cost that much money to insure well people from everyday stuff. And well people can shop for bargains in stuff like physicals and having corn or toenail removed. Eventually we all get cancer or have a stroke or something. That costs money, and you can't really shop for chemo. IMO, at some point sane people need to stop thinking that Ayn Rand has a model for healthcare or that do we really want to have everyone on Medicare where the only cost control is 24 doctors in Washington deciding how much a knee replacement is worth/
Something has to be done, and it's amazing that dems were so gung ho to try Obamacare without really knowing what it would do, and are now crying that "WE DON"T KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN" if even a smidge of reform is tried.
If single payer champions were honest they would have tried this in a single, mid-sized to small State already. that they can't get it done at that scale means it will never freaking work full scale.
I think the dems knew what Obamacare should have done. The outline was in Krugman's Conscience of a Liberal, which is a play on Goldwater's conscience of a conservative, which is still a good read, btw.
The proposal was to hike taxes on the wealthy and passive investment to provide each American w/o insurance enough to be on Medicare, but let them buy insurance competitively. The premise was that Medicare has the lowest overhead, so ultimately Medicare would be the logical choice, and we'd be on our way to single payer, which is the dems view of the promised land, and has been since the 1930s. Basically, the dems got wet feet on really soaking the rich, because the Great Recession was still in full swing.
Paul Rand's dream is doing away with Medicare except as a voucher that will not be enough to cover really sick people. Reagan opposed Medicare because it gave an entitlement to people who really didn't need one. But he was never against covering those who really needed it.
Neither one is, imo, very realistic. I'd rather shop for an internist to check by bloodpressure, cholesterol and possible cancer, and even a arthritis doc to monitor my meds and blood levels. I don't need the gummit to help me decide what treatment I need. But Paul Rand is trying to **** us all with his annotated copy of Atlas Shrugged when we get cancer or something. So are the Kochs
