The Goat Pen

If the individual mandate were to be repealed and Americans were no longer required to purchase the Obamacare-mandated levels of health insurance coverage, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) believes that 15 million Americans would no longer purchase such coverage.[1]

Some, including Jonathan Gruber, believe that the CBO is overestimating the impact of repealing the mandate. Gruber was one of the architects of the healthcare law.[1]

Politically, the impact of these projections is significant since the individual mandate has long been the most unpopular part of Obamacare. Recent polling shows that two-thirds of Americans would like to see it repealed.[2] For many, the idea of the government forcing anybody to buy anything is in conflict with America’s commitment to individual freedom.

Additionally, if the CBO projections are correct, there are 15 million Americans who would directly benefit from the repeal. Typically, when people are directly impacted by a law, their support or opposition is more intense than that of more casual observers.

On the other hand, if Gruber is correct, the Republican plans to repeal and replace Obamacare would have a much smaller impact than the CBO expects.

If the individual mandate were to be repealed, many Americans might be interested in purchasing less comprehensive and less expensive coverage. The CBO has offered no estimates of how many might take advantage of such alternatives. It is currently illegal for insurance companies to offer less expensive plans offering less comprehensive coverage.

https://today.yougov.com/news/2017/02/2 ... l-mandate/

Yep, almost 2/3rds in this poll. It's around 50% in others, but the point is taken. The mandate is the LEAST popular part of obamacare.

Whereas the MOST popular is the demand that insurers accept customers with their pre-existing conditions. 80-85% approval in every poll. But the thing is, that sets up the classic adverse selection spiral for the insurance companies, whereby many healthy gamblers can go without or shift into crap policies, which means big rate hikes for everybody left behind to make up for the shortfall. Guaranteed.

The only way to avoid that Catch 22 is to do away with the pre-existing requirement as you toss out the individual mandate. Then we're back to the same sorry shit we were 7 years ago, with many millions without coverage, even more many millions with crap coverage or policies that have riders excluding the coverage that is truly needed. Chapter 7 attorneys will rejoice for sure.

http://time.com/money/4765443/obamacare ... y-decline/ How Obamacare Slashed Personal Bankruptcies

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... id=U142DHP

House voted 419 to 3 to sanction Russia but Trump is going to try to veto it. I'm not sure Putin understands that those kinds of numbers make a veto problematic.

without the mandate the pyramid scheme fails


then again, it failed with the mandate too

"CBO's Secret: 73% Of Coverage Difference Between Obamacare & GOP Bills Driven By Individual Mandate"

https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothec ... a006236270

sardis wrote:"CBO's Secret: 73% Of Coverage Difference Between Obamacare & GOP Bills Driven By Individual Mandate"

https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothec ... a006236270

So I read that article, supposedly some dish from a CBO insider. What I didn't read in that article:

• The current Director of the CBO is a republican, a former conservative economist in the Bush administration
  The CBO Director was appointed by a republican congress
  The individual mandate was conceived by republicans
  A republican governor was the first to make the individual mandate into law

So, what in the article is incorrect?

Before Obamacare, the US healthcare system was broken because premiums and deductibles were always skyrocketing and lower income people couldn't afford it.

Under Obamacare, the US healthcare system has been broken because premiums and deductibles have been skyrocketing and lower income people can't afford it.

If the Republicans repeal and replace Obamacare, the US healthcare system will be broken because premiums and deductibles will continue skyrocketing and lower income people won't be able to afford it.

If the Republicans fail to repeal and replace Obamacare, the US healthcare system will continue to be broken because premiums and deductibles will continue to skyrocket and lower income people won't be able to afford it.

Basic Medicare for all.

Eventually.

Agreed.

Instead of very good healthcare for most, and no healthcare for some, we will have poor healthcare for all.

Go down to the nearest VA hospital and see our future.

Professor Tiger wrote:Agreed.

Instead of very good healthcare for most, and no healthcare for some, we will have poor healthcare for all.

Go down to the nearest VA hospital and see our future.

Didn't say 'VA for all' - hello. People on Medicare love Medicare, regardless of party affiliation. "Keep your government hands of my Medicare" was a staple at Teaparty rallies, remember?. Citizens have wanted to expand Medicare for years, polling around 70% since 2000 on the issue of dropping the age from 62 to 55, and a clear majority desired expanding it for all ages. The only thing public sentiment hasn't been able to overcome is the lobby money generated by the insurance and pharmaceutical giants lo these many years. Hardly a revelation, right..but the refrain remains the same. The root of all evil...

And basic medicare for all is the baseline - of course anyone can go in their wallet for an upgrade. This is America, after all.

problem with basic medicare is its the biggest entitlement expenditure destined to consume most of our federal budget

I think the term is unsustainable

Health insurance companies are killing it. Look at the their stock performance now and the last 30-40 years. All those mega-billions in profits yet they've never forked over so much as an aspirin to anybody.

I think the term is "what the fuck?"

The ultimate leftist goal is single payer. We all know this. It's where this whole Democrat bait and switch game has always been headed.

And single payer, by definition, will abolish private health insurance companies, leaving the whole medical industry run by the federal government. Health insurance companies deserve a lot of the criticism they get. BUT, health insurance companies on their worst day provide health care 10,000x better than the VA, which is 100% government run, on its best day.

As a country, we are deciding to trade in UPS for the Post Office. Or, Amazon for the Sears Roebuck catalog.

It's hard to imagine how everyone else in the world has managed to stay alive.

Cletus wrote:It's hard to imagine how everyone else in the world has managed to stay alive.

For patients in the VA, just staying alive is something of an accomplishment. I don't remember Blue Cross or Anthem or Aetna pulling crap like this:

The Department of Veterans Affairs drew fire in 2014 for manipulating appointment waitlists while veterans died without care, but despite hopes that the agency would clean up its act, it hasn’t fared any better in 2015. In fact, increased scrutiny has resulted in more light shed on incredibly serious problems plaguing the department.

From patients dying while they wait to gross over-medication, here are the top five worst VA scandals of 2015.

1. A year after the waitlist scandal, the number of veterans waiting for care is up by 50 percent....

2. Almost a third of veterans waiting for care have died without appointments.....

3. Marine Corps veteran Jason Simcakoski died from negligence and over-prescription policies at Tomah VA.....

4. VA executives fraudulently obtained $400,000 in relocation expenses.....

5. John Wooditch, former VA inspector general and serial masturbator.....

http://dailycaller.com/2015/12/31/it-wa ... -to-offer/

Cletus, maybe you would care about the deaths of these veterans if they started cross dressing.

bluetick wrote:

Professor Tiger wrote:Agreed.

Instead of very good healthcare for most, and no healthcare for some, we will have poor healthcare for all.

Go down to the nearest VA hospital and see our future.

Didn't say 'VA for all' - hello. People on Medicare love Medicare, regardless of party affiliation. "Keep your government hands of my Medicare" was a staple at Teaparty rallies, remember?. Citizens have wanted to expand Medicare for years, polling around 70% since 2000 on the issue of dropping the age from 62 to 55, and a clear majority desired expanding it for all ages. The only thing public sentiment hasn't been able to overcome is the lobby money generated by the insurance and pharmaceutical giants lo these many years. Hardly a revelation, right..but the refrain remains the same. The root of all evil...

And basic medicare for all is the baseline - of course anyone can go in their wallet for an upgrade. This is America, after all.

why do people love medicare? because it runs on the backs of a health care system supported by capitalism

know any doctors in private practice that only accept medicare patients? know any doctors that would be ok by only having medicare patients?

I'm sure you'll answer with someone but by and large, when there is a healty percentage of doctors who refuse medicare, and when there are doctors who limit their exposure to medicare, the people may love medicare, but only because there are 160 million other people paying to keep the lights on. If we did a switch, family physicians would bail. Every doctor you'd have would be some guy straight off the boat from some third world country because the established guys would go into specialty fields.

Scaramucci comes in , next day says Priebus is the leaker, 2 days later, Priebus is out the door.

Priebus should have never been in the white house to begin with.

He's a snake and he saw his job as undermining Trump's agenda whenever he could

I tend to tune out palace intrigue talk, but I'll say this about Scaramucci: he, his style and his mouth remind me of every native New Yorker I've ever known. Sometimes I think those people rock their babies to sleep at night with lullaby's laden with F bombs.

But they are also direct. I loved the line Scaramucci said yesterday: "This town is full of back stabbers. I'm more of a front stabber." That's funny right there.

Priebus was the conduit between the WH and GOP lawmakers. After the healthcare and the sanction outcomes, Trump has put republicans on notice that he's pissed off bigly and he's willing to go his own way.