Why Do Republicans Oppose A Public Healthcare Option?

Mott the Hoople said:
That’s not quite true. France has the best health care system in the world, in terms of outcomes, at about half the cost per GDP vs the US. France has a private system with a public option.
Click to expand...

According to whom, WHO? Their rankings are for crap and more about "fair and equal" outcomes than quality of care.

However to make those savings and achieve those outcomes they have made it mandatory that private health care operate as non profits. They have either reinvest profits in operational costs, capital cost or labor costs. Profits not reinvested are returned to premium purchasers.
Click to expand...

In the US the problem is we've inherited a system of paying for health care with insurance rather than pay-as-you-go open market care. For routine care, the bulk of your health care needs an open market where you pay personally is the way to go. You have insurance to cover the few times you end up needing something grossly expensive or a hospital stay.
That system evolved from wage and price controls imposed by FDR during WW 2. Employers were not allowed to pay prevailing wages, particularly for jobs that required high levels of skill and training. The result was employers had to come up with alternatives to pay to incentivize workers to want to hire on with them. So, they started offering meals in a company cafeteria (got around issues with rationing people faced and higher prices for food), health insurance ("free" doctor visits etc.), that sort of thing.

Those things had real value and were in lieu of higher pay. When the war ended, these benefits stayed on. Some went away over time, but others stayed, health insurance was one that remained. So, today we're where we are because of rules imposed in WW 2 by FDR.

So how does this work? Because there’s still competition between private sector insurance providers as salaries, raises and bonuses are tied into efficiency. An executive manager can still earn substantial bonuses and salaries.

Does this cost more than purely socialized systems? Yes, significantly so but far less than the insanity which is the US “Supply Side” Healthcare system in which costs and outcomes are secondary to profits.

I think that we will be seeing more calls for Healthcare reform as a fallout from the opiate crisis which is a prime example of why deregulation in healthcare is a real bad idea. With forethought and malice some pharmaceutical companies, solely due to greed, created the opiate epidemic and made over a hundred billion in revenue at a cost to our nation of several trillion dollars, not to mention the human cost.
Click to expand...

The problem with all that is nobody is really looking at true reform. They are just trying to tweak the current system in a vain attempt to make it more cost effective. What we need to do is scrap the whole system and start over with a better system.

The one I've proposed for years is that you make routine care market based and institute a national catastrophic health insurance plan using private insurers but making it universal. The whole of it would incentivize employers to help employees pay routine costs in return for tax breaks making it desirable. Individuals would be incentivized to open and maintain health care savings accounts to pay for their care. At the low end, the government forces--this is for individuals who are unwilling, too myopic, or too stupid to do what's right--individuals to have a savings account for health care. It would use things like the now Earned Income Credit and other government funding to put money in these accounts for people to use for health care.
That gets the insurers out of covering routine care and makes it so that providers have to price on what the market will bear not what they can milk insurers for.

The accountability stage has began as the corporations responsible for this crises and the loss of human life are being held accountable are getting their asses sued off. Purdue Pharmaceutical has already filed for bankruptcy protection and Johnson and Johnson and Cardinal Health are knee deep in the shit too. I’m not convinced though that they will be held fully to account as we all know that ultimately our system is rigged to protect these drug lords.
Click to expand...

Accountability starts with an open market.

What the American public is waiting to see is if we see a repeat of what happened in 2008. Will these companies get bailed out from complete financial ruin by the government and will the executives at these companies responsible for the huge cost and loss of life be held criminally accountable? Fuckin Pablo Escabar was a rank amateur compared to these assholes.
Click to expand...

Government will only make it worse the way we're going now, and the Democrats are leading that charge.


Obama’s single greatest legislative legacy is also his greatest failure. At that time he could have implemented a public option with an existing and workable framework already in place that would have been hugely popular and a third rail for conservative politicians. That is a public option to by into Medicare via your payroll tax.

Instead Obama came up with this Rube Goldberg device, the PPAACA or ACA for short. Which is to be far to complicated. His rational was he wanted bipartisan cooperation from Republicans instead of just unilaterally having Democrats implement a public option via Medicare. Well that backfired on his ass as he couldn’t get any bipartisan support for the ACA so Dems had to implement the ACA unilaterally. Irony of Ironies.
Click to expand...

Obamacare failed because the Democrats wrote it up in secret, passed it without even giving anyone time to really look at it, and cut the Republicans out of the process entirely. This is one-party rule at it's worst and why you don't want a dictatorship running the government.

So the answer to your question as to why Republicans (or Democrats for that matter) won’t support a public option is why should they? We have a system rigged in the favor of the powerful and wealthy and they don’t need to give two shits about us. Let us eat cake is the reality of the situation and we will never see any meaningful reforms to our healthcare system by either party until we’ve dealt with inequality and denutted the Oligarchs who now rule our nation.
Click to expand...

Because a public option is not the answer. It is an answer, but it is nowhere near the best answer. You want a healthcare system that answers to you? Then make it accountable to you, not to an insurance company, not to the government. Insurers and the government don't care about you as an individual. They care only about the overall cost and efficiency of the system in making a reasonable return on investment for them. If that means you get crappy coverage or care, then you get crappy coverage or care. They'll make sure they have a better system for themselves, one that you aren't privy to. Congress already does that for themselves...
Click to expand...
 
gardner said:
According to whom, WHO? Their rankings are for crap and more about "fair and equal" outcomes than quality of care.



In the US the problem is we've inherited a system of paying for health care with insurance rather than pay-as-you-go open market care. For routine care, the bulk of your health care needs an open market where you pay personally is the way to go. You have insurance to cover the few times you end up needing something grossly expensive or a hospital stay.
That system evolved from wage and price controls imposed by FDR during WW 2. Employers were not allowed to pay prevailing wages, particularly for jobs that required high levels of skill and training. The result was employers had to come up with alternatives to pay to incentivize workers to want to hire on with them. So, they started offering meals in a company cafeteria (got around issues with rationing people faced and higher prices for food), health insurance ("free" doctor visits etc.), that sort of thing.

Those things had real value and were in lieu of higher pay. When the war ended, these benefits stayed on. Some went away over time, but others stayed, health insurance was one that remained. So, today we're where we are because of rules imposed in WW 2 by FDR.



The problem with all that is nobody is really looking at true reform. They are just trying to tweak the current system in a vain attempt to make it more cost effective. What we need to do is scrap the whole system and start over with a better system.

The one I've proposed for years is that you make routine care market based and institute a national catastrophic health insurance plan using private insurers but making it universal. The whole of it would incentivize employers to help employees pay routine costs in return for tax breaks making it desirable. Individuals would be incentivized to open and maintain health care savings accounts to pay for their care. At the low end, the government forces--this is for individuals who are unwilling, too myopic, or too stupid to do what's right--individuals to have a savings account for health care. It would use things like the now Earned Income Credit and other government funding to put money in these accounts for people to use for health care.
That gets the insurers out of covering routine care and makes it so that providers have to price on what the market will bear not what they can milk insurers for.



Accountability starts with an open market.



Government will only make it worse the way we're going now, and the Democrats are leading that charge.




Obamacare failed because the Democrats wrote it up in secret, passed it without even giving anyone time to really look at it, and cut the Republicans out of the process entirely. This is one-party rule at it's worst and why you don't want a dictatorship running the government.



Because a public option is not the answer. It is an answer, but it is nowhere near the best answer. You want a healthcare system that answers to you? Then make it accountable to you, not to an insurance company, not to the government. Insurers and the government don't care about you as an individual. They care only about the overall cost and efficiency of the system in making a reasonable return on investment for them. If that means you get crappy coverage or care, then you get crappy coverage or care. They'll make sure they have a better system for themselves, one that you aren't privy to. Congress already does that for themselves...
Click to expand...

you think insurance companies want this? do they have influence?
 
AssHatZombie said:
you think insurance companies want this? do they have influence?
Click to expand...

It doesn't hurt them much if any. They end up providing the mandatory national catastrophic care insurance plans that will actually make them better returns on investment (like whole life insurance does), gives government a role, but at the same time allows individuals to control their own health care and costs on a day-to-day basis.
 
T. A. Gardner said:
It doesn't hurt them much if any. They end up providing the mandatory national catastrophic care insurance plans that will actually make them better returns on investment (like whole life insurance does), gives government a role, but at the same time allows individuals to control their own health care and costs on a day-to-day basis.
Click to expand...

stop it.
 
just to say that insurance companies would be fine with eliminating insurance companies, and that they have no influence is moronic.

you got 0/2 on a basic moron quiz.
 
AssHatZombie said:
you're bullshitting. and you know it.
Click to expand...

No, I'm not. I've argued for my version of a plan for years now. It goes like this (note the exact numbers can be changed to fit things better, it's the ideas here that are important)

First, we institute a National Catastrophic Health insurance program. Everyone is covered. You can choose options from private health insurers with different payment amounts and minimum deductibles. The default is a government one with a deductible equal to the maximum amount allowed in your individual private health care savings account (see below). You can get plans that cover more if you like but you will automatically get the government plan otherwise.
That would make the government deductible be somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000 per year.

Second, all medical expenses out-of-pocket are 100% tax deductible. That means if you have a lot of health care payments you can get most or all of it back off taxes.

Next, everyone is required to have a health care savings account. This is much like requirements for having an account for direct deposit but in the form of an account that pays interest on the money in it but can be withdrawn as necessary to cover medical expenses.
The size of these accounts would be capped at the government catastrophic plan deductible. That is, the most you can put in is the same as that deductible. For persons who have less than that amount in their account and who receive tax return money, EIC, etc., that money gets deposited into that account for health care expenses until you have the maximum in it. Then you can receive such money as you do now. That means for persons who are low income, you will have money to cover health care expenses during the year and can't use your return to buy a 52" TV instead. Too bad for you.
For those who are retired or otherwise don't have an employer account they can have up to double the amount of the deductible in their account.

Employers would be able to create similar accounts for their employees using pre-tax money up to the same limit as the individual accounts. The way these would work is that the employee would submit their medical expense to the employer (or the insurance company managing their accounts), and be reimbursed in full for the cost. At the end of each year, any amount remaining in the account would be split between the employer and employee. The employee gets a bonus for being healthy, the employer can roll over their half into the next year's account tax free so that eventually after 5 to 8 years these accounts are mostly self supporting with the employer no longer having to contribute to most of them. This also incentivizes the employee to shop for the best deals on health care to keep costs down to get a bigger bonus.

The government's role is supervising the whole of this making sure everyone is not cheating. The insurance companies still issue catastrophic policies and would manage most corporation's employee health care accounts. Individuals would be making their own health care decisions. There would be no 'in system' nonsense or requirements to see only certain providers.

That takes government out of running health care--except for the indolent and lazy where they force them have an individual account and provide catastrophic coverage. For everyone else you manage your own health care costs and only have to deal with insurance if you had something catastrophic occur.
 
T. A. Gardner said:
No, I'm not. I've argued for my version of a plan for years now. It goes like this (note the exact numbers can be changed to fit things better, it's the ideas here that are important)

First, we institute a National Catastrophic Health insurance program. Everyone is covered. You can choose options from private health insurers with different payment amounts and minimum deductibles. The default is a government one with a deductible equal to the maximum amount allowed in your individual private health care savings account (see below). You can get plans that cover more if you like but you will automatically get the government plan otherwise.
That would make the government deductible be somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000 per year.

Second, all medical expenses out-of-pocket are 100% tax deductible. That means if you have a lot of health care payments you can get most or all of it back off taxes.

Next, everyone is required to have a health care savings account. This is much like requirements for having an account for direct deposit but in the form of an account that pays interest on the money in it but can be withdrawn as necessary to cover medical expenses.
The size of these accounts would be capped at the government catastrophic plan deductible. That is, the most you can put in is the same as that deductible. For persons who have less than that amount in their account and who receive tax return money, EIC, etc., that money gets deposited into that account for health care expenses until you have the maximum in it. Then you can receive such money as you do now. That means for persons who are low income, you will have money to cover health care expenses during the year and can't use your return to buy a 52" TV instead. Too bad for you.
For those who are retired or otherwise don't have an employer account they can have up to double the amount of the deductible in their account.

Employers would be able to create similar accounts for their employees using pre-tax money up to the same limit as the individual accounts. The way these would work is that the employee would submit their medical expense to the employer (or the insurance company managing their accounts), and be reimbursed in full for the cost. At the end of each year, any amount remaining in the account would be split between the employer and employee. The employee gets a bonus for being healthy, the employer can roll over their half into the next year's account tax free so that eventually after 5 to 8 years these accounts are mostly self supporting with the employer no longer having to contribute to most of them. This also incentivizes the employee to shop for the best deals on health care to keep costs down to get a bigger bonus.

The government's role is supervising the whole of this making sure everyone is not cheating. The insurance companies still issue catastrophic policies and would manage most corporation's employee health care accounts. Individuals would be making their own health care decisions. There would be no 'in system' nonsense or requirements to see only certain providers.

That takes government out of running health care--except for the indolent and lazy where they force them have an individual account and provide catastrophic coverage. For everyone else you manage your own health care costs and only have to deal with insurance if you had something catastrophic occur.
Click to expand...

socialism!.....lol. couldn't help myself.....

you think insurance companies are gonna give up overcharging on ever zit, and abrasion?
 
AssHatZombie said:
socialism!.....lol. couldn't help myself.....

you think insurance companies are gonna give up overcharging on ever zit, and abrasion?
Click to expand...

It isn't socialism because you control your money, not the government. The only requirement the government imposes is you have an account. How you use it is up to you. The catastrophic plan has a taint of socialism in it but it is one of last resort, not first. Even there, you have the option to go with a private insurer for a better deal than the government gives.
The idea here isn't to eliminate the government from the process completely but rather to reduce their role to referee as much as possible leaving almost the entire market to individuals and private companies.
 
Because greed and profit.

They want to privatize everything and monetize everything so that they or their cronies can get rich.

That why they want to keep hospitals bills secret and let them charge you whatever they want,

They also want to put people in the poor house by denying coverage or claims so that you who is comfortable has to file for bankruptcy and lose your house.

They want to keep insurance companies who's goal is to make profits and has nothing to do with health or care in the business of greed.

They want to keep pharmaceutical companies in charge of charging as much as they want and they don't care that taxpayer money is going to pay $50,000 a year or more in medication to people on Medicare who are below the poverty level or on Medicaid as a copay. Then they let these drug maker drug dealers who make their drugs overseas like the illegal drug dealers sell for as much as they want and the tax payer pays.

Then they let these legal drug dealers keep the medications from becoming generic by changing one ingredient that improves it and they have a drug RX addicted patient for another 7 to 10 years. Then they allow them to spend more on advertising than they do on research and development because the America people are stupid and ask the doctor for what they want instead of the doctor telling them what they need, and there are crooked doctors too who can give someone a cheap generic that has been working for 50 years but gives them the higher cost new one with more side effects for payola, so they can earn free trips and speaking salaries.
 
The repubs are against universal healthcare because they are super pro corporations and the wealthy who run them. Those who are making huge amounts of money with for-profit heathcare are the Repubs upper echelon. Insurance companies execs make obscene amounts of money for denying healthcare . Insurance companies do not do healthcare., They simply stop a hospital or doctor from providing the service if they decide it that way. The determining factor is profit.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top