The rising costs will bankrupt everyone until we are forced into single payer…And yes that means less compensation for doctors and hospitals. …plus higher wait times, rationing and lower standards. …except for the few that can afford private medicine. …There is no other way to control costs…
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Well, there is but it involves exercising, losing weight, and the self-control of not eating sweets or soda evry day 
Self control just isn’t an American value.
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We can always bring back drafts, and force men and women to go thru military trainings. That should be enough exercise for everybody.
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Last I saw, 75% of Americans couldn’t qualify to join the military.
Bush did EITC which erased the tax bill for millions who weren’t rich. It greatly increased the percent of households with no tax liability.
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Twhitler is throwing republicans under the bus. Even Ryan was finger pointed by him. Go to see certain Foxnews report he said, and in it, they will destroy Ryan. What a pal!
Admit it, some people voted for an inept, incompetent, trivial, lazy, ignorant on the matter guy. He rather spends time twitting in the morning, than reading a plan that will either destroy or benefit millions of citizens in this country. Golfing every weekend doesn’t help either. Weren’t you complaining of Obama’s golfing?
As far as I am concerned, he owns Obama/Trumpcare now, it’s his baby, it’s his 100% administration, all republican. He can claim Obama’s achievements as unemployment is down, etc but he says the disaster of his incompetence to deliver “the art of the deal” is owned by democrats. Really? You can’t be serious, are you? Everything is recorded in videos, no way out of this mess you created and failed to fix, your own words, your own actions.
No sir, you are a miserable liar as never seen. Never admitting responsibilities, or any fault as a leader, that is for cowards and lacking honesty people. Period!
The plan congress came up with sucks. They shouldn’t pass it. They need to develop an actual plan to lower healthcare spending as a percent of GDP. Congress will never do that, since they need big pharma money to get elected. In that case, we should get the government out of healthcare and let companies compete across state lines. All anyone has to do is look at the cost of elective procedures which are LOWER than 20-30 years ago
Insurance inflates healthcare costs…Elective surgey costs are down…not inflated by insurance…Even Trump would consider single payer. .gets rid of insurance, ambulance chasing lawyers and will put price controls on doctors, drugs and hospitals …It is the only solution
This AHCA was a disaster in the make, they, if they were smart, unless they have a sinister plan, should have not attempted to move a finger. It backfired on them, bigly!
Now, how do we fix healthcare? To me, getting rid of the middleman aka insurance companies. With the money they suck for themselves, let’s build more hospitals and hire all the medical workers needed. A higher but fair tax maybe?
By the way, Twhitler is using, still, the “somebody told me” crap. Time to be accountable and admit failure. At 36% approval, I would start eating some modesty cake.
Insurers profit ~5%. Eliminating them won’t reduce costs much at all. Also, be careful what you wish for because medicare and medicaid deny a higher percentage of claims than private insurers. All that building more hospitals will do is raise healthcare spending. You have to pay for all those hospitals and pay people to work in them. The only real way to lower healthcare spending is getting people to be healthier.
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Bravo.
The concept of getting people healthier is a cute sound bite…But the reality is people are getting older and sicker…In fact white males are dying at an accelerated rate…Millenials are the fattest least healthy generation ever…Most cant qualify to join the military.They never even go outside…Most come to Tahoe and stay inside and watch TV…Most vacation rentals up here have a TV in every room…
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I receive preventive care letters from Kaiser about how to be healthy and whatnot. That’s because I have somebody who worries about me, that hospital if you get my point.
But without any kind of “teacher”, people without any access to hospitals are not receiving any advise on how to be healthy at all. Is it taught in school? College? Common sense? Shutting down the TV so they can’t see McDonald’s ads? No more Coca Cola?
Preventive care is what is needed. But again, the access to a doctor cost an eye for the American public, the disaster compiles no matter what.
If you think insurers profit 5%, let me tell you, I have seen quotes where 20% discount is possible. And the insurer giving that discount is still profiting, that is, without servicing the person needing the quote. The middleman is there, it needs to be taken away.
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Right. How do you do that as a public policy? Force people to eat broccoli and exercise?
One simple way to tame healthcare spending is tax employer provided health benefit. Right now it’s not taxed if it’s paid by employer. The same thing is taxed at people’s marginal rate if it’s paid by employee. So employer pays for it and user of insurance don’t care about cost.
Kudos & Great Post about preventive care ! In US, it is preventive care that extends the life of people !!
I have seen many of my friends, who does not follow doctor’s advice, preventive care, land up with heart attack at early 50s.
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Safeway is successfully doing it. They self-insure and their healthcare spending is flat while others are seeing 10-20% increases. They provide discounts for hitting healthy metrics that are proven to lower rates of chronic disease. I’ve posted the CDC data before. 80% of spending is on chronic illness. Over half of those cases are preventable through healthier living. That’s over 40% of healthcare spending. The issue is the companies the lobbyists represent don’t get rich off healthy people.
The government has a hand in the blame. They backed the sugar is fine and fat is evil dietary recommendations. The whole thing was based on the sugar lobby funding a research study at MIT. Go figure the study found that sugar doesn’t cause any health issues and fat is evil. It’s going to take us years if not decades to undo the decades worth of misinformation about it.
If we went single payer, I’d go similar to Safeway. I’d give people tax credits for each of those healthy metrics they pass. People need to have it directly impact their wallet before they’ll care and change.
Employers have healthier workers than the general public…The Safeway model won’t work for the general population. .I am for your tax credits…just wonder how you decide whose habits are healthy and how you prove they follow the guidelines. .and what about high risk behavior. .I have plenty of healthy friends who spend a lot of time in the emergency room due to high risk sports injuries. .
It comes back to 80% of spend is on a list of <10 chronic conditions. You can accurately predict rates of those chronic diseases by 4 measurements:
- blood pressure
- BMI
- smoker/non-smoker
- cholesterol
You reward people for each measurement that’s at a healthy level.
The fat people will be outraged with a BMI tax…Besides BMI dicriminates against body builders and other heavily muscled people…It sounds great but in practise, people will cry discrimination. …Field day for lawyers. …Besides your criteria doesn’t account for other bad behavior. .like risk taking, promiscuity, drug use…