The U.S. Health Care Catch-All Thread

The article didn't seem all that loaded to me. I'm just not sure why it means everyone is taking ten steps back.

^Smaller growth rates hurt the whole country, it's simply a relative scale. My '2 steps forward' is to express that I don't have much investment income, like the ones who paid even more than I did, in relative terms, for the harm the whole country suffered in sclerotic, euroland-type growth rates. The 'five steps forward' was when I became a free-rider after Trump defanged the penalty/mandate.

- Christopher
Ridiculous; it's just math, devoid of any opinion or judgement or values.

Fuck bills, I'm getting hookers and blow.

Why aren't Republicans talking about getting insurance across state lines, tort reform, allowing states to figure out their own thing and block grants, where did that go?

In execution insurance across state lines would be a disaster. What you are talking about is striping states of the ability to regulate insurance and medical care with in their borders. Also, believe it or not the least regulated states tend to get the highest costs and the least coverage while relatively heavy but smart regulation states like California end up with lower costs and better coverage. Mostly due to oversight done by the state insurance commission.

Why?

Also, why aren't Republicans doing a full repeal of Obamacare, that's what they've promised after all?

Read the rest of my post.

Your post is a one sentence opinion.

For basic health reasons as well as affordability reasons states need the ability to regulate both health care providers as well as the practices of health insurance companies. It gets down to little things like max staffing loads, minimum staff counts, and a million things all of which effect quality of care as well as relative health outcomes for patients.

What Rethuglicabs call "selling accross state lines" is in practice a federal take over baring states from regulating these things. That is just bad policy.

Check again.

Who's to say states can't regulate both and who's to say there can't be reciprocity between states?

Because they're chickenshit cowards.

Dinner touched on the same thing I heard a local political analyst say on the radio this morning: for six years, they screamed about repealing the ACA, knowing full well it wouldn't happen because Obama would veto it.

Now that they hold both houses and the presidency and they could actually repeal it, they've gotten cold feet because they're afraid the voters will take it out on them in 2018.

The analyst basically called them a bunch of pussies for not living up to their promises.

Something funky must have happened because at the time, there was only one sentence.

Yeah, well, they deserve to be called pussies. Shit or get off the pot.

Tge whole frigging point to selling health care insurance across state lines is to avoid the regulations in that state. Do you even think before you post?

No, the point is to create a competitive marketplace.

www.medscape.com

COMMENTARY

Medicaid Cuts Hurt Us All
Hansa Bhargava, MD

July 20, 2017

Is healthcare for children a political issue? Many have made it so but as a pediatrician who sees many children covered by Medicaid, I really don't think so. I believe it is a health issue. All children deserve to be vaccinated and to receive care for both common infections and illnesses as well as serious diseases like cancer.

Some of us may not be paying attention to this perceived "political" issue; but I would argue that even if your children are covered by a generous insurance policy, this concern still matters to you.

My children are insured through my employer coverage. Most of my friends' kids are too. So, while the conversation about healthcare reform goes on, you may feel that your kids are safe. After all, it's really not going to affect your kids, right? Wrong. Stripping Medicaid could potentially adversely affect all children, including those who are insured.

Here are a few examples.

Medicaid and government-related insurances now cover 47% of the children in the United States. That includes:

• Vaccinations;
  
  
• Vision and hearing screenings;
  
  
• Medications for infections, asthma, and mental health disorders; and
  
  
• Treatment for cancer and other serious diseases.

If your child goes to school, the chances are pretty good that at least some kids in the class will be covered by these services. So if children who can't get vaccines because of Medicaid cuts get measles, that means your child is exposed. This is what happened in California and Michigan recently.

If vision and hearing screenings are not done, some of the children in your child's class will not be able to see the board properly. Although some kids may just shut down and let their academics quietly suffer, others will act out. If the child sitting next to yours can't see the board or hear the teacher properly, he may get frustrated and start disrupting the class. This becomes a situation where the teacher is distracted and spending more time coping with kids' behavior issues and not teaching. And is it really fair that this child should not get a proper education, just because he can't afford to get his vision or hearing checked?

And one last point. As a mom and pediatrician, I know that health can turn on a dime. Recently I met a family whose son was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. His medications cost $70,000 a year. This family has gone bankrupt trying to pay for their son. A good friend of mine has a son who was just diagnosed with cancer. She had to take several months off of work to cope with this. Fortunately she was at a job that was understanding and let her take the time. But, in many cases, parents who cope with this are let go, just when they need that insurance for very hefty bills. Cancer is a diagnosis that can cost jobs as well as bank accounts. The truth is that any of us could get the bad news on any day, which literally brings us to our knees. And it may require that, unthinkable as it may seem right now, we have to turn to governmental resources.

So, please, stand up for your children, mine, and the rest of the nation's children. Physicians matter. We have a well-respected voice and we can make a difference in policy that can hurt all of us. As moms and dads, we just need to.

Follow Dr Bhargava on Twitter @Dr_Hansa
Follow Medscape on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Medscape Pediatrics © 2017

Cite this article: Medicaid Cuts Hurt Us All - Medscape - Jul 20, 2017.

GOP using funds meant to assist in ObamaCare enrollment to produce vids slamming it. Only upside? These supposedly "viral" vids have only had a coupla hundred views.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/team-trump-used-obamacare-money-to-run-ads-against-it

My point is that it's not just Collins et al. who won't vote to repeal it. They're the scapegoats so (I suspect) most of the GOP in the Senate doesn't have to vote on repeal, because a vote can only hurt them - most of them, I suspect, think Obamacare is a good thing, so voting for repeal is bad in their minds (and possibly gets them killed in their next general election), and voting against repeal gets them primaried for sure.

If the Democrats had any spine, they could end the repeal attempts by promising and giving the Republicans the votes for cloture on a straight repeal bill, and watch the defections as the bill comes to a vote. But they don't, because "TEH REPUBLICANS ARE GONNA REPEAL OBAMACARE YOU'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" is just as good a stalking horse for them as Obamacare itself is for the Republicans.

I got into argument around thirty years ago when substantial tax reform last passed congress, basically on the side of how great to have gridlocked government as a near insurmountable constraint built in to protect our country from further excesses (any time exec. branch and all congress not under common control). The theory being that the need for at least some kind of compromise with opposing talking-faces would necessarily arrive at a ground somewhere between the two ‘endgames’.

Friend countered about how much better for US’s future if one party has all three, move forward in one direction with a particular ideology, and in time public will validate or repudiate that course. Of course, at the time it would be silly to think an Obama could be so bad that the reaction would be a fucking Trump.

But I think his side assumed control of all three by idealogues (not the whores to reelection so obvious in DC), not pragmatists or the modern republican RINOs - the “right” almost as spendthrift as their counterparts, and paying lip service to few if any of the traditional planks: limited government, particualarly when related to functions best handled at state level (police powers, ed., etc.), pro-economic growth, leave it the same as yesterday if something isn’t broken, not forgetting of course the wacko religious baggage (which these day has been eclisped by the Red Menace).

I’ve even cracked wise here recently that GOP isn’t at all a party of small govt but simply a flock of whores compelled to spend only slightly less than the fat theives on the left already spending like our money has an expiration date.

Possibly a "good thing" if you mean an idealized, imagined version of O-care not written by pigs and whores, that was actually designed to reduce health care costs or insurance premiums or achieve any objective other than growing the government-controlled share of GDP when they can't even handle what they got (see: too big to fail). But agreed on the rest, fear of 'tea party' insurgency or general dishonesty about their ideology prove it's not just Collins - god I'm so glad Snow is gone.

^ Proof positive that life as a billionaire makes one inept to the issues facing regular people.

Running his company, and now running the government -- it's all a game to him. Because there's never been any real consequences to him personally if he does a poor job. He'll be uber-rich and happy regardless.

I believe this hits the nail squarely on the head.

What the holy fuck is our president's malfunction?!?!?

Affluenza.

He's an incompetent dildo, in way over his orange head.

At this point, a single malfunction won't cover it, I think we're beginning to understand the threat of the "positronic cascade failure" Lal suffered on TNG.

I saw a good one on Twitter today: Mango Mussolini.

I prefer my favorite, Orange Julius Caesar.