By R.C. Seely
THE CBO ESTIMATES THAT TRUMP’S health care bill will leave 24 million without health insurance coverage-this is the regurgitated line by pundits of the American left. And actually it was 52 million all together, the 24 million is an estimate for 2026, by why quibble over it. According to the AARP, the plan “could have raised premiums on Americans between 50 and 64 years old by as much as $8,400 a year.” CNN reports, “opponents say it could reverse the gains in coverage … since the Affordable Care Act.” The most staunchest critics of Trump’s plan, the American Health Care Act (AHCA), were not the Obamacare supporters but the Freedom Caucus and Tea Party activists. “Conservatives complain that the bill does fully repeal Obamacare and that many provisions are far too similar to the health reform law,” according to CNN reports. But the “proponents of the bill say it would save the individual health market from collapse” this bill would not do that actually. It doesn’t open up healthcare free market options and can only be accurately described by the common nomer “Obamacare-lite.” Speculation has surfaced that Trump isn’t pleased with it either and it was pushed by speaker Ryan. For now the bill has been pulled and meaningful healthcare reform has been shelved.
The AARP referred to the AHCA as an “age tax” and it is, just not to seniors as the organization claims. A tax is a government imposed penalty without necessarily receiving a benefit, that’s not the seniors who are being taxed but the youth. The AARP Public Policy Institute claims that “the AHCA would allow insurance companies to charge older Americans five times the amount they would charge others for the same coverage.” And? With age, we use more healthcare services, so seniors should be incurring the higher costs since they are using more. Plus, they have had longer to plan and save up for their future financial needs, why should the youth-who have comparatively far more limited income-be taking care of this bill? Most don’t need healthcare until in our forties or fifties and before that there was an inexpensive policy option in place, Catastrophic Coverage, but the Affordable Care Act killed it. Insurance companies aren’t greedy, they simply understand economics and make sensible decisions based on that. The AARP also alludes to collusion between the Trump adminstration and special interest groups, maybe but wasn’t there a special interest group supporting the ACA? Oh right, that was the AARP but that’s different.
Now onto the other critics. In an email sent out from the Heritage Action for Action PAC:
“The American Health Care Act … was pulled from the house floor because it did not have the votes to pass. This means the house needs to revise the legislature so it reduces premiums, repeals ObamaCare and truly makes life better for the Americans under ObamaCare.
This is a victory for conservatives.
The AHCA would have kept Obamacare’s regulatory architecture in place, ensuring premiums remained high. The bill’s defeat was essential-but now the hard work begins.
Conservatives, lead by Rep. Mark Meadows and Rep. Jim Jordon … recognized that the AHCA didn’t repeal the fundamental structure of Obamacare. And rather than giving in to political pressure from leadership and the White House, they stood strong.
So what’s next? It is now clear that the House cannot pass a bill that does not repeal Obamacare’s core regulatory architecture. Congressional leaders and the administration need to go back to the negotiating table.
We now have an opportunity to get [the] Obamacare repeal right, but that only happened because of the conservatives stood their ground and the grassroots America rose up in opposition.”
So, what’s the solution? Get the federal interlopers out of here! AARP gripes about special interest groups, they should lead the way. There are already free market alternatives, Direct Primary Care for example. Basically, you’re charged a membership and the costs are lower because it’s based on the routine medical care and insurance is used only for major health issues. It treats the individual as an individual rather than part of the masses. Besides lower costs it makes healthcare more modeled towards your specific biological needs. Oh, but you need your “risk pools” there are also Marketshare options in the shared economy. You could give Health Co-op or Liberty Healthshare a consideration. Another option is a Health Saving Account, which are what they sound like, a savings account for medical needs.
Dr. Ron Paul has talked about his experience as a medical practitioner in the time before federal healthcare as a time of medical excellence and people weren’t worried about being denied services. How could that be? Because doctors had autonomy, they could offer less expensive treatments and at times help the patient pay. With the safety patrol of government medicine and abused litigation, many doctors are afraid to experiment. And they should be. Medical costs are up so high in part because alternatives are outlawed as “unsafe” and many are denied access. Dr. Rand Paul has also presented his alternative to the ACA-all four pages of it-and has made it available for public scrutiny. Unlike Paul Ryan who seems to have developed the same “we have to pass it to know what’s in it” mindset of Nancy Pelosi, the Pauls understand that healthcare is a collection of services and products not a right, therefore for the market to resolve.
The failure to pass the AHCA has encouraged the supporters of the single-payer system, saying that we should conform to the rest of the world and adopt this model. No, it didn’t get the votes because it didn’t satisfy either side. Neither wants to compromise and Heritage and the Free Caucus are right. What would a grocery store be like if it were run this way? The government said it will pay for a portion of your groceries; but in order to qualify, you can’t buy certain products and you have to go where they tell you. You like Pepsi, well too bad we have a deal with Coke so you have to buy Coke. Oh, and the ones with real sugar, cherry or vanilla are void, and so is the cheaper alternative. You can get diet and organic, though. And you have to buy from the stores we approve, even if it’s not where you want to shop or their competition offers it for less. With free market medicine we get cheaper, better medical technology and services, at the locations of our choosing; with public we get less options, stifling of alternatives through big pharmaceutical alliances, the end of private practitioners and excessive lawsuits in the name of public safety. The plain truth is we ask for more from our local grocery store than medical institutions. The consumer has decided we want choices on the store shelves why not in the operating room? We ask for so much in flavors and gluten-free and less sodium alternatives of corn chips, but are afraid of Health Savings Accounts. Options and innovations make every other part of our lives better, why do so many believe the free market would falter in healthcare? I can’t answer that, in my view healthcare is where we need choices the most.
An article in NaturalNews.com discussed this in February 2016:
“Researchers from the Stanford University of Medicine and the National Bureau of Economic Research have uncovered the path towards more affordable healthcare. The path doesn’t consist of … consolidated government insurance plans … healthcare prosperity is less systematic, less consolidated, less controlling and less fear-based. It’s a more open system, with more options that put the patient back in control.
The researchers found out that the answer for more affordable healthcare is simple: Get rid of the government controls and consolidation of physician services and instead create more competition in the marketplace. This doesn’t mean more specialists, more testing and more diagnoses. This excess has occurred because of the loss of competition between individual physicians.
What used to be several private practices, consisting of one or two independent physicians, has evolved into more complex organizations with more specialized doctors and systems. The competition that used to exist between individual physician practices has … diminished, consolidating care into larger organizations of healthcare providers who can raise the cost because there’s no one in the area to compete with the price. They continue to raise the prices through the years because they know the patients have fewer options and will eventually be herded through their doors anyway.
The larger practices allow doctors to work in groups and exchange information about a patient’s medical history more readily. A bigger staff operating as one can take on a larger volume of patients, but this way begins to treat patients as units on a conveyor belt, as the time per patient dwindles to maximize efficiency within the larger healthcare organization model.
When the costs of all types of doctor visits were averaged, the least competitive markets were found to be the most expensive, averaging 3.5 to 5.4 percent higher in cost. With privately insured individuals spending nearly $250 billion on physician services yearly in the US, this small percentage multiples into tens of billions of dollars.”
According to a Forbes article, “the time to schedule an appointment has jumped 30% in 15 U.S. metrpolitan areas from 18.5 days in 2014 amid a national doctor shortage fueled by aging baby boomers, population growth and millions of Americans with health insurance.” So the way to fix this is more people insured? Sounds like treating cancer with… more cancer. The argument has become which public healthcare system is better than the other, neither one really. Obamacare, Trumpcare both were set up for social control and not for protecting consumer choice.
The current healthcare system is sure to fail and the single-payer system isn’t a better option just because everyone else has it. This is a unique country so it shouldn’t be adopting the policies of others, we should do what we do best-innovate. Instead of trying to implement the stale European models let’s figure out something new and different that will satisfy the individual for once. Treat the person like a person and not a number the way they do at the DMV. Stalling the healthcare bill until it has been refined is the best decision the Trump adminstration could have made, the only question is whether or not they have learned from it or repeat it’s mistakes. Will Trump have a healthcare massacre or a close call? In this case blazing the untested trail will lead to promise instead of party cannibalism.
R.C. Seely is the founder of americanuslibertae.com, ALTV and an author. His latest book is Victims of White Male: How Victim Culture Victimizes Society, is available on Amazon.
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Health “Scare” Madness
Posted: July 16, 2017 in Social CommentaryTags: aca, Affordable Care Act, americanus libertae, health "scare" madness, health care, medicine, r.c.seely, Republicans
By R.C. Seely
AS MANY OF YOU HAVE PROBABLY FIGURED OUT, government health care is not going away any time soon and neither is the duopoly effort to take the credit–or blame, depending on who you ask–for the law. The republican party was running on the promise to repeal the law, but along the way it seems to have lost even the will to attempt that. There are a few GOP senators who hold strong in their opposition. Senators like Rand Paul and Thomas Massie seem perfectly fine with the notion of repeal and don’t replace. With the unfortunate rise in popularity of the law according to the polls, that scenario is becoming more unlikely. And the support for it has more to do with scare-mongering than the efficiency of the law, since the real world effectiveness is impossible to judge so early on.
The propaganda for the single-payer system is what’s truly effective and efficient. An email from Senator Elizabeth Warren describes “the fight to protect the Affordable Care Act is personal” and she’s going to give it everything… [she’s] got.” She is right on one point, more than likely “we all know someone–a cancer survivor, a mom who went into early labor, or a parent or grandparent who got Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s and needed help.” Problem is that a single-payer system won’t lower costs simply spreads them around and worse it stiffles medical innovations by handcuffing health care service providers with strict restrictions and burdensome paperwork.
In the DNC Chair Tom Perez donation drive email, he recounts that “millions of Americans from every corner of this country made calls, sent emails and letters, rallied and protested” against the health care repeal. Former DNC Chair Donna Brazile claimed the Trump administration has “stripped away health care for tens of millions” and “left women without critical reproductive care.” Senator Al Franken has sent numerous emails condemning it, in one paraphrasing Mitch McConnell:
So Franken is a mind reader now? In another email Franken exercises his (lack of) an ability to come up with a nuanced response by rattling off a bunch of single word responses for Trumpcare, “contemptible” and “despicable” and “exercrable” are a sample. And we can’t leave CREDO out of the “health care crisis” discussion and their push for the implementation of “universal health care for all.” They make the revolutionaryesque war cry for democrats to “unite behind a bold and clear alternative [to Trumpcare] like Medicare for All, also known as ‘single-payer’ health care.”
As you can see there’s a lot of support for Obamacare and not for it’s repeal. But this is based on fear and misinformation, clouding the judgement of the nation’s citizens. Like a drug addict, Americans have gotten hooked on “free health care” and until the high crashes and it’s time for rehabilitation, we’re stuck with laws such as the ACA or the AHCA. The current proposed measure from the Trump administration is the Better Care Act but whether it’s really any better is still debatable. Another plan offered by the GOP comes from Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy. Considering the determination of gridlock by democrats, in regards to health care, even a compromise is not promising. But let’s push through the partisian distortion and reexamine this with the light of objectivity. Yes, there will be people who will be denied coverage or lose their existing coverage under what the republican plan ends up being, and it could be the CBO’s “24 million.” But people lost their coverage under Obamacare while he was still in office–millions of them–and many insurance companies are opting out of the exchanges. That trend will only continue the longer the ACA is place. The promise of “everyone being covered” has already been broken by Barack Obama.
All the problems everyone is concerned about only get worse the more government gets involved in health care, since they treat you not as an individual but a number. A doctor in the free market system of medicine has to keep your business and so he looks out for your best interest. The government and it’s system has no such benevolent incentives, their interest is to get and expand control and what better way than through health care. That’s why control freak Saul Alinsky put it on the list, of Rules for Radicals. Whatever the republican plan is it’s surely going to have more to do with maintaining control of health care and branding it with an “R.” That’s not in the public’s best interest and we shouldn’t be coerced into a bad plan out of scare tactics. After all “we have nothing to fear, but fear itself,” right?
R.C. Seely is the founder of americanuslibertae.com and ALTV and has written books about pop culture. His most recent book, Victims of White Male: How Victim Culture Victimizes Society is available at Amazon.