Trumpcare: the worst, most heartless, most cruel thing on earth, causing untold suffering and death
You would think so, from the coverage of it in the press.
You would also think from the way they’re carrying on that it was an actual statute passed by both houses, with the force of law, and not a first pass subject to change in the Senate.
The headlines are replete with words like “shameful”, “horrific”, and “abomination.”
Typical and not at all unusual was this tweet from Senator Elizabeth Warren:
HCA will devastate Americans’ healthcare. Families will go bankrupt. People will die.
Let me repeat that this is not a law yet; it’s the very first legislation, passed by the House. Maybe the shock of the MSM coverage will kill some people, but that’s the only way it could happen. But let’s ramp up the fear to as high a level as possible.
Here’s an article that discusses the viciousness of the Democrat reaction. Let’s take a particular look at this response in the WaPo:
The health-care bill that the House of Representatives passed this afternoon ”¦ is an abomination. If there has been a piece of legislation in our lifetimes that boiled over with as much malice and indifference to human suffering, I can’t recall what it might have been.”¦ It is no exaggeration to say that if it were to become law, this bill would kill significant numbers of Americans.
All this for a bill that is more liberal than the health insurance laws were just a few short years ago, when things were pretty good, actually; a bill that would restore some health insurance choices that were taken away by Obamacare, as well as even perhaps cost less. Perhaps. And did we repeal EMTALA, and leave poor people with no health care at all? If we did, I must have missed it.
Amidst so much purposeful propaganda and hype, how to find the truth about the bill? Most of us are not equipped to analyze it ourselves. But in the past I’ve come to trust Avik Roy the most on these matters. And so I turn to him and get a review that’s a mixed bag—some excellent things are in the bill, as well as some things that are problematic and need fixing, but nothing that would justify the sturm and drang of the left’s propaganda. And here are his detailed suggestions for a fix in the Senate for the provisions that are unlikely to work.
Roy knows his stuff, unlike 99.99999% of the people writing about this topic. His prose isn’t as purple as theirs—it’s rather dry in style. But that’s what we need, although it’s vanishingly rare.
My hope is that the Senate is paying attention.
If it preserves the anti-capitalist market (e.g. monopolies and practices), it probably will.
Did they remove Obamacare’s penalty for preexisting conditions, specifically birth?
Did they remove coverage of post-choice elective procedures that deny life unworthy and other Planned things including clinical cannibalism?
Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger spoke today on health care in Omaha. I will combine some of their remarks.
We have gone from 5% to 17% of GDP being spent on healthcare. Most countries are at 10%. There are too many entrenched special interests around to really reform things. We – as consumers – aren’t organized and sit as lumps. The Dems and GOP hate each other on the issue and won’t compromise an inch. Healthcare is a bigger cost to business than taxes.
Me: Problem is unfixable.
I urge all to read the OWH coverage on the BRK meeting. You will learn something. Always an excellent story by Steve Jordan of the OWH.
Added. Crazy talk by Dems cited above by neo just show how much each side hates the other on this issue.
‘Problem is unfixable’
Yeah, this is such a disaster that I almost tune it out as a political debate. No matter who is in charge or from what angle they come it is just going to get worse in some way.
A cartoon from PowerLine’s weekly feature seems apropos.
http://i1.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2017/05/Media-Fix.jpeg
Come to think of it, so does this one.
http://i0.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2017/05/Democrats-Change.jpeg
Thanks for the link to Avik Roy’s take on Ryancare, neo. He makes a lot of sense. This is an issue that requires sensible thinking and not hysterics, as we are seeing from the Dems. My local paper had a long article today about how people with pre-existing conditions will not be covered. Also the claim was that 20 million people will be thrown off Medicaid. All pure bunk or “fake” news, but I expect to see many more stories like this in the coming months. I hope Trump recognizes that the GOP has to get out in front and set the story straight. Unfortunately, it is a complex subject and very easy to make hyperbolic claims that people will remember while the truth remains hidden.
I hope Trump has people on all the Sunday morning shows explaining the bill that came out of the House. That could help get the ball rolling.
I’m forwarding Roy’s article to all my e-mail list. At least that will help get the word out to a few people.
Here’s an excellent rebuttal to the Dem hysteria hype.
http://thefederalist.com/2017/05/05/dont-forget-people-obamacare-hurts/
You may know me as a political pundit and writer who has spoken publicly about how the Affordable Care Act negatively affected my family. What you might not know is two years ago, I was a seven-month-pregnant widow with one toddler who got a letter two weeks after my husband died, informing me I’d lost my third or fourth health insurance plan since the Affordable Care Act passed. If you’ll remember, the promise was that I could keep my plan if I liked it. I could not.
I predicted what would happen to my family’s insurance, and to much less fortunate people subjected to the exchanges with us, many of whom have seen doubled premiums and tripled deductibles. If you’ll remember, the promise was everyone’s premiums would go down. They did not. For predicting it, I was routinely called a lying hack in public. It’s a hazard of the job, but I wasn’t lying. I was right. I also thought it was improbable the federal and state governments could handle building these exchanges and that they’d likely blow up and be inoperable, thereby preventing people like me from actually purchasing the new plans the ACA required we purchase. Again, I was not lying for partisan gain.
ACA has helped people. I know some of them well! I have two friends with serious health challenges, one of whom I can say was probably kept alive by Obamacare; the other by the fact she was able to keep her grandfathered pre-ACA plan. I am not in the habit of asserting any piece of health legislation is either perfect or a tool of evil designed by hateful actors. They’re not. I will not assert either of these fundamentally shallow and manipulative things about either ACA or adjustments to it (and, yes, this piece of House legislation is an adjustment or a reform, not a repeal, which would change dramatically in the Senate if taken up and change again before eventual passage).
It has come to my attention that, even among those who should know, or assert they know a lot about health care policy and the market, many don’t know that people like me exist. But there are many of us, many with far fewer resources than I, who now have much more expensive, less effective, junkier, nearly unusable plans than we had back when our allegedly “junk” plans were outlawed. Again, we are not the only ACA story. But we are part of the story, we were sold a bill of goods, and we’re often overlooked.
There aren’t a lot of good answers, here…. ACA was not a good answer. AHCA likely isn’t a super one either.
In any system, and any change to a system, there will be people who come out on both the good and bad sides of the deal. When Obamacare supporters denied this truth applied to ACA, it was wrong. …
Most people who aren’t in the individual market, which is the one most affected by ACA, have no idea what the plans look like. It is a market where the costs of the bill’s mandates are more visible, even when subsidized. …
Arguing about this as if beneficiaries of ACA don’t exist isn’t right. Arguing about it as if people like me don’t is also not right. ACA was never the panacea it was sold as and it remains distinctly un-utopian in its results. Lazy characterizations of things you like as perfect–and of people you oppose as big fans of people dying–are not particularly helpful to actual people.
…
My family may be the trade-off that was worth it for you to implement ACA. And I’m actually fine with you thinking that, as long as you don’t pretend we and the rest of the people like us don’t exist. We’re probably never going to stop arguing about this, but arguing responsibly and empathetically is better.
More news aggregation.
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/05/06/gov-scott-walker-confronted-democrat-obamacare-repeal/
“Friday, Governor Scott Walker visited Appleton, Wisconsin at the request of the city’s mayor to help promote tourism. While there, he was confronted by a former Democratic member of the Wisconsin State Assembly (and current county executive) Tom Nelson. Nelson attempted to hijack the governor’s appearance and create a scene over the GOP’s Obamacare repeal bill. Rather then pretend Nelson’s questions were in good faith, Gov. Walker replied, “If you want to have a press conference, go ahead.”
When Nelson kept pressing the point, Walker suggested he’d had his chance to run for congress and that if he wanted to run for Governor he should do that rather than interrupting the event. “
Cornhead, beware Buffett and the other prattlers who talk about our health care costs as %GDP. They necessarily lump the huge entitlements in with the meat-and-gravy health care.
Buffett is a manipulator extraordinaire. How he made his billions is irrelevant to his analysis of major national issues. Let him go buy another railroad.
Can’t recall who made the following point:
“reasoned argument is useless against the lies and unceasing yammering of shrewd men”
“four legs good, two legs bad”
Warren: “HCA will devastate Americans’ healthcare. Families will go bankrupt. People will die.”
OK, except for the die part, why didn’t she say that about Obamacare?
Under Obamacare my healthcare insurance would have cost me $20,000 between premiums and deductibles before anything would be reimbursed.
So, instead I opted out and was suppose to pay the Obamacare tax.
Just how was that NOT devastating?
“Just how was that NOT devastating?”
It only devastated the people they didn’t like.
Precision JDAM gps bombing, Aesop.