Healthcare & Health Insurance Catch-All | GOP seeking a plan

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Sorta weird to see the GOP targeting insurance companies. I didn't think I'd see the day. Who next? Auto dealers?

Do they think that people are clamoring to pay for health expenditures out of their pockets? To comparison shop doctors (if that was even possible)? To have an accident then think about how many fingers you can afford to attach?
 
Allow up to $25,000 in healthcare expense deductions? Where does the $25k to pay the doctor/hospital up front come from? What happens if you need a heart transplant? How does that get paid for?

And allow a tax deduction for health insurance premiums? Most Americans get insurance through their employers and those premiums are already tax exempt.

This sounds suspiciously like "let them eat cake" And idiot MAGA will suck it up until their kid is seriously injured or diagnosed with a serious illness and they are left holding the bag.

Josh Hawley must think we are all as stupid as his voters.
 
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tax deductions help out folks in high marginal tax brackets and are least useful to folks in low income marginal tax brackets. Yeah, GOP!!! Way to crack that affordability nut! You really have your finger on the pulse.
 
nycfan said:

Why Republicans aren’t eager to cut an Obamacare deal​

"No one wants a primary challenge where the accusation is: ‘You supported Obamacare.'"


“… For other conservatives, any blowback will be worth it if it means they get to rein in a system the party has fundamentally opposed since its launch more than a decade ago.


“Democrats have to start acknowledging they blew it,” Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson told reporters Tuesday. “Obamacare has been a huge disaster.”

… “The base of the Republican Party still yet thinks Obamacare is a swear word, so supporting it in that manner is just a bridge too far for most Republican members,” said Stan Barnes, an Arizona-based GOP strategist and former state senator.

“Who wants to risk that in any kind of deep red district, or even a swing district? No one wants a primary challenge where the accusation is, ‘You supported Obamacare.”…”
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What these idiots don't understand is that if you refer to Obamacare as the ACA then vast numbers of Republicans do like and support it, and large numbers of GOP Congressmen in rural areas have constituents who do use it in large numbers. A few years after Obamacare was implemented a survey of ACA users in deep-red Kentucky showed that if you called the program Obamacare they hated it and said they didn't like it, but if you called it the ACA they supported it and said it was great, and a good number were actually using it. Beyond showing the clear ignorance of the MAGA base, it also shows just how deceptive Republicans have been in their approach to the program.

The ACA isn't perfect and certainly we all need something better than the gradually collapsing system we have now, but in fact the ACA did work well and was a major improvement over what we had before, which was essentially nothing. And one reason it is currently struggling is due to repeated GOP attempts over the years to cut its funding and limit what it can do. It's also worth pointing out that the ACA was based on a Republican healthcare plan; they only hated it after a Democratic POTUS adopted and implemented it.

I continue to believe that ultimately the GOP (and especially Trump's) attacks on the ACA are because they know it is Obama's signature achievement and so Trump will stop at nothing to destroy it and then gloat about it.
 
nycfan said:
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No, what's broken the system is your party over the past decade doing everything they could to limit and defund and damage the ACA without actually abolishing it because it's been too popular to totally abolish, even among your own base. And your party has literally nothing to replace it with either. So now the best they can come up with is just giving some money directly to people, except that what they're offering won't even make a dent in serious medical expenses for most people. And your party wants to allow health insurance companies to deny treatment to people with pre-existing conditions, which would likely cause a national healthcare crisis. The longer Mike Johnson serves as Speaker the more he does to destroy any notion that he's a Christian, whatever he claims otherwise.
 
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“… The Senate is expected to vote this week on a Democratic-backed measure to extend the enhanced healthcare subsidies for three years. Senate Republican leaders agreed to hold the vote as a condition for ending the government shutdown.

The Democratic proposal isn’t expected to pass, heightening the risk that the subsidies will expire and millions of people will see their healthcare costs rise starting next month. Republicans haven’t yet united around an alternative proposal, as they struggle with how—or whether—to extend the subsidies and address issues that animate conservatives such as healthcare fraud.

Some Republican lawmakers are increasingly concerned that healthcare is a political vulnerability for many in the GOP, who campaigned for years on repealing the Affordable Care Act, but haven’t agreed on a healthcare plan of their own.…”
 
nycfan said:



“… The Senate is expected to vote this week on a Democratic-backed measure to extend the enhanced healthcare subsidies for three years. Senate Republican leaders agreed to hold the vote as a condition for ending the government shutdown.

The Democratic proposal isn’t expected to pass, heightening the risk that the subsidies will expire and millions of people will see their healthcare costs rise starting next month. Republicans haven’t yet united around an alternative proposal, as they struggle with how—or whether—to extend the subsidies and address issues that animate conservatives such as healthcare fraud.

Some Republican lawmakers are increasingly concerned that healthcare is a political vulnerability for many in the GOP, who campaigned for years on repealing the Affordable Care Act, but haven’t agreed on a healthcare plan of their own.…”
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“…
The subsidies at the center of the healthcare debate were first enacted in 2021 during the pandemic and have attracted millions of new people into Obamacare’s individual marketplace. Unless Congress acts, hundreds of thousands of middle-income people will fall off a “subsidy cliff” and lose the benefit entirely. Lower- and moderate-income people will still receive a subsidy, but the size will revert to prepandemic levels, making their costs increase.

Abortion policy is another sticking point in the healthcare discussions. Under current law, users have to pay a nominal fee to get abortion coverage in ACA insurance, but antiabortion groups such as Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America want GOP lawmakers to push for further restrictions….”
 
“…
A group of nearly three dozen Democrats and Republicans, including several facing tough re-election fights next year, have pitched a plan that would extend the subsidies for one year and commit to making a new bipartisan plan on healthcare by mid-2026. They are writing legislative text in preparation for introducing the bill.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R., Pa.), who is talking to Democrats and Republicans as well as White House officials, said he is planning to soon release a bipartisan bill extending the subsidies for two years, but making them available only to people below a certain income level and requiring everyone to pay at least something. His measure also envisions eventual more widespread reliance on health savings accounts, which allow people to sock away money tax-free to use later for healthcare.

Sen. Rick Scott (R., Fla.) has introduced a plan to create “Trump Health Freedom Accounts.” The plan would redirect money from the subsidies to savings accounts that could be used to pay for healthcare costs. That plan was backed by the Republican Study Committee, of which more than half of House Republicans are members.…”
 
"The plan would redirect money from the subsidies to savings accounts that could be used to pay for healthcare costs."

Wait, so for example if my premium normally costs $300 per month, and the subsidy makes it cost $100 per month, the Republicans want to take away the subsidy and put that $200 in a savings account?

How is this saving me any money, I'm still spending $200 more per month?
 
lightbluenc said:
"The plan would redirect money from the subsidies to savings accounts that could be used to pay for healthcare costs."

Wait, so for example if my premium normally costs $300 per month, and the subsidy makes it cost $100 per month, the Republicans want to take away the subsidy and put that $200 in a savings account?

How is this saving me any money, I'm still spending $200 more per month?
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They want to eliminate Obamacare entirely and provide money to an HSA to which you could also add your own savings to use to buy insurance on the open market, presumably buying a catastrophic plan and using your HSA to pay out of pocket for most ordinary medical costs. A key to this would be requiring pricing disclosures for basic medical care so people could value shop for care and theoretically put downward pressure on the cost of medical care.

This ignores how much medical costs vary if you pay out of pocket versus what is paid by an insurance plan, for instance, much less the way life or death medical crises distort market forces, but the goal is to make people more educated consumers of their own healthcare to create market pressure on pricing and get the government out of spending so much on healthcare other than Medicare (which I am sure many in the GOP would terminate if they didn’t know that would cause an actual revolution).
 
I have a Masters Degree in Public Administration. I worked Govt Bureaucracy all my life. At various points I was theoretically "in charge" of Health Insurance explination to various organizations' employees, ( luckily I supervised actual experts).
When I get my annual Medicare booklet I don't even open it. Because no way I can traverse/understand it. Now if I have some horrible Medical Cost I will dig in I guess
So yea-great freaking idea to give low income Americans some money and have them figure out what insurance to buy etc
 
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