Healthcare for YOU

[This_person]

Conservative Groups Push Health Plan They Say GOP Needs

They call it “Healthcare for You,” and they plan to spend a quarter-million dollars just rolling it out. The first television ad drops Thursday on the heels of the latest Democratic primary debate.



So, what exactly are the two groups pushing as a health care alternative after Republicans failed to repeal Obamacare while in control of the House, the Senate and the presidency?

According to literature reviewed by RealClearPolitics, the proposal is a grab bag of reforms aimed at restoring “the doctor-patient relationship” by:

• Changing the way health insurance is bought and sold and regulated by allowing patients to purchase coverage across state lines while giving states more regulatory power.
• Lowering drug prices by targeting exemptions that currently allow pharmaceutical middlemen to skirt federal anti-kickback laws.
• Creating personal health management accounts, akin to existing health savings accounts, to allow patients to pay for insurance premiums or care with pre-tax dollars.
• Targeting medical malpractice laws to better protect physicians from frivolous lawsuits and excessive awards.
• Maintaining protections for pre-existing conditions.

Wait, stuff like this could actually help!! How could the Democrats allow for this to exist???? Shouldn't stuff that can help the American people be outlawed as "hate speech" by now?????

 

[This_person]

I'm a firsthand victim of the so-called affordable care act, and this looks like little more than big money trying to fight against Medicare for All. Of all of the problems I face, the doctor-patient relationship is not even something I would have thought of as a problem. I've outlined my suggested solutions before, So I won't go into it again.

I also suggest you google the organizations behind these ads to see who is really funding them.

I just looked at the bulleted list - more about what they're saying than who they are.

Buying across state lines has been a potential help for some time.
The health care accounts to eliminate taxes seems the right thing to do (compromise between what it is now and my suggestion of removing from the actual tax owed vice reducing it from the income earned).
Malpractice reform is LONG overdue.

Those kinds of things.

 

[transporter]

I just looked at the bulleted list - more about what they're saying than who they are.

Buying across state lines has been a potential help for some time.
The health care accounts to eliminate taxes seems the right thing to do (compromise between what it is now and my suggestion of removing from the actual tax owed vice reducing it from the income earned).
Malpractice reform is LONG overdue.

Those kinds of things.

Just to point out the stunningly obvious: there is not one NEW proposal in the bulleted list.

Same old rehash.

Changing the way health insurance is bought and sold and regulated by allowing patients to purchase coverage across state lines while giving states more regulatory power.

This one is actually kind of funny. If a product is bought and sold across state lines, it (by definition) is regulated by the federal government--not the states.

Lowering drug prices by targeting exemptions that currently allow pharmaceutical middlemen to skirt federal anti-kickback laws.

Seems this is already on the books: http://www.antikickbackstatute.com/

Creating personal health management accounts, akin to existing health savings accounts, to allow patients to pay for insurance premiums or care with pre-tax dollars.

This isn't "akin to health savings accounts"...this IS a Health Savings Account.

Targeting medical malpractice laws to better protect physicians from frivolous lawsuits and excessive awards.

This tired old "tort reform" line. Yes...by all means lets protect bad doctors from the public instead of the public from bad doctors.

Maintaining protections for pre-existing conditions.

Care to explain how protecting something that is already protected is an added benefit????

 

[glhs837]

Here's a good interview by a Canadian with a guy pretty deep in the Canadian health care system. Seems pretty straight forward, and the health care guy, while he wiggles a bit, is pretty straight forward and honest. He mentions, in fact, that in a govt paid system, its hard to innovate and that there are parts of the US healthcare system that Canadians cannot dream of. He talks pretty clearly about wait times and what the Canadian system doesnt pay for. Worth a read.

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/podcast/2018/oct/truth-about-waiting-see-doctor-canada

Here's an opinion piece from another guy deep in the systems, again, a good read.

https://theconversation.com/how-to-solve-canadas-wait-time-problem-96170

A total of $41.3 billion was spent by the federal government over 10 years, including $5.5 billion to specifically address wait times in five key areas: Cancer, cardiac, sight restoration, medical imaging (CT and MRIs) and joint replacement.

Some provinces, notably Ontario, saw improvement. Annual report cards from the WTA and Canadian Institutes for Health Information (CIHI) showed modest improvements across the country.

A landscape of chronic disease
But now were are seeing slippage. Performance on wait times is holding steady at best. It’s increasingly clear that all this money bought us time, but did not fix the problem.