…has lost the uninsured.
As he notes, the fact that 55% would prefer to go back to the old system means that the Republicans could run on a simple repeal platform, even without offering a replacement. Though they should offer one that allows severability of employment from health insurance and purchasing across state lines.
The ‘easy’ piece IMNSHO is just to allow/require tax-free health savings accounts as a piece of “insurance”. It doesn’t mean they’ll be -filled- instantly, but they’re popular even in dark blue states, and explicitly allowing them on a federal level enhances people’s ability to vote with their feet.
Georgia Congressman Tom Price did precisely that:
Congressman Tom Price, M.D. (GA-06), introduced the Empowering Patients First Act (H.R. 2300) today.
You can watch his description of it on a cut from Special Report With Bret Baier:
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/special-report-bret-baier/2013/12/12/center-seat-rep-tom-price-his-alternative-obamacare
But here’s a bit of the transcript:
PRICE: The bottom line is we can solve any health care challenges that we have by putting patients and families and doctors in charge of health care, not Washington, D.C. We do that in our bill, HR-2300, Empowering Patients First Act, by making certain that folks, everybody in this country, every single American has the financial feasibility to purchase coverage that they want, not that the government forces them to by. We do that through tax deductions, and credits and refundable credits and advance-able refundable credits.
We solve portability problems. You ought not lose your insurance if you change your job or you lose your job. You ought to be able to own your coverage regardless of who is paying for it.
We solve preexisting illness by making it so that individuals in that individual and small group market can pool together and get the purchasing power of millions so nobody’s health status makes any difference to the cost of their health coverage. We can do all of that, that is cover folks, solve insurance challenges, and save hundreds of billions of without putting Washington in charge or raising your taxes.
BAIER: So it is across state lines.
PRICE: Purchase across state lines. We equalize the tax treatment for the purchase of coverage. Employers get a tax break for purchasing coverage for their employees, individuals ought to get the same kind of tax break. If you do that, then you make it so that we are focusing on the patient, not on government.
BAIER: And some element of tort reform, I assume.
PRICE: Absolutely. Robust lawsuit reform that isn’t a cap on noneconomic damages, it’s basically a safe harbor, says that if the doctor does the right thing, based on what the specialty society says, not what the secretary of Health and Human Services says, but what their specialty society says, they can use that as an affirmative defense in a court of law. We don’t deny anybody the access to the courts. We just say the doctor ought to be able to say, if I’ve done the right thing, then I ought to be able to use that as an affirmative defense.
“We solve preexisting illness by making it so that individuals in that individual and small group market can pool together and get the purchasing power of millions so nobody’s health status makes any difference to the cost of their health coverage”
wow, that’s so wrong, that it defies imagination.
You realize this is the same line used to support Obamacare’s inclusion of those with pre-existing conditions?
It took me awhile to understand how it was distinctly different than the claim by Obama. In many ways, it isn’t. It is only different when you listen to the pundits version that ACA will combine healthy and pre-existing condition into a pool to lower cost. The only problem with claiming that distinction is that’s not actually happening. Healthy people are not signing up at the rate expected. Any many unhealthy people are being put into Medicaid. So no real distinction at all, other than Price’s statement is a bit more honest.
If the GOP is serious about Price’s bill, it’d get it scored by the CBO and bring it up for a vote. That hasn’t happened.
and they should make it their number one priority.
“If the GOP is serious about Price’s bill, it’d get it scored by the CBO and bring it up for a vote. That hasn’t happened.”
That’s because the GOP leadership is not Conservative. You keep conflating the two and then puff your sunken chest out as if you’ve made some startling and profound statement.
In fact the GOP leadership is part of the Establishment. The Democrats are part of the same Establishment: the DC Power Establishment; whose main goal is to accumulate more power and the money that goes with it. This has been explained to you dozens and dozens of times but you refuse to pay attention.
This is why you’ve heard real Conservatives time and time again tell you that Big Government is bad. You refuse to listen.
Just like you refused to listen when Conservatives explained the obvious to you about Obamacare. You are reaping the horrors of Obamacare now and will continue to do so (see the topic above this one on the new self-identified rubes). You will likewise continue reap the horrors of Big Government……
…even as you shout with glee while begging them to destroy you.
Liberalism is a mental disorder.
You can read the Bill here:
http://tomprice.house.gov/sites/tomprice.house.gov/files/HR%202300%20Section%20by%20Section.pdf
“A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released this week asked uninsured individuals whether or not they thought the law was a good idea. Just 24 percent said they thought it was.”
Translation: People don’t know what is good for them.
“In contrast, half the uninsured polled said they thought it was a bad idea.”
Translation: People don’t like what is in their best interest out of irrationality.
Let me get this straight. They had 3 1/2 years, the most compliant press in the history of the presidency, and hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal. Even with all that, they can’t even convince the one group of people the law was supposed help that it’s a good idea. Calling these guys incompetent is being generous.
At some point, sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
At some point, sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
I disagree, sort of, because that statement seems to assume that malice and incompetence are fundamentally different, and thus to a degree mutually exclusive. I counter with the premise that there are times where they aren’t: It’s conceivable to have both utterly magnificent incompetence and malice in the very same act. For example, Obama’s oft-repeated lie of “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. Period!” That was clearly malice aforethought. However, though he had political motive to tell this lie to get Obamacare passed, and then again to get reelected, what motive could he had had to be repeating said lie just days before the Obamacare roll-out, and while the first batches of cancellation notices were being printed up? And then he roused (and routed) himself to his own defense by claiming that he’d never said what he’d said on camera at least 39 times. That’s truly magnificent incompetence, but it does nothing to take away from the absolute malice of the lie.
I’d list more examples of Obama’s combined incompetence and malice, such as blaming Benghazi on a video to countless examples with Obamacare, but if I tried to list everything, I’d get carpal tunnel syndrome from all the days of typing, and thanks to Obamacare I’ll be uninsured come Jan 1st, so I can’t risk it.
So, with Obama, I prefer to give him all due respect and benefit of the doubt, and thus say that in his case, incompetence and malice are not even close to mutually exclusive – he’s fully capable of doing both at the same time. In fact, it’s the one thing he excels at, and I think he’s better at it than anyone.
🙂
There are so many mortally crippling things about this colossal mistake called Obamacare….
5.5 million have no insurance
the 365k that they claim are enrolled – most don’t have insurance
Computer security is amateurishly non-existent – the fraud will be legendary…this, really is a failure second only to the peopele who are going to die from substandard coverage because…there is no coverage.
And now we get reports of people being prematurely billed and/or double billed and the web site is down so the “customer” cannot investigate and fix this:
For the second week in a row, the Washington Healthplanfinder website is down, and it’s causing problems for people who are dealing with billing issues. Some of them say the website is mistakenly debiting their accounts.
Shannon Bruner of Indianola logged on to her checking account Monday morning, and found she was almost 800 dollars in the negative.
“The first thing I thought was, ‘I got screwed,’” she said.
The Bruners enrolled for insurance on the Washington Healthplanfinder website, last October. They say they selected the bill pay date to be December 24th. Instead the Washington Healthplanfinder drafted the 835 dollar premium Monday.
Josh Bruner started his own business this year as an engineering recruiter. They said it’s forced them to pay a lot of attention to their bills and their bank accounts.
“Big knot in my gut because we’re trying to keep it together,” said Shannon Bruner. “It’s important to me that this kind of stuff doesn’t happen.”
They’re not alone.
………………………………
http://www.kgw.com/news/Enrollees-report-erroneous-debits-by-WA-Healthplanfinder-235244701.html
How Libertarian are Health Savings Accounts anyway? Or 401K’s? Or Roth IRA’s?
Tax rates should be low enough that people are able to set aside and save money on their own. For health care. And retirement. And their children’s education. And their children’s weddings. And for a downpayment on a house. And for a nice automobile. And for nice clothing. And for a boat/elaborate model train set/or other hobbies.
What we do is tax ordinary income. And then we tax the return when some of that income is set aside as savings and invested so it doesn’t melt away with inflation.
Yes, we need to pay taxes to fund our common defense, pay benefits to veterans who have made personal sacrifices to contribute towards that defense, to provide a social safety net for the less fortunate, to maintain a legal and regulatory system to provide some manner of level playing field, and so on.
But there is a fear in liberal/Progressive/Left circles that someone, somewhere, someplace has even a tiny surplus of income over what they choose to spend right now, and that such a person, through the power of even low levels of “compound interest”, that is, positive net return in investment, is able to get ahead and make themselves unequal to those who are unwilling to save, and yes, unable to save.
So saving is evil, “you didn’t build that”, so we need to tax investment income, and we need to inflate the money so that they kind of low-risk investment used by “the little guy” has a negative net rate of return.
But then we can’t have people in old age with zero savings and depending 100% on Social Security. So you get some sheltering of your income or investment returns if you save money for a government-approved purpose such as setting aside money for old age.
And we can’t have 100% of the population on Medicaid. So we need to have Health Savings Accounts. You need to pay full tax rates if you want to spend your money on expensive brass model train locomotives for the collection in the basement driving your wife nuts, but if you want to set the money aside for your health care, OK, here is a tax break.
And if everyone were dependent on government grants to pay for higher education, that wouldn’t work either. So you get a tax break for putting money aside in some kind of approved higher education account, and you get to feel pretty smug that you are doing that instead of, say, blowing it at the tribal casino or on Powerball tickets.
So we feel pretty good about not really paying that much in taxes because our money is going into a retirement account, a health care account, an education account, and yes, into paying property taxes and mortgage interest that are Federal tax deductible. Yes, sir! We are free men sheltering our income from taxes. By doing everything the government has decided we should do with our money. Not that we wouldn’t want to save for retirement not to be a burden on our kids, save for our health care not to depend on charity medicine, save for our kids’ college to get them a good start on life, and provide a comfortable house for ourselves and our family. But we are children whom the government has to be a parent, that Christmas check from Grandma has to go straight into our “college savings account” where we will never see it. There is a logic to this, but it is not the logic of Libertarian personal choice, personal responsibility, and person accountability?
“There is a logic to this, but it is not the logic of Libertarian personal choice, personal responsibility, and person accountability?”
It is a system – and that fails the “Libertarian” test, perhaps.
Which is more Libertarian:
“Thou shalt pay 12.5% (half hidden by your employer) into a retirement account that you (by law) don’t even own and is poorly enough managed that you just have to trust that we’ll pay you back.”
Or:
“Here’s a retirement account number into which you can deflect income -tax-free- up to 12.5% of your income. You own it, you can withdraw at any time for any reason and pay standard taxes on the withdrawal.”
If you’d rather withdraw it immediately and bury it in the back yard as Krugerrands – you can. If you chose to invest it on a child’s college – you can.
Rephase this as pretty much -anything- that is ‘general welfare’. Schools? Food Stamps? Medical? They can all be done in the same fashion.
Neither “-is- Libertarian”. One is -more- Libertarian. Arguing against moving in the right direction doesn’t seem useful.
One benefit of having the accounts at all, is precisely “that Christmas check from Grandma”. Grandma can “earmark” it. Giving is higher in situations where the person giving the money has some say on where or how it is spent. “Here’s some food money dear”