The fall of Trumpcare

Discussion in 'Politics' started by ElectricFetus, Mar 24, 2017.

  1. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    Not 7 years - more like ten. Remember the run-up to the 2008 election? It was a major issue in the election.
    https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/instructors/setups2008/campaign-issues.jsp

    "One of the clearest difference between the candidates was in their approach to health care. Obama argued that major federal legislation was needed to reform the health care system. Specifically, he proposed government action to prevent health insurance companies from denying coverage to people on the basis of their existing health condition. He also proposed taxing employers who did not provide health care insurance to their employees (with exemptions for small employers). He further proposed reducing the number of uninsured individuals by expanding Medicaid and by establishing a government run health insurance program that would allow those who did not have health insurance to purchase it at a reasonable cost.


    McCain took a more free market approach to reforming health care (Shear 2008). He proposed taxing the health insurance benefits for those who were covered by their employer, arguing that it was unfair for that group to receive insurance benefits tax free, while others paid taxes on the money that they used to purchase insurance. Instead, all individuals would receive a tax credit that they could use to purchase health care insurance under McCain's plan. He argued that greater competition in the health insurance market would result in lower costs and greater coverage."

    The reason it took that long to introduce, amend and pass that emasculated version was the howling - rabid, scurrilous, not to mention libelous - opposition by Republicans, in the legislature, in the town-hall meetings, in the media, and in the courts. I don't recall them trying to endorse McCain's half-assed plan. Did anyone seriously advocate it?
     
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  3. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    It's that damn truth thingy that keeps biting them in the ass. After 7+ years and so much screaming about how bad Obamacare was, all the death panels and such, one would think Republicans would have an alternative. I think this pretty much exposes the lies.

    Amen to that!
     
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  5. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    Oh, and Democrats didn't want universal health coverage before Obama got into office?

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    By that logic, the Dems should have had a fully-negotiated plan day one of Obama's first term.

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    Only for those with high relative benefits utilization. Low utilized plans have higher prices than they would with rates comparable to risk. Again, it's just basic economics.
    1900s–1920s
    U.S. efforts to achieve universal coverage began with progressive health care reformers who supported Theodore Roosevelt for President in 1912, though he was defeated. Progressives campaigned unsuccessfully for sickness insurance guaranteed by the states.
    1930s–1950s
    In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Isidore Falk and Edgar Sydenstricter to help draft provisions to Roosevelt's pending Social Security legislation to include publicly funded health care programs. These reforms were attacked by the American Medical Association as well as state and local affiliates of the AMA as "compulsory health insurance."
    ...
    Following the world war, President Harry Truman called for universal health care as a part of his Fair Deal in 1949 but strong opposition stopped that part of the Fair Deal.
    1960s–1980s
    In 1970, three proposals for universal national health insurance financed by payroll taxes and general federal revenues were introduced in the U.S. Congress. In February 1970, Representative Martha Griffiths (D-MI) introduced a national health insurance bill—without any cost sharing—developed with the AFL–CIO.
    ...
    In January 1971, Kennedy began a decade as chairman of the Health subcommittee of the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee, and introduced a reconciled bipartisan Kennedy-Griffiths bill proposing universal national health insurance.
    ...
    In January 1975, in the midst of the worst recession in the four decades since the Great Depression, Ford said he would veto any health insurance reform, and Kennedy returned to sponsoring his original universal national health insurance bill.
    ...
    In April 1976, Democratic presidential candidate Jimmy Carter proposed health care reform that included key features of Kennedy's universal national health insurance bill.
    - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histo...e_United_States#Federal_health_care_proposals
    I think you get the idea. Progressives and Democrats have wanted universal health coverage for decades, yet it took them 14 months into Obama's first term to get it done.

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    What was their excuse for taking so long?

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    Yet:
    In the parlance of today's ObamaCare discussions the "Mandate" refers to a legal obligation dictated by the federal government for all residents to purchase comprehensive health insurance covering routine, preventative, emergency, and mental health care and more.​

    The 'mandates' laid out by the Heritage Foundation were of an entirely different nature, as they focused on two areas: 1) Employer Mandate, requiring all large companies to provide healthcare coverage and 2) A Catastrophic Insurance Mandate, intended to protect the public from absorbing the costs for uncovered emergency care.

    Routine health care was always regarded as an individual obligation.
    ...

    Dr. Butler in a USA Today article in February of 2012, summed up the position of the Heritage Foundation:​

    "Is the individual mandate at the heart of "ObamaCare" a conservative idea? Is it
    Constitutional? And was it invented at The Heritage Foundation? In a word, no.

    The U.S. Supreme Court will put the middle issue to rest. The answers to the first and last can come from me. After all, I headed Heritage's health work for 30 years. And make no mistake: Heritage and I actively oppose the individual mandate, including in an amicus brief filed in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court."​
    In its amicus brief to the Court, the Foundation stated:

    "the Heritage position quoted by the Department of Justice (should) have a red flag indicating it had been reversed. . . . Heritage has stopped supporting any insurance mandate."
    Heritage policy experts never supported an unqualified mandate like that in the PPACA
    [ObamaCare]. Their prior support for a qualified mandate was limited to catastrophic coverage(true insurance that is precisely what the PPACA forbids), coupled with tax relief for all familiesand other reforms that are conspicuously absent from the PPACA. Moreover, Heritage's legal scholars have been consistent in explaining that the type of mandate in the PPACA is unconstitutional.​
    ...
    The next time you hear or read someone mention that the Heritage Foundation conceived of the "individual mandate," one should reflect a bit, not on what is being said, but on what is being left out. We need to recognize that the Heritage Foundation:

    1) Did not propose a mandate for routine health care.

    2) Later withdrew all support of any type of a mandate.

    3) Recognized that any such mandate is unconstitutional.

    4) Argued to the Supreme Court (via briefs) that any such mandate was at odds with individual liberty.
    - http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2013/10/heritage_vs_obamacare.html

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    Nope, it's definitely your intellectual honesty that's suspect.
     
    Last edited: Apr 2, 2017
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  7. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    They should have negotiated it before they could negotiate it?

    Syne logic at its finest.
     
  8. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    Okay, so the progressives have been trying to reform health insurance for a century; the regressives kept blocking, sabotaging, maligning and vetoing every attempt.
    So, actually, the Republicans have had 100 years to come up with a viable alternative....
    couldn't...
    ....and are still trying to blame it on Obama???
     
  9. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    What did I hit a nerve? Sorry I thought I was being gentle. Let me get this straight, you think this is a pissing contest over who has the better party? You think I respect and love the democrats?

    Anyways your party is in charge, and despite their livid hate for obamacare can't manage to get their own shit together to destroy it and replace our crappy healthcare with something worse, your inability to recognize how ridiculous that is, is not my problem. I honest was hoping on them doing it, the damage done would enhance voters swing to my side, but please do managed to do it later, closer to the next elections.

    Talk about intellectual honesty: your clearly recognize they proposed a mandate, your just weaseling over specifics.

    How did that court case go by the way? So let me get this straight heritage foundation changes it mind to attack the Democrats (big surprise), what is your point? That by changing there mind they did not propose this to begin with? That makes no sense.
     
  10. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Well, and democrats, and the Freedom Caucus, and Trump's son in law, and Paul Ryan. Basically everyone but themselves.
     
  11. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    So it took 14 months to negotiate Obamacare, but you think the Republicans failed for not doing so in 3 months?

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    Seeing as Obamacare has raised premiums without lowering costs, the free market was a viable alternative.
    You've made the same mistake of which you seem to accuse me. Where have I said I identify as a Republican?
    You believing Trump's and Ryan's bullshit false dilemma that it was either Obamacare or Trumpcare is not my problem. It's ridiculous to assume that, if they didn't do what took Obama and the Dems 14 months in 3 months, they'd never get another chance.
    Your side? Since you've objected to that being the Dems, which side is that?
    I'm all for repeal and not-replace, and the sooner the better. Rip the bandage off a give things time to settle down (including premiums and costs) before the midterm.
    You're just naive or intellectually dishonest enough to think all mandates are equivalent...even given significant differences in both intent and actual effect.

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    By your argument, the real origin of Obamacare was 1883 Germany, since it is a national health insurance.

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    Even you should be able to see that once the Dems used the catastrophic mandate as a jumping off point to a primary care mandate, Heritage reevaluated it. What was a simple, broad religious exemption in the Chafee plan became an exemption that required you to forgo Social Security under Obamacare. Or is that just another difference you can't manage to differentiate?

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  12. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    The Republicans failed by proposing a terrible plan, not getting any review input on it and not budgeting any time to fix it. They've had at least six years to come up with a plan, and by all accounts only started working on it once Trump took office. That's foolish and short-sighted, and that's the reason it failed.

    Perhaps next time they will learn the lessons of Obama and do the work to create and vet a rational plan, then get approval and support for it BEFORE demanding a vote by an absurd deadline.
     
  13. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Attempting to compromise with the Republicans in Congress, and maneuvering around them (especially the filibuster in the Senate) when that proved a waste of time.
    No, for everyone - if everyone's insured, including those who cannot pay or are very sick. That's how insurance works. The premiums pay for risk and overhead - splitting the pool increases both.

    Meanwhile, low utilization increases delivery cost in medical care, unless significant care is denied to many people.
    Non sequiter. A "free market" in universal medical insurance is not possible, let alone a "viable alternative".
    The many and diverse resemblances between the Heritage plan and the '93 Republican plan, and both of them to Romneycare and then Obamacare, are laid out for you in the Kaiser study I linked, above. Kaiser did not find the mandates to be of an "entirely different nature", instead they concluded that they plans were "similar". And eyewitnesses verify that the '93 Republican plan was used as a model.
    The fact that the Heritage Foundation opposed anything and everything initiated by the Obama administration, regardless of what it was or where it came from, on whatever grounds they could cobble together at any given moment regardless of consistency or reason, is evidence of nothing except the Republican agenda. Remember, this is the Party and political faction that had Senators filibustering their own sponsored bills if Obama supported them.
     
  14. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    Where's any evidence that the Democrats started working specifically on Obamacare before Obama got into office?

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    It's precursor was crafted in November 2009...4 months before it was signed into law...and 10 months after Obama got into office.

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    TC failed because it was trying to fulfill contradictory campaign promises...repeal Obamacare while keeping many of its provisions. Maybe they will have a better plan and support, given the same 10 months of prep and 4 months of negotiations that Obamacare had. Alas, what short memory you have.

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  15. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Actually, Democrats began working on healthcare reform in 1992. It was called Hillarycare. It scared Republicans so much they created what would become Obamacare.

    Trumpcare failed for many reasons. First and foremost of those reasons is the fact they over promised. They cannot deliver more healthcare for less without significant long term structural changes which will take years to effect. Republicans lied about healthcare.
     
  16. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Google "Healthy Americans Act." It was first proposed in 2007 by Democrats, and later reworked to become the ACA.
    Maybe. So far they are 2 and 0. They certainly couldn't do any worse.

    Unfortunately, Trump really isn't into those "planning" "support" "negotiation" and "prep" sort of things. He's a man of action, not a loser nerd like Clinton.
     
  17. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    You mean an impulsive moron.
     
  18. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    In August 1994, Democratic Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell introduced a compromise proposal that would have delayed requirements of employers until 2002 and exempted small businesses. However, "even with Mitchell’s bill, there were not enough Democratic Senators behind a single proposal to pass a bill, let alone stop a filibuster."[29]

    A few weeks later, Mitchell announced that his compromise plan was dead and that health care reform would have to wait at least until the next Congress. The defeat weakened Clinton politically, emboldened Republicans, and contributed to the notion that she was a "big-government liberal" as decried by conservative opponents.
    - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_health_care_plan_of_1993#Defeat

    If there wasn't enough democrat support, it could hardly be said that democrat in general were working on it. I've already disproven your Heritage Foundation nonsense...no matter your useless protests, and this one is similar:

    The conservative Heritage Foundation argued that "the Clinton Administration is imposing a top-down, command-and-control system of global budgets and premium caps, a superintending National Health Board and a vast system of government sponsored regional alliances, along with a panoply of advisory boards, panels, and councils, interlaced with the expanded operations of the agencies of Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Labor, issuing innumerable rules, regulations, guidelines, and standards.
    - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_health_care_plan_of_1993#Criticism
    But I agree, Trumpcare did over promise. Perhaps you missed that:
    "TC failed because it was trying to fulfill contradictory campaign promises."
    Do you ever read what you cite?

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    It would transition away from employer-provided health insurance, to employer-subsidized insurance, having instead individuals choose their health care plan from state-approved private insurers. It sought to make the cost of health insurance more transparent to consumers, with the expectation being that this would increase market pressures to drive health insurance costs down. The proposal created a system that would be paid for by both public and private contributions. It would establish Healthy Americans Private Insurance Plans (HAPIs) and require those who do not already have health insurance coverage, and who do not oppose health insurance on religious grounds, to enroll themselves and their children in a HAPI.
    - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthy_Americans_Act
    So what happened to the cost-saving transparency? What happened to employer-provided becoming employer-subsidized? What happened to the state-determined criteria for religious exemption?
    (3) VERIFICATION OF RELIGIOUS EXCEPTION.—Each State shall develop guidelines for determining and verifying the individuals who qualify for the exception under paragraph (1)(B).
    - https://www.congress.gov/bill/110th-congress/senate-bill/334/text

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    2 and 0? They only tried to bring it up in the House once.

    But I agree, Trump isn't really cut out for dealing with Congress. Too use to instant gratification probably.

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  19. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    And your point is? As I previously stated Democrats have been working on healthcare reform since 1992. They failed in the early 90s. As the article you referenced stated, the Clintons were very secretive about their plan, and it caused great concern. That's when Heritage developed Obamacare. I don't think anyone knows today what Hillarycare looked like. But I think Hillary has envisions some grand revisions.

    Just a few general comments about the Clintons, I was never a great fan. They just happened to be better than anything Republicans offered up. They made mistakes.


    What makes you think I missed that? Trump has made a number of impossible promises. Healthcare was just one of them. He promised a trillion dollar infrastructure spending bill, a trillion dollar increase in defense spending, a 13 trillion dollar tax cut and to pay off the national debt in his first term to name a few.

     
  20. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Yes. You asked for evidence that the democrats started working on the ACA before Obama got into office. I gave you an example of a plan they were working on that was the precursor of the ACA.

    If you don't want the answer, don't ask the question.
    And they couldn't even get Trumpcare 2.0 to that level before it was abandoned.
     
  21. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    Even if previous Democrat plans had superficial similarities to Obamacare, that's just more reason to expect coming up with a plan to take much longer than three months.

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    I've already debunked your nonsense about the Heritage Foundation creating Obamacare, so that lie won't get you anywhere.
    Who has disputed any of that?

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    Aside from the significant differences I cited, this is only an argument for it taking MUCH longer than three months.

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    And? Again, it's only been about three months. And the Freedom Caucus is already predicting a passable bill within weeks.
     
  22. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Agreed there. Several Republicans are already saying that it might have to look a lot more like Obamacare (i.e. the ACA) to have a chance at passing. So a lot of changes will have to be made.
     
  23. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    Cite a source on that.
     

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