Post by DADDY O on Mar 14, 2017 16:15:24 GMT
The downfall of the Trumpster?
The history of nationalized health care in America has been going on since the Civil War (1850's), but to no avail. One program after another has been proposed, only to be defeated by the private insurance companies, Doctors Organizations and/or the ultra conservatives. Most of Europe had national health care since 1912, but not the US. In the USA we had private health insurance companies that provided one scheme after another as to the products they were pedaling at the time.
The beginning of a real national program was advanced under Lyndon Johnson's (not one of my favorite Presidents) tenure in the 1960's with the establishment of the Medicare and Medicaid acts. These were part of his "Great Society".
Medicare was established to assist people over the age of 65 with health coverage. The only problem was......it only covered about 20% of the costs of health care, thus, one needed to purchase a "private" health insurance policy to pay the remainder of the costs. Still, it was better than nothing. Medicaid was established to assist indigent people who had little or no income at all, as well as incapacitated people (mostly mental health patients), and children of indigent parents. Anyone else had to purchase private health insurance, or pay out of pocket for their medical expenses.
During the Clinton administration, Hillary tried (to no avail) to get a National Health Care bill approved and funded.
It wasn't until the Obama administration that real legislation for a national health care system was enacted. The name of the bill was the "Affordable Care Act (ACA)", but later became known as "Obamacare". This legislation was a compromise between private insurance companies and the federal government. It required all Americans to participate in Health care, either through the ACA, or private insurance. Failure to do so would result in fines to people who had no health insurance. The reasoning behind this was if everyone participated, the costs of health coverage would go down. A play on Supply & Demand so to speak. As with any insurance, the more people paying into the system, the lower the costs of the system will be.
One of the primary points to the ACA was that Medicaid funding would be increased in order to help low income people be able to afford this insurance. This funding was presented on a "sliding scale" dependent on the persons income and size of their family.
Obamacare was doing fine until last year when several of the private insurance companies withdrew from the program. Apparently, they did not feel as though they were making enough profits, and could do better under Trump's program of once again not having to compete, but be able to charge whatever they wanted to. When this happened, the remaining companies raised their costs....after all, the competition just left, so let's increase our profits.
Now then, enter the Trumpster. Seeing no problem that he won't capitalize on, he campaigned to abolish Obamacare in order to fix it. That's paramount to driving your car off a cliff because it needed a tune up. So............the Trumpster created a bill....let's call it Trumpcare for fun, which pretty well gave Obamacare the death march. It totally eliminated any assistance for low income people, but at the same time gives large tax credits to America's wealthiest people. Thus, and as one Republican Senator put it, "This bill takes away heath insurance for those who most desperately need it and gives that money to the Billionaires of America".
The bill was reviewed by the "Congressional Budget Office (CBO)" yesterday. This is a non-political entity made up of an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. Their analysis of the bill predicts that:
The history of nationalized health care in America has been going on since the Civil War (1850's), but to no avail. One program after another has been proposed, only to be defeated by the private insurance companies, Doctors Organizations and/or the ultra conservatives. Most of Europe had national health care since 1912, but not the US. In the USA we had private health insurance companies that provided one scheme after another as to the products they were pedaling at the time.
The beginning of a real national program was advanced under Lyndon Johnson's (not one of my favorite Presidents) tenure in the 1960's with the establishment of the Medicare and Medicaid acts. These were part of his "Great Society".
Medicare was established to assist people over the age of 65 with health coverage. The only problem was......it only covered about 20% of the costs of health care, thus, one needed to purchase a "private" health insurance policy to pay the remainder of the costs. Still, it was better than nothing. Medicaid was established to assist indigent people who had little or no income at all, as well as incapacitated people (mostly mental health patients), and children of indigent parents. Anyone else had to purchase private health insurance, or pay out of pocket for their medical expenses.
During the Clinton administration, Hillary tried (to no avail) to get a National Health Care bill approved and funded.
It wasn't until the Obama administration that real legislation for a national health care system was enacted. The name of the bill was the "Affordable Care Act (ACA)", but later became known as "Obamacare". This legislation was a compromise between private insurance companies and the federal government. It required all Americans to participate in Health care, either through the ACA, or private insurance. Failure to do so would result in fines to people who had no health insurance. The reasoning behind this was if everyone participated, the costs of health coverage would go down. A play on Supply & Demand so to speak. As with any insurance, the more people paying into the system, the lower the costs of the system will be.
One of the primary points to the ACA was that Medicaid funding would be increased in order to help low income people be able to afford this insurance. This funding was presented on a "sliding scale" dependent on the persons income and size of their family.
Obamacare was doing fine until last year when several of the private insurance companies withdrew from the program. Apparently, they did not feel as though they were making enough profits, and could do better under Trump's program of once again not having to compete, but be able to charge whatever they wanted to. When this happened, the remaining companies raised their costs....after all, the competition just left, so let's increase our profits.
Now then, enter the Trumpster. Seeing no problem that he won't capitalize on, he campaigned to abolish Obamacare in order to fix it. That's paramount to driving your car off a cliff because it needed a tune up. So............the Trumpster created a bill....let's call it Trumpcare for fun, which pretty well gave Obamacare the death march. It totally eliminated any assistance for low income people, but at the same time gives large tax credits to America's wealthiest people. Thus, and as one Republican Senator put it, "This bill takes away heath insurance for those who most desperately need it and gives that money to the Billionaires of America".
The bill was reviewed by the "Congressional Budget Office (CBO)" yesterday. This is a non-political entity made up of an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. Their analysis of the bill predicts that:
- Twenty-four million fewer people would have coverage a decade from now than if the Affordable Care Act remains intact, nearly doubling the share of Americans who are uninsured. The number of uninsured people would jump 14 million after the first year.
- The Republican legislation would lower the deficit by $337 billion during that time, primarily by decreasing Medicaid spending and government aid for people purchasing health plans on their own.
- Premiums would be 15 to 20 percent higher in the first year compared with current Obamacare premiums, but 10 percent lower after 2026.
- Older Americans would pay “substantially” more, and younger Americans less.
- The CBO analysis also found that the plan to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding would leave many women without services to help them prevent pregnancy, resulting in “thousands” of additional births, which would in turn jack up Medicaid costs.
This bill will, of course, be defeated. Even the Republicans can't swallow it.
