Trumpcare-- 1.0 [Archive] - SpursTalk.com Forums

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RandomGuy

10-13-2017, 02:40 PM

Trump to issue stop-payment order on health care subsidies

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a move likely to roil America’s insurance markets, President Donald Trump will “immediately” halt payments to insurers under the Obama-era health care law he has been trying to persuade Congress to unravel for months.

Before sunrise Friday morning, Trump went on Twitter to urge Democrats to make a deal: “The Democrats ObamaCare is imploding,” he wrote. “Massive subsidy payments to their pet insurance companies has stopped. Dems should call me to fix!”

https://apnews.com/43e18d46f519464aa5c5f79f7eb1503e
:lmao Democrats now get to rightfully blame Trump and the GOP for all the premium increases and canceled/reduced coverage.

He seriously thinks the Dems in congress are going to come to his rescue. :lmao

All kidding aside, we now get to see how Republican war-on-the-poor policies play out.

rmt

10-13-2017, 04:14 PM

Section 1402 of Obamacare requires insurance companies to reduce deductibles, copayments, and other similar payments for lower-income consumers and then says that the federal government will reimburse the insurers for their losses. Specifically, insurers will notify the federal government of the amount of their price reductions, and the government will “make periodic and timely payments to the insurer equal to the value of the reductions.”

Unlike other provisions of Obamacare covering other forms of subsidies (for example, Section 1401, which funded subsidies that helped cover insurance premiums), the law didn’t specifically appropriate any money to fund these payments. This isn’t a small thing. In fact, it implicates the core constitutional structure of our government. Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution unambiguously declares that “no Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by law.” The most relevant federal appropriations statute states quite clearly that “a law may be construed to make an appropriation out of the Treasury . . . only if the law specifically states that an appropriation is made.” In fact, there is unmistakeable evidence that President Obama knew that his administration needed a specific appropriation to fund Section 1402 subsidies — he asked Congress for the money. Congress said no. It didn’t appropriate a single dime. So Obama did what he did best: He “penned and phoned” the subsidies into existence. He directly violated the Constitution by spending the money anyway. The House of Representatives sued, and on May 12, 2016, federal district court judge Rosemary Collyer ruled in the House’s favor and held that the Obama administration’s payments were unlawful. Her opinion reads like a 38-page civics lesson, but for all its length the court’s core holding is simple: “The Affordable Care Act unambiguously appropriates money for Section 1401 premium tax credits but not for Section 1402 reimbursements to insurers. Such an appropriation cannot be inferred.”

The Obama administration argued that blocking the payments would lead to “absurd economic, fiscal, and healthcare-policy results.” The judge’s response was constitutionally and legally sound: The only result of the ACA, however, is that the Section 1402 reimbursements must be funded annually. Far from absurd, that is a perfectly valid means of appropriation. The results predicted by the [administration] flow not from the ACA, but from Congress’ subsequent refusal to appropriate money. In other words, if you have a problem with the lack of appropriation, take it up with the House and Senate.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/452660/obamacare-subsidy-payments%3A-trump-illegal-subsidies

boutons_deux

10-13-2017, 07:30 PM

Trash owns Obamacare now and the suffering and deaths he's commiting

hater

10-13-2017, 07:34 PM

The Prophecy 666 tbqh

Kushner owns 666 building in NYC btw

boutons_deux

10-13-2017, 08:31 PM

Trash owns Obamacare now and the suffering and deaths he's commiting

Splits

10-21-2017, 09:29 AM

921739216391983104

DMC

10-21-2017, 12:25 PM

The Prophecy 666 tbqh

Kushner owns 666 building in NYC btw

Looking for that kind of shit is worse than tweeting the turd you just laid, as POTUS, tbh.

RandomGuy

10-31-2017, 11:17 AM

921739216391983104

I'm confused. What does this have to do with Hillary?

Oh, that's right, nothing.

I wonder how Trump will spin the premium increases.

boutons_deux

05-06-2018, 04:30 PM

Trump Says He Got Rid of Obamacare. The I.R.S. Doesn’t Agree.

“Essentially, we are getting rid of Obamacare,” :lol

“Some people would say, essentially, we have gotten rid of it.” :lol

the Internal Revenue Service has been pursuing companies that fail to comply with the mandate and, according to the agency, was sending penalty notices to more than 30,000 businesses around the country.

The Congressional Budget Office predicted that these fines would total $12 billion in 2018.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/06/business/trump-obamacare-irs.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Spurtacular

05-06-2018, 04:50 PM

Trash owns Obamacare now and the suffering and deaths he's commiting

So according to you, Obama installed a system that depended on a Republican president buying into socialism? :lol

Winehole23

05-07-2018, 07:37 AM

Every attempt to repeal the ACA, even with the GOP controlling all three branches of government, has failed.

It's still on the books because a few Republicans go along with it, and Trump's IRS is enforcing the insurance mandate.

Republican opposition to the ACA appears to be virtue signalling.

AaronY

05-07-2018, 07:56 AM

Its in deep trouble without the individual mandate honestly

boutons_deux

05-07-2018, 08:15 AM

1000s will suffer and die as sociopathic Repugs degrade ACA, cut poor women's clinics, increase pollution, fund criminal CPCs

boutons_deux

05-09-2018, 10:27 AM

Health insurers say higher Obamacare premiums are coming, and it’s Republicans’ fault

People who don't have insurance through work stand to lose.

Early signs show health insurance companies are trying to exponentially raise prices for plans sold on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace — and

for people who don’t qualify for federal assistance, there’s no relief in sight.

Insurers in Maryland and Virginia are asking for double-digit premium increases to 2019 monthly plans.

CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield CEO Chet Burrell said (http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-0509-maryland-aca-20180508-story.html) that Maryland’s exchange is in the “advanced stages of a death spiral.”

Health experts warned this would happen.

In fact, insurers who set the premium rates cautioned that costs would rise if lawmakers continued to undermine the Obamacare exchanges and not shore up the market.

A letter issued to lawmakers in November from major health industry players said

“eliminating the individual mandate by itself likely will result in a significant increase in premiums,

which would in turn substantially increase the number of uninsured Americans.”

Instability —

largely driven by Republican policy like the repeal of the mandate and

the president’s decision to stop paying insurers for cost sharing subsidies —

has irked insurance companies, but they’re mostly able to avoid serious harm.

In 2017, for example,

insurers still made money — Blue Cross Blue Shield had a $1.3 billion windfall — by raising premiums and enjoying the delay of an Obamacare tax,
https://thinkprogress.org/new-insurance-rates-prove-trumps-policies-have-increased-obamacare-premiums-0793a17d1eb0/

4M+ have lost or quit ACA under the Repugs.

This is what you deplorables voted for, right?

And of course, the Repugs destroy ACA, hurt Americans, and with have no replacement

koriwhat

05-09-2018, 11:05 AM

Health insurers say higher Obamacare premiums are coming, and it’s Republicans’ fault

lmao but how? if obama slid that pos HC under our noses then how's it repubs fault that premiums are coming when that pos HC should've never been a thing in the first place? loony left logic.

Pavlov

05-09-2018, 11:09 AM

lmao but how? if obama slid that pos HC under our noses then how's it repubs fault that premiums are coming when that pos HC should've never been a thing in the first place? loony left logic.You don't even know the main reason the premiums are going up.

koriwhat

05-09-2018, 11:13 AM

You don't even know the main reason the premiums are going up.

i don't even care. if it wasn't clandestine to begin with you and i wouldn't have this back and forth right now. case closed pav.

Pavlov

05-09-2018, 11:15 AM

i don't even care.We knew that.

boutons_deux

07-07-2018, 07:37 PM

Health Insurers Warn of Market Turmoil as Trump Suspends Billions in Payments

Seema Verma, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said Trump administration officials had

decided to suspend payments

because of a February court ruling in New Mexico. :lol

The Trump administration said Saturday that it was suspending a program that pays billions of dollars to insurers to stabilize health insurance markets under the Affordable Care Act,

a freeze that could increase uncertainty in the markets and drive up premiums this fall.

Many insurers that enroll large numbers of unhealthy people depend on the “risk adjustment” payments,

which are intended to reduce the incentives for insurers to seek out healthy consumers and shun those with chronic illnesses and other pre-existing conditions.

“Any action to stop disbursements under the risk adjustment program

will significantly increase 2019 premiums for millions of individuals and small-business owners, and

could result in far fewer health plan choices,”

said Justine G. Handelman, a senior vice president of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.

“It will undermine Americans’ access to affordable care,

particularly for those who need medical care the most.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/07/us/politics/trump-risk-adjustment-payments-obamacare.html (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/07/us/politics/trump-risk-adjustment-payments-obamacare.html)

Trash and his mafiya committing willful manslaughter

boutons_deux

07-07-2018, 07:39 PM

Woman Trapped By Subway Train

Did Not Want To Call An Ambulance

Because She Can't Afford It

https://www.techtimes.com/articles/231771/20180706/woman-trapped-by-subway-train-did-not-want-to-call-an-ambulance-because-she-cant-afford-it.htm

boutons_deux

07-08-2018, 02:12 PM

A Baby Was Treated With A Nap And A Bottle Of Formula. The Bill Was $18,000.

Park Jeong Whan, fell off the bed in the family’s hotel room and hit his head.

There was no blood, but the baby was inconsolable. Jang and her husband worried he might have an injury they couldn’t see, so they called 911, and

an ambulance took the family — tourists from South Korea — to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH).

just a little bruising on his nose and forehead.

He took a short nap in his mother’s arms, drank some infant formula and was discharged a few hours later with a clean bill of health. The family continued their vacation, and the incident was quickly forgotten.

Two years later, the bill finally arrived at their home: They owed the hospital $18,836 for a visit lasting three hours and 22 minutes,

the bulk of which was for a mysterious fee for $15,666 labeled “trauma activation,”

also known as “a trauma response fee.”

https://khn.org/news/how-er-bills-can-balloon-by-as-much-as-50k-for-trauma-response/

rmt

07-08-2018, 02:54 PM

boutons_deux

07-08-2018, 02:58 PM

And???? You think Trump is responsible for that?

it's a problem that Trumpcare REFUSES to address, and even intends to make much worse.

ducks

07-08-2018, 05:01 PM

ducks

07-08-2018, 05:03 PM

boutons_deux

07-11-2018, 11:21 AM

Trump Hits Obamacare Again, Nearly Wiping Out Funds For Outreach

It will probably mean less help for the very people who need Affordable Care Act coverage the most.

the agency that runs the health insurance exchanges is slashing funds for organizations that help people to shop for coverage,

forcing the groups to make do with about one-fourth of the federal funding they got for this year’s open enrollment.

The organizations will almost certainly respond by downsizing and scaling back services, so that they end up

providing less help, reaching fewer people, or both.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (https://www.cms.gov/) (CMS) announced (https://www.cms.gov/Newsroom/MediaReleaseDatabase/Press-releases/2018-Press-releases-items/2018-07-10-2.html) the cut late Tuesday.

The cut will affect navigators,

the nonprofit organizations that the federal government pays to help with enrollment in the states (https://www.kff.org/health-reform/state-indicator/state-decisions-for-creating-health-insurance-exchanges-and-expanding-medicaid/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22 :%22asc%22%7D) that use HealthCare.gov (https://www.healthcare.gov/) as their online marketplace for people trying to get coverage through the Affordable Care Act.

Next year, navigators from across the country

That’s down from $37 million for the 2018 plan year

and from $63 million for 2017.

The Trump administration (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/topic/trump-administration/)has made similarly

sharp reductions (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-obamacare-sabotage-enrollment-cuts_us_59a87bffe4b0b5e530fd5751?ht) in funds earmarked for advertising and promoting health insurance enrollment.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-obamacare-navigator-cut_us_5b4538f4e4b07aea75452807?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=__TheMorningEmail__071118&utm_content=__TheMorningEmail__071118+CID_661c050d 8c5a9a6738b635901a7e2b7b&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=HuffPost&ncid=newsltushpmgnews__TheMorningEmail__071118

Trash OWNS ACA now, and of course he is fucking it up just to spite the knitter, and doesn't care if he denies health care to 10Ms of Americans.

boutons_deux

07-11-2018, 02:45 PM

Any way you slice it, Trump's Supreme Court pick is bad news for health care (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/7/11/1779701/-Any-way-you-slice-it-Trump-s-Supreme-Court-pick-is-bad-news-for-health-care)

Obamcare supporter and University of Michigan Law School professor Nicholas Bagley says that he doesn't think Kavanaugh will approach future challenges as "health-care cases," but rather he'll "view them through the constitutional lens he brings to his cases more generally."

in a previous Obamacare case,

he argued in dissent that the president has the power to determine if a law or part of it is unconstitutional, no matter what the courts have decided.

Things like protections for people with pre-existing conditions would be out the window.

That's where the threat of Kavanaugh comes in. Abbe Gluck, a Yale law professor, pinpoints that when she

"predicts there will be cases that accuse the Trump administration of sabotaging the ACA, :lol

which she says violates the Article II of the Constitution or

the "Take Care Clause (https://definitions.uslegal.com/t/take-care-clause/)," which requires the president to act in good faith to enforce laws. :lol

Given his record,

"one could surmise that he'd find reasons for the actions Trump has taken to weaken the ACA via regulations."

GOP Sen. Hatch, who met with Kavanaugh this a.m., about Ds arguing he’s a threat to the ACA. He said:

“The Affordable Care Act is one of the broad, inclusive bills that you’ll ever see.

And anybody who thinks it’s not going to be litigated sometime in the future is nuts.”

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1779701

boutons_deux

09-03-2018, 08:16 PM

Trump loses again, more people have health insurance than ever (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/9/3/1791938/-Trump-loses-again-more-people-have-health-insurance-than-ever)

https://images.dailykos.com/images/583014/large/uninsured-rate-among-the-nonelderly-population-1972-2018q1white.png?1535571613

According to the CDC survey,

20.3 million fewer people are going without insurance than in 2010, which is still a big fucking deal.

Remarkably, the gains have remained stable (https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-08-obamacare-enrollee-falling.html), as health economist Ellen Meara points out.

"During a time with a lot of uncertainty— Thanks, Repugs!

there's been a lot of political turmoil over what will or won't happen with Obamacare—

these gains we've made in reducing the number of uninsured have held pretty steady."

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1791938

Pence, fake Christian, has promised that if Repugs control the House after the elections, the Repugs will kill ACA and throw 10Ms off insurance.

boutons_deux

09-03-2018, 08:20 PM

Obamacare on the Ballot: Will Red-State Voters Expand Medicaid This Fall?

Republican governors and state legislatures who wanted no part of cooperating with a law that was championed by a president they disdained.

A growing body of evidence (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/02/upshot/finally-some-answers-on-the-effects-of-medicaid-expansion.html) shows that both access to health care and the quality of that care improved measurably in places that expanded the program,

while the damaging financial repercussions its detractors feared — or claimed to fear — failed to materialize.

Over the last year, voters in multiple such states have banded together to change this sad state of affairs.

Last November, after a successful petition drive, voters overwhelmingly voted to expand Medicaid in Maine, the one Northeast state that hadn’t yet gotten on board.

(Paul LePage, the state’s proto-Trumpist governor, is still resisting implementing (http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/08/top-maine-court-orders-lepage-to-start-medicaid-expansion.html) the program, but he’s fighting a losing battle.)

Below, a rundown of the four Republican-dominated states where Medicaid is on the ballot in November:

Utah

Idaho

Nebraska

Montana

with Democrats poised for gains in statehouses across the country ,

Medicaid expansion may just get a little closer to becoming a reality everywhere.http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/09/will-red-state-voters-expand-medicaid-this-fall.html

boutons_deux

09-03-2018, 08:40 PM

Get Sick, Go Bankrupt and Die

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/09/03/opinion/03krugmanWeb/03krugmanWeb-superJumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp
Vice President Mike Pence, campaigning last week with Leah Vukmir, a Senate candidate in Wisconsin, told reporters that Republicans would repeal Obamacare if they held majorities in Congress in November.

now McCain is gone, and with him, as far as we can tell, the only Republican in Congress with anything resembling a spine.

As a result, if Republicans hold Congress in November, they will indeed repeal Obamacare.

That’s not a guess: It’s an explicit promise (http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/404536-pence-gop-plans-to-try-again-to-repeal-obamacare-if-elections-go-well), made by Vice President Mike Pence last week.

Surely Republicans have spent the past year rethinking their policy ideas,

trying to come up with ways to undo the A.C.A.

without inflicting enormous harm on ordinary Americans,

especially those with pre-existing medical conditions.

Right?

See, I made a joke.

Republicans haven’t rethought their ideas on health care (or, actually, anything else).

Partly that’s because the modern G.O.P. doesn’t do policy analysis.

The G.O.P. can’t come up with an alternative to the Affordable Care Act because no such alternative exists.

In particular, if you want to preserve protection for people with pre-existing conditions —

the health issue that matters most to voters (https://www.kff.org/health-reform/poll-finding/kaiser-health-tracking-poll-july-2018-changes-to-the-affordable-care-act-health-care-in-the-2018-midterms-and-the-supreme-court/), including half of Republicans —

Obamacare is the most conservative policy that can do that.

The point, again, is that Obamacare is the most conservative option for covering pre-existing conditions, and

if Republicans really cared about the scores of millions (https://www.kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/mapping-pre-existing-conditions-across-the-u-s/) of Americans with such conditions, :lol

they would support and indeed try to strengthen the A.C.A.

But covering pre-existing conditions is popular;

therefore, they’re pretending that they’ll do that, while offering proposals that would, in fact, do no such thing (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gop-pre-existing-condition-promise-fraud_us_5b8053bfe4b0cd327dfc8a1c).

Do they imagine that voters are stupid?

Well, yes.

In recent rallies Donald Trump has been declaring that Democrats want to “raid Medicare to pay for socialism (https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/whos-going-to-tell-him).” :lol

So if you’re an American who suffers from a pre-existing medical condition, or fear that you might develop such a condition in the future,

you need to be clear about the reality:

Republicans are coming for your health care.

If they hold the line in November,

health insurance at an affordable price — maybe at any price — will be gone in a matter of months.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/03/opinion/midterms-healthcare-bankrupt.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

boutons_deux

09-07-2018, 03:46 PM

Only Modest Premium Hikes, Some Price Cuts Under ACA Next Year

Millions of people covered under the Affordable Care Act will see only modest premium increases next year, and some will get price cuts.

That’s the conclusion from an exclusive analysis of the besieged but resilient program, which still sparks deep divisions heading into this year’s midterm elections.

“Obamacare’s” health insurance marketplaces seem to be stabilizing after two years of sharp premium hikes. And the exodus of insurers from the program has halted, even reversed somewhat, with more consumer choices for 2019.

The analysis found a 3.6 percent average increase in proposed or approved premiums across 47 states and Washington, D.C., for next year. This year the average increase nationally was about 30 percent.

The average total premium for an individual covered under the health law is now close to $600 a month before subsidies.

For next year, premiums are expected either to drop or increase by less than 10 percent in 41 states with about 9 million customers.

Eleven of those states are expected to see a drop in average premiums.

In six other states, plus Washington, D.C., premiums are projected to rise between 10 percent and 18 percent.

Insurers also are starting to come back. Nineteen states will either see new insurers enter or current ones expand into more areas. There are no bare counties lacking a willing insurer.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/only-modest-premium-hikes-price-cuts-under-aca-next-year?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tpm-news+%28TPMNews%29

boutons_deux

09-07-2018, 03:54 PM

Are we all so glad Trash fixed high drug prices?

Insulin’s high cost leads to deadly rationing

Diabetic ketoacidosis is a terrible way to die. It’s what happens when you don’t have enough insulin. Your blood sugar gets so high that your blood becomes highly acidic, your cells dehydrate, and your body stops functioning.

Nicole Smith-Holt lost her son to diabetic ketoacidosis, three days before his payday, because he couldn’t afford his insulin.

The price of insulin in the U.S. has more than doubled (http://www.healthcostinstitute.org/healthy_bytes/price-insulin-prescription-doubled-2012-2016/) since 2012 alone. That’s put the lifesaving hormone out of reach for some people with diabetes (https://www.news-medical.net/health/What-is-Diabetes.aspx),

My first vial of insulin cost $24.56 in 2011, after insurance. Seven years later, I pay more than $80. That’s nothing compared with what Alec was up against when he turned 26 and aged off his mother’s insurance plan.

Smith-Holt said she and Alec started reviewing his options in February 2017, three months before his birthday on May 20.

Alec’s pharmacist told him his diabetes supplies would cost $1,300 a month without insurance — most of that for insulin.

His options with insurance weren’t much better.

Alec’s yearly salary as a restaurant manager was about $35,000.

Too high to qualify for Medicaid, and, Smith-Holt said, too high to qualify for significant subsidies in Minnesota’s Affordable Care Act insurance marketplace.

The plan they found had a $450 premium each month and an annual deductible of $7,600.

He died less than one month after going off of his mother’s insurance. His family thinks he was rationing his insulin

— using less than he needed — to try to make it last until he could afford to buy more.

He died alone in his apartment three days before payday.

The insulin pen he used to give himself shots was empty.

The patent for the discovery was sold to the University of Toronto for only $1 (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMms1411398) so that lifesaving insulin would be available to everyone who needed it. :lol

Today, however, the list price for a single vial of insulin is more than $250. Most patients use two to four vials per month (I personally use two).

Some blame middlemen (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/drug-prices-rising-pharmacy-benefit-managers-middle-man/) — such as pharmacy benefit managers, like Express Scripts and CVS Health — for negotiating lower prices with pharmaceutical companies without passing savings on to customers.

Others say patents (https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/03/19/393856788/why-is-u-s-insulin-so-expensive) on incremental changes to insulin have kept cheaper generic versions out of the market.

“Young adults are dropping out of college,” she told the lawmakers.

“They’re getting married just to have insurance, or

not getting married to the love of their lives because they’ll lose their state-funded insurance.”

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20180907/Insuline28099s-high-cost-leads-to-deadly-rationing.aspx

"goddamn USA"

boutons_deux

09-07-2018, 11:06 PM

rmt

09-08-2018, 12:04 PM

Trump's new Medicaid work requirements kick 4,574 Arkansans out of coverage (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/9/7/1794077/-Trump-s-new-Medicaid-work-requirements-kick-4-574-Arkansans-out-of-coverage)

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1794077

Expect more states to follow (except CA, NY, etc) as that percentage states are on the hook for increases as we get closer to 2020.

boutons_deux

09-13-2018, 03:24 PM

Federal government slashes grants to help Texans get health insurance

Texas grassroots health groups got $5 million less than last year for the navigator program,

which helps them enroll hard-to-reach populations in the nation's least insured state.

https://www.texastribune.org/2018/09/12/navigator-grant-health-insurance-affordable-care-act/

boutons_deux

09-17-2018, 10:41 AM

Medicaid Expansion Boosted The Financial Health Of Low-Income Michigan Residents

Low-income Michigan residents who enrolled in a new state health insurance plan didn’t just get coverage for their health needs – many also got a boost in their financial health,

People who gained coverage under the state’s expanded Medicaid program have experienced fewer debt problems and other financial issues than they had before enrollment,

Those who had the most health problems felt the most financial relief after enrolling in the Healthy Michigan Plan, which now covers more than 650,000 people in the state,

The study shows drops in unpaid debts — especially medical debts and over-drawn credit cards – as well as fewer bankruptcies and evictions after people enrolled.

Meanwhile, enrollees’ credit scores and car loans rose.

Those with chronic illnesses, or who had a hospital stay or emergency department visit after they enrolled, saw the largest financial effects.

https://scienceblog.com/503325/medicaid-expansion-boosted-the-financial-health-of-low-income-michigan-residents/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+scienceblogrssfeed+%28Science Blog.com%29

Fucking red state Michigan? Home of massive racial crime scene Flint? WTF?

boutons_deux

09-21-2018, 04:09 PM

Here's How the Republicans' Relentless Attack on Pre-Existing Conditions Is Blowing Up in Their Faces

The GOP mounted a frivolous lawsuit to gut Obamacare. Now the prospect it could actually succeed has Democratic challengers surging.

Republican state attorneys general thought they had a perfect way to flex their muscles after the GOP tax scam bill (https://www.thenation.com/article/gop-tax-cuts-are-such-a-blatant-scam-that-they-might-change-the-whole-conversation/) was passed: sue to overturn the Affordable Care Act's protections for pre-existing conditions,

Politico reports (https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/18/obamacare-lawsuit-2018-elections-774975) that it has had one key consequence: it has thrown many of the elected attorneys general who backed it into political jeopardy:

With a blue wave already forecast for this November’s midterm elections, and the battle over the Affordable Care Act now playing out in the courts rather than in Congress,

Democrats seeking to claim as many as a half dozen attorney general seats are using a lawsuit brought by 20 Republican AGs to abolish Obamacare as a political battering ram —

highlighting its threat to the health law’s popular protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

The lawsuit has already injected unexpected energy and cash into many of the 30-plus races across the country for state attorneys general — a dozen of which are seen as competitive.

Democratic challengers in battleground states like Florida, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona are attacking the incumbents for bringing the lawsuit and vowing to withdraw their states from the case or join with states defending Obamacare.

Many are cutting ads saying

the lawsuit could threaten health coverage for tens of millions of people with preexisting conditions,

from children with cancer to adult diabetics,

and holding rallies featuring people who struggled to obtain insurance before Obamacare due to a health condition.

One of the Republican attorneys general who is now facing heat at home for going after President Barack Obama's landmark insurance protection is

the brains of the lawsuit, Ken Paxton of Texas.

Already politically wounded by three felony indictments (https://www.mystatesman.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/ken-paxton-indictments-now-years-old-are-campaign-issue/phjtqLRn8lmE0nufhWlfFL/) for securities fraud,

Paxton faces a serious Democratic challenger in Justin Nelson (https://www.texastribune.org/2018/07/25/texas-attorney-general-ken-paxton-justin-nelson/),

https://www.alternet.org/election-03918/republican-attorneys-general-pre-existing-conditions

boutons_deux

10-10-2018, 05:06 PM

Medicare for All Is Officially Winning

Trump and Republican Senate candidates are now lying about single payer. Why? Because they’re losing the health-care debate.

Donald Trump and the Republican candidates he is struggling to shore up (https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/09/politics/cnn-poll-midterms/index.html) in the election are so afraid of the momentum in favor of Medicare for All that

they are now lying about this practically, economically, and morally necessary health care reform.

It is always troubling when a president lies.

It is also troubling when the media amplifies those lies.

But the fact that USA Today published (https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/10/10/donald-trump-democrats-open-borders-medicare-all-single-payer-column/1560533002/) a repurposed set of partisan talking points from the president as an op-ed piece on Wednesday—

under the scorchingly dishonest headline “Democrats ‘Medicare for All’ plan will demolish promises to seniors”—

should be read as evidence that

the movement to replace health care profiteering with a single-payer health-care system is winning.

The unwitting president and his minions are agitated about the momentum that the movement for Medicare for All (https://berniesanders.com/medicareforall/) has gained in recent years—

so agitated that they are making up arguments against a reform that the August Reuters–

Ipsos survey (https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-election-progressives/) found 70 percent of Americans (https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/403248-poll-seventy-percent-of-americans-support-medicare-for-all)

(85 percent of Democrats, 52 percent of Republicans) now support.

Trump and his fellow Republicans are inviting a debate that they will lose.

Trump also sought to confuse Americans regarding the cost of reform.

He argued that the Sanders plan “would cost an astonishing $32.6 trillion (https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/blahous-costs-medicare-mercatus-working-paper-v1_1.pdf) during its first 10 years,”

without acknowledging the whole story of the study—by the Koch-funded (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/us/koch-donors-george-mason.html) Mercatus Center at George Mason University—from which his numbers are drawn.

That study determined that, under the Medicare for All plan proposed by Sanders, Baldwin and other progressive senators,

“national personal health care costs decrease by less than 2 percent,

while total health expenditures decrease by only 4 percent (https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/blahous-costs-medicare-mercatus-working-paper-v1_1.pdf),

even after assuming substantial administrative cost savings.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/medicare-for-all-is-officially-winning/

SnakeBoy

10-10-2018, 05:15 PM

the movement to replace health care profiteering with a single-payer health-care system is winning.

:cheer We have no power but we're really winning :cheer

Reck

10-10-2018, 05:20 PM

:cheer We have no power but we're really winning :cheer

:lol Failing to defeat Obamacare. You're carrying a bigger loss, guy.

MCcain still ass fucking trump from the Grave. :lmao

https://tribkiah.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/mccain-gif.gif?w=640

LGBTQIAPK & G-D

10-10-2018, 05:24 PM

:lol Failing to defeat Obamacare. You're carrying a bigger loss, guy.

MCcain still ass fucking trump from the Grave. :lmao

https://tribkiah.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/mccain-gif.gif?w=640

The maverick! Him and Palin!

Pavlov

10-10-2018, 05:25 PM

:lol McCain still triggering alts

RandomGuy

10-11-2018, 04:59 PM

Expect more states to follow (except CA, NY, etc) as that percentage states are on the hook for increases as we get closer to 2020.

work requirements don't really work.

You can't tell a pool of people who are generally disabled that they need to work and expect anything to change. That is... dumb.

RandomGuy

10-11-2018, 05:01 PM

:cheer We have no power but we're really winning :cheer

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/04/12/about-half-of-americans-support-single-payer-health-care/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a773e54160a4

boutons_deux

10-11-2018, 05:39 PM

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/04/12/about-half-of-americans-support-single-payer-health-care/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a773e54160a4

medicare for all sounds great,

but I'm convinced BigInsurance, BigMedicine, BigPharma, BigDevice will screw it up, cripple it, like they did with ACA, even Harry-and-Louise it to death.

the oligarchy is simply too powerful to fight.

We can only fight through voting for politicians to pass legislation, and they are, in large majority, financed, controlled by the oligarchy, and the oligarchy has also captured regulatory functions.

boutons_deux

12-10-2018, 12:29 PM

An asshole from the ultra-conservative (Herbert) Hoover Inst

TRUMP IS DELIVERING THE OBAMACARE SAVINGS THAT OBAMA ONLY PROMISED

When President Donald Trump took office, supporters of the law were worried that he would seek to undermine and eventually repeal it.

Their fears seemed validated by Republican efforts in 2017 to do away with the core of Obamacare and replace it with market-based reforms.

But since those efforts failed, premiums on Obamacare’s marketplaces for coverage in many states have actually stabilized,

The Trump administration has actually done more to lower costs (and therefore achieve one of Obamacare’s core stated goals) :lol

than the Obama administration did over its many years of implementing the law. :lol

this administration undeniably has a laser-like focus on advancing policies that create more choice and competition in the health care marketplace. :lol

And, over time, this enhanced optionality serves to bring down premiums and health costs more generally. :lol

https://www.ozy.com/opinion/trump-is-delivering-the-obamacare-savings-that-obama-only-promised/91058?utm_source=dd&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=12102018&variable=992d608214b505003aa04bf10a595031

boutons_deux

12-10-2018, 12:37 PM

The Trump Administration Just Asked States to Help It Kill Obamacare by Stealth

https://compote.slate.com/images/27eac58e-c571-468d-9ffe-6a0f86012a87.jpeg?width=780&height=520&rect=3000x2000&offset=0x0

Republicans in Washington couldn’t repeal and replace Obamacare—

so the Trump administration apparently wants to let Alabama and Idaho go ahead an do it on their own instead.

federal regulators issued a long (https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/press-releases/cms-administrator-discusses-initiatives-strengthen-health-insurance-markets) document (https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/press-releases/cms-administrator-discusses-initiatives-strengthen-health-insurance-markets) inviting

state lawmakers to knock down or rewrite fundamental pieces of the health care law,

while offering a number of radical ideas for how they might go about it.

to restructure the law’s insurance subsidies, which help low and middle-income Americans pay their monthly premiums,

so that they’re tied to age instead of income. (This would effectively give more help to high-earners and less to low-earners).

to let people spend those subsidies on cheap health plans that don’t meet all of Obamacare’s coverage requirements. (This

would likely drive up costs for some people who needed more comprehensive coverage).

such moves would likely undercut Obamacare’s consumer protections, including for Americans with pre-existing conditions.

The new guidance is just the latest step in the Trump administration’s

long quest to dismantle much of Obamacare through executive fiat.

Department of Health and Human Service has already resurrected (https://slate.com/business/2018/08/trump-has-brought-back-the-type-of-junk-health-insurance-that-obamacare-was-meant-to-ban.html) the sort of junk health insurance the ACA was meant to ban, by

issuing rules making it easier for insurers to sell so-called “short-term, limited duration” plans.

companies that sell them are allowed to deny or underwrite customers based on their health,

Americans are basically free to rely on those plans as their primary insurance, creating a parallel market to the Obamacare exchanges.

Trump also wants to give states more leeway (https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20181023.512033/full/) to opt-out of or restructure parts of Obamacare under what are known as Section 1332 waivers.

under Trump, federal regulators are trying (https://www.brookings.edu/blog/usc-brookings-schaeffer-on-health-policy/2018/11/28/the-trump-administration-side-stepped-rulemaking-processes-on-the-acas-state-innovation-waivers-and-it-could-make-their-new-section-1332-guidance-invalid/) to turn the waivers into a tool states can use to deregulate their markets, while making them easier to apply for.

https://slate.com/business/2018/11/seema-verma-plan-to-kill-obamacare-preexisting-conditions-coverage.html

So Chen the Hoover propagandist guy is FUCKING LYING

boutons_deux

12-17-2018, 05:04 PM

Texas Judge’s Ruling on Obamacare Torpedoes Hospital Stocks

some health insurers and most hospital stocks are getting taken to the woodshed.

UnitedHealth Group Inc. (NYSE: UNH) dropped 3% on Friday and traded down more than 2% more in early Monday trading.

But hospital operators HCA Healthcare Inc. (NYSE: HCA), Universal Health Services Inc. (NYSE: UHS), Tenet Healthcare Corp. (NYSE: THC) and Community Health Systems Inc. (NYSE: CYH) fell much more.

When the ACA became effective in 2014, insurance stocks got a nice bump thanks to an insurer fee that insurance companies paid to help fund the law and expand benefits to the uninsured and the poor.

That tax, however, was repaid by the state and federal governments through higher reimbursements to insurers.

The insurer tax encouraged insurers to sign up more members and rewarded them for doing so.

competition drove prices down in the first year, and

insurers raised premiums for the following year to reflect more realistically what the ACA actually cost.

They’ve been raising rates ever since and, even if they lose subscribers due to O’Connor’s ruling, the impact is likely to be slight.

Not so for hospitals that will once again have to shoulder the costs of uninsured patients by raising their charges to offset the cost of caring for uninsured patients.

https://247wallst.com/healthcare-business/2018/12/17/judges-decision-on-obamacare-torpedoes-hospital-stocks/

boutons_deux

12-17-2018, 05:14 PM

Alito cut the legs out of the latest attack on Obamacare — and didn’t even know he did it

The religious right's biggest court victory should be the death knell to the latest assault on health care.

https://i2.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/GettyImages-511882634.jpg?w=1280&ssl=1

a passage in Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion for the Court in Hobby Lobby could — or at least, should — take on an entirely unexpected significance after

Reed O’Connor, a partisan operative turned federal judge (https://thinkprogress.org/obamacare-repeal-lawsuit-republican-governors-attorneys-general-2aef6cde8775/), struck down the entire Affordable Care Act on Friday in a case called Texas v. United States (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5629711-Texas-v-US-Partial-Summary-Judgment.html).

Judge O’Connor’s opinion is a jurisprudential trainwreck (https://thinkprogress.org/breaking-republican-judge-issues-order-striking-down-obamacare-967945c56a97/).

It misreads the text of the law,

draws distinctions that the Supreme Court explicitly rejected, and

it feigns ignorance regarding the outcome of a year-long debate

where congressional Republicans tried and failed to repeal Obamacare.

O’Connor’s opinion is such an embarrassment to the judiciary that even Jonathan Adler,

one of the architects of the last partisan lawsuit (https://thinkprogress.org/hours-after-anti-obamacare-lawyers-file-brief-an-ally-reveals-that-the-briefs-key-claim-is-false-f8b42e6fd40d/) seeking to undermine Obamacare, called the opinion “strained and implausible (http://reason.com/volokh/2018/12/14/breaking-district-court-judge-in-texas-h).”

O’Connor’s opinion suffers from a third problem: It is entirely at odds with Hobby Lobby.

The purpose of RFRA (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2000bb), according to these findings, is “to restore the compelling interest test as set forth in Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398 (1963) (https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/374-398) and Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972) (https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/406-205).”

This language matters because the “compelling interest test” set forth in Sherbertand Yoder incorporated the rule that a people of faith cannot wield their religious objections to limit other people’s rights (https://thinkprogress.org/the-bait-and-switch-behind-todays-hobby-lobby-decision-2df83fa497a9/).

Expanding the rights of religious conservatives at the expense of, well, anyone else, is one of Alito’s pet projects (https://thinkprogress.org/justice-alitos-bizarre-and-offensive-attack-on-atheists-3899ff4b3f3b/).

But RFRA’s statement of its own purpose undermined Alito’s goal.

So Alito found an excuse to ignore that statement of purpose.

the correctness of Alito’s Hobby Lobby decision is irrelevant

to the question of whether O’Connor’s Texas opinion is correct.

As a lower court judge, O’Connor is required to follow Supreme Court decisions, including Hobby Lobby.

In Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court ignored those findings. O’Connor, as a lower court judge, is bound to follow the same rule in Texas.

Alito is as reliably partisan as O’Connor (https://thinkprogress.org/the-most-partisan-supreme-court-justice-of-all-fd31c58a25aa/).

And he’s already shown that he’s willing to embrace dubious legal reasoning (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-114_qol1.pdf) if that reasoning undermines the Affordable Care Act.

the disparity between Hobby Lobby and Texas provides a window into how judges actually behave in political charged cases.

the rank dishonesty of O’Connor’s opinion won’t matter.

Chief Justice John Roberts is more capable of embarrassment.

And he was pretty damn clear the last time his Court heard a political attack on the Affordable Care Act that he is sick of these cases (https://thinkprogress.org/the-supreme-courts-obamacare-decision-is-the-biggest-possible-win-for-the-obama-administration-48d65149a5e6/).

Assuming that the Court’s membership does not change before Texas reaches Roberts, O’Connor’s attack on Obamacare is unlikely to succeed.

https://thinkprogress.org/justice-alito-hobby-lobby-latest-attack-on-obamacare-6306777db963/

boutons_deux

12-17-2018, 06:24 PM

Republicans freak out over Obamacare decision, with Pelosi and Schumer promising to bring the pain (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/12/17/1819705/-Republicans-freak-out-over-Obamacare-decision-with-Pelosi-and-Schumer-promising-to-bring-the-pain)

The only Republican applauding the appalling and ridiculous decision (https://www.dailykos.com/story/2018/12/15/1819355/-A-rogue-federal-judge-in-Texas-is-trying-to-take-down-the-ACA-Here-s-why-he-ll-fail) by an extremist federal judge in Texas declaring the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional is Individual 1.

The rest of them understand (https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/15/republicans-obamacare-ruling-1066659) how much this screws them politically.

They're well aware that they lost the 2018 election largely on the issue of health care, and

now the ones still in office know they're on the hook for

the promise they made to people that they would preserve all the protections in the ACA,

particularly those for people with pre-existing conditions.

the majority of Americans, 130 million of whom have pre-existing conditions, but

if the law were really to disappear, that's just a part of what would be lost.

As many as 17 million people could lose their coverage in a single year.

The 15 million people covered under Medicaid expansion could lose their coverage.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/12/17/1819705/-Republicans-freak-out-over-Obamacare-decision-with-Pelosi-and-Schumer-promising-to-bring-the-pain?detail=emaildkre

boutons_deux

12-18-2018, 02:21 PM

Big Pharma Fights Proposal to Keep It From Looting Medicare (https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/12/17/big-pharma-fights-proposal-to-keep-it-from-looting-medicare/)

The Trump administration has proposed that insurance plans providing drug coverage to Medicare beneficiaries will no longer be forced to cover six hitherto “protected” drug classes.

The classes––which include drugs for psychiatric conditions, cancer and immune diseases––are among the priciest of all drugs and account for as much as 33 percent (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/22/business/plan-to-alter-medicare-drug-coverage-draws-strong-opposition.html) of total outpatient drug spending under Part D of Medicare.

Under the proposal,

Medicare plans could “exclude from their formularies protected class drugs with price increases that are greater than inflation, as well as certain new drug formulations that are not a significant innovation over the original product,”

“You get much better outcomes when a doctor can work with patients to figure out which medications will work best.” He might have added, as long as the taxpayer pays.

“When insurers balk at reimbursing patients for new prescription medications, these groups typically swing into action,

rallying sufferers to appear before public and consumer panels, contact lawmakers, and

provide media outlets a human face to attach to a cause,”

well known Pharma tactic to loot Medicare dollars.

example of

lobbyist-initiated regulations which protect nothing more than drug industry profits

and its expensive psychiatric drugs, many of which have cheaper alternatives.

The Pharma-friendly Alliance for Patient Access has saturated broadcast airwaves

warning cancer patients about “European style” restrictions on the “newest drugs” without which they will presumably die.

few to none of the newer psychiatric or cancer drugs show clear improvements over cheaper ones.

They all lack the safety profiles of older drugs that are widely in use and their main benefit is enriching Pharma.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/12/17/big-pharma-fights-proposal-to-keep-it-from-looting-medicare/

boutons_deux

12-18-2018, 02:57 PM

There’s no GOP backup plan for the anti-Obamacare lawsuit

What exactly is the GOP's health care plan?

The lawsuit aims to strike down very popular provisions (http://files.kff.org/attachment/Topline-Kaiser-Health-Tracking-Poll-November-2018) of the ACA, including but not limited to

protections for pre-existing conditions,

the Medicaid expansion,

the elimination of lifetime or annual limits (https://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/about-the-aca/benefit-limits/index.html) on most benefits,

allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ plans until the age of 26,

closing a coverage gap in Medicare prescription drug plans, and

even free flu shots.

The Trump administration said it has a backup plan (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/daily-on-healthcare-cmss-verma-says-there-is-a-backup-plan-if-anti-obamacare-lawsuit-prevails) :lol

should the anti-Obamacare lawsuit prevail in court,

but has yet to specify what exactly it is. :lol

Health officials told Politico (https://www.politico.com/politicopulse/)

the administration has no contingency plan should the ruling be held in appeal.

“We have a chance, working with the Democrats, to deliver great HealthCare!

A confirming Supreme Court Decision will lead to GREAT HealthCare results for Americans!” :lol

he tweeted (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1074650975456124928?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5 Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1074650975456124928&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fpol itics%2Ftrump-suggests-a-supreme-court-ruling-invalidating-the-affordable-care-act-would-lead-to-better-health-care%2F2018%2F12%2F17%2Fd133497e-01ec-11e9-9122-82e98f91ee6f_story.html) on Monday.

https://thinkprogress.org/no-republican-backup-plan-for-obamacare-lawsuit-f57d4fe398fd/

boutons_deux

12-20-2018, 10:03 PM

Another 4,600 Arkansans kicked off Medicaid this month, just in time for Christmas (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/12/19/1820244/-Another-4-600-Arkansas-kicked-off-Medicaid-this-month-just-in-time-for-Christmas)

Arkansas has kicked nearly 17,000 people (https://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2018/12/17/work-rule-ends-medicaid-coverage-for-4600-more-arkansans-in-december) off of Medicaid, including 4,655 who lost coverage at the beginning of December.

They were all enrollees of the state's Medicaid expansion program, Arkansas Works, and

lost their coverage because of the work requirements the Trump administration allowed the state to impose on their continued participation.

Up until this week, all participants had been required to report 80 hours of "work activity" every month,

but the only option for them to report is through a website (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/11/21/1814308/-Arkansas-Medicaid-work-requirement-fiasco-actually-causing-working-people-to-lose-jobs) that shuts down every single night from 9:00 PM to 7:00 AM for "scheduled maintenance."

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1820244

boutons_deux

12-27-2018, 12:41 PM

Why We Still Don’t Really Know What Killing the Individual Mandate Did to Obamacare

Killing off Obamacare’s individual mandate was supposed to deal a serious blow to the health insurance market.

Congressional Budget Office projected (https://www.cbo.gov/system/files?file=115th-congress-2017-2018/reports/53300-individualmandate.pdf) the move would lead 3 million fewer people to purchase insurance on their own in 2019, when the mandate was set to officially phase out.

So far, there’s been no sign of such a sharp drop.

Last week, the Trump administration reported (https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/press-releases/enrollment-through-federal-exchange-remains-steady) that approximately 8.5 million Americans bought coverage for next year on Obamacare’s federal exchange during the recent open enrollment period.

The total was down just 3.4 percent from last year’s mark of 8.8 million.

Does that mean Obamacare is sturdier than the wonks thought?

That the mandate wasn’t all it was cracked up to be?

https://slate.com/business/2018/12/obamacare-individual-mandate-effect-enrollment.html (https://slate.com/business/2018/12/obamacare-individual-mandate-effect-enrollment.html)

boutons_deux

12-29-2018, 09:17 AM

Experts say Maine's new Democratic governor can ignore Medicaid work requirement waiver (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/12/28/1822142/-Experts-say-Maine-s-new-Democratic-governor-can-ignore-Medicaid-work-requirement-waiver)

In what the monstrous Seema Verma, administrator of the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, called a Christmas gift (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/12/21/1820890/-Medicaid-chief-says-kicking-tens-of-thousands-off-Medicaid-is-Trump-s-Christmas-gift-to-states) last week,

Maine's outgoing Republican Gov. Paul LePage got the power to impose work requirements on the citizens of Maine who are Medicaid enrollees.

In a late holiday gift to the people of Maine, the incoming Democratic Gov. Janet Mills won't have to implement them (https://www.pressherald.com/2018/12/27/experts-mills-does-not-have-to-apply-lepages-medicaid-work-requirements/)

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1822142

rmt

12-29-2018, 12:45 PM

Winehole23

12-29-2018, 01:23 PM

Death panels are real

1078443167639355393

Winehole23

01-09-2019, 02:20 PM

Tennesse docs get big bux to deny disability claims.

Https://amp.tennessean.com/amp/1077220002?__twitter_impression=true

CosmicCowboy

01-10-2019, 08:24 AM

CosmicCowboy

01-10-2019, 08:38 AM

Will Hunting

01-10-2019, 11:54 AM

Just went through our healthcare care review for renewal with my agent yesterday. I still pay 100% of the premium for employee and family. Part of the review is looking at actual costs that the insurance paid in the previous year. Everyone talks about "rich doctors" but the drug expenses are shocking...and these are relatively healthy working guys...one was $33,000+, two were $20,000+...and that is per individual, not family...and only for 10 months since I renew in March.

Solution???? :lol Drug companies OWN Congress on both sides of the aisle. They will never fix it.
Yeah that money that the doctors take home is a drop in the bucket compared to money that the drug companies get.

The solution would be campaign finance reform, otherwise you're probably right that the Pharma lobby is strong enough to prevent a single payer plan that gives the government bargaining power with drug companies from ever passing.

Will Hunting

01-10-2019, 12:05 PM

We probably will eventually get "healthcare for all" in one form or another because the drug companies that own congress will back it. My guess it happens after 2020 when the anti-Trump backlash puts a Democrat in the White House. They will sell it as a humanitarian "right" and damn the cost, will pay for it with additional deficits. The huge winners will be the drug companies who will transfer trillions of deficit spending directly to their corporate profits.
IMO any sort of nationalized "healthcare for all" plan would have a tough time getting past the insurance lobby in Congress. Obamacare was able to thread the needle in satisfying both the insurance and pharma lobby while being pitched as a humanitarian bill.

boutons_deux

01-10-2019, 12:17 PM

satisfying both the insurance and pharma lobby while being pitched as a humanitarian bill.

both got paid so poor Americans could get medical care

Capitalism is shakedown, fleecing of non-Capitalists

ElNono

01-10-2019, 12:25 PM

Just went through our healthcare care review for renewal with my agent yesterday. I still pay 100% of the premium for employee and family. Part of the review is looking at actual costs that the insurance paid in the previous year. Everyone talks about "rich doctors" but the drug expenses are shocking...and these are relatively healthy working guys...one was $33,000+, two were $20,000+...and that is per individual, not family...and only for 10 months since I renew in March.

Solution???? :lol Drug companies OWN Congress on both sides of the aisle. They will never fix it.

Complete ripoff. This is one of the aspect we discussed, how the US subsidized medicine for the rest of the world by going out of control here. There's no way you can do anything about this without using price controls of some form. There's simply no competition with patent enforcement in place. Once the patent is gone, generics take over and prices plummet. It's just a scam.

Winehole23

01-12-2019, 02:39 AM

price increases driven by manufacturer price hikes, not innovation:

“The skyrocketing cost of many prescription drugs in the U.S. can be blamed primarily on price increases, not expensive new therapies or improvements in existing medications as drug companies frequently claim, a new study shows….. Since rising costs aren’t paying for improved treatments, policy makers may want to take action, says Dr. William Shrank, chief medical officer of the UPMC Health Plan, who is also an author on the study. ‘This observation supports policy efforts designed to control health care spending by capping price inflation to some reasonable level,’ he says.”https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/abs/10.1377/hlthaff.2018.05147

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/01/07/682986630/prescription-drug-costs-driven-by-manufacturer-price-hikes-not-innovation

Winehole23

01-12-2019, 02:45 AM

Flu season is shaping up to be a bad one.

I seldom get ill but will get the shot in consideration of others, as I probably should have done already.

The flu can kill the young and the elderly with a quickness.

boutons_deux

02-11-2019, 11:38 PM

Utah Republicans scale back Medicaid expansion approved by voters (https://theweek.com/speedreads/823250/utah-republicans-scale-back-medicaid-expansion-approved-by-voters)

Voters in Utah approved a ballot measure in November that would expand Medicaid,

but on Monday, state lawmakers passed a bill that provides coverage to about half as many people and adds work requirements.

"This is a dark day for democracy in Utah,"

"State legislators turned their backs on voters and on families in need."

The plan that passed the Republican-led Legislature only extends Medicaid to 80,000 people,

letting 70,000 others buy subsidized insurance on the marketplace created under the Affordable Care Act.

"I think we are doing the long-term responsible thing," :lol

https://theweek.com/speedreads/823250/utah-republicans-scale-back-medicaid-expansion-approved-by-voters (https://theweek.com/speedreads/823250/utah-republicans-scale-back-medicaid-expansion-approved-by-voters)

Fuck the voters, yep, responsible.

boutons_deux

02-12-2019, 03:22 PM

Minnesota Residents Struggle to Afford Needed Healthcare New Survey Results Show

https://abouthealthtransparency.org/2019/02/minnesota-residents-struggle-to-afford-needed-healthcare-new-survey-results-show/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AboutHealthTransparency+%28Ab out+Health+Transparency%29

and MN expanded Medicaid under ACA

rmt

02-12-2019, 04:58 PM

boutons_deux

02-12-2019, 05:14 PM

So, is this your KNOCK on the AFFORDABLE Care Act? After all, MN expanded Medicaid and ACA is still the law of the land.

no, it's yet another proof that BigHealth is screwing the country.

And your beloved Repugs haven't even bothered to expand Medicaid, and where they have, some are restricting it.

People suffer, people go into poverty or bankruptcy, lives trashed, people die.

Ain't Capitalistic America great?

Repugs have NO PLAN except to trash anything the Dems propose and defend the status quo, no matter how many Americans suffer and die for want of health care.

boutons_deux

03-26-2019, 05:06 PM

What Happens if Obamacare Is Struck Down?

The Affordable Care Act touches the lives of most Americans.

Some 21 million could lose health insurance if the Trump administration were to succeed in having the law ruled unconstitutional.

The Affordable Care Act was already in peril after a federal REPUG judge in Texas invalidated the entire law (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/14/health/obamacare-unconstitutional-texas-judge.html?module=inline) late last year.

But the stakes ramped up again this week,

when President Trump’s Justice Department announced it had changed its position and

agreed with the judge that

the entire law, not just three pieces of it, should be scrapped.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/health/obamacare-trump-health.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

This is how Trash gets revenge on the hated knitter and McCain.

Trash's personal vendettas override the sufferings, lost wealth, and deaths of Ms of Americans.

boutons_deux

03-26-2019, 07:24 PM

Louisana Republican blames Medicaid population for 'voting for a living instead of working' (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/3/25/1845086/-Louisana-Republican-blames-Medicaid-population-for-voting-for-a-living-instead-of-working)

Abraham's congressional district, the 5th, is the tenth poorest in the nation, and

has benefitted hugely from the adoption of Medicaid expansion,

which has provided coverage to half a million Louisianians who were previously uninsured.

In fact, he's blaming rising healthcare costs on poor people getting access.

his previous job—he was a medical doctor, running a rural clinic in Mangham, Louisiana.

It's quite possibly healthier for the population of Mangham not be getting care from this dumb asshole.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1845086 (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1845086)

boutons_deux

03-26-2019, 10:13 PM

Republican official calls Trump ‘tone deaf’ after sparking health care debate

https://www.rawstory.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/trump-afp-2.jpg

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump ignited a debate about healthcare (https://www.rawstory.com/2019/03/cnn-panel-explains-how-trump-is-shooting-himself-in-the-foot-on-healthcare-fight/) that

several Republicans criticized as a bad political move for the president.
Trump said that he wanted to repeal Obamacare (https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=FuCaXMbHMq62ggeCzJTIBg&q=trump+healthcare&oq=Turmp+he&gs_l=psy-ab.1.0.0i10l10.57.2695..4119...1.0..1.987.5321.0j2 j0j2j2j1j3....2..0....1..gws-wiz.....6..0i131j0j35i39.ZRzoROGdoVc), but failed to offer solutions for a replacement.

He said that his goal was to make the GOP the healthcare party.

“The Republican Party will soon be known as the party of health care,” Trump told reporters. “You watch.”

Several pundits saw this as

a “gift” to Democrats and said that this fight would benefit them in 2020,

seeing as the healthcare debate did not go over well for Republicans in the past.

While talking The Daily Beast (https://www.thedailybeast.com/wtf-is-wrong-with-them-republicans-horrified-as-trump-goes-after-obamacare-again?ref=home)a

GOP official called out the president for being “tone deaf,”

“How about a few more victory laps on Mueller while you can get away with it? WTF is wrong with them?”

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/03/gop-official-calls-trump-tone-deaf-after-sparking-health-care-debate/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29 (https://www.rawstory.com/2019/03/gop-official-calls-trump-tone-deaf-after-sparking-health-care-debate/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29)

Trash got Barr not to defend ACA.

boutons_deux

03-26-2019, 10:22 PM

Trump’s own cabinet secretary tried to stop his latest attempt to kill Obamacare — he ignored them

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar tried to stop President Donald Trump (https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/26/trump-obamacare-reversal-cabinet-1238359) from waging another war against the Affordable Care Act this week.

Azar argued against the administration supporting a lawsuit to get a full repeal of the law during a December White House meeting. He cited a lack of an alternative piece of legislation from the GOP,

Budget director Mick Mulvaney claimed that supporting the “bold stance” would force Congress into repealing and replacing the law.

Now, the country is firmly behind the law with 50 percent who support it and only 37 percent against.

It matches the meager 37 (https://twitter.com/CarrieNBCNews/status/1110550266695335937) percent of Americans who think Trump is doing great on health care.

While 52 percent disapprove of Trump’s work on healthcare.

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/03/trumps-cabinet-secretary-tried-stop-latest-attempt-kill-obamacare-ignored/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29 (https://www.rawstory.com/2019/03/trumps-cabinet-secretary-tried-stop-latest-attempt-kill-obamacare-ignored/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29)

Nbadan

03-27-2019, 01:52 AM

johnsmith

03-27-2019, 02:01 AM

The Trump health care plan is die quick. The ADA is far from perfect, especially since the GOP watered down the mandate but it does cover pre-existing conditions and kids till they are 26...too politically costly items that the GOP needs to keep in mind in 2020

Dan do you still think posting here makes a difference in real life? What do you think this post did? How has it influenced policy? Just curious to see if you’re still batshit crazy.

boutons_deux

03-27-2019, 06:37 AM

Why Trump’s New Push to Kill Obamacare Is So Alarming

It’s not just the potential damage to the health care system and the people who depend on it. It’s also the threat, in the administration’s legal logic, to the rule of law.

the Justice Department announced on Monday that it would now seek the invalidation of the entire Affordable Care Act — every last one of its thousands of provisions.

It’s a shocking dereliction of the Justice Department’s duty, embraced by Republican and Democratic administrations alike, to defend acts of Congress if any plausible argument can be made in their defense.

Nor is the Affordable Care Act some minor statute that can be shoved aside without disruption. It is now part of the basic plumbing of the American health care system.

Unceremoniously ripping up the law would inflict untold harm on the health care system — and on all Americans who depend on it. Yet the Trump administration has now committed itself to doing just that.

It flouted the Justice Department’s duty to defend, a solemn duty, and one that goes to the heart of the rule of law.

Without it, the sitting administration could pick which laws it wanted to defend in the courts and which it wanted to abandon.

Laws could rise or fall based on nothing more than partisan disagreement.

That’s inconsistent with a constitutional system that assigns to Congress — not the president — the power to legislate.

a group of blue states has intervened, the appeals court will hear a full-throated defense of the law.

Most observers expect the court to uphold the Affordable Care Act;

if so, the Supreme Court may choose not to hear the case.

the Trump administration has signaled loud and clear that its campaign against Obamacare is not over; that

it will stop at nothing to achieve in court what it could not achieve in Congress;

and that

it doesn’t care how many people are hurt if the Affordable Care Act is undone.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/27/opinion/trump-obamacare-affordable-care-act.html?partner=rss&emc=rss (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/27/opinion/trump-obamacare-affordable-care-act.html?partner=rss&emc=rss)

rmt

03-27-2019, 11:04 AM

Part of the reason why health care costs are so high is unnecessary tests eg. for most women (since 2012), pap smears should be every 3 years (or 5 years with HPV). Called to cancel my pap smear today and got a bunch of BS about how it should be done every year - not only that, last year, they hooked me up to a machine to test my heart and measure my pulse rate (more unnecessary testing) but all paid for (ANNUALLY) by ACA. This is at an ob-gyn - testing my heart - smh. I wonder how many MILLIONS of women still get a pap smear every year (I'm just hearing about this 7 years after the recommendation).

The USPSTF recommends screening for cervical cancer in women age 21 to 65 years with cytology (Pap smear) every 3 years or, for women ages 30 to 65 years who want to lengthen the screening interval, screening with a combination of cytology and HPV testing every 5 years (A recommendation).

https://www.aafp.org/patient-care/clinical-recommendations/all/cw-pap-smears.html

boutons_deux

03-27-2019, 11:37 AM

The main reason American health care is so expensive is that it's a Capitalistic for-profit, wealth-extractive business.

boutons_deux

03-27-2019, 04:23 PM

more evidence of why Repugs are ramming through breaking Senate rules, polluting Federal judiciary with right-wing political hack whores

U.S. judge blocks Kentucky from implementing Medicaid work requirements

A U.S. federal judge on Wednesday overturned the Trump administration’s reapproval of a plan by the state of Kentucky to impose new work requirements on people seeking to obtain benefits from the Medicaid health insurance program.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington ruled that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services acted arbitrarily in granting Kentucky a waiver from Medicaid requirements in order to implement its plan.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-healthcare-medicaid-kentucky/u-s-judge-blocks-kentucky-from-implementing-medicaid-work-requirements-idUSKCN1R82G6?feedType=RSS&feedName=politicsNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Reuters%2FPoliticsNews+%28Reu ters+Politics+News%29 (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-healthcare-medicaid-kentucky/u-s-judge-blocks-kentucky-from-implementing-medicaid-work-requirements-idUSKCN1R82G6?feedType=RSS&feedName=politicsNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Reuters%2FPoliticsNews+%28Reu ters+Politics+News%29)

What the oligarchy/Repugs can't achieve in legislation will be attempted through the non-elected judiciary.

Nbadan

03-27-2019, 10:18 PM

Here's what happens if the courts kill Obamacare
This cruel notice came out of the blue and it is devastating.
Here's what happens if the courts kill Obamacare

(CNN)President Donald Trump has repeatedly promised to make health care better for all Americans, especially those with pre-existing conditions.

But while his administration has yet to unveil a plan, his Justice Department is now threatening to strip away coverage and benefits that many people have come to take for granted in the nine years since the landmark Affordable Care Act was signed into law.

The administration said Monday that the entire law should be struck down, a dramatic reversal of its earlier stance. In a filing with a federal appeals court, the Justice Department said it agreed with the ruling of a federal judge in Texas that invalidated Obamacare. Previously, the agency under former Attorney General Jeff Sessions had argued only that two key protections for those with pre-existing conditions could not be defended.

If the Trump administration prevails, the health care of nearly every American could be affected, though most don't realize it. While most people associate Obamacare with the individual health insurance exchanges and Medicaid expansion, it has far wider impact.

Obamacare has meant lower premiums, deductibles and out-of-pocket costs for the roughly 60 million senior citizens and disabled Americans enrolled in Medicare. And it helped close the gap in Medicare's drug coverage.

It slowed the growth of Medicare payment rates to hospitals and other providers, reduced payments to Medicare Advantage plans and improved benefits for enrollees. The Obama administration estimated in 2016 that the typical Medicare beneficiary pays about $700 less in premiums and cost sharing thanks to the Affordable Care Act.

Another popular provision: Children are allowed to remain on their parents' plans until they turn 26. Also, companies with at least 50 employees must provide affordable insurance to their staffers who work more than 30 hours a week. The law also prohibits employers from imposing annual or lifetime limits on benefits and caps out-of-pocket spending so those with expensive conditions don't exhaust their coverage.
Americans are also able to get a wide range of preventive care -- including annual check-ups, mammograms, cholesterol tests and flu shots -- and birth control at no cost. And it's helped combat the nation's opiod addiction by broadening Medicaid coverage to more adults.
Even the Trump administration is using the law to try to lower prescription drug prices.

And, of course, there are the millions of people who've gained coverage. More than 11 million people have signed up for 2019 policies on the Obamacare exchanges, and more than 12 million are insured through Medicaid expansion. The number of uninsured plummeted to 29 million last year, from 48 million in 2010.

If the law is struck down, roughly 20 million more people would be left uninsured, an increase of 65%, according to an Urban Institute report published Tuesday. And hospitals would see uncompensated care jump by $50 billion, or 82%.

But even more influential than the benefits Obamacare provides is how it has changed what people have come to expect in health insurance.
Prior to the law, insurers could deny people policies or charge them more based on their medical histories -- so those with acne as a teen could have trouble securing coverage on the individual market years later, for instance. Some 52 million non-elderly adults -- more than one in four -- have a condition that could have rendered them uninsurable before Obamacare took effect, according to estimates from the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit health care research group.
The Affordable Care Act stopped those practices, requiring insurers to cover all applicants and provide comprehensive benefits......................

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/26/politics/obamacare-lawsuit-doj-impacts/index.html

I think getting rid of the AHCA before having a replacement plan would be political suicide for many GOP senators in 2020.....they gotta be shitting their pants right now....

The only reason Trump want's this now is because he wants the talking heads to quit talking about the Mueller Report.....but you know...nothing stays secret in Washington for long...

boutons_deux

03-27-2019, 10:53 PM

the number one issue in the Repugs-were-curb-stomped 2018 elections? ... health care

boutons_deux

03-29-2019, 12:39 PM

Billion Dollar Fraud Case Could Be Dismissed Because Trump Hates Obama (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/3/28/1846067/-Oops-Billion-Dollar-Fraud-Case-Could-Be-Dismissed-Because-Trump-Hates-Obama)

Just recently in Florida (of course), there was

a HUGE Medicare/Medicaid fraud trial. How huge? Rick Scott huge. Over a Billion dollars.

So, according to Think Progress and the Miami Herald, (https://thinkprogress.org/trump-obamacare-medicare-fraud-4910319d89ed/)

The billion-dollar fraud case involves Philip Esformes, who ran a chain of skilled-nursing and assisted living facilities in Miami-Dade.

Esformes’ business was apparently quite lucrative — as the Miami Herald noted, the health executive raked “in millions from his healthcare business, gobbling up pricey real estate and darting around the country in chartered jets,” until his arrest in 2016.

[Prosecutors claim that the]health care executive paid kickbacks to health providers “in exchange for medically unnecessary referrals” to Esformes’ facilities.

Esformes and co-conspirators then allegedly submitted “false and fraudulent claims to Medicare and Medicaid in an approximate amount of $1 billion for services that were medically unnecessary, never provided, and procured through the payment of kickbacks and bribes.”

All of Esformes’ co-conspirators plead guilty, according to the Miami Herald.

That’s the trial part. Here’s where the ACA comes in.

On Wednesday, Esformes’ lawyers filed a motion to dismiss, or alternatively, a motion to declare a mistrial.

Why?

“Because the Justice Department has admitted that the health care offenses at issue in this trial are unconstitutional.”

Basically the argument boils down to this:

The problem arises because O’Connor did not simply strike down the core provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

He declared that every single provision of the law is invalid,

including relatively minor provisions amending the statutes governing Medicare fraud and kickbacks paid to health providers.

Though Esformes alleged actions may also be illegal under the unamended versions of those statutes,

Esformes was charged under the amended versions.

According to Esformes’ motion,

“every health care statute cited in the Indictment has been identified as among those ruled unconstitutional” by Judge O’Connor.

“the Due Process Clause will not permit the Justice Department

to prosecute the Defendant based upon alleged violations of statutes and regulations

that they have independently deemed and declared to be unconstitutional.”

And as fraud cases are ones where the defendants can afford lawyers,

think of the inundation of the system with calls for dismissal.

The Affordable Care Act was a sweeping statute amending numerous, longstanding provisions of America’s health laws.

Anyone prosecuted under any one of these provisions may now claim that they are immune from consequence.

And the Justice Department will need to awkwardly explain itself in every single case.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/3/28/1846067/-Oops-Billion-Dollar-Fraud-Case-Could-Be-Dismissed-Because-Trump-Hates-Obama?detail=emaildkre

The oligarchy / Repug Federal judiciary of political hacks in robes,

which may reach 200 asshole so-called judges "for life" under Bitch McC,

will tie the country in constipated knots,

continue to fuck the country into unfuckability for decades.

Winehole23

03-31-2019, 01:43 PM

Rick Scott transformed the way healthcare is delivered, he's now the point man for Trumpcare.

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/fl-op-col-rick-scott-medicare-fraud-20181002-story.html

Winehole23

04-01-2019, 11:54 AM

Something spectacular is on the way:

In the 1990s, Scott was the CEO of Columbia/HCA, a company that, under his direction, owned (https://www.politifact.com/florida/article/2010/jun/11/rick-scott-and-fraud-case-columbiahca/) more than 340 hospitals, 135 surgery centers, and 550 home-health locations by the time Scott resigned in 1997. That year, federal agents announced an investigation into whether or not the company defrauded Medicare and Medicaid on a massive scale. Turns out, they did: According to Politifact’s summary of the settlement (https://www.politifact.com/florida/article/2010/jun/11/rick-scott-and-fraud-case-columbiahca/)Columbia/HCA made with the Justice Department, the company took the following actions while Scott was CEO:

Columbia billed Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal programs for tests that were not necessary or ordered by physicians;

The company attached false diagnosis codes to patient records to increase reimbursement to the hospitals;

The company illegally claimed non-reimbursable marketing and advertising costs as community education;

Columbia billed the government for home health-care visits for patients who did not qualify to receive them.

As part of the settlement, Columbia/HCA agreed to plead guilty to 14 corporate felonies — charges that involve financial penalties, but no jail time. (Corporations are people (https://www.npr.org/2014/07/28/335288388/when-did-companies-become-people-excavating-the-legal-evolution), but they cannot be sent to prison.) Over two settlement rounds, Columbia/HCA wound up paying the government $1.7 billion in criminal fines, civil damages, and penalties, in what the Justice Department called (https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2003/June/03_civ_386.htm) “the largest health-care fraud case in U.S. history.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/rick-scott-is-an-odd-choice-to-lead-gops-health-care-reform.html

boutons_deux

04-01-2019, 12:23 PM

We're Heading Towards a Rural Health Care Emergency

We’ve got a rural health care emergency on the horizon.

Rural hospitals are closing or teetering on the brink of closure at an alarming rate.

More than a hundred (https://www.hrsa.gov/enews/past-issues/2017/october-19/hospitals-closing-increase.html) have closed since 2005 and

hundreds more are on life support.

Long-term care facilities are vanishing across rural America or being bought up by large corporations who care about profit,

we handed the program over to private, for-profit “managed care organizations.”

What we got in return was

less care — and

more services denied,

facilities shuttered, and

lives lost to corporate greed.

Hospitals that were already struggling now have to

submit and re-submit claims to these private companies and wait months, if not years, to get paid.

Even without privatized Medicaid, we’d still be facing an impending rural healthcare emergency.

Privatization merely hastened what was already happening.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/were-headed-towards-a-rural-health-care-emergency/ (https://www.truthdig.com/articles/were-headed-towards-a-rural-health-care-emergency/)

In many ways so uncountable, even Ditzy Devos couldn't count them,

America is FUCKED and unfuckable by the oligarchy, by rapacious, destructive Capitalists

boutons_deux

04-01-2019, 01:56 PM

Health care and insurance industries are spending a lot of money to defeat Medicare for All

Special interests try to sway Democrats.

the ambitious overhaul of the nation’s health care system faces a major threat: big spending by health care and insurance interests determined to preserve the status quo.

those industries, part of a coalition called the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future,

donated nearly $1.2 million in the 2017-2018 election cycle to Democratic members of four key House committees that could determine the fate of Medicare for All.

https://i1.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Totals-Across-Comms1.png?w=1920&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C1020px&ssl=1

https://thinkprogress.org/parternship-for-america-donations-house-democrats-elections-anti-medicare-for-all-spending-health-care/ (https://thinkprogress.org/parternship-for-america-donations-house-democrats-elections-anti-medicare-for-all-spending-health-care/)

Chris

04-01-2019, 02:59 PM

https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/1112771273858408449

:tu

spurraider21

04-01-2019, 03:00 PM

Pavlov

04-01-2019, 03:02 PM

https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/1112771273858408449

:tuIt's been nine years and all you got is a tweet?

:lol

boutons_deux

04-01-2019, 05:12 PM

https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/1112771273858408449

:tu

G F Y

Chris

04-01-2019, 05:13 PM

G F Y

^That's 2+ years of MUH RUSSIA talkin'

rmt

04-01-2019, 05:45 PM

if you remove the profit motive you can scale back costs right there. also would decrease the need for marketing/advertising budget which would additionally scale back costs. a single provider would also have much more leverage to negotiate prices down.

And the incentive to develop new drugs, new medical devices, new ANYTHING goes. I assume you plan on scaling back salaries too - and wonder whether there'll be any students going into medicine and competing for jobs at post office/VA/DMV-like hospitals, clinics, etc. The policy makers/administrators will be making the decisions instead of doctors and a whole layer of bureaucrats with corresponding pensions running things - just like all the other efficiently-run, innovative government institutions.

boutons_deux

04-01-2019, 07:21 PM

Two Republican attorneys general urge court to uphold Obamacare

Two Republican state attorneys general on Monday urged a federal appeals court to uphold the Obamacare federal healthcare law,

saying that striking it down would be disruptive for patients, doctors, insurers and employers.

The attorneys general of Ohio and Montana submitted “friend of the court” briefs to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals,

which is expected to review a December ruling by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth, Texas, striking down the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare.

Dozens of patient and healthcare industry groups, including

the American Medical Association,

American Hospital Association,

American Cancer Society and

seniors advocacy group AARP

also filed briefs in support of the law.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-obamacare/two-republican-attorneys-general-urge-court-to-uphold-obamacare-idUSKCN1RD3DW?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FhealthNews+%28Reute rs+Health+News%29 (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-obamacare/two-republican-attorneys-general-urge-court-to-uphold-obamacare-idUSKCN1RD3DW?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FhealthNews+%28Reute rs+Health+News%29)

boutons_deux

04-01-2019, 07:27 PM

And the incentive to develop new drugs, new medical devices, new ANYTHING goes.

taxpayers are funding a huge chunk of research which is then sold by BigPharma at exorbitant prices.

Drugs developed by Uncle Sam, PhD, play an outsized role in medicine

https://www.latimes.com/health/la-xpm-2011-feb-10-la-heb-drug-development-taxpayers-20110210-story.html (https://www.latimes.com/health/la-xpm-2011-feb-10-la-heb-drug-development-taxpayers-20110210-story.html)

=============

NIH funding contributed to 210 approved drugs in recent years

https://www.statnews.com/2018/02/12/nih-funding-drug-development/ (https://www.statnews.com/2018/02/12/nih-funding-drug-development/)

Chris

04-01-2019, 07:29 PM

spurraider21

04-01-2019, 07:36 PM

I know people that didn't even file taxes through the Obama years because they were worried about the penalties for not having healthcare. Talk about short circuiting the economy! Obamacare was a disaster, and I applaud people like LG who want to leave it up to the States.
did you report them?

boutons_deux

04-01-2019, 07:40 PM

did you report them?

that's the kind of bottom-feeders Chris associates with, and of course provided no evidence for "Obamacare was a disaster".

The states, esp the red/slave states, can't handle "up to the states" health care for their citizens.

Anything like "Federal block grants / no strings" will be siphoned off to slush funds and tax cuts for BigCorp

Chris

04-01-2019, 09:46 PM

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1112900816371900418
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1112903454941474817
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1112906931868520452

pgardn

04-01-2019, 09:50 PM

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1112900816371900418
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1112903454941474817
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1112906931868520452

Mitch McConnell is going to let him hang himself again.

Pavlov

04-01-2019, 09:51 PM

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1112900816371900418
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1112903454941474817
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1112906931868520452It's been nine years.

They have nothing.

Nothing.

:lol Qhris

boutons_deux

04-01-2019, 11:35 PM

The Late Show Imagines the Dastardly Obamacare Replacement Plan That Lives in Kellyanne Conway’s Head

https://www.mediaite.com/entertainment/the-late-show-imagines-the-dastardly-obamacare-replacement-plan-that-lives-in-kellyanne-conways-head/ (https://www.mediaite.com/entertainment/the-late-show-imagines-the-dastardly-obamacare-replacement-plan-that-lives-in-kellyanne-conways-head/)

UnWantedTheory

04-02-2019, 12:43 AM

ElNono

04-02-2019, 01:03 AM

:lmao punting after the next election

oh, and...

GOP lawmakers root against Trump in court on ObamaCare

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/436572-gop-lawmakers-root-against-trump-in-court-on-obamacare

ElNono

04-02-2019, 01:04 AM

:lol 9 fucking years and still no plan... also the orange clown campaigned on greatest, bestest health insurance evar, and now punting it to Congress... then they bitch about liars...

UnWantedTheory

04-02-2019, 02:49 AM

:lol 9 fucking years and still no plan... also the orange clown campaigned on greatest, bestest health insurance evar, and now punting it to Congress... then they bitch about liars...
It was also suppose to happen Day 1. :lol

boutons_deux

04-02-2019, 05:41 AM

It was also suppose to happen Day 1. :lol

and what about Trash's "promise" of IRS declarations simplified to a post card?

nope, USA has the most complicated IRS tax declaration of any industrial country, and the tax software and tax preparers industry lobby spends $Ms to keep that way, and make it worse. Just another way BigCorp fleeces citizens of $Bs per year.

pgardn

04-02-2019, 06:48 AM

Mitch McConnell is going to let him hang himself again.

:lmao punting after the next election

oh, and...

GOP lawmakers root against Trump in court on ObamaCare

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/436572-gop-lawmakers-root-against-trump-in-court-on-obamacare

Mitch got to him.
Convinced orange man things are easier to break than make.

Red team has zero in the works.
Promises made, promises kept, continue lying.

pgardn

04-02-2019, 06:49 AM

and what about Trash's "promise" of IRS declarations simplified to a post card?

nope, USA has the most complicated IRS tax declaration of any industrial country, and the tax software and tax preparers industry lobby spends $Ms to keep that way, and make it worse. Just another way BigCorp fleeces citizens of $Bs per year.

Capitalism also leads to innovative cheating.
That’s the red team deep theme of taking care of yourself.

boutons_deux

04-02-2019, 07:14 AM

black pastor kicking the balls of Confederate states' politicians

https://www.facebook.com/washingtondcpress/videos/266758630942766/

Winehole23

04-02-2019, 10:37 AM

In the 1990s, Scott was the CEO of Columbia/HCA, a company that, under his direction, owned (https://www.politifact.com/florida/article/2010/jun/11/rick-scott-and-fraud-case-columbiahca/) more than 340 hospitals, 135 surgery centers, and 550 home-health locations by the time Scott resigned in 1997. That year, federal agents announced an investigation into whether or not the company defrauded Medicare and Medicaid on a massive scale. Turns out, they did: According to Politifact’s summary of the settlement (https://www.politifact.com/florida/article/2010/jun/11/rick-scott-and-fraud-case-columbiahca/)Columbia/HCA made with the Justice Department, the company took the following actions while Scott was CEO:

Columbia billed Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal programs for tests that were not necessary or ordered by physicians;
The company attached false diagnosis codes to patient records to increase reimbursement to the hospitals;
The company illegally claimed non-reimbursable marketing and advertising costs as community education;
Columbia billed the government for home health-care visits for patients who did not qualify to receive them.

As part of the settlement, Columbia/HCA agreed to plead guilty to 14 corporate felonies — charges that involve financial penalties, but no jail time. (Corporations are people (https://www.npr.org/2014/07/28/335288388/when-did-companies-become-people-excavating-the-legal-evolution), but they cannot be sent to prison.) Over two settlement rounds, Columbia/HCA wound up paying the government $1.7 billion in criminal fines, civil damages, and penalties, in what the Justice Department called (https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2003/June/03_civ_386.htm) “the largest health-care fraud case in U.S. history.Rick Scott took the 5th seventy-five times.

boutons_deux

04-02-2019, 11:12 AM

Trash punts on health care until after 2020 election, at which point he better not be on the Repug team.

boutons_deux

04-02-2019, 12:49 PM

Experts discover historic roots of Medicare for All, public option and free-market proposals

Medicare for All Act of 2019 ... traces its roots back to the 1948 Wagner-Murray-Dingell national health insurance bill and the 1971 single-payer

"public option" plans ... first proposed by two Republicans, Sen. Jacob Javits and Rep. John Lindsay in the early 1960s.

"The leading option for U.S. health reform

would leave 36 million people uninsured in 2027,

while costs would balloon to nearly $6 trillion.

And the disgraceful trends of decreasing life expectancy,

rising drug prices,

medical bankruptcy, and

physician burnout

would persist" said Dr. Himmelstein.

"That option is called the status quo."

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-04/pfan-edh040119.php (https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-04/pfan-edh040119.php)

spurraider21

04-02-2019, 01:07 PM

we will have a great great plan... AFTER the election!

:lmao what a joke

Pavlov

04-02-2019, 01:45 PM

I just like the headline.
1113097710884851714

boutons_deux

04-02-2019, 03:53 PM

holy shit, Trash's brain is trash

Trump's latest bizarre pledge: Give us back the House and we'll be the "Party of Great Health Care"

Trump follows the longtime Republican playbook on health care:

Oppose Democrats but offer nothing of your own

https://www.salon.com/2019/04/02/trumps-latest-bizarre-pledge-give-us-back-the-house-and-well-be-the-party-of-great-healtcare/ (https://www.salon.com/2019/04/02/trumps-latest-bizarre-pledge-give-us-back-the-house-and-well-be-the-party-of-great-healtcare/)

Chris

04-02-2019, 03:56 PM

0hZJ4cotUWc

Pavlov

04-02-2019, 03:58 PM

0hZJ4cotUWcActually we wanted it in 2017 when Trump said he had a plan and full control of the federal government.

Why didn't they have a plan then?

Why didn't they have a plan in 2010?

Chris

04-02-2019, 04:05 PM

Actually we wanted it in 2017 when Trump said he had a plan and full control of the federal government.

Why didn't they have a plan then?

Why didn't they have a plan in 2010?

I see you are unaware of the federal judges.

spurraider21

04-02-2019, 04:27 PM

I see you are unaware of the federal judges.
trump and congress never passed anything. federal judges dont come into play during the legislative process

lol chris

spurraider21

04-02-2019, 04:29 PM

thats an excellent debate strategy

what is your plan to reform immigration? i'll let you know after the election

what is your plan to help veterans? i'll let you know after the election

you cant criticize policies that dont exist

pointingtohead.gif

ElNono

04-02-2019, 11:36 PM

trump and congress never passed anything. federal judges dont come into play during the legislative process

lol chris

votingrepublican.jpg

UnWantedTheory

04-02-2019, 11:37 PM

I see you are unaware of the federal judges.
What the hell does that have to do with not having an actual plan?

RandomGuy

04-02-2019, 11:43 PM

RandomGuy

04-02-2019, 11:44 PM

And the incentive to develop new drugs, new medical devices, new ANYTHING goes. I assume you plan on scaling back salaries too - and wonder whether there'll be any students going into medicine and competing for jobs at post office/VA/DMV-like hospitals, clinics, etc. The policy makers/administrators will be making the decisions instead of doctors and a whole layer of bureaucrats with corresponding pensions running things - just like all the other efficiently-run, innovative government institutions.

That isn't a fucking health care plan to get everybody health care.

That is some whiney ass buck-passing.

Quit bitching/preaching and give me a goddamn plan or shut the fuck up.

RandomGuy

04-02-2019, 11:48 PM

0hZJ4cotUWc

Not clicking on the video. Does it outline the Republican health care plan?

You and your intellectually and morally bankrupt party have had decades to come up with something. Obamacare was your best solution, and because a Democrat passed it, you decided it was suddenly not a good idea.

What is your replacement troll-boy? give me your party's plan.

Yea

Chris

04-02-2019, 11:57 PM

Not clicking on the video. Does it outline the Republican health care plan?

You and your intellectually and morally bankrupt party have had decades to come up with something. Obamacare was your best solution, and because a Democrat passed it, you decided it was suddenly not a good idea.

What is your replacement troll-boy? give me your party's plan.

Yea

I see you are unaware of the federal judges.

UnWantedTheory

04-02-2019, 11:59 PM

I see you are unaware of the federal judges.It seems you are unaware of how laws are passed.

Pavlov

04-03-2019, 02:15 AM

I see you are unaware of the federal judges.You didn't answer the questions.

Why didn't they have a plan in 2017?

Why didn't they have a plan in 2010?

:lmao "federal judges"

Avant

04-03-2019, 02:35 AM

You didn't answer the questions.

Why didn't they have a plan in 2017?

Why didn't they have a plan in 2010?

:lmao "federal judges"

Pavlov, see what I mean, this is all you ever do man, why?

Pavlov

04-03-2019, 02:40 AM

Pavlov, see what I mean, this is all you ever do man, why?Because I'm talking about health care plans which is the topic of the thread, you idiot.

Are you talking about the topic of just following me around like a fucking lost puppy?

boutons_deux

04-03-2019, 05:58 AM

Trump Admits Republicans Have No Plan To ‘Replace’ Obamacare

“Republicans are developing a really great HealthCare Plan with far lower premiums (cost) & deductibles than ObamaCare,”

he tweeted (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1112903454941474817) Monday night, add that

Republicans won’t be voting on it until “right after the Election when Republicans hold the Senate & win back the House.”
That’s a far different claim than what Trump was saying (https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/436366-trump-group-of-gop-senators-writing-spectacular-obamacare-replacement) just a week ago, when

he insisted a group of Republican senators were hard at work crafting a magical new health care plan that will be “really spectacular.”
That was a lie.

The Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-trumps-party-of-health-care-there-is-no-health-care-plan/2019/03/30/b4005bd0-5264-11e9-8d28-f5149e5a2fda_story.html?utm_term=.e28188cd0e56) reported no Republicans in Congress have a health care plan, nor is there anything in the works.

Chuck Grassley (R-IA), :lol

chair of the Senate Finance Committee, told the Post flatly that

there are no plans or efforts to draft any such plan.

A White House official told the Post that

there wasn’t a specific proposal from the White House, either
.
But now Trump is admitting that Republicans aren’t even going to bother with an Obamacare replacement for more than a year.

https://www.nationalmemo.com/286405-2/ (https://www.nationalmemo.com/286405-2/)

RandomGuy

04-03-2019, 10:47 AM

I see you are unaware of the federal judges.

That's not the Republican health care plan.

What is it? or are you going to wait until after the election to tell me? :lmao

boutons_deux

04-03-2019, 11:04 AM

Remember that ACA was debated for a year, amended 100 times mostly to placate Repugs, then not one Repug voted for it.

rmt

04-03-2019, 03:35 PM

That isn't a fucking health care plan to get everybody health care.

That is some whiney ass buck-passing.

Quit bitching/preaching and give me a goddamn plan or shut the fuck up.

You must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed. I've given my opinion on HC many times. I was responding to SR21's post.

RandomGuy

04-04-2019, 05:51 AM

You must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed. I've given my opinion on HC many times. I was responding to SR21's post.

Think I did.

Refresh my memory though:

Does your position include a plan or policy proposal get the tens of millions of people with no or low coverage into health insurance?

RandomGuy

04-04-2019, 05:52 AM

I see you are unaware of the federal judges.

Do those federal judges have the Republican 'plan for health care"? :lmao

Do tell, geenyus.

boutons_deux

04-04-2019, 08:53 AM

Do those federal judges have the Republican 'plan for health care"? :lmao

Do tell, geenyus.

Have you not noticed that the oligarchy/Repugs have decided the the legislative branch is too messy, unpredictable to force through fucking over America to obtain AmeriKKKA

So they have the Senate Repugs forcing through 100s of young, inexperienced, incompetent exteme right wing politicians into the Federal judiciary.

Bitch McC is going to nuke yet another Senate rule to simple 51 votes, while trying to reduce discussion nominees from 30 hours to 2 hours.

A Repug judge in shithole TX recently nuked ACA in totality. Expect the same and worse for decades from the oligarchy's whores in robes.

boutons_deux

04-04-2019, 09:06 AM

Americans borrowed more than $88,000,000,000 last year to cover healthcare expenses (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/4/2/1847163/-Americans-borrowed-more-than-88-000-000-000-last-year-to-cover-healthcare-expenses)

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/4/2/1847163/-Americans-borrowed-more-than-88-000-000-000-last-year-to-cover-healthcare-expenses (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/4/2/1847163/-Americans-borrowed-more-than-88-000-000-000-last-year-to-cover-healthcare-expenses)https://news.gallup.com/poll/248081/westhealth-gallup-us-healthcare-cost-crisis.aspx (https://news.gallup.com/poll/248081/westhealth-gallup-us-healthcare-cost-crisis.aspx)

https://news.gallup.com/poll/248081/westhealth-gallup-us-healthcare-cost-crisis.aspx (https://news.gallup.com/poll/248081/westhealth-gallup-us-healthcare-cost-crisis.aspx)

BigHealthCare and BigFinance rape Ms of people every year, which is exactly how the no-health-plan Repugs like and want it, enabling the rapacious brutality of the status quo by the oligarchy.

Chris

04-04-2019, 03:27 PM

Do those federal judges have the Republican 'plan for health care"? :lmao

Do tell, geenyus.

I see you are unaware of the federal judges.

spurraider21

04-04-2019, 03:48 PM

I see you are unaware of the federal judges.
i see you're unable to explain how federal judges have prevented the republican congress from passing healthcare legislation

Chris

04-04-2019, 04:02 PM

i see you're unable to explain how federal judges have prevented the republican congress from passing healthcare legislation

I see you are unaware of the federal judges.

https://www.pressherald.com/2019/03/29/federal-judge-rejects-trumps-health-care-plan-to-go-around-obamacare/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/us/politics/trump-judge-health-care.html
https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/02/04/federal-district-judges-have-blocked-trump-actions-30-times-a-record-rate/

spurraider21

04-04-2019, 04:10 PM

I see you are unaware of the federal judges.

https://www.pressherald.com/2019/03/29/federal-judge-rejects-trumps-health-care-plan-to-go-around-obamacare/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/us/politics/trump-judge-health-care.html
https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/02/04/federal-district-judges-have-blocked-trump-actions-30-times-a-record-rate/
yup. all of those were trump trying to change healthcare through executive action.

none of this explains why congress didnt pass bills that would accomplish those same goals. judges wouldnt be able to block congress

Chris

04-04-2019, 04:13 PM

yup. all of those were trump trying to change healthcare through executive action.

none of this explains why congress didnt pass bills that would accomplish those same goals. judges wouldnt be able to block congress

Yeah that didn't work either thanks to #TheResistance. I thought you already knew about all this stuff? I mean this is old news:

""I called Chuck Schumer yesterday to see if the Dems want to do a great HealthCare Bill. ObamaCare is badly broken, big premiums. Who knows!" the president wrote on Twitter Saturday morning.

Schumer, in a statement, said Trump had suggested another Obamacare repeal-and-replace effort, which the New York Democrat said was a non-starter.

"The president wanted to make another run at repeal and replace and I told the president that's off the table,” Schumer said."

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/07/trump-says-that-he-has-reached-out-to-schumer-on-health-care-243560

Chris

04-04-2019, 04:18 PM

Did you seriously think Trump Congress could just hamfist healthcare through? :lol

pgardn

04-04-2019, 04:24 PM

Did you seriously think Trump Congress could just hamfist healthcare through? :lol

Oh. So they had a plan but could not get it through.

This was like the N. Korea thing.
Arms control and health are with us.

"You mean you really believed that? Only believe if it actually occurs, not if I say it occurs."

"And there is one way to get to the truth, twitter."

spurraider21

04-04-2019, 04:31 PM

Yeah that didn't work either thanks to #TheResistance. I thought you already knew about all this stuff? I mean this is old news:

""I called Chuck Schumer yesterday to see if the Dems want to do a great HealthCare Bill. ObamaCare is badly broken, big premiums. Who knows!" the president wrote on Twitter Saturday morning.

Schumer, in a statement, said Trump had suggested another Obamacare repeal-and-replace effort, which the New York Democrat said was a non-starter.

"The president wanted to make another run at repeal and replace and I told the president that's off the table,” Schumer said."

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/07/trump-says-that-he-has-reached-out-to-schumer-on-health-care-243560
yup so not federal judges

Chris

04-04-2019, 04:39 PM

Oh. So they had a plan but could not get it through.

This was like the N. Korea thing.
Arms control and health are with us.

"You mean you really believed that? Only believe if it actually occurs, not if I say it occurs."

"And there is one way to get to the truth, twitter."

Nevertrumper and RINO Paul Ryan was serious about passing Trump's healthcare? That's news to me.

John McCain?

https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.buzzfeed.com%2Fbuzzfeed-static%2Fstatic%2F2017-07%2F28%2F10%2Fasset%2Fbuzzfeed-prod-fastlane-01%2Fanigif_sub-buzz-8207-1501252568-1.gif&f=1

Does anybody read anymore or do I have to do all the explaining?

Chris

04-04-2019, 04:39 PM

yup so not federal judges

Thanks for playing.

spurraider21

04-04-2019, 04:48 PM

I see you are unaware of the federal judges.

I see you are unaware of the federal judges.

I see you are unaware of the federal judges.

yup so not federal judges

Thanks for playing.
:tu

ElNono

04-05-2019, 12:29 AM

:lmao @ judges

UnWantedTheory

04-05-2019, 03:05 AM

Nevertrumper and RINO Paul Ryan was serious about passing Trump's healthcare? That's news to me.

John McCain?

https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.buzzfeed.com%2Fbuzzfeed-static%2Fstatic%2F2017-07%2F28%2F10%2Fasset%2Fbuzzfeed-prod-fastlane-01%2Fanigif_sub-buzz-8207-1501252568-1.gif&f=1

Does anybody read anymore or do I have to do all the explaining?
There was never anything to pass you fucking nitwit. You have to at least attempt to pass legislation before bitching about obstruction.

Pavlov

04-05-2019, 09:35 AM

Nevertrumper and RINO Paul Ryan was serious about passing Trump's healthcare?What was Trump's healthcare plan?

boutons_deux

04-08-2019, 09:20 PM

What was Trump's healthcare plan?

unfair question, won't get a response, as always

https://images.dailykos.com/images/660781/story_image/1381.png?1554245549

boutons_deux

05-09-2019, 04:45 PM

An unsubtle Trump threatens veto of 'Protecting Americans with Preexisting Conditions Act of 2019' (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/5/9/1856506/-An-unsubtle-Trump-threatens-veto-of-Protecting-Americans-with-Preexisting-Conditions-Act-of-2019)

Donald Trump doing things like saying he would veto (https://www.protectourcare.org/white-house-threatens-veto-of-protecting-americans-with-preexisting-conditions-act/) a bill called "Protecting Americans with Preexisting Conditions."

legislation would protect Americans with pre-existing conditions from the Trump administration's healthcare sabotage by reiterating that insurance companies cannot discriminate against them.

This is in response to guidance from the

Trump administration that will allow states to let insurance companies sell non-compliant policies

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1856506 (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1856506)

baseline bum

05-09-2019, 05:44 PM

What was Trump's healthcare plan?

Insurance is, you're 20 years old, you just graduated from college, and you start paying $15 a month for the rest of your life and by the time you're 70, and you really need it, you're still paying the same amount and that's really insurance.

boutons_deux

05-09-2019, 08:45 PM

No states want to take Trump up on his offer of crappy health insurance (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/5/9/1856336/-No-states-want-to-take-Trump-up-on-his-offer-of-crappy-health-insurance)

allowing states to have a waiver to make crappy, not-ACA-compliant insurance plans legal.

The problem for Trump: The states don't want to do it (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-health-202/2019/05/06/the-health-202-states-aren-t-taking-up-the-trump-administration-s-offer-of-obamacare-relief/5ccf0e5b1ad2e506550b2f55/?utm_term=.4f11475cfe0a).
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced that it would process and accept these waivers last fall, back in October.

So far, not a single state has indicated that it wants to do that.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1856336 (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1856336)

boutons_deux

05-11-2019, 09:54 AM

44 states act, Trash has done nothing in two on drug prices

Teva, other drug companies accused in sweeping U.S. price-fixing scheme

U.S. states filed a lawsuit accusing 20 drug companies including Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc of a sweeping scheme to inflate drug prices - sometimes by more than 1,000 percent - and stifle competition for generic drugs, state prosecutors said on Saturday.

The drug companies engaged in illegal conspiracies to

unreasonably restrain trade,

inflate and manipulate prices and reduce competition,

according to the complaint by 44 U.S. states

“Teva and its co-conspirators embarked on one of the most egregious and damaging price-fixing conspiracies in the history of the United States,”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-drugs-lawsuit/teva-other-drug-companies-accused-in-sweeping-u-s-price-fixing-scheme-lawsuit-idUSKCN1SH0DP?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FhealthNews+%28Reute rs+Health+News%29 (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-drugs-lawsuit/teva-other-drug-companies-accused-in-sweeping-u-s-price-fixing-scheme-lawsuit-idUSKCN1SH0DP?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FhealthNews+%28Reute rs+Health+News%29)

There is no crime in simply raising prices to whatever the market will pay. That's the heart of "free market".

USA is the only industrial country that doesn't regulate drug prices since corrupt BigPharma owns corrupt Congress.

Any guess as to whether Trash/Barr will join the suit? :lol

boutons_deux

05-14-2019, 02:44 PM

Getting to Medicare-for-All

I had the opportunity to testify last week before the House Rules committee on Medicare for All.

Incredibly, this was apparently the first time the topic had been explicitly addressed in a congressional hearing.

In my testimony, I argued that a

Medicare for All program would be affordable, but the key factor was reducing the cost of input prices, like prescription drugs, medical equipment, and doctors’ pay.

I also briefly laid out what I considered the key features of a transition from the current system. I want to go into this issue in a bit more detail here.

I listed four main steps as being key in the transition:
+ Fix the current Medicare system;
+ Allow a Medicare buy-in;
+ Take measures to reduce input prices;
+ Lower age of Medicare eligibility to 64.

These four steps should allow for an orderly phase in of a universal Medicare system.

They also should quickly provide substantial benefits to most of the population in the form of better quality/lower cost health care.

Fixing Traditional Medicare

The first point largely involves reversing the effort over the last few decades by right wingers to sabotage traditional Medicare and drive people into private Medicare Advantage plans or to require them to buy private supplemental insurance if they remain in traditional Medicare.

The most obvious fix here is to impose a cap on out-of-pocket spending. This is actually required for Medicare Advantage plans, but for some reason, no cap was ever put in place for traditional Medicare. We can start with a cap of $6,000, which is roughly the cap for Medicare Advantage. As we move towards the more comprehensive system envisioned by proponents of Medicare for All, this cap can be lowered, but the first step is simply to have a cap in place comparable to the cap for Medicare Advantage plans.

The second important fix is to roll part D drug benefits into the traditional Medicare program. Requiring a separate insurance package for prescription drugs makes little sense except as a way to force beneficiaries to give money to the insurance industry. Stand-alone prescription drug insurance plans do not exist in the private sector; it is absurd that the Bush administration insisted on going this route in 2003 as a condition of providing a prescription drug benefit.

It would also be desirable to merge Medicare Part A and Part B as part of a single system, to reduce complexity.

This would require some fundamental revamping of the program (Part A is financed by the designated payroll tax, while Part B is paid partly by premiums and mostly out of general revenue), but this revamping will be necessary at some point in the movement towards Medicare for All in any case. Even if Part A and Part B are not immediately merged for current beneficiaries, they should certainly be merged for those opting to buy into the program.

The third part of a fix is to eliminate the effective subsidies that Medicare Advantage plans obtain from “upcoding” their enrollees.

Medicare reimburses Medicare Advantage plans based on the health of the people they have enrolled. Recent research (https://www.nber.org/papers/w21222) indicates

Medicare Advantage plans systematically upcode their enrollees,

implying their health is worse than is actually the case, in a way that could increase payments by as much as 16 percent.

The program should move quickly to end these excess payments. One route would be to assume that the insurers lie about the health of their enrollees and adjust payments according. For example, if the average overpayment is found to be 10 percent, then the payment to Medicare Advantage plans can simply be reduced by 10 percent.[1] (http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/getting-to-medicare-for-all#_ftn1)

Alternatively, improper coding of enrollees could be treated like the fraud which it is.

This would mean severe civil penalties for the companies that engage in the practice and possible criminal penalties for the corporate executives that design the policy. There are plenty of people in prison for stealing cars that might be worth just a few thousand dollars.

There is no reason that insurance executives, who might be stealing tens of millions from Medicare, should not face punishment that is at least as harsh.

Allowing a Medicare Buy-In

After putting in the fixes discussed above (which should be quickly doable),

people of all ages should be allowed to buy into the Medicare program, so that the system competes directly with private insurers.

This buy in would be either through the exchanges, with households being able to apply whatever subsidies for which they are eligible under the exchanges, or alternatively through employer-based coverage, with employers able to pay an age-adjusted rate for their workers, as is the case now for private insurers under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

This buy-in would serve four purposes. First, it should give every person in the country access to a decent insurance plan. A reformed Medicare plan will provide access to a large number of providers and avoid the harassment that often proves so profitable for private insurers. It also is likely to provide an attractive option to employers who currently provide insurance for their workers. There is no reason not to allow employers to replace a current private plan with Medicare, and undoubtedly many would choose to do so.

The second benefit is that it would provide a serious competitor for private insurers. This is especially important in markets where consolidation of insurers has limited the availability of plans to just one or two insurers, but a reformed Medicare plan, if priced at cost, should be an attractive option everywhere.

The third benefit is that a reformed Medicare program, with a buy in option, should have enormous market power. The existing plan, with 40 million enrollees, already has substantial market power. But if we assume that half of those currently enrolled in Medicare Advantage switch to a reformed Medicare plan, along with 10 percent of the pre-Medicare age population, the reformed Medicare plan would have almost 80 million people enrolled, or just under a quarter of the population. Since this group includes most of the elderly and disabled, it would account for an even larger share of health care spending.

This would be such a large share of the market that it is likely that providers in many areas would opt only to deal with Medicare in order to avoid the administrative costs associated with dealing with a variety of smaller insurers. There would be even more market power with a merged Medicare-Medicaid program, which together with a modest degree of voluntary buy-ins, would account for well over half of the country’s health care spending, and far more than half in particular markets. Insofar as providers decided to rely on Medicare only, it would allow for the administrative efficiencies sought by proponents of Medicare for All.

The last advantage of a buy-in is that it would increase people’s familiarity and comfort with getting their insurance through Medicare. It would make the step to a universal Medicare program seem far less drastic.

Getting Health Care Input Prices in Line with the Rest of the World

The United States pays roughly twice as much for our health care inputs – drugs, medical equipment, doctors – as do people in other wealthy countries.

This both makes it much more difficult to pay for universal Medicare and also leads to poorer quality health care.

This is most clear in the case of prescription drugs and medical equipment. Because these items are expensive in the United States, doctors and patients often choose inferior courses of treatment. In the case of prescription drugs, they may take a less effective drug because it is cheaper. Alternatively, many people take half doses in order to economize on their drug spending. In the case of medical equipment, they may not take advantage of new technological developments because they are too expensive.

These health endangering efforts at saving money are especially painful because it is government policy that makes drugs and medical equipment expensive. Specifically, they are expensive because the government grants patent monopolies as the way it pays for the research and development costs for new drugs and medical equipment.

Without these government-granted monopolies, drugs and medical equipment would almost invariably be cheap.

In the case of prescription drugs, new breakthrough drugs would sell for the same price as generic drugs long on the market. There would be no issue of debating whether the government or private insurers should have to pay for a new drug that cost tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands a year, since new drugs would rarely cost more than a few hundred dollars a year.

The same applies to medical equipment. The most modern scans would not cost much more than a simple X-Ray. There would be no economic reason for doctors not to prescribe the best method for examining a patient.

If we did not rely on government-granted patent monopolies, the government would need another mechanism for financing research. The obvious alternative is direct government funding. This would likely be an enormous money saver.

We will spend more than $430 billion this year on prescription drugs that would likely cost less than $80 billion in a free market without patent or related protections.

[2] (http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/getting-to-medicare-for-all#_ftn2) For this additional $350 billion in spending, we get roughly $70 billion in research from the pharmaceutical industry.

The government currently spends more than $40 billion a year through the National Institutes of Health and other agencies.

If it were to double or triple this spending, it should be able to replace the research currently being supported through patent monopolies.

This publicly funded research would have two major advantages over the current system.

First, all the results would be fully public, this would be a condition of receiving the money.[3] (http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/getting-to-medicare-for-all#_ftn3) This should allow research to advance more quickly, since researchers could quickly build on each other’s’ successes or failures.

The other great advantage is that it would eliminate the incentive to lie about the safety and effectiveness of drugs. This is a widely recognized problem with the current system where pharmaceutical companies often engage in questionable or even illegal practices to promote their drugs. In extreme cases, they push drugs in contexts where they can be harmful to patients, as is alleged (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/health/opioids-purdue-pharma-oklahoma.html) to be the case with Perdue Pharma promoting OxyContin as not being addictive, even though it knew it was. No one would be lying to increase sales of OxyContin if it sold for the same price as generic aspirin.

We will not get a system of publicly funded research overnight, and even if we did, it would take many years before the research yielded fruit. However, we can ramp up funding, with the explicit intention of bringing new drugs onto the market at generic prices. In the meantime, we can use the same sort of price controls to bring prices in the U.S. in line with other wealthy countries.

A bill (https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sanders-khanna-to-introduce-legislation-to-drastically-lower-prescription-drug-prices) proposed by Senator Sanders and Representative Khanna provides a great example of how this can be done.

It would require companies to charge no more than the median price available in the next seven largest wealthy countries or lose their patent monopoly.

A separate bill (https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-schakowsky-introduce-bicameral-legislation-to-radically-reduce-drug-prices-through-public-manufacturing-of-prescription-drugs) introduced by Senator Warren and Representative Schakowsky would limit abuses of monopoly power in the generic market by creating a government manufacturing capability that would allow it to quickly enter markets where excessive concentration has allowed generic producers to jack up prices, as happened with Martin Shkreli and Daraprim, an important treatment for AIDS patients.

These are measures that could in the near term allow for hundreds of billions of dollars of savings annually on prescription drugs.

We can also enact comparable measures for medical equipment, getting our costs in line with other wealthy countries.

In the case of doctors and dentists, who earn on average twice of what their counterparts make in other wealthy countries, we can look to measures to increase the supply through rules that allow qualified foreign doctors to practice in the United States.

We can also change licensing rules to allow lesser paid medical professionals, such as nurse practitioners and physicians’ assistants, to do tasks for which they are fully competent, like prescribing drugs, which are now typically performed by doctors. A reformed Medicare can also lower compensation rates.

If we look to get doctors’ pay in line with other wealthy countries we should also cover most of the cost of their education, as is the case in other wealthy countries.

In addition, we should look to loan forgiveness for those who acquired large debts from their education.

Even with paying more for medical education, there should still be large savings.

If we paid $100,000 a year towards the education of 60,000 medical and dental students, it would come to $6.0 billion a year, less than 2.0 percent of what we pay doctors and dentists each year.

Taking these and other steps to reduce the cost of health care inputs would both immediately lower the cost of health care to everyone and also make an eventual transition to a universal Medicare system far more affordable.

If the cost of health care inputs in the U.S. were in line with other wealthy countries, the government would already be paying almost enough to cover the cost of Medicare for All.

Lowering the Age of Medicare Eligibility to 64

The most obvious way to extend Medicare coverage is to expand the age group that is automatically eligible. There have been a variety of proposals to lower the age to 60, 55, or 50 as a major step towards including the whole population. While these age reductions are reasonable policies, they would undoubtedly be big steps.

Just lowering the age to 60 would add close to 20 million people to program.
By contrast, lowering the age of eligibility to 64 is not a big step. It is just one year, roughly doubling the number of new enrollees that Medicare would see in a normal year. Also, the cost would be limited since many of 64-year olds would already be getting Medicare through the Social Security disability program, or alternatively would be receiving Medicaid.

It is likely that at least 40 percent of this age group already is having their health care paid by the government, and this would include the highest cost patients, since these are often the people receiving disability. Given this skewing,

the additional cost of adding 64-year olds to Medicare would probably be in the neighborhood of $12 to $14 billion a year,

the sort of money Congress adds to the military budget without a second thought.

While this would be a small step, it would nonetheless be an important one.

First, it would directly extend Medicare coverage to millions of people, providing them with a much greater level of health care and financial security.

It would also move the year of eligibility one year closer for many people with health issues who are approaching 65.

This modest extension of coverage would also give insights into the problems that would be encountered in a larger expansion. There will inevitably be mistakes in any large scale expansion of the program, but

the experience of taking a smaller step, like lowering the age to 64 should, make the system better prepared to deal with a larger expansion.

This simple step will also make the idea of an expanded Medicare program very concrete. The system was set up to cover people over age 65, and the disabled more than fifty years ago, with no change in the age of eligibility.

(There have been some efforts to raise it.)

If we can successfully lower the age to 64, this will be a new fact on the ground.

Everyone will know that lowering the age of eligibility is possible and that we can move to universal Medicare system.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/13/getting-to-medicare-for-all/ (https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/13/getting-to-medicare-for-all/)

boutons_deux

05-16-2019, 04:25 PM

Politifact: ‘False’ Rating For Trump On Pre-Existing Conditions Claim

Politifact (https://www.politifact.com/health-check/statements/2019/may/16/donald-trump/trumps-talk-preexisting-conditions-doesnt-match-hi/)gave Trump a “False” rating for this

claim from early May: “We will always protect patients with pre-existing conditions, very importantly.”

The analysis relied on interviews with four experts who cited Trump’s desire to strike down the entirety of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as contradicting the his claim.

Trump’s Justice Department asked (https://shareblue.com/health-care-attacks-trump-officials-bad-idea/) federal courts to completely eliminate the ACA, part of which protects people with pre-existing conditions from paying higher health care costs or being denied health insurance all-together.

The administration reiterated their goal in May, writing (https://shareblue.com/doj-health-care-preexisting-conditions-must-be-struck-down/) that the entire ACA “must be struck down.”

the Trump administration is allowing states to sell junk health insurance plans that are not required to protect people with pre-existing conditions

the “White House’s policy trajectory does exactly the opposite” of protecting people with pre-existing conditions, concludes Politifact.

The analysis goes on to say that Trump’s team has “taken further steps that could make it harder for people with pre-existing conditions to get affordable coverage.”

Rather than being honest about what he is fighting for,

Trump’s statement “is not accurate and makes a claim in direct opposition of what’s actually happening.”

https://www.nationalmemo.com/politifact-false-rating-for-trump-on-pre-existing-conditions-claim/ (https://www.nationalmemo.com/politifact-false-rating-for-trump-on-pre-existing-conditions-claim/)

boutons_deux

05-16-2019, 04:59 PM

From Repug shit hole Texas

Big Pharma-loving lawmaker whines about Americans criticizing corporate profits: ‘I mean. it’s just offensive’

https://www.rawstory.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/U.S.-Rep.-Chip-Roy-R-TX-1-800x430.jpg

Trump-Supporting GOP Congressman Says He Hopes US Companies Continue to Make a ‘Crap-Ton’ of Money
U.S. Rep.

Chip Roy (R-TX) broke down, appeared to cry, and yelled :lol

during a House hearing Thursday afternoon on the exorbitant and growing prices pharmaceutical companies are charging Americans.

Congressman Roy called it “offensive” ...

over Americans criticizing the drug manufacturers for making out-of-control profits

while people are literally dying because they can’t afford the high cost of their prescriptions.

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/05/big-pharma-loving-lawmaker-whines-about-americans-criticizing-corporate-profits-i-mean-its-just-offensive/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29 (https://www.rawstory.com/2019/05/big-pharma-loving-lawmaker-whines-about-americans-criticizing-corporate-profits-i-mean-its-just-offensive/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29)

boutons_deux

05-16-2019, 05:43 PM

‘Medicare for All’ Could Kill Two Million Jobs, and That’s O.K.

Reform has a cost. But the point of a health care system is to treat patients, not to buttress the economy.

Any significant reform would require major realignment ofthe health care sector,

which is now the biggest employer in at least a dozen states.

Most hospitals and specialists would probably lose money.

Some, like the middlemen who negotiate drug prices, could be eliminated.

That would mean job losses in the millions.

the point is to streamline for patients a Kafka-esque health care system that makes money for industry through irrational practices.

the Harvard economists Katherine Baicker and Amitabh Chandra warned (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1204891)against “treating the health care system like a (wildly inefficient) jobs program.”

The first casualties of a Medicare for all plan, said Kevin Schulman, a physician-economist at Stanford, would be the “intermediaries that add to cost, not quality.”

For example, the armies of administrators, coders, billers and claims negotiators who make good middle-class salaries and have often spent years in school learning these skills.

the answer is not to freeze the sectors where we are for all time.

When agriculture improved and became more productive, no one said everyone had to stay farmers.”
(https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/16/opinion/medicare-for-all-jobs.html?partner=rss&emc=rss)https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/16/opinion/medicare-for-all-jobs.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

boutons_deux

05-19-2019, 09:59 AM

Alabama congressman: "People who lead good lives" don't have preexisting conditions

Mo Brooks ... claimed that

"people who lead good lives" don't have to worry about dealing with pre-existing conditions —

like a stroke, or heart problems or birth defects."

"My understanding is that (the new proposal) will allow insurance companies to require

people who have higher health care costs to contribute more to the insurance pool.

That helps offset all these costs, thereby

reducing the cost to those people who lead good lives, they're healthy, they've done the things to keep their bodies healthy.

And right now, those are the people — who've done things the right way — that are seeing their costs skyrocketing."

https://www.salon.com/2017/05/02/alabama-congressman-people-who-lead-good-lives-dont-have-preexisting-conditions/ (https://www.salon.com/2017/05/02/alabama-congressman-people-who-lead-good-lives-dont-have-preexisting-conditions/)

Some if you have medical condition, or are poor, it's your own fault, and God doesn't love you because you are a bad person

pgardn

05-19-2019, 11:44 AM

Promises made
Promises kept

Now let’s get back to Hillary.

boutons_deux

05-19-2019, 09:13 PM

Trump says he’ll give Americans the ‘best healthcare ever’ — but only if Republicans win in 2020

Trump said he’s developing a plan :lol

that will be far better than the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare). :lol

But that bill will never become law in the next two years because he wants Republicans to be elected first.

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/05/trump-says-hell-give-americans-the-best-healthcare-ever-but-only-if-republicans-win-in-2020/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29 (https://www.rawstory.com/2019/05/trump-says-hell-give-americans-the-best-healthcare-ever-but-only-if-republicans-win-in-2020/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29)

boutons_deux

06-16-2019, 11:09 PM

Will this be Trumpcare 2.0? 3.0?

Trump thinks he can create his own healthcare law that will take the issue off the table for Democrats

one thing he is talking about is a better healthcare law than the Democratic one.

Trump is “vowing to issue the plan within a month or two, reviving a campaign promise with broad consequences for next year’s contest.”

He thinks he can take the issue off the table by providing the GOP’s plan. :lol what plan?

“But nervous Republicans worry that putting out a concrete plan with no chance of passage would only give the Democrats a target to pick apart over the next year,”

“The hard economic reality of fashioning a plan that lives up to the promises Mr. Trump has made would invariably involve trade-offs unpopular with many voters.

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/06/trump-thinks-he-can-create-his-own-healthcare-law-that-will-take-the-issue-off-the-table-for-democrats/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

boutons_deux

06-22-2019, 05:18 PM

Here's a promise that Trash didn't keep, and doesn't even talk about it anymore

As price of insulin soars, Americans caravan to Canada for lifesaving medicine

Her daughter, who is 13, has Type 1 diabetes and needs insulin. In the United States, it can cost hundreds of dollars per vial. In Canada, you can buy it without a prescription for a tenth of that price.

So, Greenseid led a small caravan last month to the town of Fort Frances, Ontario, where she and five other Americans

paid about $1,200 for drugs that would have cost them $12,000 in the United States

Like millions of Americans, Greenseid and Nystrom are stressed and outraged (https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/445401-voters-are-angry-about-prescription-drug-costs) by the rising costs of prescription drug (https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2016/09/29/americans-believe-drug-prices-unreasonable/)s in the United States — a problem Republicans and Democrats alike have promised to fix.

Insulin is a big part of the challenge. More than 30 million Americans have diabetes, according (http://www.diabetes.org/newsroom/press-releases/2018/insulin-affordability-white-paper-release.html) to the American Diabetes Association. About 7.5 million, including

1.5 million with Type 1 diabetes, rely on insulin.

Between 2012 and 2016, the cost of insulin for treating Type 1 diabetes nearly doubled (https://www.healthcostinstitute.org/research/publications/entry/spending-on-individuals-with-type-1-diabetes-and-the-role-of-rapidly-increasing-insulin-prices),

Large numbers resort to rationing — a dangerous and sometimes deadly (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/magazine/wp/2019/01/07/feature/insulin-is-a-lifesaving-drug-but-it-has-become-intolerably-expensive-and-the-consequences-can-be-tragic/?utm_term=.7d6e15666caa) practice.

None of this is recommended by U.S. officials, and some of it

might be illegal (https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-basics/it-legal-me-personally-import-drugs) under Food and Drug Administration guidelines. :lol of course, FDA is owned by BigPharma

“When you have a bad health-care system, it makes good people feel like outlaws (http://www.startribune.com/insulin-outlaws-high-cost-of-medication-drives-minnesotans-across-the-border/509802712/#6),” Greenseid said.

“It’s demeaning. It’s demoralizing. It’s unjust.”

Those ideas aren’t necessarily popular in Ottawa, where many worry that bulk buys from the United States could cause shortages or higher prices.

He said insulin prices in Canada are controlled through policy, including price caps and negotiations with manufacturers.

When Nystrom was diagnosed with diabetes as a child

in the late 1990s, she said, her family paid about $15 to $20 a vial. Now, at 33, she sometimes pays more than $300 for the same amount.

her son spent about $1,000 per month on the drug.

Alec Raeshawn Smith, an uninsured Type 1 diabetic, rationed his insulin supply due to cost (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/magazine/wp/2019/01/07/feature/insulin-is-a-lifesaving-drug-but-it-has-become-intolerably-expensive-and-the-consequences-can-be-tragic/?utm_term=.7d6e15666caa), his mother said. He died in 2017.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/as-price-of-insulin-soars-americans-caravan-to-canada-for-lifesaving-medicine/2019/06/14/0a272fb6-8217-11e9-9a67-a687ca99fb3d_story.html?utm_term=.e89473fd5cfa (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/as-price-of-insulin-soars-americans-caravan-to-canada-for-lifesaving-medicine/2019/06/14/0a272fb6-8217-11e9-9a67-a687ca99fb3d_story.html?utm_term=.e89473fd5cfa)

Predatory, avaricious, sadistic Capitalism.

TeyshaBlue

06-22-2019, 06:31 PM

I buy my Novolin 70/30 at Walmart. $24.88/vial. They don't carry the short acting variant.....yet.

boutons_deux

06-22-2019, 06:36 PM

I buy my Novolin 70/30 at Walmart. $24.88/vial. They don't carry the short acting variant.....yet.

then why are others spending $1000s / month? why wouldn't "social networking" or just internet search show the Walmart product?

TeyshaBlue

06-22-2019, 06:50 PM

I actually found out on Facebook. I dismissed it immediately. Then, out of curiosity, I asked a Walmart pharmacist about the program. She simply asked "How much do you want?"

So yeah, it's the real deal. Its the older, human sourced variant.

TeyshaBlue

06-22-2019, 06:51 PM

The new synthetic analogs are more expensive and need different dosing structures.

TeyshaBlue

06-22-2019, 06:52 PM

Google Walmart insulin.

boutons_deux

07-01-2019, 10:16 AM

Red States that refused to expand Medicaid under the ACA are seeing their rural hospitals close down (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/6/30/1868490/-Red-States-that-refused-to-expand-Medicaid-under-the-ACA-are-seeing-their-rural-hospitals-close-down)

ABC’s ‘This Week’ about rural hospitals shutting down in states that have refused to expand Medicaid.

Only the most backward red states have refused to implement expanded Medicaid.

Those states are now seeing a lot of their rural hospitals closing down, with many more rural hospitals in deep financial trouble.

Rural hospital closures leave residents with few options: 'It's a fight every day' (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rural-hospital-closures-leave-residents-options-fight-day/story?id=64039863&cid=clicksource_903_null_dp_image)

Across Tennessee alone, a dozen rural hospitals have closed since 2010,

and, according to an analysis by The Tennessean newspaper (https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/health/2019/05/16/tennessee-rural-hospitals-closing-medicaid-expansion-ballad-health/3245179002/),

more than a dozen others are at serious risk of going under.

But it's not just a problem for Tennessee.

In the last decade, more than 100 rural hospitals have closed across the country, according to (https://www.shepscenter.unc.edu/programs-projects/rural-health/rural-hospital-closures/) the University of North Carolina's

Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research. And an analysis by the (https://www.navigant.com/-/media/www/site/insights/healthcare/2019/navigant-rural-hospital-analysis-22019.pdf%20) management consultancy firm Navigant found that

21% of rural hospital in the United States are in danger of closing, too, if their finances don't improve.
Rural hospitals face a variety of challenges.

They tend to serve aging communities that suffer from poor health and require expensive treatments.

There are often severe doctor shortages in rural areas, and

gaps in insurance coverage if patients have insurance at all.

And, several studies show that

rural hospitals are closing at a faster rate in states that chose not to expand Medicaid coverage to poor residents under Obamacare.

The 12 (SHITHOLE) states besides Tennessee that have refused to expand Medicaid are:

Alabama
Florida:
Mississippi
Missouri
North Carolina
Oklahoma
South Carolina
South Dakota
Texas (shitbage are Bigger in TX!)
Wisconsin
Wyoming

(Georgia is in the process of changing it’s law. )

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/6/30/1868490/-Red-States-that-refused-to-expand-Medicaid-under-the-ACA-are-seeing-their-rural-hospitals-close-down?detail=emaildkre

boutons_deux

07-03-2019, 12:07 PM

Obamacare's immediate fate lies in the hands of a nightmare couple of Republican judges (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/7/2/1868784/-Obamacare-s-immediate-fate-lies-in-the-hands-of-a-nightmare-couple-of-Republican-judges)

Last week, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit :lol

that will hear arguments on the Affordable Care Act issued a disquieting order (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/6/27/1867681/-Appeals-court-issues-ominous-threat-to-the-Affordable-Care-Act) questioning the right of Democratic states and the U.S. House of Representatives to appeal a lower-court decision that threw out the law.

The judges (https://t.co/Mwu9mWKvCy?amp=1) are

Jennifer Walker Elrod, a George W. Bush appointee who will preside (https://twitter.com/RMFifthCircuit/status/1145683350298009600);

Jimmy Carter appointee Carolyn Dineen King;

and Kurt D. Engelhardt, a Trump appointee.

Elrod is indeed a nightmare (https://twitter.com/imillhiser/status/1145680156851392512) judge, having distinguished herself in anti-abortion (https://www.afj.org/blog/fifth-circuit-panel-known-for-hostility-toward-womens-rights) and anti-immigration (http://www.pfaw.org/blog-posts/5th-circuit-immigration-ruling-shows-importance-of-courts-elections/) cases.

Englehardt (https://www.salon.com/2018/02/12/another-appalling-trump-judicial-nominee-this-one-aided-killer-cops/) has a "history of disturbing rulings on cases involving racial violence and injustice, as well as cases involving sexual harassment and workplace discrimination against women."

This isn't going to be a forward-thinking majority,

nor one that gives a damn about the ACA and the millions and millions of people receiving health coverage and care through it.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/7/2/1868784/-Obamacare-s-immediate-fate-lies-in-the-hands-of-a-nightmare-couple-of-Republican-judges (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/7/2/1868784/-Obamacare-s-immediate-fate-lies-in-the-hands-of-a-nightmare-couple-of-Republican-judges)

boutons_deux

07-07-2019, 11:34 PM

Republicans are screwed on healthcare — regardless of what the courts decide this week

Trump and the GOP are counting on the fact that Americans will forget Republicans just spent the last ten years trying to attack Democrats for Obamacare and working to repeal it over 80 times.

Trump wants to fight Democrats on healthcare, claiming that the Republican Party has the best plan and they can solve everything. The problem is that the chickens come home to roost on Tuesday at the 5th Circuit.

The ACA has gone to court several times and survived most attempts to bring it down.

But Tuesday there is no win for Republicans.

If the 5th Circuit strikes down the law, they have two problems:

First,

they will be outed for trying to kill healthcare for millions and pre-existing coverage for the country.

Second,

the GOP will be forced to find the replacement they campaigned on but never ... developed.

If they lose on Tuesday,

they choose whether to continue fighting the law in what will become a very public Supreme Court battle,

or admit defeat.

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/07/republicans-are-screwed-on-healthcare-regardless-of-what-the-courts-decide-this-week/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29 (https://www.rawstory.com/2019/07/republicans-are-screwed-on-healthcare-regardless-of-what-the-courts-decide-this-week/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29)

boutons_deux

07-09-2019, 06:31 AM

Obamacare Is Going Back On Trial, With Insurance For 20 Million At Stake

The Republican lawsuit hasn’t gotten a lot of attention lately, but it should.

in November, (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/judge-rules-obamacare-unconstitutional_n_5be057e5e4b01ffb1d047be2) a federal district judge sided with the plaintiffs, declaring the Affordable Care Act was unconstitutional.

It was a big victory for the 20 GOP state officials who brought the case as well as for President Donald Trump (https://www.huffpost.com/news/topic/donald-trump), who had the U.S. Justice Department file a brief (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-administration-pre-existing-conditions-court_n_5c999b91e4b0d42ce360169c) supporting the case.

Now the case is before the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, where a panel of three judges will hear oral arguments on Tuesday.

Two of the judges are Republican appointees and have ties (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/Jennifer%20Walker%20Elrod)to (https://fedsoc.org/events/luncheon-with-hon-kurt-d-engelhardt) the conservative Federalist Society (https://www.huffpost.com/topic/federalist-society), :lol

just like the federal district judge (https://fedsoc.org/contributors/reed-o-connor) who ruled in favor of the case in November. :lol

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/aca-obamacare-lawsuit-appeal-unconstitutional_n_5d2399dbe4b0d11a78458c40?ncid=n ewsltushpmgnews__TheMorningEmail__070919&guccounter=1 (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/aca-obamacare-lawsuit-appeal-unconstitutional_n_5d2399dbe4b0d11a78458c40?ncid=n ewsltushpmgnews__TheMorningEmail__070919&guccounter=1)

boutons_deux

07-09-2019, 06:36 AM

Even Conservatives Want The Courts To Ignore Trump On Obamacare

They hate the Affordable Care Act, but they also want no part of this latest lawsuit.

Conservatives (https://www.huffpost.com/topic/conservatives) are begging the federal courts to uphold Obamacare (https://www.huffpost.com/topic/affordable-care-act).

President Donald Trump (https://www.huffpost.com/news/topic/donald-trump) is rooting (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-administration-pre-existing-conditions-court_n_5c999b91e4b0d42ce360169c) for the case to succeed,

even though an estimated 20 million people (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-administration-pre-existing-conditions-court_n_5c999b91e4b0d42ce360169c) would lose insurance and,

as usual (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-health-care-plan-promise_n_5ca3cdc2e4b0948075545e34), he doesn’t have a replacement plan (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/no-gop-obamacare-replacement_n_5c9bcff1e4b07c88662fd2d3).

At his behest, the Justice Department last week formally informed the 5th Circuit that it, too, wants the whole law to come off the books.

conservatives think that would be nuts ― either because

they genuinely think the merits of the case are so weak or

because they fear the political effects for Republicans could be devastating, or both.

The case is called Texas vs. Azar,

The underlying premise of Texas vs. Azar is that the Affordable Care Act’s “individual mandate,”

which imposed a financial penalty on people who didn’t obtain insurance,

has become unconstitutional because the 2017 tax cut reduced the penalty to zero.

Because Congress in 2010 thought the mandate was an essential piece of the Affordable Care Act,

the lawsuit says, the courts must throw out the entire law.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/conservatives-obamacare-lawsuit-briefs_n_5ca3de48e4b0ed0d780dfc1f?ncid=newsltushpm gnews__TheMorningEmail__070919

boutons_deux

07-09-2019, 07:05 PM

U.S. appeals court signals sympathy to bid to strike down Obamacare

expressing skepticism to Democratic calls to overturn the ruling of a Texas judge who found the landmark U.S. healthcare reform law unconstitutional.

Two Republican-appointed members :lol

of the three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sharply questioned lawyers for a group of Democratic state attorneys general and the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives defending the Affordable Care Act.

Whichever way it rules, the decision could prompt an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, potentially

setting up a major legal battle over healthcare for tens of millions of Americans in the midst of the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

The judges focused on whether Obamacare lost its legal justification after Trump in 2017 signed a law that eliminated a tax penalty used to enforce the law’s mandate that all Americans buy health insurance.

“If you no longer have the tax, why isn’t it unconstitutional?”

Republican opponents call the law an unwarranted intervention by government in health insurance markets, :lol

while supporters say striking it down would threaten the healthcare of 20 million people who have gained insurance since its enactment.

After Trump signed a tax bill passed by a Republican-led Congress that reduced the tax penalty to zero dollars, a coalition of Republican-led states headed by Texas sued, alleging the tax penalty’s elimination rendered Obamacare unconstitutional.

if Obamacare is struck down,

“A lot of this stuff would need to get sorted out, and it’s complicated.” :lol

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-obamacare/u-s-appeals-court-signals-sympathy-to-bid-to-strike-down-obamacare-idUSKCN1U40ZU?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-obamacare/u-s-appeals-court-signals-sympathy-to-bid-to-strike-down-obamacare-idUSKCN1U40ZU?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews)

Obamacare going down, thanks to shitbag Repugs and their politicized shitbag so-called judges.

boutons_deux

07-12-2019, 10:52 AM

It May Be up to John Roberts to Save the Affordable Care Act Once Again

Republicans’ claims that their 2017 tax reform bill gives the courts no other option but to strike as unconstitutional the entirety of the health law due to its individual mandate provision.

According to Republicans, the individual mandate has two distinct parts to it.

The first part “mandates” people carry health insurance by use of the word “shall.”

The second part imposes a tax on those people who fail to purchase insurance.

In 2017, Republicans left the language of the mandate in place, but zeroed out its tax penalty for those who don’t carry insurance.

because the tax from that mandate is now zero, they say, the tax isn’t really a tax anymore. :lol

And if a tax isn’t a tax, then the mandate is no longer constitutional :lol

and must be struck along with the entire rest of the ACA. :lol

individuals ultimately maintained a choice in complying with the ACA:

Purchase insurance or pay a tax.

The fact that Congress decided to make that tax zero doesn’t fundamentally change the nature of that choice.

https://rewire.news/article/2019/07/11/it-may-be-up-to-john-roberts-to-save-the-aca-once-again/ (https://rewire.news/article/2019/07/11/it-may-be-up-to-john-roberts-to-save-the-aca-once-again/)

I figure the Repug shitbag compromised 5th Circuit will agree with the TX shitbag Repug judge about the shithole TX suit,

and kill ACA for the above BULLSHIT "logic"

boutons_deux

07-20-2019, 12:08 PM

Wingnut federal judge rules against people with pre-existing conditions (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/7/19/1873006/-Wing-nut-federal-judge-rules-against-people-with-pre-existing-conditions-so-have-fun-with-that-GOP)

Reliably wingnutty Judge Richard Leon, of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, has ruled that the Trump administration can break the law (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-19/trump-s-short-term-health-insurance-rule-survives-lawsuit?campaign=87083770-AA38-11E9-BC29-BB942AECE977&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=lawdesk),

in this case the Affordable Care Act, and expand the sale of junk, short-term health insurance policies.

The Trump administration has issued a rule to allow the plans to last as long as 364 days and to be renewable for three years.

Challengers argued that this

would undermine the ACA markets,

driving healthy people out of the larger pool into these cheap, crappy plans and

causing premiums to increase for people in the ACA-compliant plans.

They also argued, correctly, that this

undermines the protections for people with pre-existing conditions under the law.

The short-term plans Trump is allowing would not have to extend those protections.

Leon was not swayed by reality.

"Not only is any potential negative impact" from the rule "minimal, but its benefits are undeniable," he wrote, saying that

there is no evidence that the rule "is having or will have the type of impact—

substantial exodus from the individual market exchanges—

that would threaten the ACA's structural core."

really so stupid that they don't understand the basic premise of how health insurance works,

but the evidence from Republicans and partisans such as Leon argues otherwise.

That, or they're just fundamentally dishonest and don't give a damn, and so cynically make this shit up.

hyperpartisan judges like Leon and those on the 5th Circuit

who look ready to toss the entire ACA are going to make political life very hard for Republicans in 2020. Which is just deserts.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/7/19/1873006/-Wing-nut-federal-judge-rules-against-people-with-pre-existing-conditions-so-have-fun-with-that-GOP?detail=emaildkre (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/7/19/1873006/-Wing-nut-federal-judge-rules-against-people-with-pre-existing-conditions-so-have-fun-with-that-GOP?detail=emaildkre)

Leon is the IDEAL hyperpartisan so-called judge model that Trash and Leonard Leo are polluting the Federal judiciary with.

boutons_deux

07-22-2019, 04:27 PM

Republican lawmakers refusing Medicaid expansion responsible for premature deaths of 15,000+ people (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/7/22/1873628/-Republican-lawmakers-refusing-Medicaid-expansion-responsible-for-premature-deaths-of-15-000-people)

A new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research (https://www.nber.org/papers/w26081)

"Our estimates suggest that approximately 15,600 deaths would have been averted

had the ACA expansions been adopted nationwide as originally intended by the ACA," they write.

"This highlights an ongoing cost to non-adoption that should be relevant to both state policymakers and their constituents."

many of those 14 states that still have refused expansion

are also suing in federal court right now to have the entire law struck down, including Medicaid expansion.

John Roberts, who became single-handedly responsible for allowing the worst of Republican state lawmakers to deny this care when

he made the political decision to make expansion optional.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1873628 (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1873628)

boutons_deux

07-31-2019, 09:38 AM

Trump Administration Announces Plan Allowing People to Buy Lower-Cost Prescription Drugs From Canada

“Under this pathway, States, wholesalers, or pharmacists could submit plans for demonstration projects for HHS to review outlining how they would import Health-Canada approved drugs that are in compliance with section 505 of the FD&C Act,”

The second path allows manufacturers to import versions of FDA-approved drugs that the companies sell in other countries and are the same versions used in the United States.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/trump-administration-announces-plan-allowing-people-to-buy-lower-cost-prescription-drugs-from-canada_3024042.html (https://www.theepochtimes.com/trump-administration-announces-plan-allowing-people-to-buy-lower-cost-prescription-drugs-from-canada_3024042.html)

I don't see any way for Americans to cut out the middleman's extortionate profits by mail-ordering directly from Canada.

boutons_deux

07-31-2019, 12:08 PM

How will Trash square this with BigPharma that should lose $Bs in drug profits.

How will BigPharma try to kill or cripple Canada imports?

boutons_deux

07-31-2019, 02:20 PM

Trump firms up plan to import medicines;

pharma companies resist :lol no shit :lol

"The importation idea still needs to be proposed and then finalized by Health and Human Services.

The largest U.S. pharmaceutical and biotech companies said they opposed the idea of importation

through their lobbyists PhRMA and BIO.

“There is no way to guarantee the safety of drugs that come into the country,” :lol

PhRMA Chief Executive Officer Stephen Ubl said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-healthcare-drugpricing/trump-firms-up-plan-to-import-medicines-pharma-companies-resist-idUSKCN1UQ1NP?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FtopNews+%28News+%2F +US+%2F+Top+News%29

BigPharma's "FDA-approved safe drugs" have killed or maimed Ms of Americans.

SAFE? G M A F B

And obviously, Canadians are being wiped out by their unsafe drugs.

boutons_deux

08-03-2019, 06:42 PM

Trump administration considers September unveiling of healthcare plan

Trump has not signed off on the tentative plan, the newspaper said, describing ongoing debate about the plan and the timing for the roll-out.

Polling shows that healthcare is a top concern for voters leading up to the election.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-healthcare/trump-administration-considers-september-unveiling-of-healthcare-plan-wsj-idUSKCN1UT0J1?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-healthcare/trump-administration-considers-september-unveiling-of-healthcare-plan-wsj-idUSKCN1UT0J1?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews)

boutons_deux

08-11-2019, 01:22 PM

No doubt that Trumpcare, due soon, will make this Capitalist dystopia much worse

WHY WOULD CANCER PATIENTS STOP TREATMENT? MONEY

if you have a condition that requires intensive, long-term care and instead of spending the average $10,000 a year, you have to spend $30,000 or $60,000 or more? And what if you can’t afford to?

The percentage of Americans who are uninsured reached a four-year high recently, with nearly 14 percent of adults saying they have no coverage.

survey included more than 1,000 patients

Fifty-four percent of patients surveyed had stopped or refused treatment due to the cost — and among the uninsured (https://www.ozy.com/politics-and-power/inside-uninsured-america-how-obamacares-retreat-is-hurting-trump-country/79337), 98 percent had.

In 2013, NerdWallet found that medical debt was the largest driver of personal bankruptcy.

In 2015, an analysis of several crowdfunding sites found that 41 percent of campaigns were to pay off medical debt, but only 11 percent of those were fully funded.

Cancer survivors (https://www.ozy.com/acumen/the-cancer-patients-who-survive-because-theyre-treated-like-kids/86875) report

borrowing money,

going into debt,

being unable to pay for care,

making other financial sacrifices and

experiencing psychological hardship associated with costs of medical care,

even when they have jobs and insurance.

When the debt collectors come calling, cancer patients are more than two times more likely to file for bankruptcy than other patients facing financial hardships.

filing for bankruptcy after a cancer diagnosis is a risk factor for early mortality.

https://www.ozy.com/acumen/why-would-cancer-patients-stop-treatment-money/95885?utm_term=OZY&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DD_2019_08_11&utm_content=A (https://www.ozy.com/acumen/why-would-cancer-patients-stop-treatment-money/95885?utm_term=OZY&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DD_2019_08_11&utm_content=A)

America is fucked into barbarity, and unfuckable

If Dems take sweep House, Senate, WH in 2020, they won't try seriously to fix health wealth extraction.

And we know the Repugs never will

iow, there is no solution. The oligarchy is too wealthy, $Bs more than is necessary to buy politicians and the judiciary.

rmt

08-15-2019, 12:31 AM

Finland's entire government resigns over failed healthcare reforms

https://www.euronews.com/2019/03/08/finland-s-prime-minister-juha-sipila-offers-government-s-resignation-over-failed-healthcar

boutons_deux

08-15-2019, 06:20 AM

Finland's entire government resigns over failed healthcare reforms

https://www.euronews.com/2019/03/08/finland-s-prime-minister-juha-sipila-offers-government-s-resignation-over-failed-healthcar

what's your opinion on this and does it relate to USA's shitshow of Capitalist so-called healthcare?

boutons_deux

08-16-2019, 01:22 PM

Fox contributor suggests Medicare for All would increase mass shootings

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0?ui=2&ik=c5ffe9fe07&attid=0.2&permmsgid=msg-a:r5784301135327993331&th=16c9ba91f4224c36&view=fimg&sz=s0-l75-ft&attbid=ANGjdJ_59ZDBTtzwuEoaSaL0ZXgpJDJ0AnhJ0Z2UAEz Gz1PPZMtwDK5PCj0WnJSkl5p8s5MMRDUHZybfFDTJLF9VbsHVR b9edjxXxzF94jtLXULpvkP4LzHtMeXEJTQ&disp=emb&realattid=ii_jzefuhe61
"The Mexicans Will Not Replace Us!" :lol

Rachel Campos-Duffy suggested that

Medicare for All would increase the likelihood of mass shootings by lowering access to mental health care.

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/08/fox-contributor-suggests-medicare-for-all-would-increase-mass-shootings/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1160

boutons_deux

08-16-2019, 03:49 PM

AbbVie prices new rheumatoid arthritis drug at $59,000/yr

A four-week supply of Humira, the world’s best-selling medicine, has a list price of about $5,174, amounting to more than $60,000 for a year.

Humira brought in global revenue of $4.87 billion in the second quarter,

but sales have been hit by competition from cheaper rivals in Europe, and

AbbVie in June announced a deal to buy Botox-maker Allergan Plc for $63 billion to reduce dependence on the drug.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-abbvie-fda/abbvie-prices-new-rheumatoid-arthritis-drug-at-59000-yr-idUSKCN1V61MJ?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FhealthNews+%28Reute rs+Health+News%29 (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-abbvie-fda/abbvie-prices-new-rheumatoid-arthritis-drug-at-59000-yr-idUSKCN1V61MJ?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FhealthNews+%28Reute rs+Health+News%29)

boutons_deux

08-18-2019, 01:33 PM

No doubt Trumpcare will address the gawdawful problem of rural health care

The ‘follow-up appointment’

For many people in medical debt, a trip to the emergency room leads to the courtroom

Unpaid medical bills are the leading cause of personal debt and bankruptcy in the United States according to credit reports, and

what’s happening in rural areas such as Butler County is a main reason why.

Patients who visit rural emergency rooms in record numbers are defaulting on their bills at higher rates than ever before.

Meanwhile, many of the nation’s 2,000 rural hospitals have begun to buckle under bad debt,

with more than 100 closing in the past decade and hundreds more on the brink of insolvency as

they fight to squeeze whatever money they’re owed from patients who don’t have it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-follow-up-appointment/2019/08/17/1be5ded6-b936-11e9-a091-6a96e67d9cce_story.html?noredirect=on&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-follow-up-appointment/2019/08/17/1be5ded6-b936-11e9-a091-6a96e67d9cce_story.html?noredirect=on&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1)

boutons_deux

08-20-2019, 04:39 PM

Trump unleashes bizarre stream of gobbledygook when reporter asks him to describe his health care plan

Trump was asked by a reporter in New Hampshire this week to describe his health care plan, and the president responded with a stream of gobbledygook.

“So, we have a great plan coming out,” :lol

the president began when asked about his plan.

“It’s going to be — if we can take back the House because we’re not going to get the Democrats to vote for it,

because they’re doing Medicare for all, which is going

to take away your freedom, :lol
take away your doctors, :lol
take away everything that you should be able to have, :lol

and
most importantly, it’s going to take away —

we have 180 million people right now that have private insurance and they love it, and

all of that’s going to be taken away.

It’s absolute craziness.”

the president then proceeded to make false statements about Medicare for All.

“On top of everything else, they’re looking at 80, 90, 95 percent tax, :lol

because there’s no — there’s no way they can afford it,” he said.

“But people don’t want to go to a hospital, :lol

to go to a doctor. :lol

They don’t want to go. :lol

They want to have their own doctor, number one, :lol

and we went through this with Obamacare,

which we got rid of the individual mandate, :lol

by the way, which is very important.” :lol

“But we have a great health care plan,” he said. :lol

“If we get the House,
we hold the Senate,
we keep the presidency,

we’re going to have great health care, :lol

much better than Obamacare, :lol

at much less cost.” :lol

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/08/trump-unleashes-bizarre-stream-of-gobbledygook-when-reporter-asks-him-to-describe-his-health-care-plan/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1190 (https://www.rawstory.com/2019/08/trump-unleashes-bizarre-stream-of-gobbledygook-when-reporter-asks-him-to-describe-his-health-care-plan/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1190)

Obamacare was repealed on "day one" of Trash's disastrous so-call Presidency, right? :lol

boutons_deux

08-22-2019, 08:22 AM

Health Care Rationing? It’s Already A Reality Here, And This Report Proves It.Almost 18% of working-age diabetics are skipping meds because of cost.

there’s been no shortage of studies on people forgoing medical care because it’s too expensive, just as there’s been no shortage (https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-health-insurance-sick-patients-high-bills-20190606-story.html) of stories about people suffering (https://prospect.org/article/insulin-racket) as a result (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2717498).

Jesimya David Scherer-Radcliff (https://www.kare11.com/article/news/family-says-21-year-old-son-died-rationing-insulin/89-d451a01b-9170-4341-9010-155cb87edccc), a 21-year-old diabetic from rural Minnesota, died. His family said it was because he had skipped insulin doses he couldn’t afford.

Among the mourners at that memorial service was activist Nicole Smith-Holt (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/magazine/wp/2019/01/07/feature/insulin-is-a-lifesaving-drug-but-it-has-become-intolerably-expensive-and-the-consequences-can-be-tragic/), from nearby Minneapolis, whose 26-year-old son, Alec Raeshawn Smith, had died under similar circumstances in 2017.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/diabetes-insulin-cost-rationing_n_5d5c9809e4b0f667ed6a1adf?ncid=newsltus hpmgnews__TheMorningEmail__082219 (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/diabetes-insulin-cost-rationing_n_5d5c9809e4b0f667ed6a1adf?ncid=newsltus hpmgnews__TheMorningEmail__082219)

Sociopathic, psychopathic Capitalism: amassing wealth, profits before human lives

the shakedown, extortion: "You wanna live? PAY UP, or die"

boutons_deux

08-26-2019, 12:23 PM

No Worries, Trash is limiting the cost of drugs

The $6 Million Drug Claim

New treatments for rare diseases are changing the lives of patients, but

the price can reach millions of dollars for a single person.

her family and her husband’s union, which covers the drug’s cost, have been shocked by the mounting bills for the treatments for her and two of her children, who have the same genetic disease.

In 2018, the union faced a potential $6 million annual bill for the Patterson household,

casting doubt over the future of the labor group’s generous drug coverage and the family’s health.

These drugs face no real competition, including from generic companies, leaving the door wide open for manufacturers to set nearly any price they want.

Rare diseases, however, aren’t all that rare. There are an estimated 7,000 of them (https://rarediseases.info.nih.gov/diseases/pages/31/faqs-about-rare-diseases), and about 30 million Americans have one — roughly the same number of people in the United States with diabetes (https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p0718-diabetes-report.html).

Of 59 new drugs approved in 2018 (https://www.fda.gov/media/120357/download), more than half, or 34, were for rare diseases.

Those treatments are typically the most expensive, helping to drive an increase in overall spending on prescriptions nationwide.

big and small employers are getting hit with higher drug bills.

It may be for a worker’s

child with hemophilia whose treatments can cost over $1 million or for an employee receiving immunotherapy for lung cancer.

But not every union or corporate employer has an adequate cushion to absorb these prescription bills.

a stunning lack of transparency in drug pricing;

many rare-disease drugs are priced based on a patient’s weight, :lol

meaning a prescription for an adult costs many times more than one for a child or infant.

In 2018, Ms. Patterson’s drug bill approached $2 million.

The breathtaking price threw the labor union — the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, which covers her health care through her husband, Bill — into a crisis.

At one point in 2018,

for every hour that one of the union’s 16,000 members worked, 35 cents of his or her pay went to Alexion to cover the Pattersons’ prescriptions.

Employers and unions say the impact is already being felt.

Some small businesses, hit with just a single claim for a family like the Pattersons, have

considered ending their employee health coverage.

Others have drastically cut back coverage for drugs, and some employers are considering excluding coverage for expensive and novel treatments like gene therapy.

Companies cannot predict these costs.

“You are one hire, one diagnosis away from this happening to you,”

“It’s literally like being struck by lightning.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/25/health/drug-prices-rare-diseases.html?te=1&nl=morning-briefing&emc=edit_NN_p_20190826&section=topNews?campaign_id=9&instance_id=11903&segment_id=16480&user_id=992d608214b505003aa04bf10a595031&regi_id=80821797tion=topNews

BigPharma buys politicians who protect BigPharma, and DO NOTHING so the rapacious status quo is maintained.

Just another way Capitalism fucks America for profit

Get sick in America and spend the rest of your life in or near poverty. Capitalists don't GAF

What if employers start forcing job candidates to document all diseases and medical care before hiring?

boutons_deux

08-29-2019, 04:46 PM

GOP House hypocrite is suddenly grateful for the health care he tried to take away from millions (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/8/27/1881721/-Sean-Duffy-is-a-hypocrite-of-the-worst-kind)

https://images.dailykos.com/images/249758/story_image/GettyImages-150873719.jpg?1462892112

He noted that former members of Congress don’t get health insurance for life and explained he plans to get a COBRA plan for his family — utilizing a 1985 law that allows people to pay to stay on their employers’ health plans at their own expense for up to 18 months after leaving a job.

“We pay the full boat for that so we can transition and with the condition of the baby, we have that complete coverage,” Duffy said.

“But, yeah, you are right. I had to look at that and make sure that with, open heart surgery, we had coverage to make sure that, you know, we could pay for that and we have got that worked out.

So, thank God, :lol that’s not a consideration as we look to the birth.”

the original “reality TV star turned politician”

campaigned on repealing the Affordable Care Act.

And like many of his colleagues, he dressed his message up in a comforting trope, namely that

he would not vote to eliminate the ACA unless and until Repu (https://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/jan/25/sean-duffy/us-rep-sean-duffy-ignores-replace-part-his-pledge-/)blicans had a ready, comprehensive plan to replace it. (https://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/jan/25/sean-duffy/us-rep-sean-duffy-ignores-replace-part-his-pledge-/)

As it turns out,

Duffy did the exact opposite,

voting repeatedly not only to repeal the Affordable Care Act (https://duffy.house.gov/press-release/congressman-sean-duffys-comments-about-obamacare-repeal-and-replacement)

(and its protections mandating affordable coverage for those with so-called “pre-existing conditions,” (https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2006-09-17-0609170032-story.html) like his unborn daughter),

but actually, specifically opposing legislation that would have blocked the Trump administration’s guidelines allowing states to promote “junk” insurance policies which do not provide such protections.

And, predictably, Duffy did all this with no Republican “alternative” plan proposed, much less in place.

Sean Duffy voted to deny millions of Americans the same type of health care that he is now so thankful to God for receiving. There’s at least one word for that: hypocrisy.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/8/27/1881721/-Sean-Duffy-is-a-hypocrite-of-the-worst-kind?detail=emaildkre (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/8/27/1881721/-Sean-Duffy-is-a-hypocrite-of-the-worst-kind?detail=emaildkre)

boutons_deux

09-03-2019, 12:22 PM

Medicare for All? ain't gonna happen. BigMedicine won't even allow a single modification to their wealth-extracting scam.

Providers wage war against fixing surprise medical billing, in a preview of what's to come (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/9/2/1881832/-Providers-wage-war-against-fixing-surprise-medical-billing-in-a-preview-of-what-s-to-come)

For a preview of the fight to come over improving anything in our healthcare system, look no further than the fight the providers—hospitals and some doctors’ groups—are waging against fixing one basic, big problem:

surprise billing

when people with insurance receive care from providers or at facilities that aren't in their insurance networks.

There's legislation in both the House and the Senate (https://khn.org/news/surprise-medical-bill-legislation-takes-a-step-forward-but-will-it-lead-to-a-step-back/) to fix the problem, and the efforts are bipartisan.

There had been hopes that the Senate would pass its version before the August recess, but

lobbyists managed to stop that from happening.

Now it looks like the American Hospital Association thinks it has killed (https://twitter.com/ben_ippolito/status/1166315989673361410) current proposals.

a mystery group (https://about.bgov.com/news/mystery-group-puts-13-million-into-ads-on-surprise-health-bills/) calling itself Doctor Patient Unity has spent $13 million in more than 20 states

just since July on an ad campaign fighting the legislation. That's along with the almost

$10.2 million the AHA has spent on lobbying so far in 2019,

and the

$11.5 million the American Medical Association has spent this year.

The Congressional Budget Office says (https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2019-07/s1895_0.pdf) that one of Senate's bills

could lower premiums by 1% across the board,

which is apparently a bridge too far for providers.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1881832 (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1881832)

Medicare for All ain't never gonna happen

America is fucked and unfuckable

boutons_deux

09-03-2019, 01:11 PM

https://scontent-dfw5-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/69289145_524280351640933_1559624524939395072_n.png ?_nc_cat=1&_nc_oc=AQmGo5mFQGHo8mTLbt9gnddGEtWiDuDh1GxZh4AMqHg ouD4awJxOoElwlRMV5Q2dkDY&_nc_ht=scontent-dfw5-2.xx&oh=87d42cbbb175f457d95438da2b8c9770&oe=5E08725A

boutons_deux

09-09-2019, 12:03 PM

Thomas Jefferson would be so proud of his "masterpiece"

‘UVA has ruined us’:

Health system sues thousands of patients, seizing paychecks and putting liens on homes

Their money problems began when the University of Virginia Health System

pursued the couple with a lawsuit and a lien on their home to recoup $164,000 in charges for Waldron’s emergency surgery in 2017.

The family has lots of company:

Over six years ending in June 2018,

the health system and its doctors

sued former patients more than 36,000 times for over $106 million,
seizing wages and

bank accounts,

putting liens on property and

homes and forcing families into bankruptcy,

Unpaid medical bills are a leading cause of personal debt and bankruptcy,

with hospitals from Memphis (https://www.propublica.org/article/methodist-le-bonheur-healthcare-sues-poor-medical-debt) to Baltimore (https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/johns-hopkins-hospital-sues-patients-many-low-income-for-medical-debt/2019/05/20/d850cafa-7b19-11e9-a5b3-34f3edf1351e_story.html?tid=lk_inline_manual_7) criticized for their role in pushing families over the financial edge.

But UVA stands out for the scope of its collection efforts and how persistently it goes after payment,

pursuing poor as well as middle-class patients for almost all they’re worth,

https://beta.washingtonpost.com/health/uva-has-ruined-us-health-system-sues-thousands-of-patients-seizing-paychecks-and-putting-liens-on-homes/2019/09/09/5eb23306-c807-11e9-be05-f76ac4ec618c_story.html?wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1 (https://beta.washingtonpost.com/health/uva-has-ruined-us-health-system-sues-thousands-of-patients-seizing-paychecks-and-putting-liens-on-homes/2019/09/09/5eb23306-c807-11e9-be05-f76ac4ec618c_story.html?wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1)

Where is Trash's promised health care plan, on Day One, better and cheaper for everyone, than Obamacare? :lol

boutons_deux

09-11-2019, 06:28 AM

The uninsured rate had been steadily declining for a decade. But now it’s rising again.

The number of uninsured Americans is increasing for the first time since Obamacare passed.

In 2018, the number of people in the United States without health insurance rose to 27.5 million, up from 25.6 million in 2017. The uninsured rate jumped from 7.9 percent in 2017 to 8.5 percent in 2018. It was the first year-to-year increase in uninsured rates since 2008 and 2009.

the Trump administration has taken numerous steps over the last few years to both hamstring the Obamacare marketplaces for private insurance and to roll back Medicaid enrollment.
The Census data revealed only marginal decreases in private insurance coverage, but Medicaid coverage dropped by 0.7 percentage points, a drop in enrollment of about 2 million people.

President Trump and congressional Republicans repealed the ACA’s individual mandate, which ended the requirement that people purchase coverage or pay a penalty. That could have led some people to voluntarily drop their insurance.

The administration has also sought to make skimpier “short-term insurance” plans more available and it has cut enrollment outreach for Obamacare enrollment.
For Medicaid, the administration has approved the first-ever work requirements, which was found in Arkansas to have led to some 20,000 people losing coverage.

The administration has also notably sought to crack down on immigrants’ enrolling in Medicaid, by changing federal “public charge” rules so they penalize migrants for utilizing public assistance.

The Census report found

persistently high uninsured rates among impoverished in states that have refused to expand Medicaid under the ACA.

In those states, which have declined a generous federal match to cover their poorest citizens through the health care law,

more than one-third of people in poverty lack health insurance.

Racial disparities also persisted in insurance coverage in America:

5.4 percent of white non-Hispanic people were uninsured,

while 9.7 percent of blacks and

17.8 percent of Hispanics lacked coverage.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/9/10/20858938/health-insurance-census-bureau-data-trump

The Repugs fuck the poor and enrich the rich, consistent with policy-driven inequality and the oligarchy's FUCK EVERYBODY strategy.

boutons_deux

09-11-2019, 03:06 PM

Shithole Texas has the most people without health insurance in the nation — again

For the second year in a row, the number of Texans without health insurance increased, and fewer people enrolled in Medicaid.

In 2018, 17.7% of Texas residents — about 5 million people — had no health coverage, up from 17.3% in 2017.

Both years,

Texas had almost double the number of uninsured people compared with the national average of 8.7% in 2017 and 8.9% in 2018.

It was one of only nine states to record an increase in the uninsured rate.

Texas is one of 14 states that have not expanded Medicaid,

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/09/10/texas-has-most-people-without-health-insurance-nation-again/ (https://www.texastribune.org/2019/09/10/texas-has-most-people-without-health-insurance-nation-again/)

boutons_deux

09-13-2019, 07:09 PM

370 healthcare groups send letter to Congress urging prior authorization reform in Medicare Advantage

urging passage of the Improving Seniors' Timely Access to Care Act of 2019 (H.R. 3107),

a bipartisan bill to protect Medicare Advantage beneficiaries from prior authorization requirements that needlessly delay or deny access to medically necessary care.

requiring the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to regulate the use of prior authorization by Medicare Advantage plans.

The bill would also increase transparency by mandating that health insurance plans report to CMS their prior authorization usage rate and the frequency with which they approve or deny coverage.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-09/acor-3hg091119.php

My bet: The Repugs will block in the House, and if it passes, MoscowMitch will kill it.

Recall that the Repugs used Medicare Advantage to partially privatize Medicare and shift $100Bs to BigInsurance.

M/A costs 10% or more to taxpayers and than standard Medicare.

boutons_deux

09-17-2019, 11:51 AM

Bring on 2020 with House Republicans planning to run on Obamacare repeal (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/9/16/1885840/-Bring-on-2020-with-House-Republicans-planning-to-run-on-checks-notes-Obamacare-repeal)

Coming out of their weekend retreat, House Republicans unveiled their big 2020 (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-13/house-gop-to-run-in-2020-on-obamacare-repeal-debt-reduction) initiative to win back disaffected voters ... Obamacare repeal.

That will be the key element to their other main goal of … reducing the debt.

"The first thing we would do is make sure our debt is taken care of," House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said. They would do it by repealing the Affordable Care Act, he said. A

"We want to protect pre-existing conditions. :lol

We want to lower the cost of health care while raising quality overall," :lol

"health care is an important issue for us to lean in on."

Republicans reworking their 2017 "replacement" bill :lol

to "make it even stronger." :lol

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/9/16/1885840/-Bring-on-2020-with-House-Republicans-planning-to-run-on-checks-notes-Obamacare-repeal?detail=emaildkre (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/9/16/1885840/-Bring-on-2020-with-House-Republicans-planning-to-run-on-checks-notes-Obamacare-repeal?detail=emaildkre)

better, cheaper, covering everybody! :lol On Day One! :lol

boutons_deux

09-18-2019, 01:21 PM

Trump Admin launches ACA Replacement Plan in case they win #TexasFoldEm: "Obamacare Sucked Anyway!" (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/9/17/1886141/-Trump-Admin-launches-ACA-Replacement-Plan-in-case-they-win-TexasFoldEm-Obamacare-Sucked-Anyway)

The Health 202: White House may have given up on health plan it says it is writing

A former White House staffer and several congressional aides and activists say they’ve been told

the Trump administration has moved away from seeking an Obamacare replacement and

is instead focused on damage control should a judge rule next month to topple the entire law.

Trump made waves earlier this year by promising to come up with yet another Obamacare replacement plan, but

a high-stakes case before the Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit is threatening him and other Republicans seeking reelection with a political wild card, as

it could result in millions of Americans losing coverage as the election season heats up.

“There seems to be a decreasing appetite for the ‘big plan’ reveal and instead

just focusing on responding to the 5th Circuit with prudence and a minimum of hysteria,” a former senior administration official wrote me in an email yesterday.

, in order to "give up" on a replacement healthcare plan, they would've had to be working on one in the first place...which is likely complete nonsense. :lol

But conservative groups say they’ve not been told about an Obamacare replacement plan,

even though their buy-in would almost certainly be sought by the White House.

“Although we’ve had discussions with the White House on health care,

we’ve heard nothing from the White House on a health-care plan,”

said Jason Pye, vice president of legislative affairs for FreedomWorks.

CMS Administrator Seema Verma posted the following entry on the official CMS blog: (https://www.cms.gov/blog/thank-obamacare-rise-uninsured)

Thank Obamacare for the Rise of the Uninsured

The U.S. Census Bureau released their annual report on health insurance coverage in the United States which shows the number of uninsured Americans rose from 2017 to 2018.

As usual, critics of President Trump have been quick to blame the Administration’s healthcare policies for this increase.

But a review of key facts suggests the rising uninsured rate stems largely from Obamacare’s failure to deliver affordable health insurance premiums and has created a new class of uninsured.

While Obamacare promised affordable health insurance for every American, and even penalized those who refused to buy it, the law did nothing to control underlying costs

This is a flat-out lie.

The ACA didn't do enough to control costs,

but it does include some provisions...including, I should note,

the very Medical Loss Ratio (MLR) provision which is resulting in nearly $1.4 billion in excessive premiums being rebated back to the policyholders (http://acasignups.net/19/09/14/2018-mlr-rebates-lessons-learned-plus-all-50-states-dc-one-table) this year alone,

for a total of over $5.3 billion being rebated since 2012. (http://acasignups.net/19/08/07/important-updates-my-half-assed-mlr-explainer-or-how-much-will-be-rebated-2019-2020)

..Average premiums went up by another 26 percent in 2018.

The chutzpah here is incredible.

Yes, average unsubsidized premiums did increase around 26% in 2018 (officially it was projected to be around 29%,

but the biggest single reason for that 26% increase (http://acasignups.net/2018-rate-hikes) was Donald Trump's decision to cut off CSR reimbursement payments.

Fully half of the 2018 hikes were due specifically to the CSR cut-off...

according to many of the insurance carriers themselves in their official actuarial rate filings.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/9/17/1886141/-Trump-Admin-launches-ACA-Replacement-Plan-in-case-they-win-TexasFoldEm-Obamacare-Sucked-Anyway (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/9/17/1886141/-Trump-Admin-launches-ACA-Replacement-Plan-in-case-they-win-TexasFoldEm-Obamacare-Sucked-Anyway)

"The chutzpah here is incredible." :lol The DISHONESTY here is automatic, relentless Repug behavior

So the Repug whores in the 5th Circuit can destroy the legality of ACA, which would put Trash in DEEP SHIT with no replacement

OR

5th Circuit can rule the ACA is LEGAL :lol

boutons_deux

10-03-2019, 03:03 PM

Trash wonderfully desperate to something positive.

Trump spouts off incomprehensible Obamacare joke before attacking John McCain

“We eliminated Obamacare’s horrible, horrible, very unfair, unpopular individual mandate,” he said.

“A total disaster.

That was a big penalty.

Where you paid a lot of money for the privilege of not having to pay a lot of money for the privilege of having no health care.

You paid not to have healthcare.

It was a penalty.

How it ever held up in the Supreme Court I don’t know but it did and we just got rid of it.

We did it the old-fashioned way.

We vastly expanded options including short-term plans and health reimbursement agents —

arrangements which are incredible.

Many of these are up to 60% less expensive than Obamacare.”

At this point, Trump paused and seemed to wait for people to laugh — and no one did. :lol

“Nobody got that,” he said. “Obamacare. I said Obamacare.”

“We did a great job in running it,

we unfortunately had one vote the middle of the night, just one thumbs down,

that wasn’t good :lol after years and years of campaigning,”

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/10/trump-spouts-off-incomprehensible-obamacare-joke-before-attacking-john-mccain/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29 (https://www.rawstory.com/2019/10/trump-spouts-off-incomprehensible-obamacare-joke-before-attacking-john-mccain/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29)

Trash's baby talk and early childhood vocab is getting more impoverished. His brain is fucked

boutons_deux

10-03-2019, 05:44 PM

Fox News Immediately Cuts Off Dr. Oz From Praising Medicare for All (https://splinternews.com/fox-news-immediately-cuts-off-dr-oz-from-praising-medi-1838742233)

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--Styi75jD--/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/is5kvomhyncekn1etdxj.png

Dr. Oz attempted to use his platform to inform viewers about Medicare for All—at least for the moment he could.

Then he was brutally SILENCED by the MAINSTREAM MEDIA for his DANGEROUS IDEAS about AMERICANS no longer going BROKE after a MEDICAL EMERGENCY.

“Half of the doctors in America want Medicare for All, that’s how much of a crisis we have,” Oz said before getting cut off by Brian Kilmeade.

“Doctor...that’s a whole different conversation,” Kilmeade interrupted,

https://splinternews.com/fox-news-immediately-cuts-off-dr-oz-from-praising-medi-1838742233?utm_source=splinter_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2019-10-03 (https://splinternews.com/fox-news-immediately-cuts-off-dr-oz-from-praising-medi-1838742233?utm_source=splinter_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2019-10-03)

boutons_deux

10-07-2019, 10:18 AM

Medicare Advantage was/is a scam to shift $100Bs to BigInsurance.

Trash will expanding privatization of Medicare behind the LIE of "market based" :lol

Trump Launches ‘Market-Based’ Attack On Medicare

new executive order (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-protecting-improving-medicare-nations-seniors/) calls for “market-based” pricing, which

would drive up costs for everyone with Medicare,

eviscerate traditional Medicare, and

steer more people into for-profit “Medicare Advantage” plans.

the slew of government audits revealing that many Medicare Advantage plans pose “an imminent and serious risk to the health of… enrollees.” (https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Compliance-and-Audits/Part-C-and-Part-D-Compliance-and-Audits/Downloads/ConstellationTermination062719.pdf)

They also overcharge taxpayers to the tune of $10 billion a year.

CMS’ limited audits (https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Compliance-and-Audits/Part-C-and-Part-D-Compliance-and-Audits/PartCandPartDEnforcementActions-.html) have highlighted major issues with Medicare Advantage plans.

the problems with Medicare Advantage may be even more far-reaching than the government audits indicate.

The Medicare Advantage plans have failed to turn over reliable and complete claims data (https://tinyurl.com/y2couv2w), as required by law.

Without this data, it’s not possible to know whether they are covering the health care services they are paid to provide or to oversee them to the extent necessary.

several serious instances of malfeasance by these corporate Medicare insurers—including UnitedHealth Group, Aetna, Cigna and Humana—in a detailed letter (https://www.brown.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/brown-colleagues-urge-cms-to-investigate-medicare-advantage-overbilling-protect-taxpayer-dollars-and-improve-care-for-older-ohioans) they sent to Verma.

The insurers’ wrongdoings are systematic.

They are ongoing.

They endanger the health and financial well-being of millions of people.

They undermine the financial integrity of the Medicare program and harm the U.S. Treasury.

Yet, to date, CMS has failed to develop, let alone execute, a plan to hold these insurers accountable for violating their legal obligations and to ensure their members get the health care to which they are entitled.

Tens of billions in overcharges (https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-16-76) are one big problem. Medicare Advantage plans have been overcharging the government (https://paymentaccuracy.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Medicare-Part-C-Getting-Payments-Right-Score-Card-FY-2019-Q1.pdf) for their services for many years now, by claiming that their members are in worse health (https://tinyurl.com/y6yx8aft) than they actually are in order to increase payments.

To make matters worse, they have refused to pay back the tens of billions in overpayments that the federal government has made to them. UnitedHealth successfully fought to keep the government from collecting this money.

Government audits show that Medicare Advantage plans are inappropriately delaying and denying care and coverage to hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of their members.

This puts patients’ health and safety at risk.

Thousands of people end up paying for care that should have been covered—or foregoing care altogether.

https://www.nationalmemo.com/trump-launches-market-based-attack-on-medicare/# (https://www.nationalmemo.com/trump-launches-market-based-attack-on-medicare/#)

boutons_deux

11-01-2019, 11:06 AM

This is an example of how the Repugs/oligarchy plan to control the control with the Federal judiciary rather than through the unreliable, messy Congress

A Federal Court May Soon Do What Congress Could Not: Obliterate Obamacare

Thousands organized to save the Affordable Care Act in 2017. Now the entire law may be struck down when no one’s looking.

any day now, aided and abetted by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, :lol dubya's Klown Priscilla Owen

the Trump administration is poised to stick a knife in the heart of what remains of the Affordable Care Act.

At minimum, this president will be throwing 20 million people who obtained insurance under the ACA off of their plans.

The notoriously conservative appellate court will decide a challenge to a state-led effort to end the ACA once and for all, on the

dubious legal theory that, when Congress chose not to kill Obamacare in 2017, it actually intended to kill the law.

if the court he packed succeeds in destroying the ACA,

it could be the single most consequential event of Trump’s presidency, and can sit right up there with

the rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program,

the travel ban, and

the family separation policy

as humanitarian catastrophes.

The case is Texas v. United States,

and it began as yet another Hail Mary lawsuit, brought by 20 state attorneys general (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/28/17064444/obamacare-aca-lawsuit-mandate-voxcare) to kill Obamacare.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/10/obamacare-fifth-circuit-texas.html (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/10/obamacare-fifth-circuit-texas.html)

boutons_deux

11-26-2019, 03:16 PM

U.S. heart patients cut back on life-saving drugs due to cost

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-heart-expenses/u-s-heart-patients-cut-back-on-life-saving-drugs-due-to-cost-idUSKBN1XZ2HM?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FhealthNews+%28Reute rs+Health+News%29

boutons_deux

11-26-2019, 03:19 PM

Trump really doesn't care about drug prices after all

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi actually has been working on legislation to lower the cost of prescription drugs, and

her staff "spent months over the course of this year trying to get White House support for her measure

to allow the government to negotiate prices for up to 250 drugs per year,

with tough financial penalties for companies that refused to come to the table."

Trump refused to work with her and is now instead bashing her efforts.

“Pelosi and her Do Nothing Democrats drug pricing bill doesn’t do the trick," Trump tweeted (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1197954043420827648%3Cbr%3E) Friday.

"FEWER cures! FEWER treatments!

Time for the Democrats to get serious about bipartisan solutions to lowering prescription drug prices for families."

All of which is demonstrably false nonsense.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1901835

rmt

12-07-2019, 01:05 PM

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Lipid Profile

Cholesterol, Total—Cholesterol is a critical fat that is a structural component of cell membrane and plasma lipoproteins, and is important in the synthesis of steroid hormones, glucocorticoids, and bile acids. Mostly synthesized in the liver, some is absorbed through diet, especially one high in saturated fats.
HDL Cholesterol—High-density lipoproteins are believed to take cholesterol away from cells and transport it back to the liver for processing or removal. They have become known as the "good" cholesterol.
LDL Cholesterol—Low-density lipoproteins contain the greatest percentage of cholesterol and may be responsible for depositing cholesterol on the artery walls. For that reason, they are known as the "bad" cholesterol.
Cholesterol/HDL Ratio—This ratio is calculated by dividing the total cholesterol by the HDL cholesterol and is used for determining relative risk for developing cardiovascular heart disease.
Triglycerides—Triglycerides are fat in the blood responsible for providing energy to the cells of the body.
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Liver Profile

Protein, Total—Proteins are the most abundant compound in serum. The protein makeup of the individual is of important diagnostic significance because of protein's involvement in enzymes, hormones, and antibodies as well as osmotic pressure balance, maintaining acid-base balance, and as a reserve source of nutrition for the body's tissues and muscles.
Albumin, Serum—Albumin is the major constituent of serum protein (usually over 50%). It is manufactured by the liver from the amino acids taken from the diet. It helps in osmotic pressure regulation, nutrient transport, and waste removal.
Globulin, Total—Globulin, a larger protein than albumin, has many diverse functions such as, the carrier of some hormones, lipids, metals, and antibodies.
Albumin/Globulin Ratio—Calculated by dividing the albumin by the globulin.
Bilirubin, Total—A byproduct of the breakdown of hemoglobin from red blood cells in the liver, bilirubin is a good indication of the liver's function. Excreted into the bile, bilirubin gives the bile its pigmentation.
Alkaline Phosphatase—A body protein important in diagnosing proper bone and liver functions.
Lactate Dehydrogenase (LDH)—An enzyme found mostly in the heart, muscles, liver, kidney, brain, and red blood cells.
Aspartate Aminotransferase (AST or SGOT)—An enzyme found in skeletal and heart muscle, liver and other organs.
Alanine Aminotransferase (ALT or SGPT)—An enzyme found primarily in the liver.
GGT—Also known as Gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase, GGT helps detect liver and bile duct injury.
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Kidney Panel

Blood Urea Nitrogen (BUN)—A by-product of protein metabolism eliminated through the kidneys.
Creatinine, Serum—Creatinine is the waste product of muscle metabolism. Its level is a reflection of the body's muscle mass.
Uric Acid—Another by-product of protein metabolism eliminated through the kidneys.
BUN/Creatinine—Ratio calculated by dividing the BUN by the Creatinine.
Glomerular Filtration (eGFR)—Provides an assessment of the filtering capacity of the kidney.
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Iron

Iron, Total—Iron is necessary for the formation of some proteins, hemoglobin, myoglobulin, and cytochrome. Also, it is necessary for oxygen transport, cellular respiration, and peroxide deactivation.
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Fluids, Electrolytes & Minerals

Chloride, Serum—Similar to sodium, it helps to maintain the body's electrolyte balance.
Potassium—Helps to control the nerves and muscles.
Sodium, Serum—One of the major salts in the body fluid; sodium is important in the body's water balance and the electrical activity of nerves and muscles.
Carbon Dioxide (CO2)—CO2 level is related to the respiratory exchange of carbon dioxide in the lungs; is part of the body's buffering system. Generally when used with other electrolytes, it is a good indicator of acidity and alkalinity.
Calcium—A mineral essential for development and maintenance of healthy bones and teeth. It is important also for the normal function of muscles, nerves and blood clotting.
Phosphorus—Together with calcium, it is essential for healthy development of bones and teeth. Associated with hormone imbalance, bone disease and kidney disease. It is found mainly in bones and teeth.
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Glucose

Glucose— Glucose, formed by the digestion of carbohydrates and the conversion of glycogen by the liver, is the primary source of energy for most cells. It is regulated by insulin, glucagon, thyroid hormone, liver enzymes, and adrenal hormones.

boutons_deux

12-07-2019, 01:21 PM

Mediterranean / DASH nutrition (they aren't diets)

Plus Alternate Day Fasting

... is all you need to fix your diseased ass

boutons_deux

12-26-2019, 06:41 PM

Trump judges are coming after Americans’ healthcare —

and Democrats have a plan to ensure the GOP pays the price

https://www.rawstory.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Screen-Shot-2018-09-30-at-5.58.05-PM.png

GOP-appointed federal judges are poised to wage war on Obamacare again

Already Democrats are racking up electoral victories to protect health care, winning key gubernatorial elections in Kentucky and Louisiana, where Democrats defeated candidates who have pledged to or already worked towards sabotaging the ACA.

The major threat to the ACA this time around comes from a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and several other right-wing state AGs.

They contend that when Republicans repealed the individual mandate in 2017 as part of their tax cut bill,

they made the entire law unconstitutional because the mandate is “unseverable” from the other provisions

conservative legal scholars ... have called this lawsuit ridiculous. :lol Thanks, shithole Texas

multiple GOP-appointed judges have accepted this argument, :lol

with Bush-appointed Texas district judge Reed O’Connor ruling in favor of the plaintiffs.

A recent appeal to the Fifth Circuit, heard by a panel of three judges appointed by Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump, agreed with O’Connor that a $0 mandate was unconstitutional,

but ordered O’Connor to reconsider whether the entire law was unseverable —

which all but ensures the case will drag out past the 2020 election.

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/12/trump-judges-are-coming-after-americans-healthcare-and-democrats-have-a-plan-to-ensure-the-gop-pays-the-price/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=3313 (https://www.rawstory.com/2019/12/trump-judges-are-coming-after-americans-healthcare-and-democrats-have-a-plan-to-ensure-the-gop-pays-the-price/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=3313)

The oligarchy/Repug strategy is to destroy USA in the judicial branch because the legislative branch is much harder, therefore Repugs are forcing through 10s of ABA-unqualified, extreme rightwing political hacks, young as Federal judges who will fuck over Americans for decades, long after Trash, Moscow Mitch, and Repugs are dead.

boutons_deux

12-29-2019, 10:10 AM

In just a couple of tweets, Republican Senate leader John Cornyn of Texas demonstrated exactly what

his party wants to do about the health care crisis: Nothing.

He started by recognizing a stark symptom (https://twitter.com/JohnCornyn/status/1209551135738126337):

"In 2017, the prices paid to hospitals for privately insured patients averaged 241 percent of what Medicare would have paid."

1210308751749570560

Senator John Cornyn
✔@JohnCornyn
(https://twitter.com/JohnCornyn)
Not Medicare for All! https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1210308751749570560 … (https://t.co/3dUvKx1meI)

==================

Repugs are using their political whores in Federal judge robes and Exec branch rules to destroy ACA, and have no intention of any health care plan at all.

boutons_deux

01-02-2020, 05:10 PM

Exclusive:

Drugmakers from Pfizer to GSK

to hike U.S. prices on over 200 drugs

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-healthcare-drugpricing/exclusive-drugmakers-from-pfizer-to-gsk-to-hike-u-s-prices-on-over-200-drugs-idUSKBN1YZ1C4?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FhealthNews+%28Reute rs+Health+News%29

... like cable and bank fees that rise simply to suck in more profits,

BigPharma raises the drug prices because they can and nobody stops them, they simply want more profit.

I'm not worried, Don The Con Trash is on the case.

boutons_deux

01-02-2020, 10:55 PM

Another huge problem that Trash and Repugs fixed

High cost of insulin has life-threatening implications for patients with Type 1 diabetes

The most commonly used forms of insulin cost 10 times more in the U.S. than in any other developed country

For the 1.3 million patients with Type 1 diabetes, insulin is as vital as air and water. Some patients are rationing insulin or switching to cheaper forms without proper supervision. We cannot wait to act." :lol Wrong! BigPharma profits before human suffering and life

There have been many recent reports of deaths in patients with Type 1 diabetes because of the lack of affordable insulin.

The No. 1 reason for the high cost of insulin is the presence of a vulnerable population that needs insulin to survive.

This population is willing to pay almost anything to have access to a lifesaving drug, and manufacturers know it."

"The price of insulin is a stark and troubling example of what's happening with other prescription drugs, and it highlights a systemic problem with how drugs are priced, compared with just about every other commodity."

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200102/High-cost-of-insulin-has-life-threatening-implications-for-patients-with-Type-1-diabetes.aspx (https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200102/High-cost-of-insulin-has-life-threatening-implications-for-patients-with-Type-1-diabetes.aspx)

Just another reason why America sucks itself into being fucked and unfuckable.

Any leading politicians screaming about insulin prices KILLING people? Any major networks running exposes?

BigPharma's political donations are actually protection money, often through dark channels, and same is true for the entire oligarchy.

boutons_deux

01-06-2020, 11:11 AM

shitbag Repugs, many of them rurals, don't give a shit about rurals is shithole Texas

LABOR AWAY

Family planning clinics and abortion clinics across Texas have been closing at an alarming rate.

Rural hospitals are shuttering their maternity wards.

For many Texans, this means traveling hundreds of miles just to access basic reproductive health care services.

Like many other parts of rural Texas, Ozona is caught in the middle of a devastating health care crisis (https://www.texasobserver.org/critical-condition/).

More than one-fifth of Texas’ 254 counties have only one doctor or none at all.

At least 20 small-town hospitals have closed since 2013.

Ozona lost its hospital in 1996, leaving it to rely on a single health clinic that offers limited reproductive health services.

People seeking basic preventative services or prenatal check-ups typically need to make a 170-mile round trip drive to San Angelo, a mid-sized city to the northeast.

Pregnant patients have to make the same hour-long drive to give birth.

The closest abortion clinic is in San Antonio, a 400-mile round trip.

When it comes to reproductive health care services, the area is “a medical wasteland,”

The reproductive health care problem in Ozona is notably pernicious, but

millions of rural Texans lack access to these services.

More than half of Texas counties have no OB-GYN.

Of the state’s 158 remaining rural hospitals, just 66 still deliver babies,

Dramatic (Repug) budget cuts in 2011 shuttered more than 80 publicly funded family planning clinics across the state.

More than half the abortion clinics closed (https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-most-cities-more-than-100-miles-from-abortion-clinic/) following sweeping anti-abortion legislation passed in 2013.

(The legislation was subsequently struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016, but most haven’t reopened (https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-abortion-clinic-reopens-supreme-court-ruling-will-any-more-follow/).)

https://www.texasobserver.org/labor-away-womens-health-rural-texas/

So Texas' so-called Christians and their evangelical Sharia are hurting WHITE rural Texas as badly if not more than urban blacks and browns.

boutons_deux

01-07-2020, 06:56 PM

Economists 'Surprised Americans Aren't Revolting' Over $8,000 Tax They Pay Each Year Due to For-Profit Healthcare System

The payments made to the U.S. healthcare system are

"like a tribute to a foreign power, but we're doing it to ourselves."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/07/economists-surprised-americans-arent-revolting-over-8000-tax-they-pay-each-year-due

boutons_deux

01-07-2020, 07:03 PM

Health Care Paperwork Cost U.S. $812 Billion in 2017, Four Times More Per Capita Than in Canada

health care bureaucracy cost Americans $812 billion in 2017. This represented more than one-third (34.2%) of total expenditures for doctor visits, hospitals, long-term care and health insurance.

“Americans spend twice as much per person as Canadians on health care.

But instead of buying better care, that

extra spending buys us sky-high profits and useless paperwork.

Before their single-payer reform, Canadians died younger than Americans, and their infant mortality rate was higher than ours.

Now Canadians live three years longer and their infant mortality rate is 22% lower than ours.

Under Medicare for All,

Americans could cut out the red tape and

afford a Rolls Royce version of Canada's system."

https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2020/01/07/health-care-paperwork-cost-us-812-billion-2017-four-times-more-capita-canada?cd-origin=rss (https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2020/01/07/health-care-paperwork-cost-us-812-billion-2017-four-times-more-capita-canada?cd-origin=rss)

America will NEVER get a national health/insurance system.

The propaganda from and politicians owned by American health care for profit are too convincing, too totally untouchable.

America is fucked and unfuckable, and is so dumbed down it allows itself to be raped their entire working years and to be impoverished by Capitalism.

boutons_deux

01-10-2020, 12:02 PM

Trash and his FDA continue to hold drug prices down

FDA approves Blueprint's stomach cancer therapy priced at $32,000 per month

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-blueprint-fda/fda-approves-blueprints-stomach-cancer-therapy-priced-at-32000-per-month-idUSKBN1Z82LP?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FhealthNews+%28Reute rs+Health+News%29 (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-blueprint-fda/fda-approves-blueprints-stomach-cancer-therapy-priced-at-32000-per-month-idUSKBN1Z82LP?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FhealthNews+%28Reute rs+Health+News%29)

BigInsurance will pay the $32K/month and cover the cost by raising price of insurance.

boutons_deux

01-10-2020, 12:06 PM

Efforts to fix surprise billing, drug costs meet election year and McConnell brick walls

There is bipartisan agreement in Congress that doing something to help people :lol

faced with
surprise medical bills and

unsurprising massive prescription drug costs

would be a great thing—and not just for their reelection prospects, but an actual good thing for actual people.

But we can't have nice things anymore, and that's because of the

for-profit healthcare industry and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

"It's a bill almost everyone wants passed,

except a handful of people and the private equity firms that benefit from it."

McConnell is among that handful of people.

And if he's against this effort, he's even more against doing something about drug costs.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1910062 (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1910062)

boutons_deux

01-11-2020, 05:24 PM

Trash/Repugs expect they will LOSE, giving the Dems a big 2020 campaign push

The Trump administration wants the Supreme Court to not rule on Obamacare until after the 2020 election

Democrats have asked the Supreme Court to hear a case that could determine the fate of Obamacare.

The Trump administration wants the court to wait.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/11/21061595/trump-administration-obamacare-supreme-court-2020-election (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/11/21061595/trump-administration-obamacare-supreme-court-2020-election)

boutons_deux

02-03-2020, 01:21 PM

ER doctor confronts Mike Pence in Iowa about Trump Medicaid cuts, and Pence fails spectacularly

he encountered something (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/mike-pence-doctor-video-medicaid-des-moines-iowa-er-rob-davidson-a9311376.html) that made him visibly uncomfortable—a well-informed citizen.

Dr. Davidson directly and respectfully asks him about the administration’s just-announced cuts to Medicaid as well as planned cuts to Medicare. Noting that a large number of his patients depend on Medicaid for their treatment in his ER, he asks Pence whether cuts to the program are a “good idea.”

The cuts referred to by Dr. Davidson are

a policy change quietly implemented (https://www.medicaid.gov/sites/default/files/Federal-Policy-Guidance/Downloads/smd20001.pdf) last week by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Under the new policy, bearing the Orwellian title of the “Healthy Adult Opportunity” initiative,

block grants for Medicaid funding are to be provided to states.

This would undo 55 years of Medicaid policy, and,

as Medicaid and Medicare advocates (https://twitter.com/pamela_herd/status/1222897496449380355)contend,

will allow individual states the flexibility to weaken the program.

By imposing a regime of block grants,

the federal government would allow states to decide who and who not to cover, and what to cover at all.

The “block grant” initiative will

also make the process more complex and confusing for Medicaid-eligible people,

another deliberate effort by

the Trump administration to reduce health care provided to poorer Americans. As noted here: (https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/480860-medicaid-block-grants-would-gut-law-and-cut-care)

Spending caps would lead to limits on enrollment, which are barriers (https://www.kff.org/report-section/the-uninsured-and-the-aca-a-primer-key-facts-about-health-insurance-and-the-uninsured-amidst-changes-to-the-affordable-care-act-how-does-lack-of-insurance-affect-access-to-care/#endnote_link_389454-15) to care,

would limit payment for care across all beneficiaries (even if the policy focuses on the expansion population), and

would limit all types of benefits coverage —

the opposite of furnishing medical assistance.

Pence at first says he hasn’t heard about any cuts to “Medicare,”

then pivots to what he did as Governor of Indiana, specifically his decision to accept Medicaid expansion (https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/12/medicaid-and-mike-pence/511262/) for his home state under the Affordable Care Act.

he then resorts to some mushy non-verbiage about “reform” of the Medicaid system.

Davidson, undeterred, proceeds to pepper Pence with questions about the cruelty of administration policy towards the poor. Pence is visibly unable or unwilling to justify that policy

Davidson doesn’t let him get away with that, and tells him he’s referring to the actions of the Trump administration.
“When I told him he is putting my patients' lives at risk,

@VP deflected and denied knowledge of the policy.

He either doesn't understand, or

doesn't care

about the impact of this administrations' policies on patients everywhere.”

“People I see in the emergency department that can't get primary care doctors, once they got Medicaid they could get primary care doctors and stay out of the ER, they work more, they actually contribute to our community more,” he adds.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/2/2/1915906/-ER-doctor-confronts-Mike-Pence-in-Iowa-about-Trump-Medicaid-cuts-and-Pence-fails-spectacularly?detail=emaildkre (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/2/2/1915906/-ER-doctor-confronts-Mike-Pence-in-Iowa-about-Trump-Medicaid-cuts-and-Pence-fails-spectacularly?detail=emaildkre)

boutons_deux

02-03-2020, 01:22 PM

Jump in employment seen among Medicaid expansion enrollees, especially the most vulnerable

Healthy Michigan Plan enrollees experienced a six-point increase in employment or student status in one year, while employment for all Michiganders stayed the same

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-01/mm-u-jie012820.php (https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-01/mm-u-jie012820.php)

boutons_deux

02-03-2020, 01:24 PM

Expanding Medicaid in All States Would Save 14,000 Lives Per Year

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/healthcare/reports/2018/10/24/459676/expanding-medicaid-states-save-14000-lives-per-year/

Repugs refusing to expand Medicaid AND cutting Medicaid are veritable manslaughter.

boutons_deux

02-04-2020, 12:16 PM

Two Million Americans Lost Health Coverage/Access In Trump’s First Year

“We hear a lot about the ACA being ‘undermined.’

While we found the ACA isn’t unravelling,

there are real consequences to some of the (Trash/Repug) policies that have been put in place.

We see that you have these

policy changes that are affecting millions of peoples’ ability to get insurance, and

millions of people forgoing care because they can’t afford it,”

The researchers note several policy changes in 2017 that could have had effects immediate enough to see within the same year, such as

shortened enrollment periods,

cuts in advertising and navigator funding, and

reductions in payments to hospitals.

They also note

widespread confusion during the “repeal and replace” battle,

when a quarter of Americans believed the ACA had been at least partially repealed.

low-income residents of states that did not expand Medicaid were the hardest hit by the reversal,

while those affected in expansion states were mostly middle-income residents who were eligible for the exchanges.

In non-expansion states, the decrease in insurance coverage and healthcare access was four to five times greater than in expansion states.

“Medicaid expansion seemed to be a really great way for states to insulate themselves from some of the damage of these federal policies,”

“Since 2017, the split
between white and black,
between rich and poor,
urban and rural,
renters and homeowners–

all of these disparities are getting wider again.

https://scienceblog.com/513904/two-million-americans-lost-health-coverage-access-in-trumps-first-year-bu-study/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+scienceblogrssfeed+%28Science Blog.com%29

iow, Trash/Repug destructive policies prevent people from getting health, so people suffer and die DIRECTLY from Trash/Repug policies to spite Obama/ACA

iow2, Trash/Repugs are GUILTY of negligent manslaughter

boutons_deux

02-07-2020, 08:46 AM

Not only are red states spiting Obama and LYING about the govt,

they are killing their poor voters, but they are screwing the poor financially

Medicaid Expansions Are Linked To Lower Out-Of-Pocket Spending For Recipients

Out-of-pocket spending fell an average of 28% for people enrolled in Medicaid, the state and federal health insurance program for low-income people, during the first four years of the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare.

The likelihood that Medicaid recipients would experience a catastrophic medical expense fell by 4.7% during the four-year study period,

https://scienceblog.com/513992/medicaid-expansions-are-linked-to-lower-out-of-pocket-spending-for-recipients/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+scienceblogrssfeed+%28Science Blog.com%29 (https://scienceblog.com/513992/medicaid-expansions-are-linked-to-lower-out-of-pocket-spending-for-recipients/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+scienceblogrssfeed+%28Science Blog.com%29)

boutons_deux

02-07-2020, 08:46 PM

https://i.redd.it/lcpqbr71ty941.png

boutons_deux

02-09-2020, 08:07 PM

Dems have passed bills about drug prices, Moscow Mitch killed they all

Utah Flies Employees to Mexico to Save on Prescription Drugs

https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/prescription_drugs.jpg
Ann Lovell picks up her box of prescriptions at Salt Lake City International Airport following a cost-saving visit to a Tijuana, Mexico, pharmacy

—Ann Lovell had never owned a passport before last year.

Now, the 62-year-old teacher is a frequent flier,

traveling every few months to Tijuana, Mexico,
to buy medication for rheumatoid arthritis —
with tickets paid for by the state of Utah’s public insurer.

Lovell is one of about 10 state workers participating in a year-old program to lower prescription drug costs by having public employees buy their medication in Mexico at a steep discount compared to U.S. prices.

a dramatic example of steps states are taking to alleviate the high cost of prescription drugs.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/utah-flies-employees-to-mexico-to-save-on-prescription-drugs/ (https://www.truthdig.com/articles/utah-flies-employees-to-mexico-to-save-on-prescription-drugs/)

Just another example of the oligarchy bleeding Americans dry, fleecing them for their wealth, throughout their entire lives, for profits paid to the 1%, to investors.

You want drugs to save your life, fight disease? PAY UP, SUCKERS

boutons_deux

02-10-2020, 11:34 AM

Just another huge American problem, caused by Capitalists, that is impossible to fix

"Moral injury":

doctors are fed up in a health system that prioritizes profit over quality care

Systemic barriers often make quality patient care impossible, grinding good doctors out of the industry

excessive testing, Corl said, stemmed from a model of emergency care that forces doctors to practice "fast and loose medicine." Patients get a battery of tests before a doctor even has time to hear their story or give them a proper exam.
"We're just shotgunning,"

using the phrase "moral injury" to describe their inner struggles at work.

Moral injury, as defined by researchers from veterans hospitals, refers to (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735809000920) the

emotional, physical and spiritual harm people feel after "perpetrating, failing to prevent, or bearing witness to acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations."

They knew how best to care for their patients but were blocked from doing so by

systemic barriers related to the business side of health care.

4 in 10 physicians report feelings of burnout,

the physician suicide rate is more than double that (https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/07/31/634217947/to-prevent-doctor-suicides-medical-industry-rethinks-how-doctors-work) of the general population.

clinicians across disciplines, who wrestle with what they consider barriers to quality care:

insurance preauthorization,

trouble making patient referrals,

endless clicking on electronic health records.

particularly intense in emergency medicine.

frustrated by a model (https://www.statnews.com/2019/09/05/triage-system-boost-profits-compromises-care/) of emergency medicine called "provider-in-triage."

"the real priority is speed and money and not our patients' care,"

burnout is a symptom of deeper systemic problems beyond clinicians' control.

"Hallway medicine is such a part of emergency medicine these days,"

[B]. Patients are "literally stuck in the hallway. Everyone's walking by. I know it must be embarrassing and dehumanizing."

"The health system is not set up to help patients. It's set up to make money,"

https://www.salon.com/2020/02/09/moral-injury-doctors-are-fed-up-in-a-health-system-that-prioritizes-profit-over-quality-care_partner/

boutons_deux

02-14-2020, 02:53 PM

https://2vwlfu3ynqxb3npfhm3m8lde-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/trump-pout.jpg

Trump Just Lost A Big Case On Taking Away Medicaid Coverage

One of the most conservative judges in the country ruled against a Trump administration effort to allow the states to throw millions off Medicaid.

the Trump administration acted illegally when it permitted the state of Arkansas to strip health coverage from thousands of Medicaid beneficiaries.

Judge David Sentelle’s opinion in Gresham v. Azar, on behalf of himself and two of his colleagues on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, is significant in its own right. But it is also significant because it suggests that the Trump administration will have a tough time defending its conduct if this case is heard by the Supreme Court.

The heart of the ruling is that Trump can’t toss out the objectives of Congress and replace them with his own.

In other words, Congress makes the laws and Trump implements them.

The President does not have the power to changes the legislative objectives that are passed by Congress.

Eighteen thousand people would have lost their Medicaid coverage in Arkansas, and without this ruling

other larger red states would have followed Arkansas.

The result would have been millions of Americans without health insurance coverage.

https://www.politicususa.com/2020/02/14/trump-loses-medicaid-case.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+politicususa%2FfJAl+%28Politi cus+USA+%29 (https://www.politicususa.com/2020/02/14/trump-loses-medicaid-case.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+politicususa%2FfJAl+%28Politi cus+USA+%29)

boutons_deux

02-19-2020, 12:15 PM

a lot of them will die from end stage kidney disease,
treated too late due to lack of insurance,
aka shithole TX shitbag Repugs' negligent manslaughter

Thousands of uninsured kidney disease patients strain Texas emergency departments

More than 10,000 uninsured patients sought care at Texas emergency departments for lifesaving kidney dialysis in 2017, incurring more than $21.8 million in hospital costs,

"They have gone weeks without dialysis, and

then they present in life-threatening crisis to the emergency department.

This requires many hospital personnel and resources to treat their dire condition, and

takes time and resources away from other patients that also need emergent treatment."

"This is a very sick population - the population with the highest morbidity rate in any emergency department,"

Emergent dialysis also carries a substantial price tag.

Scheduled dialysis in an outpatient clinic costs about $250, while

intermittent treatment in the emergency department costs eight times more, about $2,000.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-02/uoth-tou021820.php (https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-02/uoth-tou021820.php)

I suspect most are black or brown, so TX Repugs say FUCK 'EM.

RandomGuy

02-27-2020, 11:25 AM

boutons_deux

02-27-2020, 12:17 PM

Repugs commit negligent manslaughter to spite Obama

the US could have averted about 15,600 deaths if every state expanded Medicaid

The real impact of Republican’s rejection of Medicaid expansion under Obamacare.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/7/23/20703776/medicaid-expansion-obamacare-health-care-2020

boutons_deux

04-29-2020, 09:11 AM

How the Trump administration accidentally insured over 200,000 through Obamacare

the Trump administration took one particularly critical action in October 2017.

It discontinued (https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2017/10/12/trump-administration-takes-action-abide-law-constitution-discontinue-csr-payments.html) cost-sharing reduction subsidy payments to health insurers participating in the ACA marketplaces.

State insurance commissioners and insurers used them to make marketplace health plans more affordable.

Premium decreases were large – so large that 4.2 million potential enrollees had the option (https://www.kff.org/health-reform/press-release/4-2-million-uninsured-people-could-get-a-bronze-plan-in-the-aca-marketplace-with-0-premiums-after-tax-credits/) to purchase a marketplace plan for free in 2019.

more than 200,000 people, using the Healthcare.gov platform in 2019, gained insurance in 37 states due to the Trump administration’s actions.

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/how-the-trump-administration-accidentally-insured-over-200000-through-obamacare/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=4416

boutons_deux

05-07-2020, 06:20 PM

Trash has no idea what he is saying. SCOTUS just kicked his fucking ass about ACA, with a ACA-supporting decision

Trump doubles down on pledge to eliminate Obamacare,

even as the pandemic rages,

calling it 'lousy healthcare'

Trump pledged to get rid of Obamacare entirely on Wednesday, the last day the administration could amend its support for a GOP lawsuit before the Supreme Court.
"Obamacare, we run it really well ... but running it great, it's still lousy health care," Trump told reporters.
Up to 20 million people could lose their health coverage if the high court ruled in the White House's favor.
Trump has not yet offered a concrete health plan, nor fully explained how he would keep existing protections for people with health conditions.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/trump-pledge-eliminate-obamacare-lousy-healthcare-pandemic-court-lose-insurance-2020-5-1029179184

boutons_deux

05-27-2020, 11:26 AM

1265382327766659076

boutons_deux

06-26-2020, 07:04 AM

Obamacare killed on "Day One"

Trump administration asks Supreme Court to overturn Obamacare

The president is moving forward with the legal attack, even as some Republicans worry

it will hurt the party's electoral prospects.

attack on the health care law as millions of newly jobless Americans may come to depend on its coverage.

a new legal brief argues Obamacare in its entirety became invalid when the previous Republican-led Congress axed the unpopular individual mandate penalty for uninsured people.

ignoring warnings from top aides about the risk of voter backlash in November.

“No further analysis is necessary;

once the individual mandate and the guaranteed-issue and community-rating provisions are invalidated,

the remainder of the ACA cannot survive," the Justice Department stated.

The Trump-backed lawsuit, brought by a group of Republican-led states, puts

at risk health insurance for more than 20 million people covered by Obamacare,

as well as insurance protections for people with preexisting medical conditions.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/25/trump-supreme-court-overturn-obamacare-340851

Obama :lol care replaced by Trash's "better and cheaper health care for everyone"? :lol

boutons_deux

06-26-2020, 07:04 AM

boutons_deux

06-26-2020, 07:08 AM

Meanwhile, back the "proctect our BigDonor" Democrat ranch

House Democrats tack to center with election year health care bill

The House Democratic plan is less ambitious than the platform put forward by Joe Biden.

a centrist health care plan to shore up Obamacare while taking aim at Trump administration policies that critics say undercut the health care law.

doesn't include a public insurance option that could compete with private plans.

It also would not expand eligibility for Medicare or Medicaid.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/23/house-democrats-tack-to-center-with-election-year-health-care-bill-336996

boutons_deux

07-04-2020, 06:38 PM

Of course there's a big ol' tax cut for the super-rich included in Trump's Obamacare lawsuit

Trump-backed lawsuit (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/6/26/1956096/-In-the-middle-of-a-pandemic-Trump-argues-to-Supreme-Court-that-the-entire-ACA-must-fall) in front of the Supreme Court to overturn the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

The highest income 0.1% of households—those making more than $3 million annually—will get tax cuts to the tune of $198,000 if the law is completely overturned,

Now, $200,000 to someone making more than $3 million is more or less couch change, but you can bet they won't turn it down.

Those making over $1 million a year would see about $42,000 back in tax cuts.

The total loss of revenue should the law be overturned would be about $30 billion in 2020.

That itself would pay for Medicaid coverage for more than 4 million people, just for some perspective.

(By the way, if the law goes down, Medicaid expansion goes with it.)

would "transfer billions of dollars each year from low- and moderate-income people (who would lose subsidized health coverage)

to high-income households and corporations (which would receive large tax cuts)."

the loss of the law

"would cause nearly 1 in 10 non-elderly Black people, and

1 in 10 Hispanic people,

to lose coverage,

compared to about 1 in 16 white people."

In addition, the

tax cuts "would flow disproportionately to white households,

which are three times likelier than Black or Hispanic households to be in the top 1 percent of the income scale."

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1956225 (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1956225)

Trash/Repug racism to screw the non-white poor and enrich the rich

boutons_deux

09-24-2020, 06:13 PM

‘Superficial’: Trump mocked for finally releasing ‘health care plan’ – which is really a ‘toothless’ executive order

After years of promises Trump on Thursday unveiled his “health care plan.”

He’s calling it his “health care vision” because

it’s not an actual plan, it’s a wish list. :lol
And it’s a mere executive order.

“The actual policies,” Stat News (https://www.statnews.com/2020/09/24/seniors-200-gift-certificates-prescription-drug/) reports, “however, are simple, superficial, and non-binding executive orders.

Neither will improve the quality of Americans’ health care or lower its cost.

“Trump’s forthcoming executive order on preexisting conditions will not carry weight of actual law

should SCOTUS strike down the ACA [Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act.]

‘defined statement of U.S. policy that people with preexisting conditions are protected.'”

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/09/superficial-trump-mocked-for-finally-releasing-health-care-plan-which-is-really-a-toothless-executive-order (https://www.rawstory.com/2020/09/superficial-trump-mocked-for-finally-releasing-health-care-plan-which-is-really-a-toothless-executive-order/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29)

:lol

Heckuva Plan, Donnie

Will Hunting

09-24-2020, 06:19 PM

baseline bum

09-24-2020, 07:25 PM

It's sad that 35% of this country actually thinks that an executive order will protect people with pre-existing conditions in a way no different than Obamacare does.

:lol Mark Meadows also promised that people 65+ will be getting a prescription drug food stamp card "some time in the next month" with $200 of credits to use on prescription drugs

I don't think they believe it. I think they just don't give a fuck because Trump's rage and contempt for everything outside his base satisfies them emotionally.

boutons_deux

09-24-2020, 07:44 PM

$200 x 33M = $6.6B trying to buy senior's votes,

$200 gone in 3 or 4 copays

Winehole23

09-24-2020, 07:53 PM

$200 x 33M = $6.6B trying to buy senior's votes,

$200 gone in 3 or 4 copays

Raiding the future savings of another program, can he do that?

(Handing out valuable coupons in the lead up to an election -- some people might call that a bribe.)

Dirks_Finale

09-24-2020, 07:53 PM

Trump's own internal polling show him that seniors that voted for him in 2016 are turning on him. If they lose, this is the primary age group who will flip the script.

That's what all this was about :lol

Will Hunting

09-24-2020, 08:28 PM

RandomGuy

10-19-2020, 02:22 PM

RandomGuy

10-19-2020, 02:24 PM

baseline bum

10-19-2020, 02:26 PM

Pretty much.

I'm still not fully buying it. Just like white women had turned on Trump over his sexual assaults in polling but then came home to the shitbag GOP on election day.