Saturday, May 13, 2017

The Heath Care Bill

It's been seven weeks since I had any desire to say anything about anything. A lot has happened in those seven weeks and I'm going to put down my thoughts about them in a few posts in no particular order.

Like Lazarus rising from the grave the Republican health care bill doesn't want to stay dead. I'm no expert and I will admit that I didn't have the heart to read the new bill so I'm sort of relying upon what others say, but I'll give you my impression.

The Republicans are absolutely full of crap.  Yes they did rush the legislation without waiting for the CBO assessment or input from interested groups. So far I've heard the AMA and the AARP have both panned the bill.

You can't cut Medicaid dollars and essentially hope the states will pour money into some sort of high risk pool for people with preexisting conditions without guaranteeing a bunch of folks will either lose health insurance or not be able to get it.

The other thing I don't understand is why cut the tax on tanning salons? Is there anyone that seriously thinks we shouldn't be discouraging people from using those cancer incubation machines? I mean come on.

If you take all the sick people out of the market AND essentially put no requirements on what a health care policy has to include of course premiums are going to come down. Profits are also going to go up but some people are also going to die.

In the meantime the senate sounds like its going to essentially write their own bill. Can't wait to see that one.

It seems pretty simple to me that you write a bill you need to include two important things in a summary somewhere.

(1) What is the objective or objectives of the bill.

(2) A specific explanation, complete with numbers, on how this bill is expected to accomplish that objective or those objectives.

If you can't specify these two things, then you're just blowing hot air.

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