Ryan Punts on Trumpcare

Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders, currently the most popular politician in the US, will be introducing a single-payer "Medicare for all" healthcare bill in Congress.

Which won't pass.

ahhh yes.....

Forcing doctors and nurses into slavery.......

fun times.... fun times......

Which would make him as powerful and more popular than Trump.

You know where this leads us?




(But John, this doesn't make any contextual sense! Well fuck you, naysayer. I spent actual time on making this damned image last year, and by fuck I'm going to use it more than once!)

"Sokath - his eyes uncovered"

It is going to skyrocket far faster than ever before now because Trump killed the mandate. That was childish nonsense designed to cause the car to crash and now Republicans own that shit. They deliberately crashed the bus while they were at the wheel.

Where did Trump kill the mandate? I don't think he can without an act of congress. He can request (order?) agencies to not prioritize enforcement. Seems it's still in effect, unless the IRS chooses not to collect it (I don't think that's going to happen). healthcare.gov

The AHCA would have transferred control of the mandate to insurance companies, allowing them to charge penalties if insurance lapses. That didn't pass.

Well, a new day, a new Trump.

There's a new job for Jared Kushner. American Innovations. Freshly created. Drain the swamp, vote nepotism!
Also, he threatend to 'work with Democrats' if the GOPers won't follow him. Wow, yes, bipartisanship is a threat now. Got it.

Sorry, guys. But this ship is sinking and it's sinking fast. There is no conceivable way the party can allow this to go on. Unless, of course, they have suicidal tendencies.

Don't take my word for it, listen to Very conservative AR Senator Tom Cotton

For all the legit problems with the ACA (the deductibles being maybe the biggest one) the constant focus on rising premiums by critics is either bizarre, or deliberate deception. When you leave aside those covered under some government program, and those covered under their employer, and those receiving considerable subsidies, the percentage of the market which remains is pretty small, and of those the ones seeing skyrocketing premiums is smaller still. It's a problem, for a narrow slice of the market, but it's not the overarching issue that is going to resonate with all voters.

Like many Republican scare tactics, they bank on convincing folks that even if a hing is not happening to them, it's happening all around them and any minute now it will happen to them too.

They don't pay slaves you lying asshole. So take your shit analogy and go get some mental help

I'd venture you don't know anyone in the health industry. They're pretty much paid slaves (!!) as it is, so nothing would change

It's the same tactic they use to tell you that since you'll be rich any day now, let's give the top 1% a big break, so they can help you get even richer, which you'll be any day now.

I know plenty of people in the health industry and they make damn good money. I'm married to one of them.

But even if they didn't my point stands and you're wrong about them being paid slaves.

Single payer would force everyone in healthcare to work for government. That's slavery no matter how you try to rationalize it.

That's such a bizarre, twisted way of looking at that I don't even know where to begin.

Doctors would work for their patients, sometimes through hospitals and clinics, just like they do now. The bills would just get paid by the government instead of by insurance companies.

Also: Even if you accept the premise, everyone in the military works for the government. By definition, you can't be in the military and not work for the government. Does that mean everyone in the military is a slave?

I've never known a right that has to be forced by mandate. If health care is a right, who's going to force doctors to treat me?

No. They would work for the government. Instead of some insurance stooge telling them what to do it would be a government stooge.

A person in the military is a volunteer. A government employee is a volunteer.

Single payer would take millions of people and by government law force them to work for the government. Those people would have no say in the matter. Unless they were willing to give up their livelihood and leave the field.

Oh, for heaven's sake.

First of all, nobody has to force doctors to treat sick people; it's an ethical obligation that they take on themselves in the form of the Hippocratic Oath.

Second, if your house catches fire, will you be offended by the fact that firefighters are "forced" to put it out?

Actually yes it is forcing them to treat people.

Right now a doctor can fire a patient. Could he do that under single payer? Most likely not.

He could under most single payer systems I know, unless there is no alternative doctor around, but the latter might hold true due to the Hippocratic Oath anyway, regardless of payment.

Having said that, UHC with single payer notoriously works worse than systems with competition among insurers and among doctors, for all the obvious reasons. I'm going to once more argue in favour of the three-tier German system: One state-run default insurer, one second tier of private insurers offering various schemes that all have to at least offer the same medical services the state-run one does but can vary in additional offers and can be more expensive, and a third tier of freely defined contracts with private insurers, usually considerably more expensive. Tier one is covered by social security for the truly poor. Tiers one and two can't reject customers on the basis of pre-existing conditions. An individual mandate means you either have to have insurance in one of those tiers, or prove you're independently wealthy so you could cover your own medical costs when needed.

You've got accessible healthcare for everyone, with competition among insurers in tiers 2 and 3, some competition between the state-run tier 1 insurers and the private ones in tier 2; and in the third tier, you have healthy competition among doctors as well -- and because outside of specialists, doctors don't find enough customers in tier 3, they serve all tiers, and so that same competition also ends up benefiting tier 1 and 2 patients.

That's an idiotic opinion. While all those existing systems have their pros and cons, it's not slavery when I can have a very complicated procedure (like I had years ago) without going flat out broke thanks to it. Or I can take my little one to the doctor without taking out a loan first. It's insurance like so many others and that's it. You're not 'working for the government', you're working for yourself.

But I get it. Government's involved so it's automatically bad. Ideology is a bitch when it numbs any other thoughts.

Do I wish there was some competition among insurers here in Austria? You bet I do. Is there room for improvement? Hell yea. But basically it's a very good thing to have a little card that lets me access the full spectrum of healthcare.

Single payer would be the baseline, and individuals would still be able to buy private health insurance above and beyond that baseline. It's not an either or thing like you're pretending. There would still be private healthcare.

...you do realize that doctors and nurses typically become doctors and nurses because they want to help people, right?
I feel like you're arguing that a doctor that went into the profession because s/he wanted to help others will suddenly feel compelled to stop because the government takes a more active role in the insurance side.

Where on earth do you get this idea?

Pretty sure he's a stupid fucking twat.

There's also the fact that there are only two truly single-payer systems in the world, and although we talk about single-payer a lot, it's more likely that we would end up with a hybrid system with a robust public option.

Of course, Republicans will fight that tooth and nail because they've spent the last several decades insisting that private is always better than public, and they're terrified that if there's an option to buy into Medicare, people will actually choose that option, putting the lie to their ideology.

I know this has been repeatedly covered in various forms on this very page, but I think you may need to go visit one of those healthcare providers to seek treatment for the batshit hallucinations on which you are basing your claims.