Thursday, June 29, 2017

How to improve ACA (throw out water and not the baby)

Sam does a good job of reviewing options and topics at MinnPost How to Improve ACA.  Much of it seemed aligned with Sean's: How to Improve ACA. Some more links:


HBR Improve ACANew Yorker Improve ACANYT Improve ACA


By the way, I am still participating on the comments at MP CBO Score.  They have headed in much the same direction as ours have here...  Cameron left the following.
It comes down to empathy or a lack of empathy Kayla Chadwick, a Huffington Post contributor summed it up well.  "I cannot have political debates with these people. Our disagreement is not merely political, but a fundamental divide on what it means to live in a society, how to be a good person, and why any of that matters."
Which sounds very similar to our Just Keep Raising Taxes discussion.


On the Lighter side... Comic 1Comic 2,  Comic 3, Comic 4

6 comments:

  1. Republicans are concerned about premium increases. Democrats are concerned about how much people pay. For Republicans, lowering your premium is a good thing, even if you end up paying more. There is a case to be made for the Republican view, but I am not the one to make it.

    It is curious to me that Republicans often talk about premiums, when premiums aren't what people pay.
    '
    --Hiram

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  2. The interesting thing is that the Senate bill does some of these things: most notably, it essentially restores the risk corridor funding that was part of ACA (in a slightly different form) that the GOP axed in 2015. If Republicans weren't interested in whacking Medicaid to finance a huge tax cut for the wealthy, you could have a reasonable discussion on how to make the exchanges work better. But they've pretty much made clear that the tax cut piece is more important than the health care piece.

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  3. In these decadent times, it just isn't acceptable to base current policy on the assumption that future Congress' and future presidents will implement it in good faith. Our regime is just too unstable for that, as the news demonstrates every day.

    ==Hiram

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  4. It is interesting to watch our society "boil the frog" as we watch.

    The old quote seems relevant, “When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.”

    Sean seems to see a huge tax reduction whereas I see that ACA was simply a huge money grab by the populace to enable many citizens to avoid learning, avoid working, staying married, keep illegal workers out of the country, continue buying foreign low cost products, etc.

    It will be interesting to see where this leads.

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  5. "I see that ACA was simply a huge money grab by the populace to enable many citizens to avoid learning, avoid working, staying married, keep illegal workers out of the country, continue buying foreign low cost products, etc."

    Is this your answer to every issue? Should I tell Paul Molitor he should encourage all of his subpar pitchers to get married and buy Chevys if they want to throw a better curveball?

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  6. Not for every issue...

    Only those related to why American employees are earning less than they used to.

    And can not afford the same things they used to be able to.

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