Current Events > Biden's health care plan is pretty good imho

(+) Yeah! (+)

I just think the "People want us to scrap Obamacare, when we fought so hard for it!" line he keeps trotting out is dumb, because it pretends like it comes in two bills, one that destroys Obamacare and one that makes a new system, and that we're going to only successfully pass the first part and then find our hands tied.
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Anteaterking posted...

I just think the "People want us to scrap Obamacare, when we fought so hard for it!" line he keeps trotting out is dumb, because it pretends like it comes in two bills, one that destroys Obamacare and one that makes a new system, and that we're going to only successfully pass the first part and then find our hands tied.

He's just getting started with dumb: https://twitter.com/AliceOllstein/status/1150870764884832256
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Not wanting to include abortion because you want to stick it to irresponsible people is a bullshit emotional reaction that flies in the face of why medical coverage is a thing in the first place.

RoadsterUFO posted...

Where is the choice and say of the people that youre trying to force to subsidize the unproductive that are choosing to have sex and choosing to get an abortion in this scenario?

They vote on the public officials who enact (or don't enact) such rules.
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Do not feed his misogyny, please.
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RoadsterUFO posted...

Having sex is a choice. The number one reason an abortion is gotten in the United States is because the mother didnt want the damn kid that came about from her lousy life decision to have sex with a deadbeat man.

I like how every anti-abortion argument ultimately comes down to "other people are having sex and I'm not so fuck them".

The unproductive

What a dystopian worldview. The worth of human life is literally tied to the profit they can generate, according to this mindset.
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RoadsterUFO posted...

Dragonblade01 posted...

Not wanting to include abortion because you want to stick it to irresponsible people is a bullshit emotional reaction that flies in the face of why medical coverage is a thing in the first place.

Having sex is a choice. The number one reason an abortion is gotten in the United States is because the mother didnt want the damn kid that came about from her lousy life decision to have sex with a deadbeat man. The feeling when organizations like Planned Parenthood depend and need women that fail to take responsibility for their bad life choices.

And? That doesn't stop other reasons from existing. Not to mention that getting an abortion because you don't want/aren't ready to be a parent may actually be the responsible decision.

But all of that is irrelevant, because part of the whole concept is that even bad decisions shouldn't necessarily result in expensive medical treatment.

no one is forcing you, you're free to pay out of pocket for health care

Roadster, we already have a sticky note that says "Taxation is theft" that we can look at if we care about your input.
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s0nicfan posted...

Balrog0 posted...

s0nicfan posted...

Not if you're also interested in controlling cost as well as coverage.

No, most of those are utterly irrelevant either way. Interstate insurance sales are already legal, I'm pretty sure because of the ACA. And there are several states that allow people to purchase across state lines already. But no one takes advantage of it because there are structural issues with forming provider networks rather than legal ones. I only skimmed this, but it seems like a good brief: https://nashp.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Insurance-Across-State-Lines.pdf

Malpractice suits are a very small part of the cost of health care, and it depends on where you get your coverage. Certain kinds of tort reform reduce premiums by 1-2%, but only for PPOs rather than HMOs. More people are covered in PPOs, true, but that's pretty small potatoes regardless. https://www.nber.org/papers/w15371.pdf

I'm not against listing prices for hospitals, but I think it misunderstands the problem with health care, at least if you mean consumer-facing prices. Hospitals, like insurers, have structural advantages and disadvantages that drive a lot of the costs. Hospitals with monopolies can negotiate higher reimbursement rates from insurance providers. Price shopping matters, but only once you get people covered, otherwise they don't have the leverage to negotiate lower prices. That's what insurance is for, almost literally.

An attempt to standardize medicine prices is called single-payer. What other mechanism do you see to address that?

To address your last point first, Biden's plan which allows you to purchase medicine from overseas is one way to do it.

To speak more generally to everything else, my shortlist absent one or two items is primarily about boosting competition. It's certainly not going to fix everything, but the idea is to provide people with enough options to drive down price. I'm generally of the opinion that we haven't done nearly enough to try and fix our current system in meaningful ways to have gotten to the point that we are talking what is essentially a rewrite of healthcare rather than reform.

I'm sure there are other things you could mention that would also achieve this, and I'm not necessarily against any of those.

That's fair. I honestly think our version of cobstitutional federalism makes some of these changes impossible regardless due to the different legal powrrs states and. the federal government have
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