US national policy issues looming after healthcare?

I think a good case could be made that the second bomb was unnecessary.

Wow most of you guys have no idea about history... so you are condemned to repeat it.

Yes, Trump IS insane.

And so are YOU ......

But to get back on topic... Health care... Our Government provides many guarantees, FDIC for checking /savings accounts... $$$$ to General Motors and Wall Street speculators, to Tessla, to Defence contractors.... the list is a long one. So why can't we have a free market based health care insurance system with a guarantee of coverage for those who might get screwed if an unscrupulous insurance company can not provide service? And for the cost of a B2 or a F22 or two take care of the truly "poor" in that same system?

California is confronting the limits of its power to save federal environmental protections as Congress and the Trump administration take aim at a landmark law the state has relied on for decades to clean the air of noxious smog.

A push by Republicans to roll back parts of the Clean Air Act would affect California more than any other state, rattling its lawmakers and regulators. And their legal authority to pick up the fight against California’s smog on their own is constrained.

The House last month passed a bill fiercely opposed by doctors and public health groups, including the American Lung Assn. and the American Academy of Pediatrics, that would delay for years new anti-pollution standards aimed at ultimately preventing 160,000 childhood asthma attacks and as many as 220 premature deaths in California each year.

The Trump administration had already tried using regulatory authority to put the standards on hold for a year, but walked back that action Wednesday after California and 14 other states filed suit against the delay.

The bill advancing in Congress would go much further, permanently upending the way restrictions are imposed on the ozone and small particulate matter that make up smog. No longer would regulators base decisions solely on scientific findings about what level of smog is safe to breathe. The potential cost to business would for the first time loom large in setting limits, and ultimately guide such things as when people with breathing problems are warned to stay indoors.

It is now up to Democrats to lay cards on the table... if single payer is what you want... say so in no uncertain terms, so the country can vote on it. Up or Down...make it clear.

Since retiring in 2003 I have kept spreadsheets on healthcare costs and how medicare has responded. During this period the costs have included treatments for cancer and triple bypass heart surgery. Below are tabulated summary figures for the......

Total costs 172883.86

Medicare approved charges 51521.30

Medicare paid 39168.76

Amount I might be billed 14690.84

Paid by gap policy 13492.95

Cost of gap policy(F) 28199.72

1. Under medicare, healthcare cost was reduced by 70%.

2. Medicare paid 76% of the approved charge

3. The gap policy paid 92% of what I might have been billed

4. I paid 0

5. The gap policy gained a net revenue flow of $14707. A gain roughly equal to the benefit I got from the policy.

I don't expect any funny business on the part of the gap insurer, in the near term.



Bottom line

We can't expect a 70% reduction in total national health costs by going to single payer.

My experience, however, suggests we need to use data and not what some talking head says as we go about resolving this problem.

Edit:
Before I forget. since 2008 the cost of my gap policy has risen 3% each year. Inflation rates have been somewhere between 1.5% and 1.8% per annum.

Both the cost of the policy and the rate of annual increase in that cost, when compared to my experience,

involve a wonderful factor of 2. Curious.


CMS, the accounting function for medicare supplied me with the data in my spreadsheets and it could easily produce this summary data for all its participants. This could be programmed in minutes. There will be a distribution that could directly illuminate the issues for us.

It is well to bear in mind that none of us posting here have the slightest clue about the context of 7 years of unimaginable global carnage, 4 of them involving the U.S. Even just talking to parents or grandparents who lived through does not come close to fully understanding it.

Vlad Pricker -- "Yes Werner, perhaps I am. I hope not."

Werner is a religious zealot who thinks he knows it all. As to SAR, he is getting paid to do a job. I started my volunteering for SAR back in 1973 in Santa Fe, NM, the dude has no higher ground to claim.

We have elected a president entirely unfit for the office. WWI started in just such a situation. Battles with more than a million casualties soon set everyone straight. Americans have become used to the idea that there are no consequences. Nothing hurts me.