Premiums are starting to level off under Obamacare. It's not perfect, but ripping it out rather than reforming it will be a disaster

I'm just waiting to see the reaction from those who discover the negative impact on employer provided insurance this bill is set up to allow

I'm just waiting to see the reaction from those who discover the negative impact on employer provided insurance this bill is set up to allow

I'd rather hope that the Senate knocks a good deal of stuff like that out and the bill dies on the vine with the House being able (in their minds ... well, their constituents' minds anyway) to say "see? we did our part? blame those pricks in the senate, not us!"

those ppl don't care. the bill could have said we will steal all your money and inject you with cancer and they'd still be for it because it killed the big black Frankenstein's bill.

i cannot believe the personal hate against obama just because of this bill. fox news is celebrating like obama fucked their daugthers, killed their moms, and then decided to make obamacare.

i'm sure if it was a white democrat president who passed healthcare the hate would not be at these levels for the bill. We would see at least some kind of respect.

I just saw the trump celebration on the rose garden. what a bunch of fools. it looked like a KKK gathering. Worse thing I bet the majority of those bozo's didnt even read the bill. it was to kill obamacare so let's vote for it.

I'm just waiting to see the reaction from those who discover the negative impact on employer provided insurance this bill is set up to allow

I agree with delaney on basically all counts above. But most people agree on this stuff... the question is, what is the solution? Having worked in a risk (insurance) industry for longer than I care to admit, there are some basic realities that people need to accept (plus I've had quite a few Lagunitas and I have no one to talk to)...

As with any resource, health care is finite. There are only so many doctors and nurses and hospitals and chiropractors available to provide treatment. Most of these people make a lot of money (and deservedly so)... and our current system isn't really insurance at all.

Example: the company I work for provides a lot of actual insurance... primarily to larger businesses. We insure them for their own stuff (property) and their liability for suits that third parties bring against them (casualty). These are much easier things to insure than health insurance. The reason for this is that the policies (contracts) we sell provide coverage against very specific things on an occurrence basis. An occurrence is basically any time a covered "loss" occurs to our insured's business (or a 3rd party that our insured is responsible for) as defined by their contract with us. The "occurrence" part is important because each time a customer has a loss, they must share in that loss in the form of a deductible, a limit, or something that isn't even covered under their contract. The "occurrence" principle works well to prevent both moral and morale hazards. In other words, it encourages customers not to incur losses because they have skin in the game each time a loss occurs. And because these "retained risk" mechanisms are in place, P & C insurance works well and is pretty easy (relative term) to price and to keep prices down. If the market remains rather stable and the company has a large enough risk pool, insurers can pretty accurately calculate future losses and profit from the risk pool. It doesn't always work that well, and insurers frequently lose money - especially during small windows of time - but overall, solid insurers with large enough risk pools make money from these endeavors, and the market works well.

Health "insurance" is nothing like this. Essentially, customers who are not individually priced (as they would be in P/C insurance) based on their own risk exposures are rubber stamped with approval to purchase an "insurance" product that is treated as one-size-fits-all when it should not be. Therefore, it is impossible to appropriately price and health "insurance" companies simply place a guess on how much insurance should cost for individuals based on a gigantic pool of customers. If that weren't bad enough, the "product" they sell is not insurance in that it provides an unlimited amount of health care for that standard price. In other words, it is not an "occurrence" based policy. An individual can buy a health insurance policy, subject to its terms, and literally use an unlimited amount of health care with little or no retained individual risk once they have met their deductible or out of pocket maximum dollar amount. The equivalent in P/C would be if someone purchased insurance for their business and was then able to claim money every time they had to paint or put up a new sign or put in stairs or put on a new roof without any downside to them financially. Obviously, costs for such a system would spiral out of control indefinitely, as is the case with our current health care system.

The other downfall to the health care finance system in the U.S. is that (prior to the ACA) people who use health care just didn't pay for it. Young people who went without health insurance just went to the emergency room because they got drunk and needed a gerbil removed from their ass, and they would wind up never paying the bill. Some seem to imagine that these costs just go away. They don't. We all wind up paying for it, which is what the ACA attempted to address (poorly).

Lastly, this is health insurance. In P/C insurance, if someone doesn't have insurance and their building burns down, it's tragic, but they're still alive. We aren't making a judgment call on whether they are worthy of life. The moral ramifications of a health "insurance" system are vastly different than insuring "things."

At the end of the day, when you combine these issues and consider the profit motive that drives a lot of it (and the lack of value that health insurers add to our economy or our, you know, health)... I don't see how there is any free market solution that comes close to solving it. We have to accept the fact that we are all going to have to subsidize one another's health care and that an inordinate amount of that health care is going to go to the elderly and the sick. It would at least provide an enormous pool of customers which would make health care on a national level easier to price and monitor, and it would encourage, if not force, everyone to pay at least a little toward our national health care. There would certainly be barriers in terms of efficiency and customization that would frustrate some (mainly the rich), but overall, I believe the positives would outweigh the negatives of almost any other system one could come up with.

Thoughts?

Isnt that the more likely outcome at this point?

To hell with a CBO score!

They shouldn't even call it insurance. They should just call it In Case Shit. I give you some money In Case Shit happens. Now, if shit don't happen, shouldn't l get my money back?

If they scale back mental health care, and bring back pre-existing they all need to be strung up and hanged.

Mental health care is very important. As of now I have not seen any scaling back of that. My hope is that is not in there.

I have always had a problem with the pre-existing condition requirement. Not because I do not care about people or think they should not be cared for. It just does not make any sense the way they did it. I cannot think of another area where a private company is required to "cover" something that is proven to have begun prior to when they became involved in the situation. There are a lot of details to be sure but in its most basic terms that part should have been designed better. A couple ideas would be make the company that was covering the individual when that condition began continue forward to cover it regardless of the standing of the insured with that company i.e. change jobs. The other is they could have created a medicare or similar entry for people that have such a situation to cover that only. Freeing everyone to move beyond that particular condition's costs.

Interesting article:

http://theweek.com/articles/696587/repu ... at-destroy

I don't understand. The people are getting what they wanted, voted for and deserve. Let's watch some people die. Slowly. Painfully.

It is an interesting article. The part he calls fact 3 though misses the point though. Many people despised Obamacare because of the namesake, many despised it because of how it was passed. Many more despised it because it did not in fact work for them i.e. did not lower their real out of pocket money or provide them better choices. Some were all of the above. Therefore, it is completely nonsensical that they may support whatever this new Trumpcare ends up being.

In the end it may end up worse or status quo as it relates to voter's that supported the idea in 2016 pocketbooks and choices. That by itself does not automatically mean the right committed suicide. There are many other things involved in that. The Dems singing the Sox' na na na na song is likely premature.

The ACA was suppose to stop people from running to the emergency room, and provide them a primary doctor to be more preventative. The problem was educating people.

It would probably cost us(tax payers) more for not covering pre-existing vs covering it. Everyone should be covered for healthcare, period!

I really dont know if the repeal was bad or good but I do know it will suck for all those ppl who will lose their healthcare.

It is an interesting article. The part he calls fact 3 though misses the point though. Many people despised Obamacare because of the namesake, many despised it because of how it was passed. Many more despised it because it did not in fact work for them i.e. did not lower their real out of pocket money or provide them better choices. Some were all of the above. Therefore, it isn't completely nonsensical that they may support whatever this new Trumpcare ends up being.

In the end it may end up worse or status quo as it relates to voter's that supported the idea in 2016 pocketbooks and choices. That by itself does not automatically mean the right committed suicide. There are many other things involved in that. The Dems singing the Sox' na na na na song is likely premature.