Actually its free if you can wait a few days...Our healthcare is ranked as more efficient than the USA...And we are a 3rd world shit hole...So is Cuban healthcare...Don't b jelly...

Only the cigarette and fast food industries have that right!

Obviously, Obamacare has issues. I think the Democrats are now holding out hoping they can regain control of the House and/or Senate in 2018 and the Republicans are going to hope it collapses and the Democrats come crawling to them for help.

Maybe this is for the best. Perhaps, as the problems with Obamacare continue to come forward both sides will see some common sense things they can do to fix them.

All that said, I still think the only real solution is a single payer system and I don't see that happening in the near future.

That is the only solution. Republicans want to dial back the clock to pre-Obamacare, but everyone forgets how consumer friendly the health insurance and pharma industry is. Memories are short and very selective. If anyone thinks the free market is going to lower health costs I suggest that they are basically gullible and terminally stupid.

Conservative leader: GOP health plan could lead to single-payer system

With Epic GOP Failure, Dems Urged to Go Bold with Medicare-for-All | Common Dreams

If the Democrats end up controlling all three houses at some point down the road I have a feeling they will try to make a move towards a single payer system. I don't know if they would succeed, but it would be good to see them try.

All aboard the Trump Train!!!

http://koam.images.worldnow.com/images/6453653_G.jpg

Oh shit. :helpme:1orglaugh

I have a new solution:

1) deal away with private insurers
2) get a gov insurance as the only option
3) print money and pay

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

obamacare was only the smallest consence that obama could get through the senat and the congress. it is far away from what he wanted and what would make sense.

if i read statemenst to that topic from americans i have the feeling that every american is a multi millionair - but that is not the case.

the idea of a society is that things are done and paid together. health is one of this human rights what should be available for everybody.

rich people do not need any insurance because they can pay it from their pocket but they can pay it from there because the society made them rich.

basic things in a working society system have to be done from EVERYONE.

you can not say you do not pay for a street becaue you never drive on it.
you can not say you do not need police because you can secure yourself.
you can not say that you do not pay for clean water because you have your own spring in the garden.
you can not say you do not pay for schools because you don´t have children.
you can not ignore the gloabl warming because it happens yet far away
and this list could be 1000 pages long....

if you limit health care on what people are willing to pay for you will never find help when you have a seldom desease - exept you are a billionaire.

health is also not only a factor of medical costs. health is a factor of the gross national prouctivity. sick people can´t use their working power and help a national growth. that is why a society have also a big advantage when people are healthy.

USA never had a working social health system. even third world countries have often better systems. so the only obvious in this discussion is that people who never saw an elefant are fighting if the elefant have 3 or 6 legs.

a single payer system can´t work at all because it is an INSURANCE - you pay for what CAN but not what MUST happen.
and EVERY KIND OF INSURANCE will cost a price that the AVERAGE costs of the insurance company can make profit.

That a home owner can afford a fire insurance is due to the fact that a lot of homes never burn. health insurance is nothing else.

1883 - that's the year of the first mandatory health insurance in Germany. Austria followed 1888, Hungary 1891.

We have 2017 now.

Chemotherapy is a scam, go natural, use your immune system to fight cancer :2 cents:

Just read all about it: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447688/

It's the exact opposite of what ObamaCare's "one size fits all" centralized govt. disaster.

The Germans did it right after a lot of political fighting.
They did NOT want to have the centralized govt. running their lives and instead made it regional.
Which is what Trump talked about during the campaign...more power to the states.

"Regional elites felt threatened by what they saw as an overwhelming authoritarian state, particularly Bismarck?s original plan to control health insurance from a central imperial office. The iron chancellor, known for his militarism, use of coercive powers, and exercise of repressive measures, lost out to these regional forces when national health insurance was created in 1883. Sickness funds, although mandated nationally, were organized on a regional basis."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447688/

It took the Germans a lot of infighting and political upheavals...but they finally got it right and it's worked ever since.

Maybe that's the road we are on. ObamaCare was just the first mistake on our path.
German Healthcare didn't just spring up over night. It took years of mistakes and arguing to get it right.

and if I say (what I do not but i can show you MANY) to drink a mix of water and chlorine and it will help you against every desease - does that mean that i am right and everybody have to do so ?

so if YOU decide that for you it is your private desicion - but why a hell should the whole world be the same dumb ?

well the big difference between the system in Europe (and sepcially Germany) and the system in USA is that you are forced to be health insured if you are NOT rich.

people with a high income can decide for paying either a private insurance or don´t be insured at all (they will change that soon).

the us-way is exactly the opposite that they leave the poorer people who can not afford to pay an expensive insureance alone, because they do not want to take that money from the people who have it.

an even other way you find in switzerland. here it is a mix of all.
EVERONE have to pay in the socail insurance (what is in fact also a private one but you are forced to pay in - no matter if you are rich or poor).

then you have the option to get more exclusive insurance but you have to pay it by yourself.

that leads to the fact, that the rich people have very expensive private insurances what are paying nearly all. additionall they pay into the compulsory insurance (but they never use it because all is paid by their additional insurances).

they also force you that you pay into an insurance what is based IN SWITZERLAND. in example I have a very old insurance in Germany but i had to pay ADDITIONALLY in the minimum compulsary insurance in switzerland too).

the swiss healthcare system has been generating a surplus for many years what is safed for the future to pay eventually cost explosions.

but also the german compulsary insurances are making profit since a few years and one of the reasons for that is that the time of someone beeing sick could be reduced by a better healthcare technology.
at the moment there is a debate to DECREASE the insurance contributions because of that circumstance.

another thing is that every emplyee in germany does only pay 50% of his insurance - the other 50% have to be paid by the employer.

The one thing always left out of the argument about Obamacare is the fact that it was built upon a Republican, market-based foundation. It's core principles were developed by a conservative think tank in the 1990s as a counter to President Clinton's much more liberal health-care plan. Around 10 years later a version of this conservative health-care plan was implemented successfully by Republican Governor Mitt Romney in the state of Massachusetts.

Originally the Democrats did not like Obama proposing this GOP plan because they preferred a single-payer scheme. But Obama believed since the Republicans developed the original health-care plan, they would be more inclined to support Obamacare. But then Republican leaders had decided they were going to unilaterally opposed Obama in just about anything he did. They opposed it and then characterized it as a typical liberal entitlement.

Pride before the fall. Now they realized they have backed themselves into a corner. They will never get anything accomplished because they will spend all their time fighting each other instead of looking out for the American citizen. They are party first, country second and they prove this every single day.

ruff, there is no "market based" plan when there is no competition and people are also FORCED to buy it.

You read too many Democrat biased reports based on pure speculation of what they THINK people were thinking.

Who cares what ONE "think tank" might have put in a paper one time 30 years ago? That's just fucking ridiculous.

And if that's really what Obama did...then I guess he's not as smart as I thought he was.

But I guess it makes you feel "good" to convince yourself that ObamaCare's abject failure is really all the fault of one guy writing something for a Republican "Think Tank" based totally on his own theories with no real-world application.

Think about that for a minute.
What does it matter WHERE a stupid idea comes from? It's still stupid.
And Obama and the Democrats shoved it through without even bothering to READ it first.

Now THAT is irresponsible and stupid.

But this is wrong. You do not get to pick and choose. You get everything, not "some things". Then one day you wake up in the hospital with some illness you never heard of which is life threatening and you discover your insurance plan doesn't cover it because you didn't pick the right policy.

This is exactly what was happening before. People were picking cheaper healthcare and just assuming they would be covered, only to find out they weren't.

It's stunning how this works isn't it? A Republican healthcare plan put into place by a Republican, and the only reason the Republicans don't like it is because the Democrats are putting it in place.

And you are right - they backed themselves into a corner. No matter what happened they would have come out looking like shit. If it failed to pass, they looked stupid. If it passed and then failed, they still looked stupid.

When your car needs new tires, you don't buy a new car you buy new tires. If your car needs new tires, new brakes, and the transmission fixed it's still going to be cheaper than buying a new $50k car. You fix what is wrong, you don't replace it.

Robbie you seem to be hung up on people forced to buy health insurance. People are forced to by auto insurance, they are forced to by flood insurance, just as they are forced to pay property taxes for schools and etc.
Health insurance simply does not work unless everyone pays in. Other wise, the system collapses, that is guaranteed by the market. Insurance companies collect premiums from people that they do not expect to need coverage and deny coverage to people that they know will need medical attention. This is a no-brainer and something ignored by the Republicans. Free market? Are you seriously thinking you will get lower premiums and better coverage? Use your head, this is not going to happen. Ever.

Yes, I am now paying 3 times what I paid before Obama care. Same plan.
Yes, I 100% believe in the market...not govt.
I am proud to be a capitalist and a guy who believes in people paying their own way.

sadly i have to side with ruff over robbie...

capitalist healthcare is inherently unworkable.

the middle class cannot afford to pay its own way. thats why the insurance is so outrageous...its not something you "probably wont use" like things that are insurable. rather, middles class health care is like homes on the ocean...uninsurable, because the loss is "guaranteed" to happen. so the old people cost a fortune, young people dont pay...& you end up with disaster. healthy people never signed up in numbers to make obamacare work, even with lawful mandates & fines.

there is no point of an insurance company. they are simply a quasi-bank that price gouges you today to cover you in the future. their profits & what they do provide no benefit to patient care, & simply add overhead & profits to the cost of being sick. absurd.

health care also bends to monopoly, due to high cost of investment & hi hurdles to enter the market, like regulations & the need for highly skilled people to administer, people that are in limited supplies. thats why USA is importing so much white collar talent, because todays kids study social justice & art history instead of math & science.

so i support single payer, despite being a right-of-center on most other matters. i agree with bernie, health care should be a right, like public safety is a right...no GOP argues that we should disband government security, like cops or the pentagon...

:2 cents:

the first time i see from you that you write something with sense...

and when you spin this a bit further you see that trump is not on the site of the majority of americans and he is completely wrong when he says he can handle a country same as a company.

in a company you can fire the one who is less productive - in a society you can not.

The health insurance companies are going to fuck you either way Robbie they are corrupt.

The insurance companies negotiated down on this last Trump bill to only be able to charge 5 times more for people 50 and over. On the free market they won't cover you, or will charge you more than 5 times as much. Do you understand?

the biggest problem in this discussion is that everyone only knows a part of the truth.

if you look deeper into the argument that "obamacare is too expensive" you will find out that they do not talk about obamacare - they are talking about the costs of the complete healthcare system.

the biggest factor in this system is medicaid - because there is no one who even pays a dollar for that.
medicaid will definately explode because it was paid by the taxpayer since the 60s (when obama was not even in school).

now calculate the following:

trumps plan is to decrease taxes from the rich - that means he will have LESS income from the few people who pay the most tax in the country.

medicaid WAS ALWAYS paid from this taxes (since obamacare a very small part came from the people who pay for insurance)

if you now make the rich a present and let them pay less, there will be less money in the pot for medicaid.

so what can you do to get this money????

you tell the normal citizens, that the healthsystem will explode and you push all to obamacare and not not split the whole thing in his real parts.

than you make a change what will give normal people less secuity OR let them pay more.

as you are SUCH A GOOD person you will allow to deduct more medical care costs from the tax - what means that YOU PAY this money to someone else and HE pays the tax instead of you - so you (the state) will not lose money with this present.

because you reduced the standard services by 40% but the costs only by 20% you have money in the cash for medicaid.

this calculation is SO obvious and should be seen from everyone who can count 1+1 together.

Good luck with the free market. Pure capitalism corrupts.

same plan but not same circumstances

have you ever heard the name Martin Shkreli ?
The guy who even offered young voters free music downlods when they vote for trump ?

do you really think, that a guy who have increased the price for a live important medicin 5500% from one day to the other would support trump if he would be afraid that trump goes against that mafia ?

HERE ARE YOUR COSTS -LOOK AT THEM

I'm not of that belief. Monopolization corrupts. It's why we have ended up where we are.
Competition in the market is a good thing. Just look at the price of the computers we use, the cellphones, etc.

Having a CHOICE and the ability to buy a product from someone else offering a better deal is what our economy is based on.

One thing for sure...this bill from Paul Ryan was nothing more than another version of ObamaCare.
It didn't do one damn thing to bring down the actual COST of medicine and hospitals.

Ryan is just another lifetime/career bureaucrat stooge. Trump was foolish to try and put trust in him.
Or maybe not.
The political chatter now is that Ryan is damaged goods because he showed how ineffectual he was in getting his votes inline in the Congress.

That's a good thing. Now Trump can put Ryan in his place.

Trump today said that he wants to have the Democrats help him craft a new healthcare bill that they work on together that gives the US "world class healthcare" that is truly affordable.

That's what I 'm talking about. Trump campaigned saying that he felt he could work with the Democrats and cut deals with them. Schumer and the DNC said "hell no" right out of the gate (even though Chuck Schumer has been friends with Trump in "real life" for years).

Maybe this was a way for Trump to minimize Ryan and give the Democrats a way to work with him despite all the stupid "Fascist" and "Hitler" rhetoric that was thrown around by Hollywood and the media?

Isn't the bottom line that we all want GOOD things to happen in D.C. for the country?

I appreciate your point here and ideally it's what we would all want to happen. But partisan politics is the norm now. I don't see anything changing there at all. No one can trust what tRump says or does. It would be nice if he reached out for support from the Democrats, but he is not the kind of man that will do that. An example of the monopolies you speak of would be generic insulin or epinephrine injectors and other medicines that prices are jacked because someone bought or controls the only source. There is no consumer protection there at all. When someone or a company "sells " a product, they want you to use that product, they want you to come back and back that product again when it wears out or breaks. Insurance is the only product they do not want you to use. Every one eventually will need some sort of healthcare before they die. So they have all of us by the short and curlies. The free market says fuck them and feed them beans. Government isn't just for fixing potholes and speed limits, it's for guaranteeing every single person protection and quality of life. Otherwise why don't we just throw grandma off a cliff.

if you want a world class healthcare system that is also affordable, you need to do something that is totally against your belief: you need to regulate the healthcare industry - which of course will bring down profits of pharma and insurance companies.

So far nobody seems to be willing to do that - but without it, you will never get there

lol I like this

I agree. I don't think it's really necessary to "regulate" them further though. They are second only to banks in govt. regulations already.

No. What needs to happen is stopping the corruption in Washington D.C. that allows Big Pharma to price-gouge the American people.
They get away with charging us so much because they spend so many hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying Congress.

They basically own the politicians here. :(

All I 'm saying is that the govt. should stop them from price gouging. But the govt. itself is in on the scam. :(

It's outright theft and it's been going on my entire lifetime.

I would say that you can't trust what any politician in Washington D.C. says or does. They ALL say one thing to the public, and then go in secret to their donors and do something else.

Trump isn't the guy who put us in all these wars. Trump isn't the guy who negotiated the horrible trade deals. Trump isn't the guy who ran up 20 Trillion in debt.

I think you might be aiming your disapproval in the wrong direction. It should be going at the lifelong Senators and Congressmen who are getting filthy rich in public "service" and have sent our country into a tailspin.

As for reaching out to Dems...he already has. But as I said earlier...Chuck Schumer said the day Trump was elected that they would NOT work with him on anything.

So if you think that Trump is "bad" because you mistakenly think he won't come to the table with Democrats...then what do you think about Democrats REFUSING to come to the table with Trump?

Doesn't that make them "bad" too? Or is it a bit of a double standard in Washington D.C.?

I see Trump as the outsider. He's not a Republican. He's not a Democrat. He is a threat to every politician and lobbyist in D.C.
They do not want their gravy train interrupted.

That's the angle that I'm looking at it from. You should give that a bit of thought.
I know I can't change your mind, and I don't want to. But you owe it to yourself to take a hard look at the politicians in D.C. and a second look at Trump.

Maybe there will be some optimism for you in giving it a fresh look? I'm looking forward to tax reform. I'm looking forward to re-negotiated trade deals.
Hell, Trump announced Charter was investing 25 billion dollars and adding 20,000 new jobs a couple of days ago after a meeting with Charter's CEO.

The media's response? They quickly pointed out that Trump had NOTHING to do with it and that this was already documented as a plan by Charter a year earlier if they were allowed to do a big merger.

The media didn't report it as good news. They didn't report that 20,000 more people are going to be getting REAL jobs.

Nope, they turned the whole thing negative and then quickly dropped that important story to go right back to their "panels" of "experts" to discuss how Trump is a Russian spy. :(

Another Trump success story.
Medicare for all and an additional tax to pay for it probably is the only solution.

Term limits for Congress and the House of Representatives. That would be a good start.

THIS is the basic point.
he already lost all trust everywhere in the world.

this is EXACTLY the donald trump he always was and his "business style".

his statement to manage the country same as his (bankrupt) companies have been the signal for me already in the elections that this guy does not know what he is talking about.

look at the stocksmarket - look on the numbers of first time non employed - look on the purchasing´s manager index - look at the vibes inside the country - look at what other countries think about him.

he lost the game already and as he lost it in such a short periode makes him to a persona non grata. his star is fallen and will not rise anymore.
and i am sure - after he is out (what will not take a very long time) we all will find out a lot more and bigger lies from him.

Absolutely. Total agreement here.

would not resolve the problem when the "good ones" have to go and you have nobody to replace them.

i think the problem is in the voting mentality itself. and in the party-mentality.

parents already teach their children wich senator they have to vote and they will teach thier childeren too. the us public did not realize that THEY are at the end the guys who can push or stop a president.

as long as i can remember there where quite a few presidents (democrats and reps) who had good ideas but where blocked.

We can't do any worse with term limits than with what we have now. It would get rid of the vested interests and encourage fresh thinking. We have a lot of young forward thinking intelligent people looking at politics but the seniority system keeps them down. Lobbyist stay fat and influential. Maybe that's the swamp that should be drained. Term limits would keep politicians focused on the business of governing and not the business of running for re-election and constant fund-raising.

ruff you are hitting the nail squarely on the head.

Problem is...the only people who can make term limits on Congress is...Congress. :(

They sure jumped right to it on making term limits for Presidents after Roosevelt won 4 times.
But not for themselves of course. :(

I'm not sure it will ever happen. But I do believe that it would be a great start to getting our govt. under control again.

The Founding Fathers envisioned CITIZENS running the country. Not politicians. Things devolved real fast of course...and in 2017 that's just a pipe dream.
Trump is the first "citizen" President of my lifetime. Probably the last by the time they get done with him. :(

But the way our govt. was originally planned...you might have already served a term as "Senator Ruff" and I might have already been "Representative Robbie".

The Founding Fathers were sure that people would want to get back to their lives and making money for their families and would only "sacrifice' a term or two to "serve" the nation.

Instead we have these leaches in D.C. who NEVER have a real job and spend their entire lives getting rich in politics.
It's disgusting.

Excellent! It's nice to see your submissive side :thumbsup