#affordable care act

Watch the video here!

From a Rand Paul op-ed:

When did Republicans begin to believe that insurance companies should be put on the dole? That they should be bailed out when any of their customers become sick?

When did Republicans begin to believe that the federal government should force you to pay a penalty to a private insurance company if you can’t afford insurance?

When did Republicans begin to believe that we should levy a special tax penalty on those who choose to buy really good health insurance?

The current Ryan Plan — “Obamacare Lite” — is not about patients. It isn’t about better health care. It isn’t about lowering costs.

It is, plain and simple, about getting more money to the insurance companies and running more of your life from Washington.

I am a career physician. I spent years training and learning to be a doctor. I did it for patients. I don’t give a flip about guaranteeing the profits of insurance companies. And as a Senator, I shouldn’t, either.

Watch the video here!

The political struggle will likely determine if the Republican Party keeps the status quo or returns to their true conservative principles.

Written by Brandon Morse for The Blaze:

The in-house Republican battle over the repeal of Obamacare is about to boil over as Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) are engaged in an increasingly sharp war over words over their disagreements on how to proceed forward with the promised repeal and replace of former President Obama’s signature legislation.

Paul has been waging a war against the House GOP Obamacare repeal and replace plan since even before it was given to the public. Calling it “Obamacare Lite,” Paul has lambasted not only the bill, but his fellow Republicans for their less-than-diligent attempts at getting rid of the unpopular healthcare law. This time, he turned his attention toward Ryan, who has been the bill’s primary spokesman.

“I think that Paul Ryan’s selling [Donald Trump] a bill of goods that he didn’t explain to the President, and the grassroots doesn’t want what Paul Ryan is selling,” Paul told CNN. …

Other Republicans in Congress have joined Paul in his efforts to push a more conservative version of a repeal bill, which focuses solely on repeal, and repeal alone. Rep. Jim Jordan and Paul have both submitted versions of the bill in the Senate and the House, and has the support of conservative legislators such as Rep. Justin Amash,Sen. Mike Lee, and Rep. Jeff Duncan, and Sen. Tom Cotton. This list of allies now also includes a group of moderate Republicans rattled by the recent CBO report.

As the battle continues between the conservatives and GOP leadership, the faith of the voters hangs in the balance, according to the conservatives. Paul believes that should the GOP pass “Obamacare Lite,” Republicans will pay for it come election time. Duncan wrote in the Daily Signal that should the bill pass, voters “will feel betrayed.”

If that is true, then winner of the struggle between Paul and Ryan may determine the GOP’s future momentum.

Read the entire article here.

Republicans should be working to agree on a truly conservative plan to repeal Obamacare rather than bickering about numbers.

Written by Dana Loesch for The Blaze:

The bipartisan chorus continues to grow against the Republican Obamacare replacement bill. Conservatives in both chambers of Congress have voiced concerns about the bill, derisively referring to it as “Obamacare-lite.” The political news got worse for the bill when the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill would result in millions of additional uninsured Americans.

On Dana Loesch’s program Tuesday evening, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has said he would prefer a clean repeal to Obamacare first.

“What I do know is bill that’s in front of us, that leadership has brought forward, isn’t a full repeal, it isn’t going to bring down premiums and doesn’t unite the Republican party. It is not consistent with what we told the voters. … There’s a reason every single conservative group in the country is opposed to it. There’s a reason that conservative people like you are opposed to it. Even conservatives who are for it, … call it Obamacare-lite,” Rep. Jordan says.

Read the entire article - and watch the video - here.

Rand Paul is hoping that Trump will negotiate for a much more conservative bill that completely repeals Obamacare.

Written by Ben Wolfgang for the Washington Times:

President Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan have tried to present a unified front on the GOP’s health care bill, but a top Republican critic of that legislation on Sunday tried to stoke divisions between the two.

Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, said flatly that he doesn’t believe the president is fully committed to the legislation as currently written. The House Republican leadership, he added, is presenting a false choice between the status quo or the current alternative proposal backed by Mr. Ryan.

“I think there’s a separation between the two,” Mr. Paul told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “I’ve talked to the president I think three times on Obamacare and I hear from him that he’s willing to negotiate. You know what I hear from Paul Ryan? It’s a binary choice, young man. But what does a binary choice mean? His way or the highway?”

Mr. Paul said he doesn’t think the bill, as it stands now, will get the needed 51 votes in the Senate.

Read the entire article here.

The American Action Forum was set up to run ads against conservatives who oppose the “Obamacare Lite” bill. Guess who’s funding that PAC?

Yep, the pharmaceutical companies.

House Republicans like Speaker Paul Ryan tell us that the new health care bill will repeal Obamacare and lower costs. We’ve already shown why that’s untrue. Now, evidence that the pharmaceutical companies are supporting the bill with millions of dollars proves that costs will remain high and benefit them, not you.

Stand with Rand and oppose Obamacare Lite!

Time to push more of my liberal agenda: protect the ACA. Call your lawmakers! Think of how much diabetes costs without insurance–tens of thousands of dollars. Without preexisting condition protection, we don’t get insurance. Without bans against lifetime insurance caps, we don’t get to keep insurance. 

We may be sick, but we are not dead; don’t let your house representatives categorize you otherwise. We deserve to live full lives, regardless of a disease we did nothing to earn and cannot will away. 

So fight. Be sick–there’s nothing we can do about that–but nevertire. 

You can search your representative numbers here:

http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

After I’d had my gallbladder removed, some dude offered up the completely unsolicited and bonkers advice that I could heal myself with prayer. He volunteered that if I repented of my sinful ways - the results of which were my gallstones and the subsequent failure of my gallbladder - that I could regenerate my lost organ and become whole again. He said that God’s benevolent love would not only return to me my missing gallbladder, but would remedy the loss of the appendix that exploded when I was 18 and the cancer I was probably going to get from all the premarital sex I was reveling in. He then, without asking, put his hands on my stomach and proceeded to appeal to the Lord to cure me of my ailments, provided I lived a good life from that point forward and stopped leading others into the arms of the devil by my dark example.

I was reminded of this very real moment this morning, because I realized that this is exactly how it feels to talk to Republicans about healthcare.

.

.

.

P.S. My gallbladder did not grow back.

Yesterday was National Rheumatoid Arthritis Awareness Day. It’s a bit of a pointless holiday, and I didn’t even know it existed until about 3 hours ago - I’m guessing due to the fact that the Arthritis Foundation is shit, has a 1 star rating on Charity Navigator, and has been accused of misusing funds in the past. So….they probably haven’t had time to roll out an advertising campaign.

In any case, if you didn’t know, RA is an autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune system is a worthless idiot and attacks your body’s own soft and joint tissues, and can potentially render them useless through damage and deterioration.

I have RA. But I am lucky. My RA was diagnosed very early and I had it treated very aggressively.

I am also lucky because I have insurance that helps offset the cost of my revoltingly, ridiculously, disgustingly expensive medication. One month of Enbrel costs anywhere between $3,400 and $3,800. See?

It’s such an expensive medication that I actually have to use two insurance plans to afford it. Which means, if I did not have insurance, I’d be paying approximately $45,000 per year simply to stay alive.

And that is for justone of my medications, as you can tell from the above photo, where I’ve blocked out all the other medications I am also required to take to stay alive. Paying for Enbrel out of pocket would leave me unable to afford rent, food, or clothing - other things which are also required to stay alive.

Though I am currently fortunate enough to have a job that provides me with healthcare, I’ve been without insurance in the past. Back before the Affordable Care Act, I was unable to stay on my parents’ plan when I graduated and then was constantly denied coverage due to my pre-existing conditions. I basically roamed around LA, terrified of getting into a catastrophic accident while simultaneously attempting to treat pneumonia in the back of a CVS.

Obamacare is not without its flaws, I acknowledge that. But if your garbage disposal is broken, you don’t burn down your house and start over - you fix the fucking garbage disposal. So in honor of National RA Awareness Day, which is, as we’ve established, a real thing - please consider writing or calling your representatives (especially Paul Ryan) and telling them that repealing ACA without a replacement would be disastrous. It is important, and saving lives, and making it so people don’t have to choose between bankruptcy or having their immune systems kill their own bodies.

.

Contact Your Representatives: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

Contact Your Senators: https://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/

Contact Paul Ryan: https://paulryan.house.gov/contact/

Alright, it’s been too long since I had a huge post (maybe 20 hours) so I thought I’d lay one out again. I’d like to talk about Health Care, and why I’m voting for Obama because of it. 

Let me start by surprising everyone who hasn’t talked to me with the following:

I hate Obamacare - I think it violates our rights by forcing us to buy a product from private companies, and probably should be repealed. 

“But why are you voting for Obama then Rob? Surely Romney’s repeated calls to end Obamacare appeal to you!” - GOP Supporter

Lets start by looking at our health care system before the Affordable Care Act went into effect. 

• First - Every person could go to an ER, and that ER would be forced to give them basic life saving care, even if they didn’t have insurance. People still died of cancer and all sorts of nastiness, but hospitals were generally not allowed to turn people away. 
• Second - Not everyone had health insurance. Some people had preexisting conditions and were denied coverage. Some were unemployed and couldn’t afford it. Some were students older than 24. Some had jobs that didn’t provide it. However, those people still sometimes went to the hospital. 
• Third - Sometimes health insurance wouldn’t cover a procedure that a doctor recommended. Health insurance companies dictate medicine, not medical doctors. 

Anyone with a job most likely has seen their health care costs rising slowly since they’ve ever worked ever. A little raise in their premiums there, an increased deductible there. A new service not covered. 

Why you ask? Was this profiteering by insurance companies? Sure, maybe. Profiteering by doctors and hospitals? Maybe. Largely though, the problem was that you received treatment first and were billed second. If your insurance wouldn’t pay and you were stuck with the bill? You could simply declare bankruptcy or just not pay. Of course the hospital still incurred the cost of your surgery. You used medical supplies, Doctor’s time. Anesthesia and band aids. Electricity. All that stuff still had to get paid for. 

Lets say you make minimum wage working at Walmart, 30 hours a week. You may have a child. You make too much to be on medicaid, but still can’t afford insurance. Then, you get a large kidney stone, require surgery, and get stuck with a $40,000 bill for surgery. Or you get shot in the face watching batman and incur a 2 million dollar hospital bill. What if you are unable to pay? 

The hospitals - some public and some private - do the only thing they can do, which is passing those costs onto the paying customers. And the only ‘paying’ customers were people with insurance. Thus, the bill for any given procedure is largely automatically inflated, because it’s costs if paid must go towards costs of procedures that aren’t paid. That’s one of the reasons Americans spend almost 3x more on healthcare than countries that don’t have our 'system’. 

The poorest Americans, the oldest Americans, were covered under Medicare and Medicaid. But there’s a group of people - lower middle class, upper lower class - that may slip through the cracks. 

**Ok, so what did Obama care do for us?**

First, it made more people pay into the health care industry. The more people who are paying into the system, the more the health insurance industry can spread those costs across everyone. That means less people who are going to the hospital without health insurance. 

Second, it capped the profits of the health insurance industry. It is forcing the insurance industry to pay for medical procedures with your insurance premiums, not advertising. 

Third, it forces insurance companies to allow people with preexisting conditions onto health care plans. 

This alleviates a lot of problems that our health care industry was facing. However, socialism is a government owned industry. Since the government isn’t owning anything, this definitely isn’t socialist. 


So why is this not a point in the cards for Romney? Because Obamacare is demonstrably better than pre-Obamacare.  And Romney’s only plan is to repeal Obamacare. He needs to have SOME plan to replace Obamacare - because going back to the way it was is untenable. 



“So what are our options besides Obamacare? ” - GOP Supporter

Great question friend! There’s three things we can do (At least, that I can think of. Feel free to update me with your own).

1. Alleviate the problem by forcing people to pay for health care before they receive it. That way, costs will come down because everyone who gets health care will be insured. Hospitals will know that they can charge the actual costs of the procedures because they’ve already been paid.  Everyone will be forced to buy insurance, because without it they’ll simply die. (This is assuming we could convince hospitals not to treat people for free anyways) This is the system of health care that places like Somolia, Uganda, Ethiopia, and other heavily impoverished nations with terrible quality of life have. If you have money, you live long, if you don’t, you die young. In my opinion, this is completely fucking unacceptable for the United States. 
   
   
2. Socialized Medicine. *gasp*. This makes sure every single person pays into the system what they can, through taxes. And since every person is paying, every person can get health care. *THIS* is what we need, since every other country that is using it has a vastly better health care system. But that’s a different story. Read about the different types of socialized health care here.
3.  Continue with the pre-Obamacare status quo. I’m not an economist and I don’t have any formal training in health care administration, so this is entirely conjecture: Prices will continue to rise which will force more people out of the insurance pool. This will cause health care prices to go up faster. Employer prices will continue to rise, either forcing an increase in the costs of goods, or forcing down salaries to compensate. It’s an all around fuck fest. 
   
   

Of course, this is a simplistic view of the situation, and ignores a lot of important facts: Regular checkups and a relationship with the same physician is extremely beneficial for the health of the population, treating patients in a doctors office is cheaper than in the ER, access to vaccinations and health care earlier will result in healthier children, etc. Honestly I’m very lazy and want to go to bed, so I made this as simple as possible. 

But it remains you *shouldn’t* vote for Romney while he advocates path 3 for our country. Obama really screwed the GOP hard by enacting Obamacare. By *compromising* and implementing the only possible solution that the right could come up with (a federal insurance mandate), he stole their only solution for health care. Once repealed, the only option the right has is to Re-implement Obamacare, 


If you are a GOP supporter? Demand from your party a plan of action. Because without Obamacare, the health care industry is largely up shits creek. Moral arguments aside, it isn’t fiscally responsible to vote for Romney because of his lack of medical plan. As always I’m open to questions. 

 

millennial-review: