Obamacare...(new title): GOP DEATH PLAN: Don-Ryan's Express

[justice98]

Any plan that puts trust and faith in the insurance companies to not gouge the people is doomed to fail.  

[TradeTheBeal!]

[PeterMP]

1 hour ago, justice98 said:

Any plan that puts trust and faith in the insurance companies to not gouge the people is doomed to fail.  

 

I haven't seen anywhere that the MLR cap has been lifted.   Did they lift it?  As long as it is in place and enforced, that limits what insurance companies can do in terms of gouging people.  (I guess they could legislatively not lift it, but executively not enforce it.)

 

The issue to me seem to be how are we going to pay for people that can't afford insurance that actually covers their illnesses and people that could afford (good) insurance, but don't, but then have an accident or incident that requires them to use health care (then they are covered for and more than they can afford).

 

Are we paying it though high insurance premiums and taxes to subsidies (Obamacare) or through taxes going into high risk pools, health cares costs (e.g. hospitals over charging to re-coup money from people without insurance), which realistically affects premiums to the insured, and other societal costs (e.g. violence and crime related to people that have addiction issues or mental health issues that can't get insurance and so treatment and the spread of infectious disease due to people not getting regular health care, etc.) (the Republican plan)?

 

It is a pick your poison situation.

Edited May 5, 2017 by PeterMP

[LadySkinsFan]

Take the profit out of healthcare and Big Pharma. Government already finances R&D for drugs through grants. Plus, outlaw drug advertising. Every time I see a drug commercial I cringe at the side effects they are required by law to disclose. The next step for Big Pharma is convincing Congress to remove disclosure requirements, or the Executive that controls laws once they are passed and signed.

[LD0506]

 

[88Comrade2000]

5 hours ago, skinsmarydu said:

It won't pass the Senate, y'all simma down, now!

Bob Corker, (R-TN), when asked yesterday morning about it, said NO.  It's not even being considered.  He said no health care repeal/replace is...

It's been a long time since I've believed a Republican, but I think he's heard it from his state, and he ain't goin' there.  Gave me hope, and a good laugh at the pundits who think this could actually get through. 

(Nancy is a goddess...I laughed so hard at her "glowing in the dark" statement...*yeah, you fools...you own that ****.*)

If the Senate doesn't repeal it; those GOP Senators running for reelection in 2018 will be primaried.

I expect the Senate to pass something, maybe not what the House did but something. 

[Sacks 'n' Stuff]

I wish there was a silver lining of looking forward to the GOP getting crushed in future elections. Sadly, my lack of faith in the GOP is outdone only by my lack of faith in the American voter.

[Larry]

3 minutes ago, Sacks 'n' Stuff said:

I wish there was a silver lining of looking forward to the GOP getting crushed in future elections. Sadly, my lack of faith in the GOP is outdone only by my lack of faith in the American voter.

 

1)  The voters did elect Trump, after all.  

 

2)  And the GOP was smart enough to make it so that the voters don't get their nose rubbed in what a crummy plan it is, till after the next election.  

 

3)  and in between now and then, we'll have whatever bits of Obamacare the GOP permits to function, so the voters will be comparing GOPcare vs "Obamacare after two years of the GOP intentionally abusing it."  

 

I think that counting on a vast voter uprising in which the voters experience the Truth, and admit it could well be a fantasy.  

 

 

[visionary]

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 5, 2017 by visionary

[visionary]

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 5, 2017 by visionary

[Larry]

2 hours ago, PeterMP said:

 

I haven't seen anywhere that the MLR cap has been lifted.   Did they lift it?  As long as it is in place and enforced, that limits what insurance companies can do in terms of gouging people.  (I guess they could legislatively not lift it, but executively not enforce it.)

 

I remember reading that it was at least discussed.  But 1) My recalling things that I think I've read doesn;t have the best track record, and 2) I suspect that if this bill did that, I'd be reading about it.  

 

Yeah, I suspect that the overhead cap might well have been one of the best parts of Obamacare.  To me, it really guarantees that the consumers actually get what they pay for.  

 

Although I do see some drawbacks with it, too.  

 

1)  What it basically does is that it guarantees that the only way to reduce insurance premiums are:  

 

1a) Subsidize them somehow.  (You don't pay for what you get, but somebody else does.)  

 

1b) Reduce coverage.  Consumer pays less, because he gets less.  

 

2)  And, I believe that the overhead cap applies to a company as a whole, not to a particular state or demographic.  It at least allows insurance companies to overcharge one group, and use the money to subsidize some other group.  (Although, one would hope that if a company decided to overcharge one group too much, said group would simply not sign up for that company's coverage.)  

 

(In fact, I think that some of Obamacare's rules were flat out intended to force that behavior.  For example, the requirement that coverage for old folks wasn't permitted to cost more than (some number) times what they charge young folks, was a flat out mandate to the insurance companies to overcharge young people, and use the money to subsidize coverage for us old folks.  It's a subsidy that doesn't actually get listed as a subsidy.)  

[PeterMP]

3 hours ago, LadySkinsFan said:

Take the profit out of healthcare and Big Pharma. Government already finances R&D for drugs through grants. Plus, outlaw drug advertising. Every time I see a drug commercial I cringe at the side effects they are required by law to disclose. The next step for Big Pharma is convincing Congress to remove disclosure requirements, or the Executive that controls laws once they are passed and signed.

 

It is true the government funds a lot of R&D, but it isn't like Pharma doesn't fund a lot too.  In addition, historically, institutions that are getting grants and coming up with patentable things, are then able to sell/license those patents (to industry).  Historically, this has been essentially a back door to funding higher education (in the last 25 years or now, things have changed some and more people in academic positions are profiting more from research related to their grants because of weakening intellectual property clauses in faculty contracts and more faculty running companies on the side, but in a lot of cases the academic institution still makes a lot of money).

 

However, I'm also not sure it makes much sense to give people that have ideas that might lead to the treatment of diseases a clear way to profit from their ideas.

 

If I have an idea of a way to treat a disease, is my only option going to be to apply for a federal grant to get funding?

 

http://www.rinr.fsu.edu/fall2002/taxol.html

 

The Taxol history is an interesting case example (FSU ended up making hundreds of millions of dollars because they were able to patent the method by which the drug was made):

 

"Holton remembers Suffness telling him that the NCI was getting out of the Taxol business. It had become the tail wagging the dog—there simply was no way the government could justify the enormous costs of keeping Taxol in the pipeline. By 1988, developing Taxol had cost the NCI over $25 million. Other promising compounds were getting squeezed out of the competition because of this single, impossible-to-get molecule. It was time for the NCI to bail on Taxol.

 

In other words, the government was eager to find a deep-pocket pharmaceutical company willing to take a chance on turning Taxol into a marketable drug. Thanks to a novel tool Congress had just created via the Federal Technology Transfer Act of 1986, Suffness & Co. could legally hand over the commercial rights to Taxol—a substance found and then preened all the way to the market's front door by taxpayer dollars—to any private company the NCI chose.

 

In August 1989, the agency advertised that it had a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) to grant the company submitting the best proposal. Four companies rose to the bait, including Rhone-Poulenc which held the French Taxol patents, and the New Jersey-based pharmaceutical giant, Bristol-Myers, soon destined to merge with Squibb, another huge pharma. To no one's real surprise, in December, the CRADA went to Bristol."

 

"Although FSU officials couldn't know it at the time, they had just brokered the deal of a research university's lifetime. Bristol-Myers Squibb was handed an exclusive licensing agreement to use Bob Holton's spanking new semisynthesis patent plus any related patents that his research might cook up over the next five years. In exchange, FSU was entitled to royalties on any money Bristol made using any of its Taxol patents, and Holton got a five-year research collaboration deal with Bristol chemists worth $1.7 million.

 

FSU also got Bristol to agree to cover all costs associated with patenting anything Holton's lab came up with, including Taxol derivatives. At the time the agreement was signed there were no such animals. But Holton knew they were right around the corner. His relentless pursuit of total synthesis, now stoked with new money, would most likely generate a bunch of them, and soon. Who knew? Some of these derivatives, or analogs, might even prove to be better cancer-killers than the mother molecule itself."

 

"In 1996, Florida State University was the envy of the tech-transfer world of U.S. research institutions. That year alone, the university's research foundation received more than $28 million in Taxol royalties. By decade's end, the university's Taxol revenue would top $200 million, among the largest patenting pay-offs for a single university in history.

 

A handsome incentive the university had created for its research faculty in the early 1980s—entitling inventors to 40 percent of any royalties forthcoming from their patents—had made Bob Holton a wealthy man."

 

 

""He's never been motivated by money, I guarantee you that much," Schwartz said.

If anything, Holton has used his newfound wealth largely as a means of building a better place for research and education at his university—something he's deadly serious about—and for "a whole new series of ways to pursue this craziness more efficiently," Schwartz said. (So far, Holton's main concession to the substantial spike in his financial status is a Lear jet, which gets him to and from frequent out-of-town meetings in a quarter of the time he once spent flying commercially.)"

 

Construction of a $46 million chemistry research building, to be called the Center for Molecular Recognition, is set to begin next year on central campus. An $11 million gift from Holton's MDS Foundation, combined with other Taxol-related revenues will pay for most of it.

Over the years, Holton's largess to FSU and the Tallahassee community has been felt in other ways as well. In 1997, Fraser persuaded the FSU Research Foundation to use Taxol revenues to create the Cornerstone Research Program, a competitive grant program annually offered FSU faculty. The university also has used Taxol monies to strengthen academic departments across campus through an endowed professorship program, named in honor of Francis Eppes, a force in the earliest history of FSU's institutional foundation in Tallahassee. Since it began in 1998, the program has installed nearly a dozen distinguished scholars and researchers as Eppes Professors around campus."

1 hour ago, Larry said:

(In fact, I think that some of Obamacare's rules were flat out intended to force that behavior.  For example, the requirement that coverage for old folks wasn't permitted to cost more than (some number) times what they charge young folks, was a flat out mandate to the insurance companies to overcharge young people, and use the money to subsidize coverage for us old folks.  It's a subsidy that doesn't actually get listed as a subsidy.)  

 

That was the essentially idea of Obamacare.  It lowered health insurance premiums for people that couldn't afford health care or health insurance based on their actual health care usage by forcing the insurance companies to charge other people more.

 

(Which is why lots of people's premiums went up.)

 

But the fact of the matter is we are paying those costs anyway and people's premiums were going up before the ACA  (unless you actually support allowing people to die in the street without access to healthcare.)

Edited May 5, 2017 by PeterMP

[visionary]

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 5, 2017 by visionary

[ExoDus84]

Can't wait for all the memes showing douchebag members of the House pounding Bud Light in celebration, after the bill gets **** on and killed in the Senate, or sent back so heavily revised that it won't pass the House again.

Edited May 5, 2017 by ExoDus84

[JSSkinz]

Amgen makes Neulasta, they are a publickly traded company that made $22 billion in 2015. I do understand they dont use Federal grants and they fund their research (Which they cant write off on their corporate taxes) themselves which means the cost gets passed on to me.

 

I think the government or any new healthcare plan needs to understand when a drug is developed in the private sector and patented and you will have no chance at getting a generic so something has to be done to lower the cost of 1 shot @ $6000.

 

Companies are going to continue to create new drugs and patent them and some will be a crucial to certain medical protocols so if you want to lower costs this would be one placve to start.

[Sacks 'n' Stuff]

Step 1 to fixing healthcare is....

 

drumroll please....

 

 

campaign finance reform.

[visionary]

 

[visionary]

 

[Larry]

5 hours ago, jschuck12001 said:

Amgen makes Neulasta, they are a publickly traded company that made $22 billion in 2015. I do understand they dont use Federal grants and they fund their research (Which they cant write off on their corporate taxes) . . . . 

 

Could you please provide me a link to the stories where Congress passed a law eliminating the tax deductions for business expenses?  

 

Thanks in advance.  

 

[LD0506]

Rachel Maddow Exposes A Pro-Trumpcare Congressman For Lying Right To His Constituent’s Face

 

Quote

In one instance, though, a woman with a brain tumor begged her GOP Congressman – John Faso of New York – to protect her health care and vote against this legislation, and he promised he would.

Fast-forward to today’s vote, and you’ll find Faso’s name among those who voted in favor of the GOP health care legislation, which would kick millions off their insurance and make it harder, if not impossible, for Americans like this woman to get the care they need to survive.

 

http://www.politicususa.com/2017/05/04/rachel-maddow-exposes-pro-trumpcare-congressman-lying-constituents-face.html

[TradeTheBeal!]

Outstanding.

 

http://ahca.republican/

[LadySkinsFan]

Mother****ers. That's the kindest I can get with these death dealing Republicans.

Edited May 6, 2017 by LadySkinsFan

[bearrock]

20 hours ago, jschuck12001 said:

 

I think the government or any new healthcare plan needs to understand when a drug is developed in the private sector and patented and you will have no chance at getting a generic so something has to be done to lower the cost of 1 shot @ $6000.

 

Companies are going to continue to create new drugs and patent them and some will be a crucial to certain medical protocols so if you want to lower costs this would be one placve to start.

This is where fight over essential benefit becomes important.  If presceiption drug is a covered essential health benefit, no matter how much the shots cost, you are only liable up to your annual out of pocket maximum.  There is a real problem with allowing substandard insurance policy that ends up providing inadeqaute coverage.  At minimum, each policy should come with standard disclosure on how much of ordinary treatment for the more common diseases would be covered.

[LD0506]

GOP rep: ‘Nobody dies because they don’t have access to healthcare’

 

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/raul-labrador-town-hall-nobody-dies-access-to-healthcare-obamacare

 

Wotta dewshbagg

[Larry]

Oh, I assume this is yet another case of "well, there's a statement that's kinda similar to his, that is technically true". Which therefore makes it close enough for politics. 

 

I bet there is not a single case in the history of the US where the cause of death listed on the death certificate is "insufficient health insurance". 

 

OTOH, if you look at "how many people die each year of things like cancer, that could have been treated, (and relatively cheaply), if we had caught it earlier. But the guy couldn't afford to pay for the test.", then I suspect the number is much larger than zero.