Health Exchanges For Judaeo-Christian Values

 Four horsemen riding, riding, riding to my chamber door...
We come to kill your health care... nothing More!
Poe

I have decided to adopt this wonderful drawing as my metaphoric representation of the US Congress, for it works on so many levels. As previously mentioned, the Congress has had a tendency to act as the stable boys and grounds keepers at some hunt club frequented by the Night Breed. 

So it comes as no surprise that Republicans - being rational actors, although their rationality is tainted by a severe strain of dubious ideology - would go about reconfiguring health care and repealing the ACA (ObamaCare) in a way that is "rational"... meaning that some people (think of them like salami) will be "left behind" (think of the salami hitting the fan).

It was obvious to anybody.
They have neither the motivation nor the charity nor the brains to effect such a change, as I said previously.
http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-four-horsemen-of-individual-health.html


On health care, Republicans consider the meaning of ‘everybody’
01/18/17 09:20 AM—Updated 01/18/17 10:41 AM
By Steve Benen
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/health-care-republicans-consider-the-meaning-everybody?ref=yfp

Congressional Republicans recently conceded among themselves that they’ll “never” be able to craft a health-care reform plan that covers “as many people as Obamacare does.” No one, however, told Donald Trump.

The president-elect boasted to the Washington Post this week, “We’re going to have insurance for everybody. There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.” Trump added that Americans “can expect to have great health care…. Much less expensive and much better.”

The benchmarks, which Trump has no idea how to meet, were fairly specific: his administration is committing to universal coverage, “much lower deductibles,” and a simpler and less expensive system in which all Americans are “beautifully covered.”

Was Trump over-promising? Yes. Will he fail to meet his own goals? Definitely.

The funny part, however, is watching Republicans deal with the consequences of the incoming president’s rhetoric. BuzzFeed had this report late yesterday:

[S]ome Republicans in the Senate say they are working on repealing and replacing Obamacare under the belief that Trump misspoke.

Ah yes, the misstatement. The incoming president assured the American public that the Affordable Care Act will be repealed and replaced with a system in which “everybody” has insurance, to which GOP lawmakers are effectively responding, “Let’s assume he didn’t actually mean ‘everybody.’”

[...]

Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence Flanking the Head Horseman

Rational actors...
Very soon, the "invisible hand" of political markets will move and write

Mene, mene  tekel upharsin

In the disaster of the Republicans we will all come to grief. 

And art anticipates life again, as we note that "left behind" and "left out" are the same thing, and an imaginary moral taint will accrue to those without health care....

I mean, they must be seen as inferiors and not deserving of health care, for how else could we live with our "Judaeo-Christian" selves?

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note:
From the same op.cit. above we see:

...All of which brings us to the larger problem of what Trump’s aides and allies do when the president-elect says something problematic or demonstrably false. As Corey Lewandowski put it a while back, voters “understood that sometimes, when you have a conversation with people, whether it’s around the dinner table or at a bar, you’re going to say things, and sometimes you don’t have all the facts to back it up.”

A member of Trump’s transition team added in December that Americans should take the president-elect’s rhetoric “symbolically,” not literally. Kellyanne Conway said last week that Americans shouldn’t necessarily “go with what’s come out of his mouth,” but rather, we should “look at what’s in his heart.”...

It is hard to know what to say when confronted by this magnitude of claptrap.

I read Mr. Lewandowski's statement as something like talk about the weather:

"Ah, yup. That there health care is mighty fine, but it is Michigan, so just wait a few minutes 'n' she'll change!  Yup."

 As for Ms. Conway's statement, it is not Mr. Trump's heart that gives us the shivers. It is the withered hearts of the Congress.

The Four Horsemen Of Individual Health Care

...riding, riding, riding, not merely for the Affordable Care Act, known commonly as ObamaCare.

Even I, who am not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, knows that businesses do not like uncertainties, and they really do not like uncertainty on the scale of the Death Star in Star Wars.
I mean, the whole premise of starting a small business is having a hearty meal of torturous work preceded by an tapas plate of uncertainty and worry. Who wants more?

 The lack of intelligence, the lack of ability, the lack of real interest in individual welfare and in individual health are the four horsemen of the Apocalypse for the ACA and for all Individual Health Care that meaningfully addresses the needs of the millions who were without health care before the ACA.

It does not matter when the Republican repeal the ACA, because they will never have an adequate replacement ready. It is fairly obvious that the best the Congress will do is toss the hot potato back to the States, who will then let the bloody thing drop... like a hot potato.
I mean, the track record of the US Congress for doing things intelligently over the past 20 years is not stellar, and if the names of the four horsemen are Death, Plague, Famine, and War, the US Congress has acted more like a group of stable boys prepping the grounds armageddon-wise at some apocalyptical, end-of-times,  Ride and Hunt Club.

When the people in power say they are going to destroy something, businesses take heed. When the people doing the destroying have demonstrated no skill in building, businesses take note.

A very good summation here:

J.B. Silvers, Professor of Health Finance, Case Western Reserve University

The Conversation

As Republicans ready to dismantle ACA, insurers likely to bolt
December 29, 2016 4.19pm EST
https://theconversation.com/as-republicans-ready-to-dismantle-aca-insurers-likely-to-bolt-70317

There’s a joke among insurers that there are two things that health insurance companies hate to do – take risks and pay claims. But, of course, these are the essence of their business!

Yet, if they do too much of either, they will go broke, and if they do too little, their customers will find a better policy. This balancing act isn’t too hard if they have a pool sufficient to average out the highs and lows. I speak with some experience as the former CEO of one of these firms.

Employer-sponsored insurance has fit this model fairly well, providing good stability and reasonable predictability. Unfortunately, the market for individuals has never worked well...

An extremely good accounting of what has happened and so logical that it functions as sort of a spoiler alert  for what is going to happen. The last sentence quoted above gives it away: the market for individuals never functioned very well, so the task is to better that market; to amend, to make better, not to destroy.

Ah, well. It must await a more enlightened age yet to come.

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The Problem With The ACA (Obama Care)

The Republicans think they can repeal the ACA and slip in a replacement that is even better (!?!?) without any problems. I do not have any idea how they can believe this, since they do not have the replacement for the ACA - or Obama Care - outlined yet, so they really are going totally on Political Faith.
A great example of religion and politics being pretty much the same type of behaviors, great emotions, intense desires, vast hopes, and all summed up in some sort of ideological dogmatic.

I think I'm going to enjoy it. Not because they are going to mess up the health care system. I don't think I'll enjoy that. But I will enjoy being right in on the beginning of the end.

Point 1

The ACA was based on a lot of work, much of it Mitt Romney's in Massachusetts. Basic changes such as not requiring everyone to have health care insurance will destroy the nation's Health Care Insurance system as surely as our continued benign neglect destroys the nation's infrastructure.

Any workable replacement that is not a bad joke will resemble Massachusetts health insurance system and the ACA.
Any workable replacement of Obama Care will be (in essence) Obama Care.
And everyone will know it.

Point 2

If there is a disaster in the nation's health care system, Mr. Trump will loudly and clearly blame the Republican party, a party which did not much want him in the first place.
This will turn the Republican party into a  minority party of the wealthy, while the rest of the people who voted for Mr. Trump will continue to do so.

Then he will attack the Democrats. However, I'm not so sure they will self-destruct like the Republicans are going to do.


This will be bigger than the Super Bowl.
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