Trump admiinistration cuts funding for health care sign-ups out

>A number of states that operate their own insurance exchanges have extended the open enrollment period beyond the November 1 to December 15 period on the federal marketplace, healthcare.gov. California, Minnesota, Colorado and others have set January enrollment deadlines.

>CMS' decision to cut exchange advertising for next year comes just ahead of a September 5 deadline for insurers to submit final rate revisions for 2018. It underscores health insurers' continuing concerns about the Trump administration's commitment to promoting enrollment.

>"Effective education ensures that consumers understand their coverage options and encourages broader participation of healthy individuals," said Kristine Grow, spokeswoman for the Association of Health Insurance Plans, the industry's lobbying group. "Marketing, outreach, and education are critical to ensure that all consumers are aware of the upcoming open enrollment period, understand new timelines, and enroll by the deadline."

>Slavitt notes that, In addition to cutting funding for enrollment efforts, the Trump administration cut the enrollment period in half this year to just six weeks, compared to three months over the last few years.

>"I think it's their hope that at the end of the enrollment period that they can announce significantly lower enrollment. At least, that appears to be their hope. It that's their objective, I'm sure they can achieve it," Slavitt Said.

>Consumer advocacy group Protect Our Care denounced the Trump administration's move.

>"It's one thing to tweet about your opposition to a law, it's another to undermine it, sabotage it and refuse to do your duty," the group said in a statement Thursday.

>--The Associated Press contributed to this report.

>>174014
>out of spite
Actually probably more to do with trying to save money for the increasing amount of bailouts the program will need, since it continues to be an abysmal failure.

>>174019
"these are all funds that come out of user fees paid by the insurance companies. This wouldn't cost the federal government a nickel"

the more folks who buy insurance, the more effective cost sharing is.

>increasing amount of bailouts the program will need
if you consider a transaction to be a bailout, then sure. The government is essentially saying, if you paid into the system while you had the ability to purchase insurance, then you'll be protected if you get sick and lose the ability to pay, because we'll pay the insurance company to keep you on board.
That's how insurance and cost-sharing works. Everyone has an obligation to pay at least when they can so that everyone knows a safety net exists for them.

As far as abysmal failure goes, healthcare costs grew much faster before the ACA was enacted even given the attempts by republican state legislatures and congresspeople to sabotage the law's implementation. If anything, we need much stronger cost controls but the democrats just did what they could manage given that Republicans promised never to work with Obama on any legislation.

Good

>>174031
>the more folks who buy insurance, the more effective cost sharing is.
And yet people (notably mostly younger people) would still rather pay the cheaper penalty because they simply can't afford the still-rising prices of healthcare.

>if you consider a transaction to be a bailout, then sure.
So is money laundering, If you reduce everything to an absurdly simplistic form.

>That's how insurance and cost-sharing works. Everyone has an obligation to pay at least when they can so that everyone knows a safety net exists for them.
"Having the option" to pay into such a pool in a private transaction is one thing

>healthcare costs grew much faster before the ACA
Nope.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/health-care-spending-hike-prediction-120740
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/23/health-care-spending-increased-at-faster-pace-in-2015-as-prices-rose.html
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/new-peak-us-health-care-spending-10345-per-person/
https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/downloads/highlights.pdf

The ACA is an abysmal failure and trends continue to show it's going to be even more of an abysmal failure.
You don't know shit about economics bro.

>>174033
>And yet people (notably mostly younger people) would still rather pay the cheaper penalty because they simply can't afford the still-rising prices of healthcare.
Right, the current system is imperfect but with a world of difference from the arbitrary clusterfuck "landscape" that existed before, where if I pay into the insurance system all my life and then fall sick I could lose everything because of a lapse in employment.

>So is money laundering, If you reduce everything to an absurdly simplistic form.
How is it absurdly simplistic? Insurance companies are being paid by the federal government to provide coverage to those that lost the ability to afford it. Conservatives opined for that system because it preserves profit motive.

>"Having the option" to pay into such a pool in a private transaction is one thing
And the reason it never worked prior to the ACA is because when you make a collective responsibility voluntary, you end up with a death spiral. Most people can agree insurance that works when people need it most is a good thing. But when it comes time to pay one's fair share, a lot of people avoid paying into the system. That makes the cost of premiums approach the cost of care. Which causes more people to stop paying into the system. This is a positive feedback cycle that ended with kicking people off insurance when they needed it most because it's pointless when the premiums cost the same as paying care entirely out-of-pocket.

>>174033

>>healthcare costs grew much faster before the ACA
>Nope.
The cost of healthcare was already increasing well beyond the rate of inflation pre-ACA, even while middle-class wages stagnated. Price controls under the ACA have reduced the rate of price increase in premiums.

>In 2008, the average employer-sponsored family plan cost a total of $12,680, with employees footing $3,354 of the bill, according to Kaiser data. By 2016, the cost of the average employer family plan was up to $18,142 for the year, with workers picking up $5,277 of the tab.These increased costs for employers and employees alike may seem steep?up around 50% over the past eight years?but they could have risen far higher had the Affordable Care Act never passed. The Kaiser study shows that average family premiums rose 20% from 2011 to 2016. That rate of increase is actually much lower than the previous five years (up 31% from 2006 to 2011) and the five years before that (up 63% from 2001 to 2006).
http://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/health-care-costs-and-election-2008/

>The ACA is an abysmal failure and trends continue to show it's going to be even more of an abysmal failure.
>You don't know shit about economics bro.
ad hominems, ad hominems everywhere
The ACA will continue to chug along despite republican attempts at sabotage. Let's hope we get something like single payer soon so that we can pay less per capita on healthcare and get better outcomes across the board like every other modern country.
Except for cancer outcomes. We do better than other countries there but ironically because that's the only place we have more government involvement (threat of malpractice lawsuits make physicians in the US order more tests which means cancers are caught earlier which is typically critical in treating them effectively).

>Obamacare Cost in my (Very Red) state
$30.96 for a policy at an impoverished level. This includes Dental and Vision
>Penalty cost at my tax bracket
$635

Running Theory;
The whiners crying about being unable to afford insurance are either
>A
Too lazy to apply for Obamacare's Cheap Plans
>B
Too dumb to realize Obamacare Plans are cheap
>C.
Paying for Insurance through work that is unnecessarily high because of some bullshit their boss told them

Honestly. This shit speaks for itself. The ACA isn't great by any means, but to say you can't afford insurance of any kind is ludicrous. You can afford it you just want to scream like an autistic 3rd grader because mommy and daddy kicked you off the plan. Its like a Republican Version of Nigger Gibs. Its hilarious and sad.

>>174042
>...for a policy at an impoverished level..
>Penalty cost at my tax bracket
Summin aint right. What state is it? Also what year are you going by because the penalty increases annually. Up here in NY the price of paying the penalty this year is the greater of 2085 or 2.5% of my taxable income (its lower than $83400 so I pay 2085 if uninsured) but the monthly cost of the cheapest bronze plan in my county is $432 a month (5184 a year) for just me before any subsidies or grants if I am actually impoverished or any dependants. If I was still living alone and a shit job Id take the extra $3000 over a healthcare plan that still charges me 40% of the cost of my medical bills

Running theory:
People who approve of Obamacare are the ones getting $30 a month health insurance at the expense of those that work and pay $400 a month for health insurance. That or those who dont pay their own health insurance yet

>>174042
No, you fucking faggot, I cannot afford health insurance. It's maths, retard. If I can barely afford rent while I'm school, working for dirt bag employers because they are the only option, maybe I can't afford that trip to the doctor to deal with having to piss 15 times a day.
I make too much money to qualify for health benefits, but not enough to afford it on my own.
"get another job".
Yes, let me just pray to Satan for a moment and magically find another job. No, dipshit, there are no other jobs in town.
"move away"
With what money, dipshit?

Think about what you write for a moment before clicking "submit". You don't know everything and your perspective is not the only one.

>>174032
came here to post this

>>174074
>It's maths

>using maths not math
>complaining about american healthcare

get out britfag

How Employer Paid Health Benefits steal from the Poor

Very simply, Employer Paid Health Benefits are paid using pre-tax dollars.

As an example, take someone with Health Benefits that cost $12,000/year. Assume they earn about $100,000/year. They see $500/month on their pay statement, their employer pays the other $500/month.

We pay for Health Insurance using pre-tax dollars. Assume this person is a 30% tax bracket (depends on what State they live in). So they are getting their $10,000 policy tax free, saving about $3,000/year. In other words, the government has to make up this $3,000 loss of tax from other sources.

Incidentally, $3,000/year is the average government cost of providing Medicaid Health Care to low-income families. That is Health Care with no deductible, no co-pay.

Also the CBO says that the average overhead of Health Insurance is about 30% (non-medical costs, e.g. CEO wages, stockholder profits, administrative costs, etc..) In comparison, Medicare has about a 1% administrative overhead.

So long as insurance lobbyist write our laws and tax code, those rules favor them, and we'll pay higher prices.

So what would happen if I refuse to pay taxes on the penalty for not having medical insurance?

>>174090
Maths is correct and can be used im either form of English; you're just retarded.

>>174014

its fucking hilarious how amerifat elites turn USA into fucking facsist state when the world is turning around and getting ready to waste this shithole to nuclear waste shit.

>>174034
>How is it absurdly simplistic?
Because it's a bailout. Full stop.

>Insurance companies are being paid by the federal government to provide coverage to those that lost the ability to afford it.
This is called a bailout.

>Conservatives opined for that system because it preserves profit motive.
Conservatives had nothing to do with the ACA and none voted for it. Full stop.

>And the reason it never worked prior to the ACA is because when you make a collective responsibility voluntary, you end up with a death spiral.
Like the very real and measurable death spiral the ACA is in right now? Oh the ACA isn't voluntary? Oh gee. Guess we'll just have to wait and watch it get worse.

>>174038
>The cost of healthcare was already increasing well beyond the rate of inflation pre-ACA
Demonstrably false. See: my numerous links as opposed to your one.

>The ACA will continue to chug along despite republican attempts at sabotage.
And as it continues to get worse, resistance to its repeal will be political poison and politicians who actually want to win will distance themselves from any semblence of support of the ACA.

>Let's hope we get something like single payer soon so that we can pay more per capita on healthcare and get longer wait times and lower quality service across the board like every other modern country.
FTFY. Get educated.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/upshot/when-health-coverage-expansion-means-longer-waits-for-a-doctor.html?mcubz=1
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2016-08-03/canadians-increasingly-come-to-us-for-health-care
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-08/why-universal-health-care-is-no-cure-all
http://www.heritage.org/health-care-reform/report/single-payer-why-government-run-health-care-will-harm-both-patients-and
https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/universal-healthcares-dirty-little-secrets

>>174136
definition of a bailout:
"an act of giving financial assistance to a failing business or economy to save it from collapse."
In any case, it's a bailout like me exchanging money for goods and services at market value is a bailout of every business I I've ever patronized.
The ACA became a "bailout" after Trump realized he'll have to throw everything and the kitchen sink at it to make it lose its majority approval in the US. People start approving as soon as the prospect of returning to the old status quo seems a reality. Not only does it have majority approval, but among those that disapprove of Obamacare, something like 1/3 approve of the ACA. Change the name and they start approving. Most of the disapproval is Obama derangement syndrome.

>Conservatives had nothing to do with the ACA and none voted for it. Full stop.
The foundation of the law is a product of a right wing think tank that designed a pathway to universal coverage that preserved profit motive and market competition among insurers.
Not to mention the hundreds of republican amendments in it.

>Demonstrably false. See: my numerous links as opposed to your one.
lol. "I don't have time to explain, just believe me, if you read this list of articles I have it'll all become clear."

>FTFY. Get educated.
There's that wall of links again. Alluding to the existence of a counter point without presenting it. If you want, I'll find 50 links in favor. We'll just compare the number of links we can google up.

>>174068
Most of those getting the benfit of obama care are those in states that took all the subsides or get the cost supplements.

The blue balled people are those in red states or in the gray area of not poor enough to get any relief.

The plan isn't perfect, but the only alternatives we've seen offered so far is let the insuurance companies sell across state lines, allow custom plans, and free market will solve it. Not sure how well the former will work, custom plans sounds like a setup for fine print catches, and the free market is how we got to our current point.

>>174129
Why are you so inbred island savages so upset about some sunken tea?

>>174151
>The ACA became a "bailout" after Trump realized he'll have to throw everything and the kitchen sink at it to make it lose its majority approval in the US. People start approving as soon as the prospect of returning to the old status quo seems a reality. Not only does it have majority approval, but among those that disapprove of Obamacare, something like 1/3 approve of the ACA. Change the name and they start approving. Most of the disapproval is Obama derangement syndrome.
Ridiculous, delusional, sad. Most of the disapproval is from the increased amount of money people are now forced by law to pay for what are now reduced options in their health insurance. The old "status quo" was a problem already exacerbated by government, one that more government has been shown to be unable to solve. But like I've been saying, all that needs to be done is to wait for it to continue to fall apart and get worse. How many more failed exchanges you think it has left in it?

>The foundation of the law is a product of a right wing think tank that designed a pathway to universal coverage that preserved profit motive and market competition among insurers. Not to mention the hundreds of republican amendments in it.
There is aboslutley no excuse you're going to be able to pull from your go-to-sheet that will make up for the ACA being a 100% DNC blunder. Not a single Republican voted for this it despite the "hundreds of republican amendments" supposedly in it you don' mention before having the audacity to accuse me of not having the time to explain my own viewpoints.

>>174136
>>174228
>lol. "I don't have time to explain, just believe me, if you read this list of articles I have it'll all become clear."
>I don't understand what similar results shown repeatedly across a spectrum of outlets with political beliefs mean

>Alluding to the existence of a counter point without presenting it.
Like those hundreds of republican amendments? Update your sheet.

>If you want, I'll find 50 links in favor. We'll just compare the number of links we can google up.
I posted several links from several websites who are blatantly ideologically aligned with the concept of the ACA, who report the same issues. It's not about who's in favor, it's about results. You are aware with the concept of replication as it applies to scientific validity as opposed to say, political propaganda, yes?

>>174228
>the free market is how we got to our current point
The free market would literally be the first and second things you described, minutes the millions of dollars of government subsidization that drives up prices.

The disinformation in this thread is fucking HIGH.

>>174229
why would government subsidies drive up prices

government monopolies, interference, regulation, yes, but subsidies? who'se economic textbooks are you reading?

There are way too many problems with our current health system.

People need to stop making bad choices. Stop eating shitty food and do damn reasearch.

Doctors are under the control of the pharmaceutical companies. They don't have your best interests at heart. Cancer is curable. So is diabetes. Why would they cure these when they make billions of dollars?

>>174248
>there are way too many problems with our current health system
I agree, but what we have is better than leaving it to the free market
>People need to stop making bad choices. Stop eating shitty food and do some damn research
They should, but those that end up in the hospital through no fault of their own should be able to afford the care they need
>Doctors are under the control of the pharmaceutical companies. They don't have your best interests at heart. Cancer is curable. So is diabetes
Many people that go into healthcare end up being corrupted by the money, but that doesn't mean that there aren't good people. I'd like proof for the other claims

>>174014
When is he going to stop being a spiteful cunt, and act like a President?

>>174014
It's time we stopped enabling this failure of a program. By every metric the ACA has failed. The only thing it did was forced people to buy health insurance they didn't want or need.

The ratio of Administrative cost to people who actually lay hands on the patients like Doctors and Nurses, is very high.
http://www.healthline.com/health-news/policy-ten-administrators-for-every-one-us-doctor-092813

All these employees of all these Insurance Companies have to get paid to shuffle that mountain of paper and do all that data entry and project managment.

What if all those jobs were made obsolete?

What if you could just pay your doctor directly without all the layers of other shit?

Pay them via the blockchain.
Keep your records private within a platform like EOS.

Let Doctors in the various fields compete across state lines.

If Uber can revolutionize transportation, then cutting out fluff in the payments and keeping medical records encrypted and private between you and your doctor is not such a hard concept to achieve.

>USA has the highest cost of healthcare in the world
>doesn't even cover it's citizens, consistently ranks below most other developed countries
>Burgers are happy with the state of said system

Why?

>>174372
How about we just get rid of the gargantuan inefficiency that is a private health insurance industry altogether and have the government act as a non-profit without any of the added artificial costs like a marketing team for each company. Let the government handle the task of contracting providers and handling payment. An insurance pool containing every patient also has the added benefit of much more negotiating power when it comes to producing a contract with favorable terms from the consumer end.
It should just be medicare for all for the bare minimum of conventional healthcare, and then people can purchase more or special coverage on top of that from the private market if they want.

In the US we pay more per capita in healthcare than every other modern country yet our outcomes are anything but the best. With regard to wait times, it's anything but clear cut. First of all, we already have issues with wait times because when people can't afford preventive care, they have to go to the emergency room for all their needs, which translates into the longer lines at emergency and urgent care departments.

In any case, longer wait times for appointments are a consequence of greater demand from more people gaining access to preventative care that they didn't have before. The people who could already afford care do wait longer but everyone else actually gets care where when they otherwise wouldn't get anything. When people have access to preventative care they can be more productive and they're less likely to end up in an emergency room, subsequently leaving other patients and the taxpayer on the hook anyway if they can't pay for emergency care.

>>174248
>People need to stop making bad choices. Stop eating shitty food and do damn research.

We need to change the way we subsidize agriculture, improve education, and in general change the incentives for lifestyle choices to lower healthcare costs from that end. But you can't just say "screw everyone regardless of their circumstances, including children", simply because there are a minority of irresponsible people. It doesn't make sense from a macroeconomic or humanitarian standpoint. It's not meritocratic to screw children because they or their parents were born into poverty and fell ill. It doesn't help productivity for people to wait until they're in emergency condition to seek care, the cost of which will just be passed on to others. It's just arbitrarily cruel.

>>174230
>government monopolies, interference, regulation, yes, but subsidies? who'se economic textbooks are you reading?

Most people agree that the free market and profit incentive are good things because they encourage productivity and innovation. But most people also agree there are limits to what it can accomplish by itself. Our government has a monopoly on force. It is the arbiter that decides how we divvy up property rights, and enforces a person's claim on a given resource. That means we ultimately decide how resources are distributed by democratic consent in this society. And any society that allows such a gross level of income inequality as we have in this country, where some people get to make infinite dumb choices and still be allowed to control resources beyond any other man's wildest dreams, while other people lose their ability to work or die a slow painful death through no fault of their own, is a society that has its priorities completely fucked. A free market to health insurance has absolutely no ethical, humanitarian, or macroeconomic standing.

>>174407
Ignorance, stubborness and a chronic hatred of complex political thought that isn't distilled into soundbites.

>>174407
People do not like being told that their way is wrong and the ways of foreign lands are better, this is true everywhere. What's unique is that many Americans unironically believing that being the #1 nation in many aspects means being the #1 country in all aspects, and maybe how much our politicians are in bed with big business and will defend them from efforts at reform.

>out of spite

Stopped reading there.

>>174407
Because muh socialism is bad meme and believing if people can't afford chemo then they shouldn't have got pancreatic cancer in the first place.

>>174416
"have the government act as a non-profit"

No, I am saying cut out everything between the patient and the doctor!

You imagine that somehow anything the governments touches does not turn into a huge pile of costly bureaucracy... so prices go up and quality goes down...

If a Doctor is only good at one procedure, say, vasectomies, and he is having a slow week and wants to drop prices to make payroll - it's nobody's business but his and the patients that week.

It's a thing none of you seem to get - it's called the Free Market.

All of you just keep bleating about loving Socialism and endless wasteful Bureaucracy.

It's like you keep trying the same exact thing expecting a different result.

This bullshit has thwarted Natural Selection too fucking long. And when you push the pendulum too fucking far Left, do not be surprised when it swings back way the fuck Right.

Sane people just want it to hang in the middle.

Sorry, Socialism doesn't work because human beings are not bees. A hundred million deaths in the last century seems to be ignored by you motherfuckers ;-)

Natural Selection always catches up in the end.

>>174501
Socialism is bad. Look at Venezuela for the latest example.

>>174416
Government always fails.
The VA is a perfect example of why I don't want them touching private Enterprise.

>>174407
government corruption

>>174407
The government in the US is massive cluster fuck of retardation. It is impossible for a good healthcare system to be implemented even moderate efficiency. What we have right now is the best we could ever hope to manage.

>>174516
You are correct, but if you read what the people of Venezuela are saying, you can tell they are quite fucked. They believe that if they overthrow the current Socialist government, they will just replace it with another Socialist government... so, they deserve exactly what is happening. Socialism is a fucking terminal disease. In the "United" States, we have one Purple Party that has made everyone so stupid that they don't even know it is Marxist.

When reality returns, you know, Meritocracy, Free Market, letting bad ideas actually fail and letting good ideas actually succeed, it will be ugly for a while.

>>174512
>No, I am saying cut out everything between the patient and the doctor!
This is a fantasy considering medical costs can easily range into the hundreds of thousands or more; health insurance has been an issue since the 19th century because that's the only feasible way most of the country to protect their livelihoods in case of a catastrophic health failure.

>You imagine that somehow anything the governments touches does not turn into a huge pile of costly bureaucracy... so prices go up and quality goes down...
This talking point looks nice on a bumper sticker but figures don't bear that out. The US has always spent more on healthcare per capita than any other country on Earth and our outcomes are anything but superior despite the fact that all the countries that do better than us have universal coverage facilitated by the government.

Not to mention, people with healthcare plans in the US are more satisfied, by a wide margin:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/186527/americans-government-health-plans-satisfied.aspx

>If a Doctor is only good at one procedure, say, vasectomies, and he is having a slow week and wants to drop prices to make payroll - it's nobody's business but his and the patients that week.
This is another fantasy. Profiteering is absolutely rampant in the medical industry. Pharmaceuticals have profit margins of thousands of times the overhead costs per pill, largest of any industry. Patients can't consent to care when they're having an emergency or they're incapacitated, they're at the mercy of whatever the emergency room they're taken to wants to charge. When you have a captive consumer whom you can charge anything, paying out of pocket stops becoming an option for most people.

In any case, single payer doesn't mean the government just micromanages prices. You have price negotiations when the government negotiates contracts with providers. And doctors are more likely to provide competitive terms when insurance pool contains all of their patients.

>>174529
"medical costs can easily range into the hundreds of thousands or more" - yea, because of all the fucking bureaucracy.

Ron Paul spoke of delivering a baby for a poor black couple in a rural part of Texas. He knew they didn't have any money... The hardworking farmer wanted to pay something, so he gave Dr. Paul a goat. So, he was happy, Dr. Paul was happy. Who wasn't happy? Insurance Companies and the Government, because they didn't get 7/8 of the fucking goat.

It's like you have a GIGANTIC leech on your back, but you tell everyone it is not there, and they are imagining it... you ridicule us and say we are living a "fantasy" when we call all see the fucking leech on your back ;-)

It's OK, Natural Selection always wins.
You can only thwart it for so long.

Enjoy.

>>174516
The US is socialist in that our economy is organized by democratic consent and has featured regulations and subsidies and income redistribution since the late 19th century and especially immediately following the second world war. Virtually all of the countries with higher HDI than the US have universal health care. In fact they're almost all more socialist than we are, many having been governed on social democratic platforms for decades. Specific policies and lack of representative government are bad. Socialism isn't bad and unsurprisingly it's far more sensible than either extreme of a market with no oversight and no protections for the working class vs a command economy. The far right in this country just want people to misidentify what socialism means and want to group liberal platform with [practically unrelated failures of government elsewhere.

>>174534
http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-socialism-in-general-has-a-record-of-failure-so-blatant-that-only-an-intellectual-could-thomas-sowell-27-84-63.jpg

Sowell has many wise words:

"Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous. Among people of every race, color, and creed, all around the world, socialism has led to hunger in countries that used to have surplus food to export.... Nevertheless, for many of those who deal primarily in ideas, socialism remains an attractive idea -- in fact, seductive. Its every failure is explained away as due to the inadequacies of particular leaders."

The rich are suffering and the poor aren't doing enough to help them --- said nobody.

Lower taxes? Okay, but only if you get rid of tax deductions, such as pre-tax dollars for health insurance, deductible interest and mortgage payments, deductions for business capital expenses, charitable donations, and various tax credits.