Tag Archives: Healthcare

The Republican Trump Health Insurance Plan Is Not Well Supported

In a current poll, 61% of Americans want to retain Obamacare, and improve this already implemented and existing program. A mere 37% want to “repeal and replace” it.

About 69% of American want the Republicans, including the Republican President, to to do some combination of working with Congressional Democrats or a combination of Democrats and Republicans to improve the plan. The preference for having the Democrats do this as opposed to a combination is about 2:1. People have apparently observed that the Republicans are not capable of coming up with a usable plan.

The Republicans, including the Republican President, seemed to threaten Obamacare a while back, saying that through executive order and cabinet level actions, they should damage the existing Obamacare plan to make it look bad so people want it less. A tad under 80% of Americans oppose this idea. A mere 13% support it.

One of the major changes in the newly proposed plan, which the Republican Congress and President intend to pass into law by Friday, is that states would have more power to ignore parts of the plan or change it. The new survey clearly indicates that Americans are very opposed to this idea, which is the main new feature of this plan. About 62% of Americans want things like preventative services, maternity and pediatric care, prescription drugs, etc to be covered in all states. About 70% want pre-existing conditions covered in all states.

This very negative view of Paul Ryan and Donald Trump’s version of a health insurance reform plan comes at the same time as parallel polling indicates that the Republican President is at this moment the least popular president known to polling science. There were a couple of real doozies in the past, but there is no polling data to show just how much the country disliked those individuals. For all the measured presidents, the current Republican president has the lowest ranking, and not by a small amount.

Where to eat, not eat

Several restaurants are laying off employees, needlessly, as a form of passive aggressive snit in objection to Obamacare. They don’t want to have to give their employees health insurance. I think some of these companies are also known for having opposed Obama in the election, which is their right (corporations are people too, after all!) but this is actually, in my view, a form of voter intimidation large scale. If the mainly fast and medium-speed food industry collaborates tacitly or not to make a certain voting pattern hurt all of their employees, they are creating a class of people who may fee forced to vote against their own interest.

So, you know what to do. You will have to avoid eating in those establishments. Here is a graphic that lists the currently known offenders:

That is from here.

According to Fat Chick in LA, there are some companies that are “good” (for now). They are:

<ul>
  • White Castle
  • <li>Starbucks</li>
    
    <li>California Pizza Kitchen</li>
    
    <li>PF Changs</li>
    
    <li>T.G.I. Fridays</li></ul>
    

    Click through to FCILA’s tumbler to read the details on the benefits offered by the “good” (for now) companies.

    Romney on Pre-Existing Conditions

    Romney would replace Obamacare with a law that would require insurers to do what they were already doing before Obamacare, but makes it sound better than it is:

    The key phrase here is “continuously insured.”

    As pointed out by Jonathan Cohn via Think Progress:

    the federal government already forbids insurers from denying coverage to the continuously covered through the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). But the measure has been seen as a failure because “there is no limit on what insurers can charge under HIPAA” and the law does “little to regulate the content of coverage, leaving the door open to insurers to offer bare-bones policies. In addition, HIPAA notice requirements are weak, making it hard for people to know about this protection.”

    Turns out, Obama totally stole the idea of Obamacare!

    … the hazzards of sickness … should be provided for through insurance. This should be [charged to] the industries the employer, the employee, and perhaps the people at large … Wherever such standards are not met by given establishments, by given industries, are unprovided for by a legislature, or are balked by unenlightened courts, the workers are in jeopardy, the progressive employer is penalized, and the community pays a heavy cost in lessened efficiency and in misery. What [European country] has done in the way of old age pensions or insurance should be studied by us, and the system adapted to our uses, with whatever modifications are rendered necessary by our different ways of life and habits of thought.

    That was Teddy Roosevelt in 1912.

    What’s the difference between Teddy Roosevelt’s health care plan and Obama’s health care plan? There is only one important difference. Obama got it done.

    Moveon.org’s 10 Things Every American Should Know About Health Care Reform

    People are complaining that the health care bill that is currently on the verge of being law is flawed.

    Well, duh. People who actually claim that this bill should not become law because it is flawed come in two flavors:

    1) Those who are simply against all health care reform and are just blowing this out of one orifice or another. Birthers, teabaggers, Republicans, heatlh care lobbyists, other undesirables.

    2) People who have little knowledge of how these things work and just woke up to find that reality is not what they assumed, in their ignorance it to be. Have you ever heard of the EPA and environmental regulation? The “Great Society” and legal protections for disadvantaged groups? The New Deal and banking regulation?

    All three of those major shifts if the interrelationship between society and government, all of which progressives look back on and can justifiably claim to be good things, started out as sucky law. This is how it is done. You propose some good law, the yahoos show up and delay, damage, mess with the process until you finally have something that can’t pass. Then you give up.

    Then you come back and do it again. And again. And again. And finally, you get the law passed.

    Then you have this law that is not what you wanted, but you DO have a bill. You are now, finally, at the table. The basic idea of having laws of some kind dealing with a basic issue … racial discrimination, environmental protection, banking regulation, or people- and health-oriented health care insurance regulation … is then a reality, and further negotiations must start from that point, in stead of the perspective that the notion of reform is alien.

    If you look a those early versions for these other, earlier efforts they were much less developed and probably much less effective than the current health care bill is. And to demonstrate that, I give you the recently posted list of ten good things about this bill from Moveon.org:

    Continue reading Moveon.org’s 10 Things Every American Should Know About Health Care Reform

    Let’s Get this Done

    The current health care bill, which we DO need to pass (Stop whinging that is not perfect. Neither are you. We let you pass.) has two more steps to go through. Reconciliation and signing by the President. Barack will take care of that second part, but we need to pressure congress to take care of that first part.

    Harry Reid has a petition for you to sign to help develop this support.


    Click Here to Sign