Fox News reports that Trump voters will face large increases in the cost of medical coverage under the plan proposed by Trump and the GOP.
Raising a political problem as much as a financial one, newly released budget estimates show elderly Americans could be hit hard by premium hikes under Republicans’ ObamaCare repeal bill — affecting a key constituency for President Trump.
The Congressional Budget Office report released Monday shows 64-year olds making $26,500 would see premiums increase by an estimated 750 percent by 2026.
Under current law, they pay $1,700. But according to CBO projections, under the new bill, this group would have to pay almost $14,600—more than half their income.
Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney pushed back Tuesday when asked about a Politico report suggesting the “clear losers” of the American Health Care Act would be Trump voters between the ages of 50 and 64, right below the Medicare eligibility age of 65.
The AARP disagreees with Mulvaney.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
here is the truth about the GOP’s act.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEGpriv2TAc&feature=em-subs_digest-vrecs
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My 60 year old cousin, a self employed realtor, is freaking out about the health insurance rates with good reason. Trump care is really Ryan’s baby, and he is giddy about the prospect of shifting this market based burden on to elderly individuals. Spicer has been spinning the wonderful “value” of choice, but once again, it’s a lie. Older Americans have a lot more to fear from cancer or heart disease than foreigners, but Trump will fund “care centers” for victims of immigrant crime, more delusion from “the sun king.”
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Well isn’t that the dirty big secrete of Medicare . It takes the highest risk most expensive demographic right out of the insurance pool and puts them in a single payer program . Medicaid does much the same by removing the poor and disabled from the risk pool.
I will not defend Obamacare let us put Trump and the Republicans up against real healthcare reform.
Single payer for all. While we are at it, let us relegate big pharma to the trash heap of history by eliminating drug patents and developing a public funding mechanism for drug research for the bargain basement price of a little over 32 billion a year . We already spend 30 billion through NIH on drug research. The savings would yield over 300 billion according to Baker and Stieglitz. If those economists are off by 50 % that saving would still be five times the investment . Hard to see that they would be off closer to 10 x a break even point.
And as for my whinny libertarian Internist, who cries about his college and Med school loans . I am sure we could pay for his education like Finland pays to educate teachers . And do it a lot less than the difference in price between American doctors and other first world first class doctors .
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Ryan would like to privatize Medicare too, if he could get away with it. He doesn’t think government should be in the insurance business. The government should be in the business of looking out for vulnerable citizens, and if insurance is part of the equation, so be it. Markets do not solve problems!
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Here’s are some dirty open secrets about health care that you’ll rarely hear about in the media or politicians:
No high performing nation in the world bases its health care system on private insurance or the free market. Some countries, like Germany, do have private insurers, but they provide insurance for a small minority of population who are wealthy. In a sense, it puts them in the front of the line of the health care queue, but the vast majority are covered by the public system.
Private insurance in the U.S. is a rigged game focused on profits, not providing health care. The prospect of profit is greatly increased because the most expensive portion of the population has been taken out of the equation: people over 65 through Medicare, peer persons and people with disabilities through Medicaid, and veterans through the VA (which is the the most socialist of all American governmental programs). The insurance industry incentivizes ways to make those who can’t pay to be pushed into one of those three programs. As long as executive high salaries and administrative costs are part of the health care system, nothing will change.
A free market must have transparency in order to function. At no level of the health care system does transparency exist. There is no standard to know what doctors’ fees are nor how to judge or compare them. There is no agreed upon standard that determines what medical procedures, diagnostics or tests should cost.
Archaic rules governing reimbursement rates for in- and out-patient drugs administration inflate costs. One of the reasons they are so hard to change is because medical providers who administer, for example, intravenous medication often get the majority of their funding from these procedures. In the rest of the world, these are called kickbacks.
Primary health care providers jealously guard their patients in order to profit off them and are generally loathe to refer patients to specialists when this is needed.
The terms pre-existing conditions and deductible are unknown in the rest of the civilized world. They are American constructs and concepts. Only American.
For all the woes and misinformation about “socialized medicine”, aggregate patient outcomes are better, stress-induced progression of illness is never based on the ability to pay, and incentives for preventive care (in some countries, like France, there are also incentives for recovery from medical procedures like additional vacation time and pay) are great.
Ignorance about health care is political and financial gold for those who profit off the system. The Hippocratic Oath is a myth in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
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Thank you ,my friend Greg for expanding on my comment . Now I will expand on yours. Our private insurance healthcare system grew out of the New Deal in several ways . The original Blues , Blue Cross Blue Shield were not for profit companies . During the thirties Roosevelt encourage Americans to buy in as a patriotic duty and Boy Scouts launched a door to door campaign to sell insurance .
Then came WW2 when Unions were not allowed to strike for wages .Wage . Price controls did not apply to bennifits like healthcare and pensions. Thus the defined benefit pension and healthcare insurance grew like crazy. Many of these union plans were multi employer plans as well as combining a pension and health insurance plans . Mine till this day is that model.
But with the decline of unions starting with the Taft Hartley act 1947 . What Truman described as an all out assault on American’s first Amendment rights . Compounded with the retooling of American factories starting in the late sixties and early seventies (that is when robots took American jobs.) Healthcare coverage stated a decline .
Then came the seventies and Kaiser foundation got Nixon to deregulate this industry. Convincing him that younger healthier people could by insurance much cheaper in a private for profit insurance market, sounds familiar . By the nineties employer provided Pensions and Health bennifits for the organized and the unorganized were in decline . By the next century in a free fall .
Then the Democrats (Clinton ) joined the Republican party. NAFTA , most favored Nation Status & G20 membership for China took a stable American manufacturing sector, (stable in numbers but an ever decreasing portion of the work force ) and destroyed it 5 million jobs many if not most union went out the window . The related job losses cost upward of 15 million jobs for engineering and other services from the Lunch room to the neighborhood market.
This put pressure through out the economy the number of Americans with health insurance provided by their employers was plummeting ,while those that remained were transferring more and more costs to employees . With only 6% of the private sector workforce covered by Unions there was nobody to negotiate these benefits for employees .
As corporate profits soared and the amount of profits returned to share holders went from 50% in the late 50s to 94% today . There was nothing left for employees.Certainly nothing for pensions and healthcare.
As more and more private sector workers were led to the slaughter ,. Blue collar and White collar workers were placed in competition with the lowest paid workers in the world. Through outsourcing and the importation of foreign labor, documented H1Bs and undocumented immigrants whose employers did not want to pay a living wage to American workers and preferred exploiting the immigrants trying to survive.
EMPLOYER PROVIDED HEALTHCARE WAS DYING . THOSE EMPLOYERS WHO STILL PROVIDED IT WERE TRANSFERRING
MORE AND MORE COST TO THE EMPLOYEE.
The Public sector Unions stood out like a soar thumb. They were targeted for the chopping block . The poor schmucks who lost everything to plutocrats and oligarchs were told convinced it was you teachers who caused all their pain.
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As usual stated is started by is buy
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Joel, I think you and would make a good wrestling tag team. We just need to pick out the right masks and coordinated sequins for our boots.
You point out the biggest omission of my rant. Linking heath insurance to employment is another thing my European friends can’t understand. Nor do most Americans understand that if businesses paid a predictable tax as opposed to paying uncertain medical bills, they’d be better off.
To quote our friend Zorba, Oy!
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“Nor do most Americans understand that if businesses paid a predictable tax as opposed to paying uncertain medical bills, they’d be better off.”
It is not a matter of understanding but believing. And that’s a difficult thing to change in a highly religious but otherwise extremely pragmatic country.
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I love Ketih Oberman and subscribe to his Resistance VIDEOS.
HERE IS THE ONE ON HIS TAKE ON HEALTH CARE
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GregB
Our European friends were too busy trying to survive the war to worry about healthcare. After experiencing fascism directly they were ready for “Democratic Socialism”.
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“Under current law, they pay $1,700. But according to CBO projections, under the new bill, this group would have to pay almost $14,600—more than half their income.”
That’s more like a 760% (759%). Unbelievable!
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Then there’s the:
“If it doesn’t effect me, why should I have to deal with it?”
The downside to our nation’s mantra of “independence” is that of selfishness.
Despite it’s flaws, the ACA relies/relied on young people buying in. I’ve heard it on talk shows, on the street, at parties, in interviews, and elsewhere:
“I’m healthy and young. Why should I have to pay for insurance that I don’t need?”.
Or, in education:
”I have no kids. Why should I pay for public schools?”
“My kids go to private school. Why should I pay for public schools?”
Then there are the extreme social Darwinists who figure that if someone can’t afford health care, it’s his/her own fault and we’re better off without them, as a society, anyway. Population control.
Seems that many people consider the concept of sharing the wealth for the overall good as a form of socialism that needs to be avoided. I keep thinking back to the abrupt transition in the late ’70s/early ’80s from “Us” and “We” magazines to “Self” and “Me” publications. We never really went back. If anything, it’s just gotten worse.
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