President Trump is Cancelling the Illegal ObamaCare CSR Insurance Company Payments

originally posted by: spiritualzombie
I thought Trump Supporters were for change and freedom and independence....

"Change" is defined as anything different than what you've got currently.

Freedom, Independence, and CHANGE is what President Trump's Executive Order on Thursday is attempting to bring to Health Insurance, for those who want it. (All others can stay with ObamaCare.)

Summary of President Trump's TWO Health Insurance Moves This Week: www.nytimes.com...

a reply to: carewemust
Your source.

That means that the plans would have far fewer rules about generosity or benefits. State insurance regulators might also have more trouble making sure that the insurers have enough money to pay their members’ medical bills. Such association health plans, before 1983, when rules were looser, were rife with fraud.

Such plans are currently exempt from most insurance rules. That means the plans can reject or charge higher prices to customers with pre-existing health conditions, can cover fewer benefits and can charge higher deductibles.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Sounds great for America!

They didn't mention this:

As a result of the increase in total subsidies under the
policy, CBO and JCT project these outcomes, com
-
pared with what would occur if the CSR payments were
continued:
„
The fraction of people living in areas with no insurers
offering nongroup plans would be greater during the
next two years and about the same starting in 2020;
„
Gross premiums for silver plans offered through the
marketplaces would be 20 percent higher in 2018 and
25 percent higher by 2020—boosting the amount
of premium tax credits according to the statutory
formula;
„
Most people would pay net premiums (after
accounting for premium tax credits) for nongroup
insurance throughout the next decade that were
similar to or less than what they would pay
otherwise—although the share of people facing slight
increases would be higher during the next two years;
„
Federal deficits would increase by $6 billion in 2018,
$21 billion in 2020, and $26 billion in 2026; and
„
The number of people uninsured would be slightly
higher in 2018 but slightly lower starting in 2020.

www.cbo.gov...

Well thought out. As usual. But he sure stuck it to Obama! Especially with that deficit increase.

Beautiful results. Beautiful.

I notice in this entire thread not a single defense of Health Insurance companies. Because everyone knows they suck. Just face it. Single Payer is the win.

It's time to finally pursue freedom from the stranglehold of the insurance companies. Not just freedom and independence for individuals, but also for the Republican party and our government that is slave to the health insurance industry. Time to break the bonds.

a reply to: TrueBrit
We have a difference of opinion.

Regarding:
A) You think the ACA was the best thing possible at the time it was passed. I disagree. Strict regulation of the healthcare industry would have been the better. Preventing costs that people can't afford would have been better. Further restricting the profit margin on insurance would have been better. There were tons of better options than forcing people to provide a profit for a private corporation.

B) Doesn't matter what anybody does, people are going to die. Everyone's going to die. No way around that. You think that's the only important factor? I disagree. Lives were saved, good. I'm all for that. But no changes were made to the healthcare industry to make lives easier to be saved without insurance. Give us a profit and we'll make sure you live. No profit for us and we don't care if you die... That's not cool.

C) You are correct that no more proper system exists but we don't know what congress would have passed. Playing would have, could have should have is meaningless. Of course they'll work up systems that provide profits, fixing the mess to remove profits wouldn't get corporate funding. Lobbyists would be paid to fight it. Real changes need to be made. Capitulating to the profit margin isn't good enough and only leads to worse places for everybody in the long run.

I don't think insurance is a half measure. It's a fine option. But that's what it should be, an option. Not forced (at least not to private companies that profit. That's my biggest hang up, the private companies profiting part) and not the primary remedy for healthcare issues. People should be able to afford, with their own money, to take care of their own health issues. THEN if they want to mitigate risk via insurance then that's always an option.

Great that you're a socialist. I'm not but I'm not going to try to discount your views or intelligence. You do you, I don't mind a bit. It takes all types for the world to work. But does providing a profit for private coporations jive with socialism? You would say, "Do whatever you can do". I would say and have said, "your options aren't good enough and are only making the problem worse. Do someting better". I don't just type online. I do write my representatives.

Saying there wasn't a better option so we should support a bad one doesn't fly with me. Sorry. It's still a bad option. We need better. And yes, again, that will suck in the short run for some people. There is no solution that works for everybody all the time. But it would be better for most people in the long run.

I understand where you're coming from, I really do. I'm not heartless. But I can't get behind supporting a bad idea just because something better hasn't been provided yet. What's the saying? Necessity is the mother of invention?

Will people die? Yes, without question. Will anything stop that? No. Should their deaths be in vain while everybody else's situation gets worse and worse? Definitely not.

I have enjoyed this conversation and I've been thinking about my stance on this issue since it started. I think you're probably a good dude and, at least on this, your heart is in the right place. Even if you are a socialist.

If Republicans didn’t have their mouths full of insurance industry gag balls, I wonder what great ideas might come from them.

Free the Republican Party - free the people — end the corrupt stranglehold of the Health Insurance industry.

For-Profit Health Insurance is a bad deal. We can do better.

originally posted by: spiritualzombie
If Republicans didn’t have their mouths full of insurance industry gag balls, I wonder what great ideas might come from them.

Free the Republican Party - free the people — end the corrupt stranglehold of the Health Insurance industry.

For-Profit Health Insurance is a bad deal. We can do better.

Republican House and Senate members were flabbergasted and amazed when President Trump exclaimed that Friday that "Insurance Stocks Plummeted Today!"

INFO: www.cnbc.com...

Republican Presidents aren't supposed to do that. On this issue, President Trump is becoming more of an independent.

I find it funny... when one of the largest groups of democratic support (unions) were not forced to get obamacare.
I am an IBEW member, I don't have Obamacare thank god. But you would think if Obamacare was really that good, unions would be behind it 100% and not rallying to get rid of it, and stay off of it

a reply to: atx84

That's because most unions benefits are better than the average. My husband was a union concrete finisher for 38 yrs.

originally posted by: MOMof3
a reply to: atx84

That's because most unions benefits are better than the average. My husband was a union concrete finisher for 38 yrs.

So you're supporting a system you don't have to pay the ultimate bill for... philanthropy using other people's earnings doesn't count as generosity, ya?

a reply to: Phage


That writer is referring to Association plans from the 70's and 80's. Those that were formed after 2000 were backed by health insurance companies...not "self funded".

That second article describes what will force the Congress to quit mooching off the American taxpayer, and cut their $$$ windfall from health insurance lobbyists.

A great example... Which Republican is squealing like a tortured pig, now that President Trump has ended the illegal CSR payments to health insurance companies?

Senator Susan Collins of Maine..the only Republican Senator to vote against every ObamaCare repeal, when Obama was President. www.politico.com...

originally posted by: atx84
I find it funny... when one of the largest groups of democratic support (unions) were not forced to get obamacare.
I am an IBEW member, I don't have Obamacare thank god. But you would think if Obamacare was really that good, unions would be behind it 100% and not rallying to get rid of it, and stay off of it

Unions didn't believe Hillary's promises, because Obama gave them the cold shoulder, after making tons of empty campaign promises... also known as "LIES".

President Trump is trying to be the exact opposite of Barack Obama...thank GOD.

a reply to: carewemust

You lay the faith on a bit thick to be genuine.

originally posted by: spiritualzombie
a reply to: carewemust

You lay the faith on a bit thick to be genuine.

Genuineness is required for faith. Opinion noted.

a reply to: abe froman

As simple as you make that sound, if you can't purchase insurance at all because you have a pre-existing condition, you are screwed. While I am currently gainfully employed, I am retiring before age 65, am a bit over weight and that may make purchasing insurance problematic. I intend to get the weight under control in retirement after I get rid of my high stress job. Killing ACA is not the answer. Fixing it is.

There are a lot of ways to fix it. The last Republican proposal, got rid of pre-exisint condition protections, the individual and company mandates while retaining the tax increases, specifically the net investment tax and the ACA charge to insurance companies. That potentially puts me in the position where I pay a large net investment tax, which goes to paying for insurance for others while being denied coverage. If you were me would you support something where you have to pay and are denied the very benefit you are forced to subsidize? Now that is BS!

a reply to: dougie6665


Paying the majority of the healthcare costs for the "sick" members of society should be spread across all citizens.

With ObamaCare, the sick customers are paid for by the healthy ObamaCare Customers, and by the additional taxes that the Affordable Care Act levied upon businesses and health insurance companies.

An additional tax is coming on 1.1.2018 that will negatively affect all Americans with health insurance. It's the "Health Insurance Tax" (HIT).
www.ahip.org...

In 2014, this tax was added, to offset the skyrocketing costs of the Affordable Care Act. It's a "progressive" tax, which means that it goes up every year, as insurance costs increase. In 2019, the so-called "Cadillac" health insurance tax arrives. It's even worse than the Health Insurance Tax.

a reply to: carewemust

I totally agree it should be spread. The problem is that just because your employment changes does not mean that my insurability should change. In addition to paying my own annual insurance premiums of $12,000 per year, my share of my employees insurance costs is approximately $50,000 per year. Therefore, I am paying $60,000+ per year for health insurance. All I want, is the ability to purchase it at or around the $12,000 that is my direct share now. Nothing more. As it stands, I may be in a situation where I pay about $4,000 per year in net investment tax and can't purchase insurance. Obviously with that profile, I am not a poor person. But losing everything due to some health care problem to myself or my spouse would be an outrage given the levels at which I have paid in.

The real truth is that the U.S. health costs have spiraled out of control.
1. Medical schools charge huge tuition bills instead of using endowments driving up initial doctor salaries.
2. Charity hospitals use tax saving to build new buildings, many way over the top driving up overhead costs rather than using the tax exemption to provide needed care as it was intended.
3. The fraudulent charges within the system are rampant.
4. The care is not properly rationed between those that pay and those that are welfare recipients. (That is a huge flaw with Obamacare.)
5. Drug costs are not properly managed and have been allowed to spiral by the law prohibiting Medicare from negotiating price.
6. There are many others, which I am sure you can identify as well since you seem quite knowledgeable.

I wish people would focus on the cost side more and that would make help the cause immensely.

One potential solution to all this BS would be this. Health insurance is only insured up to the first $100,000 by insurance companies. Anything above, that is government covered. If you don't like the thought of the government covering you for amounts above that, you can separately purchase catastrophic coverage. There could even be gaps, for example, I have coverage up to the $100,000 and then above $500,000. That should lessen the cost of insurance for everyone. It has the effect of then spreading the huge costs for the catastrophic among everyone. Its not a single payer system, it is a hybrid.

a reply to: Noncents

Theres only one issue that I can see, with your recommendations...

NONE OF THE MEASURES YOU SUGGESTED WOULD HAVE PASSED EVEN A DEMOCRAT CONTROLLED CONGRESS!

And you know why? Because the fact is that the Democrats would not have wanted to limit the amount of money insurance companies can make from their "customers" (read: hostages). They would not have wanted to regulate that industry, because, as within the Republican Party, there are a number within that group who put their own financial gluttony, before their duty to the wider body of the American public!

Realistically speaking, the measures in the ACA, were the only ones which ever would have passed even a Democrat congress, and there was only a limited amount of time for them to actually get that measure itself passed, a window which closed soon after the thing got done in its progress through the system.

And your assertion that we do not know what congress would have passed is simply incorrect. An analysis of what has and has not passed through congress before on the topic of healthcare provision, actually shows explicitly that there are no options which can EVER pass, even an administration aligned congress, which do not revolve around making money for large companies, with the people as a hostage. You and I both know this to be wrong, of course.

However, there are only two things one can do about that, from a position of leadership. One of them is, to have everyone who financially benefits from, or lobbies for the private medical insurers, arrested on some pretext and dropped in a hole for a thousand years (which would be legally unsupportable), or just try to pass something which at least means that care is provided to more people. Do I think the ACA went far enough? No, only fully socialised medicine that makes no one a profit is remotely acceptable in so far as my beliefs go politically. But the ACA is a damned sight better than what came before it, regardless of the purely anecdotal rebuffs it received from angry folk who were already covered, OR the protestations of those who felt that the thing was a socialist measure in the first place!

You wanted better than the ACA, and I fully endorse and support that position. But there are no solutions to the issue which can pass through congress as it stands now, or stood at the time, without a root and branch dethronement of every personage, occupying every position from the President to the Supreme Court Justices, and everyone in between them, because the people who occupy congress and the senate, are NOT going to pass anything that does not make someone a dime, either them, or their friends. Personally speaking, I would rather that people had a full blown civil war about these matters, ejected the greed and the money from politics entirely, banned all the powerful families and the rich and clueless from ever occupying any position of power again, and started a new, better method of governance, which is people focused and there to put a boot heel on big business, make big business its bitch, rather than the other way around.

But this does not look likely, and its the only way anything more legitimate would EVER pass through a congress.

a reply to: ThirdEyeofHorus

Actually, you could not be more mistaken. Taxation has been around for a damned sight longer than Marxism, it was not a Marxist invention, is not socialist in and of itself.

The first known system of taxation, was found in Egypt, dating around 3000 to 2800 BC, where a person might, depending on their status and level of wealth, either deploy their physical labour, or a tithe of seed or other valuables, toward the state. There was nothing remotely Marxist or collectivist about that. Twenty percent of everyones seed haul for the year, going to the Pharaoh? Thats a heck of a lot of seed for just one family and their retainers, to go through!

You will note, that Egypt was not, at any time, but certainly not during the time of the Pharaohs, a nation which was run by and for its people, in a collectivist and socially responsible manner. Vast amounts of resource were expended by successive Pharaohs, on what we would consider now, as enormous vanity projects. The Sphinx, the pyramids, temples to "the gods", palaces, huge and utterly pointless works of hubris, little more than phallus waving contests down the ages, between the Pharaohs long dead, and those who yet lived, were all most of those projects really amounted to. Yet masses of resources were dedicated to them, rather than to the simple act of keeping the citizenry actually fed, ensuring their safety with a decent standing army, providing for their education by a standardised schooling system which worked.

In fact, most systems of tax which ever existed on this world, were originally devised by entities which were not in the least socialist, Marxist, or any other thing of the sort.

a reply to: burdman30ott6

I don't know what you are talking about. We paid insurance premiums deducted from paycheck for 38 years. The insured pool were all laborers and finishers that were that locals members. Kind of like "associations" trumpy is promoting. Trade unions not government employee unions.

originally posted by: theantediluvian
a reply to: SlapMonkey

You're nuts. (you're welcome)

Well, to be fair, I've never claimed differently, and I'm not going to start now.

He also said, "I still don't like to see the President taking unilateral action and bypassing Congress" to qualify what he meant by "improper use of EOs."

Isn't that exactly what Trump is doing with EOs at the moment?

Well, there's Hertz, and there's Not Exactly. Trump is not exactly doing the same thing with EOs at this point, but I share your concern over the similarities.

From my research on the specific apportionment of funds that this thread is discussing, it seems as if, unless there's an ongoing appeal (which I'm still unsure of, but haven't read up on it since my last posting in here), the payment of these subsidies is unconstitutional as determined by a federal judge. Therefore, Trump would have a duty to stop payment of the funds, but also, Congress has a duty to rewrite or amend the law in order to make it conform with the constitution.

But we all can assume which two of those will actually happen--well, we can assume which one will probably not happen in the near future.

I think Trump is doing what he should be doing, which is making the law function closer to being constitutionally valid. That's different than, say, changing timeframes written into the law simply because the executive branch couldn't make things happen according to the law.

Do you happen to have an analyses of the EOs under Obama and other recent presidents? No? Me neither. I'm going to take a stab in the dark here and guess that Metallicus doesn't have anything like that either.

You don't need a comprehensive review of all EOs from all presidents to understand that some of them are...well, we'll just say "shady" when it comes to their constitutionality. Every president has them, not just Obama, so I agree that pretending that this started with Obama is disingenuous at best.

More to the point, what constitutes an "improper use" versus a "proper use" of EO is often rather subjective.

"Often," maybe, but I try not to argue over subjectivity in EO issues, but I do like to hold them to the letter of the law, and if the law is telling Trump via a court ruling that a certain part of a law is unconstitutional, he has the burden to confront that issue if Congress will not.