bluegate said:
Did they ever end up repealing and replacing it, or was all of that just hollow speech?
What is the current public opinion on it? Is it still a position worth campaigning on as it was in 2016, or have people turned around on it and started to see its benefits?
The GOP tried to repeal the affordable care act but never had a replacement in mind, instead, the " replacement" was just "Healthcare reserved for the highest bidder" system that existed prior to the affordable care act. They are still pushing for this with the holes they have been knocking in the coverage meant to help the non wealthy and have steadily been making it increasingly difficult for the poor to receive proper care.
The GOP failed to repeal Obamacare over the backlash from the millions of people who would lose access to any healthcare at all. This was one of the primary reasons the GOP had losses in congress during the 2018 election. When it became apparent to the people that the GOP was actually trying to remove access to medical treatment for millions, it did not go over very well. Trump is still trying to push for destroying Obamacare by setting it up in courts with Judges who have openly opposed Obamacare and then directing his appointees at the department of Justice to refuse to defend it in court. That is still in progress as democrats then jumped in to voluntarily defend it from numerous states.
The reason we need to keep Obamacare in place is until we can actually shift over to a universal healthcare system that works well, this is all we have to keep millions of people from dying due to not being able to access medical treatment. They need to first start by regulating insurers, Pharma, doctors and hospitals to get rid of many of the and practices that are currently plaguing the industry and causing reduced quality of care. They have not yet taken that very important step. In the US, we currently have insurers actually delegating what treatment a patient can receive by refusing to pay for treatments the patients may actually need. Insurers often force patients to use medications that are harming them by refusing to pay for more effective and beneficial medications. The Insurers often cut of necessary medications and cause people a great deal of suffering or even death by refusing to pay for the medications the patient actually needs only allowing access to proper treatment to the wealthy who can afford the medications that work best on their own. Many people are not aware of this until it actually happens to them, but it is a serious issue that desperately needs to be addressed.
Just a small part of the regulation that we need to have implemented immediately in order to shift to a better system:
1) close all underwriter loopholes to opt out of Obamacare. No more bad insurance policies will be legal in the US. All insurance policies in the US must exist with at least the minimum requirements for care and not pick and choose what they will cover or what medications they will cover. Offer a public option that offers good quality of care so that all areas have plans made available. If insurers go out of business due to higher regulation, that is a plus, as more people will be shifting to the public option in those areas. Eliminate insurance being tied to employment and instead increase wages of employees.
2)Increase the minimum quality of care that will be required to be both provided and covered increasing quality fo care for all rather than have the ever widening gap between poor and quality care.
3)All Doctors and hospitals must work with all providers and eliminate "in network" doctors. This opens up patient choice and improves quality of care by not forcing patient to see doctors who are not helping them. No clinic, physician or Hospital can deny patients based on whether they are on Medicaid or an insurer they are not contracted with. This needs to be eliminated.
4) Eliminate deductibles, remove copays at the time of treatment and set payment amounts, schedules and increased regulation forcing insurers to pay what they are supposed to on time without delay. If there is a disagreement in payment, they will be forced to pay and then reimbursed if found that the payment was inaccurate so that doctors offices will be able to keep their doors open while claims are disputed rather than them having to pay for insurance delaying practices. Hopefully this will eliminate the current insurance practice focused on delaying payments so that patients will give up, die or pay out of pocket for the treatments they need. Patients will be able to receive their treatment form their doctors without delay improving patient outcomes. Insurers will be required to pay first and make claims later. This removes the possibility of a patient coming in for treatment and being told they have to pay money the insurers refused to before they can receive treatment. Work out medical payments via taxes and federal funding. Under Obamacare, some of the patients qualified for having their monthly payments reduced and it was then taken out of their tax refunds at the end of the year. This should apply to everyone, not just the poor so that middle class families qualify as well if they have high enough medical bills, even with substantial income they could still qualify for subsidies once they account for cost of living expenses . Medical bills then can be subsidized by federal taxes at the end of the year if they become high rather than people losing their homes or withdrawing their retirement to pay for the treatments they need to stay alive. The Physician would never be dealing with patients collections at all, this would be entirely on insurers and all patients would be treated equally. All they need to bring in to the office at the time of visit is their medications, medical history, identification and insurance card, not worried about having enough money to pay for the visit. Worrying about copays is the number one reason why patients delay seeking treatment at a doctors office and wind up in the emergency room in much worse condition later instead. We can reduce costs by removing barriers to early treatment.
5)Set Federal universal prices for everything, including but not limited to medical equipment, medication, Physician fees.. everything. We need everything to be regulated because anything that can be overcharged is currently being overcharged. Prices of every little thing you do not even think about from door flags to ear wash systems. All of these prices need to be negotiated at the federal level at this point because all of these costs are what are increasing healthcare costs. We also need to have discounted Utility pries given to all clinics, hospitals, imaging facilities as these can also be energy intensive. This should be considered a public service and the costs of running them should be seen as a necessity paid for and provided by the government. Hospitals should not be worried about keeping their air conditioning running to maintain their temperature regulated patients because they cannot afford the bill. That should not be even entering their minds while trying to save lives.
6)Increase regulation on hospitals to increase quality of care. Understaffing is a serious issue that has to be addressed. Far too often we have a severe lack of qualified people on staff at hospitals due to budget restraints. We should be making up for budget shortfalls through regulation and federal funding. We should not be having medical technicians resetting bones and stitching people up for $8.50 an hour while we have hospital administrations making triple digits. This is currently happening and a big part of the problem. We need both huge caps at the top and huge increases in pay at the bottom.
7)We can also increase the number of available qualified staff by offering educational incentives such as Federal grants and reimbursements for the needed fields in addition to increasing pay for those fields. Setting federal pay standards would also greatly increase the quality of care one receives.
8)Make all ambulatory services public and have much stricter regulation. Eliminate private ambulatory services all together along with their outrageous bills and unqualified emts. What I have seen and experienced in this regard is terrifying that peoples lives are often in the hands of some of the worst people.
9) No one can be denied or charged more for preexisting conditions and treatment for those conditions must be covered. Offer federal subsids to address this issue rather than removing access to care to those who need it most.
10)Increase taxes on the wreathy to pay for the additional federal spending on medical care. Seriously, they can afford it regardless of what some of them try to claim.
Most of those who seem to think of themselves as " wealthy" in the US, really are not, they are delusional compared to the actual wealthy tbh. The actual wealthy can easily afford to pay for this, and many of them actually are telling our government to increase their taxes:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/liberal-billionaires-urge-presidential-candidates-to-raise-taxes-on-the-rich/
http://fortune.com/2017/11/13/geore-soros-ben-jerrys-millionaire-billionaire-raise-taxes-congress/
They really can afford it and people need to realize we can increase quality of care and provide universal healthcare in the US, we just need to ignore people like Trump and Mitch McConnell.
EDIT: Sorry, I did not realize how long this was when I wrote it..
( though I really could keep going as so much more needs to be done here)
