What, if anything, will Repubs do to insure or uninsure Americans?

And the real unemployment (U6) is ~ 10% and the Labor Force Participation Rate is ~ 62.7% (1978 level). The Obama U3 is meaningless.

 

It's amazing how many people do not understand the invisible hand of Adam Smith. People (in this case in the form of pharma companies) working to compete with other companies develop drugs which save lives. Profits are the indicator from the markets which signal where investment should be made. Pharma is unique in that the gov imposed development costs are so high that it must be amortized over decades using the pricing structure. IMO drugs should be released with various amounts of testing so that consumers can decide whether to take the risk. And because there is such a wide disparity of physiologies and responses, all drugs should be sold with a disclaimer of liability. There are thousands of developed drugs which may help certain people which have never been released. Another good job by BIG GOV and those who profit from product liability legal actions.

 

The only thing I can figure is you must be employed by one of these companies.

Pharma loves it some India and Africa, because that's where they've committed their most egregious live drug trials, often intentionally killing their control groups.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/02/testing-drugs-on-the-developing-world/273329/

Anyway I'm done arguing about what these companies do, it's like trying to show that water is wet.

 

You aren't looking hard enough.
Any and every example of taxpayer-provided health care is an example of state-enforced involuntary servitude.

 

Of the 20 million ~ 15 million have been added to Medicaid. ObamaCare by the numbers is an expansion of Medicaid. That's a good thing ??

How to provide better and less expensive coverage with lower deductibles:

Block grant Medicaid to the states. Let the state governments determine what is best for their constituents.

Create a free market on health insurance by allowing purchase across state lines. Individual state coverage mandates inflate insurance premiums. When I was in the individual market I could have gotten a policy with the same deductible and out of pocket annual maximum for half the premium in Michigan compared to California. Of course I would not have coverage for aromatherapy, marriage counseling, chiropractic, acupuncture, etc ...

And incentivize the use of health savings accounts which create health care consumers out of policy holders.

Create high risk pools for the 1.5 million who actually have pre existing conditions. Or include them in the federal employee plan which uses vouchers and covers ~ 10 million fed employees. Figure out a way to subsidize payments or premiums.

Tort reform.

 

Differences in benefit mandates only account for a few percent of the premium differences between states. What matters most is the actual cost of care in a given region.

For instance, according to indeed.com, the average salary for RN job postings in Grand Rapids, MI is 4% below the average RN salaries for job postings nationwide. I suspect that's likely also true for many jobs in the health care sector in that city. Meanwhile, the average salary for RN listings in San Francisco is 35% above the average nationally. (You can do the same exercise for physician salaries and you'll get: 8% lower than average in Grand Rapids and 35% higher than average in San Francisco.)

All things being equal, the premium for an insurance product whose covered lives are primarily in Grand Rapids is naturally going to be lower than an equivalent product covering primarily San Franciscans because the care the latter folks are receiving is more expensive. That's a function of different costs of living, local labor expenses, etc all of which feed into the local cost of care delivery.

Unless you intend for Californians to trek out to Michigan to receive their care from Michigan hospitals, doctors, and nurses, it makes no sense to expect that premiums for a Californian can or should reflect the cost of services delivered in Michigan.

 

When I was in the private insurance market the same insurance was available at half the cost in MI compared to CA. The difference was in the mandated coverages required in CA. All things are not equal between the two policies - and that is exactly the point.

 

If Plan A operates in a region where prices for inpatient services are ~41% higher and prices for outpatient and physician services are ~47% higher than they are in the region where Plan B operates, then the primary reason that Plan A needs to raise a lot more premium revenue than Plan B is not because Plan A covers acupuncture.

Losing a few extraneous benefits is not going to address the primary driver of the premium difference.

 

I think you haven't read Chris Brown's comments - I you had, you would see he is not proposing to take your money to fund SS, or Health Care.

Of course conservatives no doubt dismiss in principle transferring some money creation rights from private banks to the public sector, because this would imply a significant role for the public sector, which is forbidden by conservative ideology.

But technology resulting in an ever more connected world will allow new approaches to deal with a dysfunctional financial system.

https://www.intellihub.com/why-dona...l-reserve-and-start-issuing-debt-free-money/#

BTW, I think I heard today that Trump is furiously back-pedalling (already!) on his commitment to double GDP growth. Conservatism triumphs again!

[Watch out for a reaction in the equities markets; the run-up has been fueled by
expectations of massive increases in infrastructure spending, as proposed by Trump. But share markets don't ride on mere hope, forever...]