Rand Paul fights the Insurance Cartel (and RyanCare)
One of the main outcomes of this last Election was to have a big "redo" and debate about the completely unaffordable (and monopolistic) U.S. Health Care system.
Of course, President Obama and the Democrats would have you believe that he solved the problem in 2009, and fulfilled the dreams of progressives, with the clear disaster known as "ObamaCare" (a Republican-made plan championed by Mitt Romney). But all ObamaCare really did is just strengthen the Insurance Cartels monopoly grip and control over the public, and then oppress people further by mandating the IRS to shakedown the American people with new tax penalties if they did not agree to become the willing victims of these far overpriced, ripoff Insurance policies. Instead of costs going down, the costs have naturally skyrocketed. Instead of deductibles going down, the deductibles are so high that you get no real coverage at all despite paying through the nose for these policies (unless major surgeries are involved). And Obama never once tried to support competitive drug bidding to drive down the costs of drugs.
Unfortunately, President Trump's efforts to open up the discussion from a fresh perspective has been highjacked by the corrupt (Establishment-hack) GOP Speaker Paul Ryan with yet another Corporatist bill that does nothing to solve the problem.
Senator Rand Paul is fighting back against this. These statements from an honest Senator ... Rand Paul:
"We just had an election about change, about draining the swamp. President Trump promised to be different, and I believe he sincerely wants to be. But he is being taken for a ride through the swamp right now on 'Obamacare Lite.' (Paul Ryan's bill). Republicans ran on repealing Obamacare, and now “Republican orthodoxy” — I’m told — is keeping the insurance subsidies, mandates, taxes, and insurance company bailouts.
That’s not acceptable to me. And it isn’t keeping our promise.
- When did Republicans begin to believe that insurance companies should be put on the dole? That they should be bailed out when any of their customers become sick?
- When did Republicans begin to believe that the federal government should force you to pay a penalty to a private insurance company if you can’t afford insurance?
- When did Republicans begin to believe that we should levy a special tax penalty on those who choose to buy really good health insurance?
The current Ryan Plan — 'Obamacare Lite' — is not about patients. It isn’t about better health care. It isn’t about lowering costs. It is, plain and simple, about getting more money to the insurance companies and running more of your life from Washington.
In Washington, somehow, the whole debate seems to be about getting people insurance instead of getting people health care.
Insurance does not equate to health care. Just ask all the Obamacare recipients with $6,000 deductibles. I am a career physician. I spent years training and learning to be a doctor. I did it for patients. I don’t give a flip about guaranteeing the profits of insurance companies. And as a Senator, I shouldn’t, either.
I’m sick of the government telling me I have to buy their crappy product, and I’m sick of watching us go into more and more debt to do it.
Obamacare jacked up insurance rates and created insurance monopolies. We need a new way, and Obamacare Lite isn’t it.
- I want the consumer (aka patient) to be king. I want to empower the patient to get the health care they want at the price they want.
- I want to let every American be able to join a CO-OP to buy their health care. When that happens, the buying power returns to the patients.
- The patient, as part of a large buying group, would be able to negotiate lower prices and a policy where you can’t be dropped or ripped off if you become sick. The patient would be able to purchase exactly the type of coverage that suited her needs, without government mandates telling her what she must buy.
- I want to give you the option of buying across state lines.
I want the patient to be king. If you want to disrupt the apple cart, if you want to take away the monopoly power of insurance companies, do one thing — allow every individual in America to join a co-op, to join a buying group, to join an association health plan. The insurance CEOs hate the idea — which should be enough to tell you it might just empower the patient."
Link: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/03/15/exclusive-rand-paul-l...
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I hope Rand Paul succeeds in defeating this bad GOP RyanCare bill, which as Paul describes keeps the insurance subsidies, mandates, taxes, and insurance company bailouts, and does nothing to solve the Health Care problem. I wish that Donald Trump and Rand Paul would form an alliance and take control ... rather than have GOP-hack Paul Ryan drive the policy.
"Covering people", or the mandating of coverage (through imposed penalties), with bogus, overpriced, ripoff, anti-consumer, high deductible policies is no victory for anyone. The whole issue is not how many people have rigged "Insurance" policies. The whole issue is how many people will have affordable Health Care.
Comments
Rand Paul Interview...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7FcMBFCA8k]
Obama and his democrats could have passed universal health care
if they wanted to, but as we know that was never the plan. They had the senate, house and the presidency and the mandate for getting it passed. That obviously was never their plan. The democrats said that they needed republicans to vote for it so they let them keep taking out the good parts of it and they told us that was so the republicans would vote for it. But the ACA passed without any republicans voting for it and even while it was being debated in congress, Obama had already made the deals with the insurance and pharmaceutical companies and the rest was kabuki theater for us rubes. And we played along with them by writing emails, signing petitions and making phone calls and I bet they were laughing their asses at us because we thought that we could make a difference.
If we had gotten universal health care then not one person would be screaming for the republicans to overhaul it because people would see how great it works.
Since that didn't happen and people are paying through their noses for junk insurance, most people want it to be dismantled.
And there are some republicans who think that what Ryan is offering is still too expensive for the government's involvement and want even more cuts to it.
I think that Grayson was right. They do want us to get sick and die so that the remaining resources only go to a certain group of people. They don't want to share anything with us peons.
I like to imagine how different things would be if Bernie was the president.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
I used to like to imagine that, too.
But with each passing day, that exercise makes me more infuriated and more depressed.
While I initially applied for my Irish citizenship as an homage to my heritage, I find that I now sincerely hope it comes through. A potential escape clause is the only thing keeping me sane these days, and even that makes me feel guilty because so many people will always be trapped here.
He makes some good points that need to be in the public
discussion. The danger in allying with Paul, he is a republican after all, or anyone who isn't advocating for single payer, i.e., getting the insurance companies and giant corporation profits out of health care, is further institutionalizing corporate driven health "insurance" and health care for the next ten, twenty years. There should be no compromising this time.
Co-op
We all are already part of the largest co-op in this nation. This co-op already has the most powerful buying power of any co-op. It even has a name: We the People
I suspect there are laws that prevent people from joining co-op
AARP is sort of a co-op. I don't know what type of plans AARP sells or endorses. Why hasn't this model, if it's any good, be replicated by other organizations, unions, trade groups (small business types)? I suspect it's because there laws eliminating effective competition between companies.
The We the People Co-op
I've been around some co-ops, even belonged to a few. My wife has also. All that I have been associated with, or have been familiar with, have something in common: they are all rather socialist organizations. For instance, I used to belong to a food co-op. The co-op owned and operated a grocery store. All members of the co-op owned it. We pitched in one way or another, often by donating our labor to keep the place running. There was no profit as we think of it, rather all gains were returned to the co-op to cover overhead, or used to lower prices for members. No commercial grocery could touch our prices because there were no fat-cat owners to rake in their take.
In the same manner, the entire population of the United States should be one co-op in regard to health care. There is no need for any middle-man with his greedy hands in the till. It's our country and all of us together can form a health care system that can provide for even the least of us.
So, in a way, I agree with Senator Paul. Co-ops are a good idea. It's just that we need only one.
@travelerxxx We have no collective
We have no collective purchasing power in the marketplace (co-op), hence....the individual mandate, and anti-consumer, never ending price escalation.
And even our Election system has been destroyed by an Oligarchical, Multi-Million dollar pay-to-play system.
We need to reinvent and re-establish the whole idea of Collective Bargaining all over again.
Co-ops are more responsive to catastrophic emergencies
This article is about food, but you get the idea.
Cuba turns to co-ops to weather hurricane aftermath
Still alive and well. Cooperation is faster and more efficient than Competition, and not so disgustingly profitable. Let's give it a try why not?
The Democrats are busy screaming "Russia! Russia! Russia!"
So Trump can only work with the crazy soul-dead Republicans. Maybe if he supports them trying to float their nutty ideas, and getting publicly smacked down, something can change. There does seem to be lots of public smacking-down going on, from all sides.
He has to swing pretty much the whole Republican Party (with lots of "2018 bloodbath" talk) if he wants to have a promise-fulfilled for his re-election campaign, because the Democrsts, at this point, would "resist" if he proposed Medicare for All. Gonna be interesting to watch.