Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Scott Wong — Conservative groups blast GOP healthcare plan

Outside conservative groups on Tuesday blasted House Republicans’ newly unveiled healthcare proposal, saying it doesn’t live up to the GOP’s promise of fully repealing ObamaCare....

“This is simply not a full repeal of ObamaCare. It falls far short of the promises Republicans made to the American people in four consecutive federal elections,” AFP President Tim Phillips said in a phone interview Tuesday.
“The proposed legislation trades one form of government subsidy for another government subsidy, and doesn’t roll back the mandate of ObamaCare. It's a poor first attempt.”
Conservatives want fully privatized health care with no government subsidy.

The Hill
Conservative groups blast GOP healthcare plan
Scott Wong

30 comments:

Matt Franko said...

"Conservatives want fully privatized health care with no government subsidy."

LOL well then they dont want health care....

Matt Franko said...

These are your libertarian buddies here Tom not 'conservatives'...

Left libertarians want the munnie to come from 'rich people!' and right libertarians want the munnie to come from the 'free market!'....

Trump/Ryan selling it while not talking AT ALL about "the deficit!!!!".... which is a dog not barking...

Andrew Anderson said...

Conservatives want fully privatized health care with no government subsidy.

Then, of course, they'd naturally want a fully privatized private credit creation system too or be revealed as total hypocrites.

And they'd be for the elimination of other welfare proportional to wealth such as positive yielding sovereign debt.

But who will challenge them on that? Progressives? LOL!

Tom Hickey said...

From The Hill article

Many on the right are objecting to the plan’s refundable tax credits, which would replace ObamaCare insurance subsidies.

Matt Franko said...

Arguments on the right seem to be centered on whether or not this truly "repeals Obamacare" or not...

The libertarian right is saying that with the $Billions of refundable tax credit and mandatory participation then that is not truly an Obamacare repeal... they, as all libertarians, want some sort of barbarian/chaos system to result...

Maybe we should create separate system for libertarians... "paging Dr. Rand..... paging Dr. Ayn Rand..."

Tom Hickey said...

These are your libertarian buddies here Tom not 'conservatives'...

Astro-turf faux libertarians.

They are classical economic liberals, and political and social reactionaries.

They want government out of the market and into the church, classroom, doctor's office and bedroom.

Matt Franko said...

This is a tweet from one of the main idiots at Peterson:

"Likely to show modest reduction in deficit, reduction in insured population, likely in range of 15 million"

So looks like they should be silenced from the standpoint of "the deficit!" anyway...

this might be a big (good) thing for passage..

all Trump has to do is get it past the cucks... would have said cut the cucks balls off but they dont have any to cut off...



Andrew Anderson said...

They want government out of the market ... Tom Hickey

Then give em what they want and get government out of subsidizing private credit creation and providing other welfare for the rich.

Penguin pop said...

So basically all the Ayn Rand morons are opposed to this. Screw them. It's already screwed up as it is without their crap getting in the way.

Matt Franko said...

Yeah they are opposing it on libertarian (tax credits/mandatory enrollment) or racist (Obamacare!... key syllable being the 'Obama') grounds imo...

Looks like the Peterson assholes may not have too big a problem tho I havent seen too much negativity out of them... tho they may still be going over it a bit... this would be good news...

I think Trump may be able to bulldoze the libertarians...

Noah Way said...

Benefits of single payer would include the elimination of health insurance costs on businesses. Since many companies push some of the cost onto the employee via mandatory contributions it wouldn't be 100% windfall but it's still money in the bank at zero expense. You'd think corporate America would be all for this. A no-brainier, really, which pretty much explains why it won't happen.

Penguin pop said...

"Benefits of single payer would include the elimination of health insurance costs on businesses. Since many companies push some of the cost onto the employee via mandatory contributions it wouldn't be 100% windfall but it's still money in the bank at zero expense. You'd think corporate America would be all for this. A no-brainier, really, which pretty much explains why it won't happen."

Right on the money, Noah. I'm shocked I don't see more of these corporate giants in favor of this. In Matt's words, they would make even more munnie. Baffling.

Matt Franko said...

Single payer leads to Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarrett taking $1M annual between them out of the U of Chicago Medical System... who probably couldn't remove a splinter,,, single payer enables such cronyism as opposed to a for profit or even a PPP type of arrangement where max returns are desired...

Jeff65 said...

Matt, stick to what you know. Some of us here have single payer.

I know single payer is better than for profit because I've experienced both - I'm a US citizen and spent the first 35 years of my life in the for profit system there. There is no comparison.

PPPs, on the other hand, we have these in Australia, too. They're bullshit. The stuff that would be better in the hands of the public sector are kept private and vice versa. Scams.

Ignacio said...

PPP also enables cronyism (big time if uncontrolled). There is no magic formula which disables cronyism of some form, you need a working society and judicial system (non for-profit juidical system, unlike in the USA) to combat cronyism.

Single-payer with optional private sector HC service works best (I have used both at the same time, they are not exclusive, and very proud of having both options). Just like you JG/BIG with private labor market would work best.

I'll leave it to you to figure out why this combination works best than having either of the options which focuses on just one, which easily enable cronyism and/or rent extraction.

John said...

PPP? Here in the UK we've had PPPs in almost every part of the public sector for about twenty-five years. The results have been bloody awful. They are, however, a superb way of funnelling huge amounts of money into the private sector, usually preferred crony corporations. The money funnelled into this swindle is far more than would have been spent using the public sector alone, without a PPP scheme. The standards of the infrastructure built, for instance, are not poor given how much has been thrown at the corporations behind them. All in all, it's a gigantic scam, as Jeff65 says of what's happened in Australia too.

John said...

Bugger, another typo! Must reread carefully when amending a sentence!

"...are not poor" should simply be "are poor".

Matt Franko said...

Well if you have austerity in the UK then no method of organization is going to look ideal...

"single payer" is a non-starter here in US anyway due to "we're out of money!" libertarian assholes...

What is interesting about this Trump/Ryan thing is that the "we're out of money!" people dont see it as a big problem so far...

They use that wacky "Modified Accrual" accounting method of theirs and perhaps the approach of using a monthly refundable tax credit is not showing up for them in how they compute "the deficit!" via their Modified Accrual as opposed to how a true Accrual Basis or Cash Basis would portray it...

iow if Trump used a direct USD payment subsidy or if someone would propose expanded single payer, then they would probably be screaming bloody murder... but with the refundable monthly tax credit approach, they dont come up with an increase in "the deficit!"...

this is a coincidence (luck) on Trump's part I would assume..

Matt Franko said...

iow, as we look at it, we know a monthly refundable USD tax credit is functionally the same as any USD in our Cash Basis ... but as they dont look at it this way, they dont see any potential for an increase in "the deficit!" via Modified Accrual....

Noah Way said...

+++ Ignacio

Ideology trumps logic and intelligence every time (no pun intended).

Matt Franko said...

Rent extraction is the same as taxation they are both losses...

You have to figure out how to minimize what Warren describes via rote as "its always an unspent income story..."

Saved rent is unspent income as well as taxation of income is income becoming unspendable...

John said...

Matt, these issues were evident before austerity and the post-2008 crisis, which have been taken as an opportunity to ram more neoliberal policies down our throats. The fraudulent PPPs were being criticised in the early nineties and after by many Conservative MPs. Real conservatives don't like fraud, crony capitalism and the misuse of taxes (what they understand taxation achieves). Pseudo-conservatives and pseudo-progressives alike have a near religious belief in using the state to funnel staggering amounts of money into the coffers of the rich, even if it's fraud.

Matt: "single payer" is a non-starter here in US anyway due to "we're out of money!" libertarian assholes...

Well, that could be the reason, but more likely they just hide behind that justification. Obviously they cannot possibly believe that the many countries that have a nationalised health system are all out of money? They believe the UK, Germany, France, Canada and all the other advanced capitalist countries are all bankrupt? Ryan and company cried crocodile tears while bailing out the financial system and the auto industry. So clearly they know the money exists if the political will is there. The political will is not there because the GOPhers and the corporate Dems are beholden to powerful vested interests and, it must be said, are also beholden to a political philosophy of the state and the economy that they were taught at elite universities. Bullshit 101 is the only course that they paid any attention to, closely followed by Horseshit 101.

Matt Franko said...

Ryan cries libertarian tears not crocodile tears...

These people are true believers...

MRW said...

I ask again. What does PPP stand for in the discussion here? To me, it stands for Purchasing Power Parity.

MRW said...

Public-Private Partnership?

MRW said...

Jeff65: I know single payer is better than for profit because I've experienced both. Me too. No comparison. I like to think of it as nationalized insurance. In Great Britain, doctors work for the state; their healthcare is socialized medicine. In Canada, they work for themselves, although the provincial governments act like insurance companies here and regulate the costs. The people in charge of our healthcare here are the insurance companies, unless the federal government lays down the law. People accept private insurance companies dictating what they can and cannot have, but get all verklempt if the federal government does it. People are dumb as shit.

Tom Hickey said...

Public-Private Partnership?

Public-Private Partnership

Penguin pop said...

Hasn't the Tory government been bringing privatization to the NHS now though? It already sounds like a disaster in the making.

John said...

Penguin, the PPPs in the NHS have been going on a very long time. It started back with the Tories in the early nineties. The Tories at the time claimed that it was a one-off way of funding the NHS until the public finances recovered. The Tories lost the 1997 election, and Labour expanded the PPPs beyond anybody's wildest imagination. Every part of the public sector had PPPs, from health to education, prisons to transportation, etc. The expansion was so wide and deep that Tory MPs became the most vocal objectors, while the so-called left fell in head over heels in love with crony capitalism.

New Labour took their gigantic electoral wins as support for their pushing through the most regressive crony legislation the country had seen in generations. New Labourites still claim that the Blairite decade of 1997 to 2007 the country had never been better governed and had never had better services. It was, of course, all an illusion, in the same way the Clinton years were. The strangest thing about the electoral wins was not that New Labour had won these elections but that the Tories had lost them by having a very nasty and public fight over Europe. New Labour swept into power.

Governing for New Labour was so easy because they had no opposition and they did so little of it: for New Labour, governing was awarding PPPs and they gave them out like sweets because the state was inefficient and the private sector was efficient. It was a religious dogma to them. When many PPPs collapsed in disarray, the state bailed them out. When PPP infrastructure was found to be useless, the state was called in to rectify things. Often things couldn't be rectified, and the public were left with poor infrastructure at an exorbitant price. Meanwhile the Tories kept imploding even further by choosing leaders that the public hated and also kept up their destructive infighting over Europe. As clearly corrupt and rightwing as New Labour were (think Bill Clinton), they kept winning elections because there wasn't an opposition. By any standard, the PPPs they awarded were fraudulent in every way. Strangely, many of the ministers involved in the awarding of PPPs went on to become directors and executive directors of the very companies which were awarded staggering amounts of money by the New Labour government. A funny coincidence...

John said...

Penguin, by the way, although this Tory government has extended the role of private firms in the NHS, it is only by 1% more than Labour, the party of the people. It's farcical watching Labour condemn the Tories over the extent of the "privatization of the NHS" when all they have done is extend it by 1% more than Labour. UK politics is a farce.