Trump is attempting to use scale and guarantees to bring the price down, this should not be hard to assess. It should be a simple micro economic analysis...
Yet we see nothing in this regard from the material systems incompetent left. Instead the left as usual uses nebulous, conceptual, emotional arguments concerning this material systems matter against the Trump focused material approach of simply achieving scale and government guarantees to bring the price down.
If the material systems incompetent left were to run Trump's hotels they would buy the soap one bar at a time and pay 3 or 4 times the price.
The material incompetent left must shop at 7-11 all the time for all the materials to make their 5 foot tall human vagina costumes and then complain about all the high prices they pay.
Trump promises premiums/deductibles will come down. Whatever the bill he signs ends up looking like, he'll own it, as Obama owned Obamacare. pic.twitter.com/x8yF1cPDCF— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) May 4, 2017
17 comments:
More Trump promises. LOL
Reminds me of BO.
The ideological issue seems to be giving the government the power to negotiate deals with the private sector where major industries are in control of prices — Big Pharma, the insurers, the medical establishment now run by administrators rather than providers.
Of course, if government were permitted to actually set prices as the monopolist, then prices would come down unless corruption intervened.
But the ideology of the right is totally opposed to that. Trump is highly unlikely to be able to work that deal with his party.
The Democratic Establishment is in the pocket of the big donors, although many of them are fine ideologically with government acting as monopolist.
Of course, the market solution is where prices are too high and supply is artificially controlled by licensing, then increase supply by training from people, or reduce the requirements, e.g., by allowing nurse practitioners to substitute for physicians in certain cases, or as China did with the "barefoot doctors" or the US Navy does with medical technicians. For example, there have been cases of appendicitis at sea with no possibility of medvac where the technician performed the appendectomy successfully.
But this is not only reason that prices are high. For instance, university education is increasing in cost all the time and it is not related to professors and instructors receiving higher pay. It's the admin costs and the plant-building.
@Matt, an important difference between soap and health care is that soap is mass produced by several providers who compete in all 50 states. Soap making is highly automated and what little labor is required is not highly skilled. If you want to enter the soap business, the barriers to entry are small. No degree is required, and you can sell your soap on ebay or at local farmer's markets, etc.. While soap is not quite a fungible commodity, it is easy enough for the consumer to evaluate a particular soap's performance, or you can find soap reviews in Consumer Reports.
Health care, on the other hand, is only available from local providers. In rural areas the local providers have little or no competition. Health care is labor intensive and high skill is required. The barriers to entry are considerable. The average person knows little about health care and may not be able to evaluate the quality and efficiency of his heart surgery. Health care is the furthest thing from perfect competition.
If the material systems competent right were to run Trump's hotels they would buy one bar of soap, charge every guest top dollar for it and prevent anyone from ever using it.
Dan, nothing you wrote addresses the issue of whether the $14k will be enough...
This is the ONLY relevant question to be asking about the policy...
These other issues the left are bringing up are of the same quality as "how are we going to pay for it?" i.e. Idiocy...
If he gets his BIG BIG reductions in premiums and deductables the whole lefty academic economist cabal is going to look irrelevant...
This would be a YUGE victory for the business class over academic class...
Matt, as a old single person I will not get $14k, only $4k. You cannot buy health insurance for an old person for $4000.
Agree about the "how are we going to pay for it" idiocy. If the public could accept that Uncle Sam can pay any bill with keystrokes, then the discussion could focus on the health care money going to rentiers and parasites rather than the money going to help sick people.
Matt, why would doctors and nurses agree to BIG BIG reductions in their pay?
Why would pharma agree to BIG BIG reductions in their prices? And why would Congress ask them to lower prices since Congress is in pharma's pocket?
The public has blamed the insurance companies for the cost of health care and it is true that insurance is a parasite. However the main reason health care is expensive in the U.S. is because doctors, nurses, and pharma charge more than in other countries. Reducing insurance margins or even socializing insurance will not change that.
You get more people paying, ie more munnie coming in so you make MORE MUNNIE....
If you sell one bar of soap for $10 then sell 100,000 for 10 Cents you make MORE MUNNIE selling at the 10 cents....
scale and guarantees....
You have a bunch of people going in now who dont even pay anything... well... they are now going to be able to start paying something...
And you should check it, it looks like anybody can get the 4k but if you have AGI then you get up to $7k, $14k filing jointly....
Dan you probably could get a plan with a few $k deductible for $7k...
I just looked at ours with my broker its a PPO, we have ZERO deductible and for age 64 it was $1,100/month didnt have the spreadsheet for a plan with deductible but she said it goes down substantially if you agree to a few thousand deductible... so that might get you into the $7k ballpark...
The soap metaphor for health insurance is that you keep paying more and more for a bar of soap that you never get and eventually go out and buy on your own - if you can afford it - because you can't live without it.
Matt, the Kaiser site lists the current average premium for my age and county at $10,460 now vs. $14,060 under TrumpCare. Presumably that is for a Silver plan with lots of deductibles and co-pays.
That means a $4000 or $7000 tax credit would be nowhere near enough to buy insurance, never mind coughing up money for deductibles and copays.
Neither O-Care nor TrumpCare is any use to me. They are both garbage.
Health care should be a basic human right that should be provided free, or at worst, charge a small per-visit fee to discourage people from seeking colonscopies that they don't really need. I would have far better health care if I lived in Cuba or Finland.
Sounds like you have better questions than the Democrats...
Kaiser is saying the premiums go up vs Trump saying they will go down... why doesn't some competent person question him on this?
TrumpCare may indeed lower premiums for young healthy people, but not for old people or sick people.
The 5,000 pills, $150,000/night hospital beds and $20,000/hr surgeon pay are coming to an end when Obamacare gets the axe. The median physician take-home pay of almost $300,000/yr *and tears* they just can't make ends meet on medicare payments. Oh the injustice.
The Dems can cry about dying babies and scary anecdotes all they want, median salaries for specialists are in the 400+ range. That is 15x the average American. Blame insurance, hospitals, politicians. It's all true. It's a giant slush fund.
It's all BS, I don't even bother to engage, I just send quiet messages of support and thanks to my lawmakers for fixing the corruption and abuse of our regulatory monopoly system by hospitals, doctors, pharma, patients and insurers.
why doesn't some competent person question him on this?
Because there is no competent person in a position to say anything. Duh.
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