Biden Wants to Limit Copays to $1000, but 40% of Us Can’t Afford a $400 Emergency (gritpost.com)
Former Vice President Joe Biden is fleshing out his 2020 healthcare vision, but it falls far short of what is needed to address the healthcare affordability emergency.
In a recent interview with WHO-TV in Iowa, Biden explained that he thought Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont), who initially proposed a single-payer, “Medicare for All” healthcare system in January of 2016, was “wrong” in his approach to reforming the American healthcare system. Biden says his healthcare plan is unique from plans offered by any other candidate running for the 2020 Democratic nomination.
Specifically, Biden said his plan would build on Obamacare by adding on a public option that Americans who don’t like their private options could buy into, and would increase private health insurance subsidies to where Americans wouldn’t have a copay larger than $1,000. He also promised that any American who liked their employer-provided healthcare plan would be able to keep it.
Hey Joe! So nice to hear that your solution to out-of-control medical costs is to allow insurance and pharmaceutical companies to continue with their “the sky’s the limit!” pricing policies.
By all means, let’s just increase taxpayer subsidies, at the same time that we keep tax rates low on the rich and increase defense spending… I cannot be the only one who wants to see just how high we can drive up America’s national debt ceiling, now can I? Wink wink, nudge nudge, eh?
It’s kind of like seeing if you can drive your car so fast that it gets up into that red warning zone shown on the speedometer, which I actually did once when I was really young and really fucking stupid. Seemed like great fun at the time, I did not think once about the possible engine damage that I might run into later. Like I said, young and stupid, ha ha ha! But voters are stupid too, we all know that, they can be razzle-dazzled with bullshit most every time. They seem to think that taxpayer $$$ grows on trees or something!
Heaven forbid that we take action to end “the sky’s the limit!” pricing policies used by insurance and pharmaceutical companies. It’s a fucking great deal for them, they are simply raking in the dough … when grandma is on the table, money is no object … amiright or amiright? Geez, if someone is going to fucking die without some life saving medicine, of course those poor saps will pay whatever the asking price is for it. OF COURSE! If a guy can make it for only pennies, but can sell it for thousands of dollars, think of what the ROI on that must be … $Kajillions! We don’t want to piss that kind of guy off, for sure … he might use those $Kajillions and donate to Republicans instead of us!
The ACA has it exactly right … as long as the price that a stupid voter pays out of pocket for their insurance is low enough, they won’t even notice that we are handing over so much of America’s national treasure to middle men and price gougers. And if Republicans whine that taxes are STILL too high, remember that politicians often have both public and private positions. It’s the American way! GOPers only say those things in public in order to get the votes of suckers … believe me, once you are elected you will see that GOPers care just as much about keeping taxpayer money flowing into the hands of middle men and price gougers as you do! But I don’t need to tell YOU that, I suppose, you’ve been able to reach across the aisle for decades to make friends, even with the likes of Strom Thurmond, bless your heart.
One thing though Joe ... I have to caution you to not make the same mistake that Obama did … you seem to be treading a bit on thin ice. The truth is that If you like your insurance company, you can keep your insurance company… but only if your employer and your profit-driven insurance company decides that you can keep it. They know what is best for everyone, after all. Ignore the fact that Wendell Potter says
Both employer-based and [Medicare Advantage] plans are notoriously unreliable. If you get your coverage through your employer, if you lose your job, you also lose your employer-subsidized coverage. Enrollees in MA plans can be—and often are—dumped and left scrambling as well. Insurers that operate MA plans frequently leave markets when they decide they are not profitable enough.
Anyone who believes that this was intended to be an anti-Biden diary is mistaken. Please note the use of the snark tag.
The point of this diary is to try to highlight the problem with our current system, which allows middlemen and price gougers to serve as gatekeepers for matters of life and death.
I want to share an exchange I just had with justmypiece in the comments
I am assuming here, but if we are paying $32 trillion now, but could pay [$30] trillion for everyone, isn’t this still waaayyy better? And still a savings, but everyone has healthcare. Yea!
I replied:
We could pay $30 trillion for everyone, and obtain BETTER CARE with BETTER OUTCOMES. What’s not to like?
The hard part, and it is really fucking hard, is that we need to rise up and fight the bastards who are currently EXPLOITING us as best they can. They are PREDATORY capitalists who are indifferent to the life and death consequences of their pursuit of $$$.
Wendell Potter puts it this way:
They put profits above patients.
They LITERALLY care more about making a buck than about whether a patient receives the care that they need. And they are gatekeepers to our entire healthcare system. They are like a cancer that keeps growing and growing.
And we all know what happens to cancer patients when it is not treated. The patient dies. Our current system is UNSUSTAINABLE. We can fiddle our thumbs and apply band-aids, but we are fooling nobody but ourselves. The system will ultimately collapse when the bastards ultimately price all of us out of it.
In my view, those who advocate ACA 2.0 type solutions, are basically advocating that we do nothing to stop the cancer. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, but I sincerely believe that it is true. We are now Sneetches, running around in an angry daze at each other, while the price-gougers methodically extract our life savings and loot the national treasury. It really is that fucking bad.
When our $$$ is gone, and the national debt is too large for us to even grasp, the game of musical chairs will suddenly stop one day. Those who are around at that time will be flat broke, deeply in debt, with few options. The price gougers will laugh at us, just like Sylvester McMonkey McBean did in a beloved story written by Dr. Seuss, The Sneetches.
Then, when every last cent of their money was spent, The Fix-It-Up Chappie packed up. And he went. And he laughed as he drove In his car up the beach, “They never will learn. No. You can’t Teach a Sneetch!”