Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Politics In General GOP at war with itself on health care

I think you might be able to wait until you get sick, then pay the one-time 30% more for the rest of the year to be enrolled. This could be perfect for a con game if you got sick on December 1st. You only have to pay for 1 month's insurance plus 30% more, and only a penalty for that year.

I have a feeling Republicans have not run this by the insurance companies. If these are the terms, nobody will offer health insurance.

The other way they could do it, is you can't enroll until January 1st of the next year, if you miss the couple of month grace period without enrollment. Then you would have to pay 30% more, but most people who got sick would be bankrupt by then.

And that penalty payment goes directly to the insurance company.

Republicans really trashed all the good ideas in RomneyCare/ACA. Now they need to come up with things that work, but they are hard pressed to find ones that are different. Obviously, charging a 60 year old single woman who makes $20000 per year $14000 for her health insurance is a boneheaded flub. If you want subsidies/tax credits that help, they have to be income-based not age based. But there's a name for such a plan: ObamaCare

If they want to keep people buying insurance, maybe they should go back to the much larger fine for non-enrollment that was in RomneyCare. It was as high as 50% of the cost of the cheapest policy. They got up to 98.1% of the people in the state covered!

They did run into the time-gaming problem: People would buy insurance just when they needed care and then drop out when they got well. At one point, over 1000 people did this. For $1200 - $1600 they would get $10,000 worth of care. So exactly how to stop this requires some careful thought.

The GOP doesn't have the votes - so ACA lives on for at least right now...

Congress is going on vaca in April and with the summer coming up - the Trump voter knuckle-draggers will forget about ACA replacement because they'll be distracted by some shiny newer object.

I used to be optimistic that "it couldn't happen", and then Trump did. So, I will not be sanguine until the effort is dead, dead, extinguished three times, and cold to the touch. Then the work of repairing the damage can begin.

From a friend, via the Oregonian:

I don;t think it entirely or categorically true or valid.

With new information on [RyanCare, TrumpCare, TrumpDontCare, or your fav] citizens are learning the fine points. There will be a hard core for whom ACA must be repealed. However there is a group increasing in number who now suspect ACA may be better than characterized by conservative leaders.

Bottom line, even though I think there may be some movement within the ranks, it will still be top shelf on their agenda i.e. tax break for the wealthy, get government out of entitlements, etc.

The only reason to rewrite ACA is to give the top 1% a tax break. ACA is pretty good - after all, it was the Heritage Foundation's idea in 1993.

ACA needs some tweaking, yes.

Indeed it does, and Obama wished/hoped for that to happen after it became law. It was viewed as a work in progress that could and should be improved upon to make it more efficient.

The far right Repubs want none of that and only desire its full repeal and to then go back to the “good old days” of 2008 and prior. Some tea party guy (forget his name) stated that very position verb ate ‘em when I saw him interviewed a few weeks ago on the telebitchin.....

Not the only reason, but certainly a good one for conservatives.

Fundamentally conservatives reject the notion the federal government should be involved in anything other than military defense. It is an idiot-ological position which is more than just difficult to convey or sell to the "base", who for the most part are simply ignorant of and lack the understanding of the abstraction.

Thus the arguments revolved around the non-existent "death panels", etc. The current arguments are all single word criticisms (collapse, death spiral, etc) which have mass appeal for people who do not want to or are incapable of looking beneath the hood.

What these conservatives are trying to sell to their base is, if you have a job and are getting insurance then your premiums will go down. And if you are wealthy your taxes will go down. It is a self centered plan which appeals to conservatives in general.

From an idiot-ological perspective, they will remove the federal government as much as is possible, which will appeal to the wonks. These guys could care less if poor folks get covered i.e. poor people should have been born "rich".

This is one of the Big Four, repeal (but not necessarily replace) ACA, the Great Wall of Trump, and tax reform (including deregulation), and the Muslim Ban. These are not going away, even if there are roadblocks.