Republican Health-Care Plan: Rand Paul Makes a Good Start

Posted by $ AJAshinoff 7 years, 9 months ago to Culture
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Sigh...HSA's are a wonderful idea FOR THE INDIVIDUAL. As soon as you make it a government function(tax) it is no longer an individual choice and opens the door for federal exploitation and corruption. FEDGOV GET THE HELL OUT OF HEALTHCARE. The entire matter is beyond the fedgov's Constitutional mandate and I'm sickened that a Paul wouldn't recognize and promoted government extraction from the matter altogether.

Less government. Less government regulation. More free market options for the individual, competition is how you bring costs under control.
SOURCE URL: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443746/republican-health-care-plan-rand-paul


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  • Posted by ewv 7 years, 9 months ago
    Tax credits for contributing to your own or other's health savings are step in the right direction to allow freedom of choice, just like tax credits for education. It could be implemented to improve on the pre-Obamacare system.

    Establishment Republicans don't like it because of their statist-collectivist premises. You see that every time they shriek their slogan "repeal and replace", with a big emphasis on "replace". Why "replace"? "Replace" with what? Repealing Obama health controls does replace it -- with the relatively freer system replaced by the Obamacare Democrats rammed through as all the statism they could get at the time.

    When Republicans, including Trump, shriek for and emphasize "replace" they mean replace with another government run system not much different than what they think are the "popular" parts of Obamacare and no way to pay for it. They don't want to go back to pre-Obamacare, let alone actually improve on that. There is too much of the predicted constituency for not giving up the latest round of subsidies, and the Republicans are too ignorant and too afraid to advocate for freedom and rights of the individual. The way they are going Obama was right when he said that they will modify his system and call it something else. "Me too but slower".
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    • Posted by $ jbrenner 7 years, 9 months ago
      Well said, ewv. Obamacare, like its Social (In)security, Medicare, and Medicaid predecessors, is based on the principle of altruism and presumes that we are our brother's keepers.
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      • Posted by ewv 7 years, 9 months ago
        And so does Trump. For all his Pragmatism rejecting acting on principle as a matter of principle he has not escaped absorbing the altruist-collectivist premises all around him as an unacknowledged standard for deciding what "works".
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    • Posted by $ CBJ 7 years, 9 months ago
      Did you read Trump's policy paper on health care reform? It's not perfect, but it contains many pro-freedom elements including some that improve on where we were pre-Obamacare.
      https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/HCRef...
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      • Posted by ewv 7 years, 9 months ago
        I have also seen what he said contradicting freedom in healthcare and elsewhere. As time passes, the Republican national healthcare plan moves more to compromise with Obama, "keeping" the "popular" parts. As with Pelosi, you know what's in it after "The Deal".
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        • Posted by ewv 7 years, 9 months ago
          From "Trump: My Healthcare Plan Is Going To Cover Everybody"

          http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvesp...

          “We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” Trump said. “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.” People covered under the law “can expect to have great health care. It will be in a much simplified form. Much less expensive and much better.” [quoted in Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...]

          In 2000, @realDonaldTrump released a book called "The America We Deserve" where he advocated for universal healthcare and single-payer. http://pic.twitter.com/k25Wsawf66
          — Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) January 13, 2017
          ...

          For quite some time, Trump has been in favor of government-funded health care. He admitted to it on CBS’ Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes in September of 2015:

          Scott Pelley: What's your plan for Obamacare?

          Donald Trump: Obamacare's going to be repealed and replaced. Obamacare is a disaster if you look at what's going on with premiums where they're up 40, 50, 55 percent.

          Scott Pelley: How do you fix it?

          Donald Trump: There's many different ways, by the way. Everybody's got to be covered. This is an un-Republican thing for me to say because a lot of times they say, "No, no, the lower 25 percent that can't afford private. But--"

          Scott Pelley: Universal health care.

          Donald Trump: I am going to take care of everybody. I don't care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody's going to be taken care of much better than they're taken care of now.

          Scott Pelley: The uninsured person is going to be taken care of. How? How?

          Donald Trump: They're going to be taken care of. I would make a deal with existing hospitals to take care of people. And, you know what, if this is probably--

          Scott Pelley: Make a deal? Who pays for it?

          Donald Trump: the government's gonna pay for it. But we're going to save so much money on the other side. But for the most it's going to be a private plan and people are going to be able to go out and negotiate great plans with lots of different competition with lots of competitors with great companies and they can have their doctors, they can have plans, they can have everything.
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  • Posted by chad 7 years, 9 months ago
    As I have pointed out before, the actors have changed the play is the same. The promise that the ACA will be repealed and then replaced confirms that we will still have the same thing but perhaps with a different name especially when some senator (or the president elect) says something like, "well, we want to keep the good parts?" Using definitions properly this country is a communist democracy where you can vote for the people who will steal and imprison you next. The problem is not the leaders, they are the symptom. The problem is this is what the majority of the people want, including republicans or any other party that concerns itself with getting elected.
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  • Posted by freedomforall 7 years, 9 months ago
    "The GOP needs an alternative to Obamacare."
    They have one. It's a rarely seen thing that works more efficiently than anything else ever devised and it's called THE FREE MARKET."
    (National Review is just another CINO statist propaganda rag that long ago lost any intent to support liberty and free market capitalism.)
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    • Posted by scojohnson 7 years, 9 months ago
      Beyond basic consumer protections and requiring proof that insurers are sufficiently capitalized (to cover their potential claims), etc., the government doesn't have any need to be involved.
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  • Posted by $ TomB666 7 years, 9 months ago
    What is so sad about this to me is that “the purpose has been lost!”

    Company paid health insurance began as a competitive thing. To get around price controls imposed during WWII, companies began to offer ‘benefits’ to workers to hire them and retain them. Think about that for a minute.

    Government mandated portability destroys one of the primary reasons companies paid for health insurance to begin with. But now government is requiring companies to pay for health insurance if they are of a certain size. A consequence of this is that companies don’t want to grow past that threshold.

    It would seem that no one in government understand the ‘Law of Unintended Consequences’ but I think at least some of them do AND they relish the chaos they cause because it gives them more to regulate. That in turn means more have to be hired and job security increases.

    This whole mess starts with the wage freezes the government imposed during WWII. Funny thing is, I can’t find that part of the government’s powers anywhere in my copy of the Constitution. Maybe liberals have something different in theirs?

    I’ll find something different to whine about tomorrow :-(
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  • Posted by brkssb 7 years, 9 months ago
    Itemize tax deductions and claim medical expenses subject to a 7.5% threshold. Make that threshold 0% and more individuals could afford at least some of the expense. Better than the "earned income credit" - this would become the tax credit. Then, remove this expense from the "itemized deduction" panel; and make it a direct offset to taxed income. Just for starters until the entire tax code is repealed...
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  • Posted by mia767ca 7 years, 9 months ago
    i share your concerns...and mistake Conservatives make is to object ON PRINCIPLE to the theft of taxation...

    it is the old two-step forward one step back that fascism and socialism use to creep closer to total govt control of it's serfs (i mean citizens)...it is why Conservatism will fail...and we will all lose our liberty and freedom....
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    • Posted by $ 7 years, 9 months ago
      But Rand is a libertarian? Conservatism can't fail unless people no longer value what Conservatives are trying to preserve. Society in general has eroded what it is to be a Conservative. There was a post not to many days ago discussing Definitions of words (and terms). There has been a full court press to make conservative a bad name. The Constitution is worth conserving no matter what I'm called and I will not give up the fight until I no longer breath.
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      • Posted by mia767ca 7 years, 9 months ago
        Ms Rand despised Conservatives worse than the liberal/fascist/socialists....and her observation that he who held the most philosophically consistent position ended up the winner...right or wrong...Conservatives have no consistently pro-freedom and pro-liberty position...case in point...in their rush to repeal Obamacare, they try to reassure everyone that they will REPLACE it with something else to the Repub/Conservative liking...Obamacare is anti-freedom and anti-liberty...it is wrong on principle...it is anti-Constitutional
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        • Posted by $ 7 years, 9 months ago
          You do realize that the Rand I was referring to was Rand Paul. Rush is foremost a republican, as is Gingrich. Rush saw the train and hopped on board.

          Personally I could give a rats ass what she or anyone else thinks/thought of me. I'm a Constitutional Conservative.
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          • Posted by mia767ca 7 years, 9 months ago
            sorry thought you were referring to Ayn Rand...
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            • Posted by $ 7 years, 9 months ago
              I should have been more clear. No need to apologize. I respect Ayn Rand for a great many things she wrote but she wasn't right about everything she wrote, even if it was consistent. Some here can't stand that I am a conservative and that's fine but I do find their constant jabs to be anti-individual. My view, we all have every right to believe as much or as little as we want about anything we want. I'm no-one drone. I think for myself.
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              • Posted by ewv 7 years, 9 months ago
                Independent thought means understanding for yourself what something means and why it is true. It does not mean a requirement to disagree with someone else.

                Ayn Rand's rejection of religious conservativism is true, not "anti-individual".

                Not caring about "consistency" or "giving a rat's ass" about what Ayn Rand thought, in the name of "individualism", is not an argument
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    • Posted by ewv 7 years, 9 months ago
      That is the phenomenon we are seeing of efforts of reform, in reaction to collectivist activists, which results in a zig-zag pattern within a downward trend over time. Without a philosophy of reason and individualism as what we are for, it not enough to oppose the worst in an atmosphere of intellectual leadership that says 'me too but slower'. Conservatism with its appeals to an historical Constitution, faith and family, has never been capable of stopping collectivism-statism. Opposing forced redistributionism as a political principle isn't enough either to fight underlying premises of altruism and irrationalism.
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  • Posted by Eyecu2 7 years, 9 months ago
    I agree with what you have said. The only excuse that I can think of for Rand Paul to be promoting this. Is that he has surrendered to the idea that the Left has promoted. The idea that the Government must have a hand in and control over each individuals health care.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 9 months ago
    Rand Paul's plan sounds exactly like what I think ACA should have been. It is a really good start.

    My biggest concern (one of those nits in an overall good thing) with Paul's proposal is what to do with people who are irresponsible in that they have no wealth, maintain no insurance, and then they need medicine. It's easy to say, "that's not my problem," but those people will find a way to freeload.

    I hate to focus on "framing", but they should sell this thing to Democrats too "HSAs shift control of health-care spending from employers to employees." --> "HSAs shift control of health-care decisions from corporations to workers" It's a little different, but it happens to be true. Democrats should support a plan along the lines of what this article says Paul is proposing.
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    • Posted by ewv 7 years, 9 months ago
      Obamacare could never have been a system of tax credits for private health care accounts because their premise was more statism and collectivism making health care a government entitlement. They aren't interest in employees making more decisions about their own health care. Obamacare was intended as step leading to full socialized medicine and Obama was caught on video saying so.

      It was never intended to work in the form the Democrats passed it. They knew it would not work but deliberately set out to entrench into law as many statist-collectivist premises they could, expecting that it would cause chaos in the insurance industry followed by a public clamor for a stronger government "solution". It's the classic pattern of more government controls promoted to "solve" problems caused by government controls, exploiting collectivist premises to rationalize progressively intensifying all of it.
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    • Posted by $ 7 years, 9 months ago
      Its entirely unconstitutional regardless of how its framed or who its framed by. Nowhere in the constitution is the fedgiv given this authority. Paul knows this...
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      • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 9 months ago
        "Nowhere in the constitution is the fedgiv given this authority. Paul knows this..."
        Why would he propose something he knows is unconstitutional?
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        • Posted by freedomforall 7 years, 9 months ago
          He's a politician. None of them honor their vows to protect and obey the constitution.
          He has never been the supporter of liberty and limited govenment that his father was.
          He is a moderate Republican, not libertarian.
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        • Posted by $ 7 years, 9 months ago
          Good question. I'd like him to answer that question as well. Perhaps his Libertarianism is being worn down ias he functions inside the political machine?
          I can only speculate its incrementally dismantling what O setup. If true, the question then becomes why be incrementalist? The republicans have the House and the Senate and DT said he'd sign. All that need be done is defund O-care. Why this p*ss approach. Just do it.

          And incrementally taken apart of not the entire assumption of authority in this matter is not stated in the Constitution and is firmly in the domain of the States, if their people allow it.

          Taxation is theft for a HSA or not.
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          • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 9 months ago
            "Taxation is theft for a HSA or not."
            I simply don't get how an HSA is a tax.
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            • Posted by $ 7 years, 9 months ago
              Okay. If they, the government extracts it from you, for you or anyone else, without your permission and consent its theft. It, they, have no right to put their hand into my pocket for anything unless I allow it (and they steal enough already). There is nothing stopping me, you or anyone from setting aside their own income as a HSA for medical situations. Why must the government ensure I do this? Are they me? No. Are they the insurer? No. So they provide the medical service? No.Sounds awful lot as a scheme insert itself to make money, no?

              What Government is is a parasite who feeds off others wealth. To get that wealth it has to attach itself in every conceivable way it can devise in order to feed. They are deliberately impeding my life, liberty and pursuit of happiness and infringing on my property to feel the financial gluttony. The host, America, is dying and this unconstitutional mental mindset has to stop.

              Tenth Amendment. Free Market.
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              • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 9 months ago
                "There is nothing stopping me, you or anyone from setting aside their own income as a HSA for medical situations. "
                I know. I've been doing it voluntarily for about 10 years. Unlike Roths, there're no income limits. It's tax-deductible going in, grows tax free, and is tax free coming out when used for medical expenses. You can invest it in stock and bonds. I don't even take money out for healthcare; I use other funds. You can only put $7k a year in, but it's worth doing. It's one form in the bound book of tax papers my CPA generates.

                It would be great if there were no booklet of taxes, but as tax headaches go, I consider HSAs a plus.

                We just got dinged for $4k for sending employees' withholding in using paper checks, even though I sent them in on time with Form 941 perfectly correct; you're supposed to use electronic remittance. The funny thing is we sent a letter asking if we can get the penalty forgiven, and they sent back a snail mail letter saying they received our letter and are doing an administrative process to make a decision that could take months. So they sent a letter saying, "ah, let me think about it."

                Given all the other other hassles, I consider HSAs to be one of the wonders of the tax world.
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