Monday, May 30, 2016

Why Obamacare is a plus and not a minus

Republicans continue to want Obamacare to be negative and to use that against Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. According to most research, Americans like Obamacare and just want the law to be improved and not retired or replaced. Herein lies how Obamacare can become a positive issue.

First, America has and continues to have the challenge to control health care expenses. The issues are making American healthcare competitively affordable and consistently high quality for all.

Second, Americans had a need to insure the uninsured. When neglected or not attended, millions of uninsured persons used the emergency room as the place to get their medical needs attended. Doing that exacerbated the weighting lines at ERs, made triage a burden to hospitals, and incurred costs that were passed onto consumers.

Third, Obamacare is working in that it has led to a sharp reduction of uninsured persons and has produced positive metrics at the ERs. Where trouble remains is controlling costs.

Most Americans know that you can't get something for nothing. Coverage for uninsured persons gets distributed to everyone based upon their means to absorb the cost. The law is intended to reduce the overall cost such that the incremental amount is held to a minimum.

Therein lies the actual issue. The question for political candidates is how do you intend to lower healthcare costs? How much lower can individual premiums be reduced under your ideas?

"A Kaiser Family Foundation poll in January found that 44 percent of the public had an unfavorable view of the law, while 41 percent had a favorable view. That is an improved picture for Democrats from 2010 or even 2014.  
More recently, though, the unfavorables have ticked back up due to Democrats unhappy the law does not go further, the Kaiser Family Foundation found.
Bannon also noted that more of the public wants to improve the law, rather than completely repeal it, as Republicans call for.  
The Kaiser poll found that 30 percent want to expand the law, 14 percent want to keep it as is, 11 percent want to scale it back, and 32 percent want to repeal it completely.
Clinton is with those trying to improve the law, which could give her cover with voters.
Many of her solutions tack to the left. Most prominently, she supports the “public option,” a government-run health insurance alternative to increase competition. 
She said it could take the form of allowing people to buy into Medicare once they reach age 50 or 55 at a roundtable this month. Because the eligible people tend to have higher health costs, shifting them out of the private market and into Medicare could lower costs for everyone else, she noted." 
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/281579-hillarys-obamacare-problem

Doing it the Republican way, they had no intention of addressing the need and problems at all.


The Open News photo

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