Are you aware that the efforts to repeal the ACA have started up again?

I know there is the Graham-Cassidy bill but I haven’t looked into it much except enough to know it is worse then the previous horrible bills. Goodbye pre-exsisting conditions. You could still get insurance.. You just couldn’t afford it. And they want to nuke the essential health benefits provision so there is even more fucking. This is especially bad if you are a female.

I guess they fear getting primaried more than fucking everyone over.

Socialized Medicine. An idea whose time has come.

I’ve heard about this, but am not particularly worried. The Republican Congress can’t repeal the ACA unless they can genuinely come up with something better. All of those red places which put Trump in office just happen to be the lands overflowing with those least able to afford health indurance. They are also the places that will be hit hardest and fastest with the repeal, and their representatives know it.

@Mariah Were the repeal to come, you couldn’t be parked in a better place than Massachusetts.

I know, but I don’t know the details.

I’m impressed with the perseverance, as much as I’m not happy with what the republicans want to do.

The inability to resolve healthcare is probably one of the largest political failures in recent history. I was aware of the efforts but don’t think they’ll go anywhere. I don’t like the ACA that much to be honest. I want private insurance out of the picture.

Well, as much as I would love single-payer – and it is gaining momentum right now – it won’t happen under Trump because even if it somehow made its way to his desk, he would veto it. So let’s maybe consider taking some action that would actually help save the lives of the sick people who would be killed by this bill, yeah?

Graham-Cassidy would repeal most parts of the ACA, remove most of its federal funding, and instead give smaller block grants to states for them to set up their own healthcare systems.

So you might think I’d be safe in MA, where they’d want to continue an ACA-like system, but with the small block grant we’d be receiving we might not be able to do so.

Chronically ill people in red states who would set up systems that historically fuck over the chronically ill, such as high-risk pools, will be harmed. Many will die.

We can’t afford to be unaware OR to underestimate the Senate’s determination to get this done. They’re planning to vote on the 25th. This is real. Please call the Senate.

I’m baffled…the ACA is a blatant failure. Insurance companies are bailing out of it left and right because they are losing money- the second year many people’s rates went up 1200% or more, it is collapsing, as it is unsustainable. If Trump was smart, he would have left it alone for another year and let it fail completely, so that Obama would receive the blame instead of the left blaming Trump.
Much like Bernie’s so-called “plans”, you cannot create a system where money is going to be taken from the rich to support the poor. People will give when it is a choice, but when it is a requirement, they will move their money overseas and go to great lengths to avoid being punished for being successful.
I am equally baffled by the ignorant people who believe a single payer system is a good idea…besides the UK and Canada’s (as examples) horrible wait times,allowing the government to control your healthcare is a frightening thought- the government can’t do anything right, and its priorities are far different from the individual’s. In single payer health care, the government will make your health care decisions- not the doctor and insurance company, which is enough of a nightmare, but the GOVERNMENT- which is always more concerned with the almighty dollar than the lives of individuals.

The ACA is not collapsing and it saves lives. Do you even care that it saves lives or do you only care about the bottom line?

It IS collapsing. Most of the larger insurance companies have bailed out, more are leaving, and my wife and I had our insurance rates go up 1400% in year two- as did many, many other people.
You need to educate yourself.

Buddy you’re going to have to find a different tact than “educate yourself” to use with me; I spend a large portion of every single day reading about health care law. I am quite educated.

Your rates have gone up because insurers have to cover sick people now. We’re making a trade off here and I personally think money for lives is a decent trade off – what do you think? Would you rather the insurers leave the sick to die?

There is a one-time market adjustment occurring in response to the requirement to cover people with pre-existing conditions, but the market is stabilizing. There is no death spiral. It is not collapsing.

It’s close to being a failure here
I don’t like the implications of this.

There will be no bare counties in 2018 (see bottom of article): http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/15/politics/20170915-cbo-insured-rate-uncertainty-premiums/index.html

I don’t see where it says that in the article. Regardless, I don’t want there to be gaps, I don’t want Trump to fuck with the ACA and I want something better so we don’t really disagree for once.

“In the last few months, dozens of counties—particularly in Nevada, Virginia and Ohio—have been at risk of not having an insurer participating in 2018. But other carriers have stepped in. Anthem announced Friday it will sell insurance plans in Virginia’s marketplaces, making plans available in what were the last counties without an insurer offering a plan.”

Bottom of article.

If you care, consider calling the Senate, to help save lives.

This could be first area that sees a gap if the one provider pulls out. It’s a little scary but I would be surprised if it happens.

The ACA does need to be fixed, and the sooner the better.

There is a bipartisan bill in the works, right now, to bring further stability to the market. It is not necessary to “fix” the ACA by burning it down.

Where I live I have only one choice for insurance. Only one insurer is in my county. I still don’t understand how that is the case, but was told it over and over again so I guess it’s true?? If not then that’s another thing sucking right now. Not that it didn’t suck always.

Just so anyone knows, I didn’t mean fixing as in “burning it down.” I meant fixing what there is as opposed to getting rid of it entirely.

I’m aware of this in a very general sense. I haven’t been following it very closely because I’m so sick of them trying to do this again and again—what number is it now?—and then I wonder, cynically, if that’s the point, that they’re trying to wear people down until they can get away with it. I mean, probably not, but it sure feels like it… I am doubly sickened by their insistence to do away with a program that has demonstrably saved lives. I don’t know how someone can look at constituents in town halls who say, “without the ACA I would be dead today,” and then vote to do away with it anyway.

The ACA is the healthcare system that is in place, and it has done a lot of good. They should be working on making it better, not trying to start from scratch again. There’s a baby in that bathwater.

The drumbeat is out there that the ACA is collapsing. But it is important to note WHERE it is that the insurance companies are abandoning ship. And it is also EXTREMELY important to recognize that the ACA is in reality a scheme devised by insurance companies to stave off universal healthcare for as long as feasible. The redlands are understandably “the Eastern Front” for the scheme, which while unraveling sooner than the parasites might have hoped, is not at death’s door (at least in blue country). The sad truth is that the greatest benefit of the ACA is that it allows for the slower moving object lesson with the dessertion of insurance companies. Of course, the fact that the lesson is falling on those in places with the greatest contempt for government might be cause for amusement considering that these are the same places most desperately in need of governmemt support. But the untold hardship, suffering and even death facing residents of the redlands is no laughing matter.

So up pops Sanders’ plan of “Medicare for everybody”. My guess is that the proposal is going to snowball faster than insurance and pharmaceutical corporations can defend against it. The bottom line reality will force even the thickest of blockheads to reluctantly accept the most certain and efficient solution to the needless suffering and death of their constituents.

Since Congress clearly cannot act, the various states will come up with ways to compel one group of people to pay for another’s medical bills.
If they are smart, the state’s with low representation in Congress will create the most attractive programs, and draw population in order to increase their representation and power.

@Josie One of the increasingly significant problems in this country is the ever dwindling representation of the nation’s population concentrating in metropolitan centers. By this I mean the fact that each state has 2 senators regardless od population.

From Ryan Grim:

McCain has announced his opposition to Graham-Cassidy.

With Rand Paul firmly against it, and Susan Collins all-but-publicly against it, it doesn’t have the 50 votes it needs. And you still have Lisa Murkowski, Rob Portman, Shelley Moore Capito and others who haven’t said anything publicly. McConnell said that without the confirmed 50 votes, it won’t be put on the floor.

Regarding Collins: she told reporters she wasn’t ready to announce her position, but then volunteered a not-so-random factoid: the bill cuts a billion dollars in Medicaid money from Maine.

Yes, McCain’s announcement was a huge relief today.

We’re still not quite in the clear – Paul says he’s a no vote, but I suspect if he were tasked with being the vote that killed the bill, he might change his stance. His problem with G-C is mainly that it doesn’t undo the ACA enough; if he believes it’s the only chance he’ll get to undo the ACA at all, he might be willing to say yes.

Collins is all but certainly a no vote. I would sleep much better at night with more commitment from Murkowski.

But yes – today is a great day. I have gone from feeling like I’ve got a rock in my stomach to being somewhat hopeful.