After reading the new health care bill and researching it we should all should give up hope that the national health care problem is being addressed at all.  This is not a solution and it just another overall con job.  The term repeal and replace is a lie.  Because there is no replace piece at all yet.  It will end Obamacare, which was an attempt, albeit a weak one, to give health care options to Americans.  Give people something to buy.  A legitimate attempt by the Democrats.  It very well may be garbage but it was an attempt.  I am stopping here for now on Obamacare.  I understand that it is expensive and may be terribly flawed.  Now to the GOP side of this.

The American Health Care Act is a broad statement by the GOP that you, the hard-working America, are on your own.  You don’t have a right to health care.  The government has no obligation to participate or intervene in the health care issue at all.  The health care racket is going to go on untouched.  Insurance companies and the bottom lines of corporations are the beneficiaries.  Nothing about the system will change.  The people get nothing.  Health care will continue to be a huge problem.  Kicking the can down the road is the American way.  Congress has once again done the easy thing.  A huge tax cut for the rich and industry, and poor people will take the hit.  Does the government need to provide health care?  No I don’t think government is the answer or would be any good at it.  However, the government can address the fact that health care is big business for profit.  Insurance companies, hospitals, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies have created a system that is almost impossible to unwind.  Impossible to change, and with flawed practices that ensure rising costs indefinitely.  That is the point of this bill.  Paul Ryan and the GOP are saying this is not government business.   This huge obvious problem exists, and the GOP have run away.

What does the American Health Care Act mean?  You will still be able to buy health insurance.  If you have pre-existing conditions you can still buy health insurance.  A person can stay on their parents’ health insurance until age 26.  These good things are staying.  Requiring individuals to buy health insurance, and requiring businesses to provide health insurance will be repealed.  Americans will get a tax credit per their age, to put towards their health care.  The age scale is due to risk.  Which is cold hearted but disciplined.  I guess.  Older people pay more and younger healthy folks pay less.  Also, the Medicaid pieces are under fire and may be defunded.  This is how a lot of poor Americans could get coverage through Obamacare.  The ways to pay for everything are reduced, a lot less people have health care, government costs go down, business costs go down, and individual costs rise.  Thanks Congress and Donald Trump!  We won’t even talk about Trump’s routine lies on the topic.  The most egregious one being that everyone will be covered.  Not sure what he is even trying to convey with that.

No matter what happens with this GOP bill and plan, or what happens to Obamacare, health care in America is still going to be a terrible on our ass.  So instead of participating in partisan politics and pretending that one of these weak sides is right.  Isn’t the better thing to isolate what the actual problem is, inform the public, and then create pressure for a real solution?

Why is health care so crazy?  Recently I became aware of the Stockdale Paradox.  Look that one up if you don’t know.  It is great.  Part of it is accepting the grim realities of your current situation.  For health care the current situation, simply put, is that the overall system is failing.  It is so expensive, it is hurting private businesses, draining government money, providing sub-par care, insurers are pulling back because of risk, and it will get worse.  People are paying lots of money to be “covered” but don’t have the out of pocket funds to actually receive treatment.  That is what the reality of the Unites States health care situation is.

http://go.cms.gov/1OghS4e

Where is all the money going?  What the heck is the breakdown?  The above link has some decent information on the breakdown of 2015 health care spending.  It is from the cms.gov site which is the Center for Medicaid and Medicare studies.  Insert government propaganda and cynicism joke here.  But nonetheless it has some data to chew on.  Spend is going up 5%-10% per year for every type of product, source of funds, and type of sponsor.    All types of healthcare demand are rising.  Costs are up.  Increased sales and profits are not resulting in dropping prices.

The government is spending way too much.  Federal, state, and local governments spent 46% of total health care.  Wow, that will make any thinking person give credit to the right for trying to rein in costs.  The argument that Obamacare is going to add to the government spend and debt is correct.  Just a fact.  People are already paying 28% and under all plans and they are destined to pay more.  Much more every year too.  Those facts are out there.  If the government and people are shouldering all the costs who does that leave?  The insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and providers.  They are expected to make profits.  Like any business.  Unfortunately, when life and death for humans and the profit motive are related you run into pesky moral questions.  How inconvenient.  Yet nobody is taking them on or even making them part of the conversation.  Partly because they have huge lobbies, get these people elected, and because their profit motive helps create good health care.  Not going to sit here and say they don’t.

So how does this get fixed?  By accepting the brutal realities of the situation as Stockdale did when he was a POW.  The brutal reality of health care is that no band-aid approach will work.  There is no “replace” magic bullet.  The only solution is a major overhaul of it all.  An overall approach that looks at the entire pie consisting of people, government, providers, insurance, and private business.  Start with bipartisan unity on the facts that the government can’t pay and oversee it all, and you can’t just rise prices and walk away.  When that happens Congress and the people can put pressure on private business to participate in the solution.  Instead of counting dollars and watching us all exist with no accountability or obligation to participate in the fix.  America always does the right thing when there are no other options.  We are approaching that point in health care at light speed.

Last comment on this topic.  Paul Ryan blew it on this one.  This guy is going to take a huge hit from this…