C-Mag wrote:Speaker to Animals wrote:C-Mag wrote:Here's the Competition Act. Many around here are smarter than me on this, tell me why it's bad or good.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-of ... m-act-2017
H.R. 372 - Competitive Health Insurance Reform Act of 2017
March 21, 2017
(House)
From my perspective, it doesn't really solve the problem, but removes the additional problems heaped on by Obamacare.
Trust busting the insurance industry is great and all, but what about breaking up the local monopolies controlled by hospital groups which are the main reason medical costs keep going up? What about limiting the span of pharmaceutical patents and the threat of voiding patents when the patent holder raises prices beyond some multiple of the cost of manufacturing?
More importantly.. Why the fuck don't we move people who can't normally get insurance to Medicare and spend all our time debating how to fund that instead?
Like BroGrump, I'm wonder if Ryan and the rest of us just got Trumped. Maybe DJT intended on this turd failing, maybe he didn't; but we've all seen how well he pivots and pulls victory from defeat. Maybe the path to correcting the Obamacare Hindenburg is to simply undermine it with a series of other laws, until, like the Hinderburg it just burns up and is only a skeletal shell. Then bulldoze the remains away.
I think this competition act is a good opening step, then slowly opening up Medicare as an option. Probably some more steps along the way to cleaning up the Hindenburg.
I can't see how it would help him. He spend, and lost, political capital pushing for this. He threatened the republican control of the House in the Midterms with it too.
Letting Obamacare implode is going to hurt him as well, even though the fault is on the democrats. No win here. He should have demanded a better plan or submitted his own bill. He needs to become a leader of the republican party, and he's not doing it.