Insurance

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act repealed the individual mandate portion of the Affordable Care Act that requires people who reject the insurance to pay a penalty of $695 or 2.5% of their income. However, Obamacare is still in effect and requires employers with businesses with 50 or more full-time employees to pay for their full-time employees health insurance, regardless of the cost. This is forcing many employers to reduce the number of full-time employees or go out of business altogether. [...]

With just a week left before Congress’ budget reconciliation process ends, the Senate is once again peddling a poorly-thought out plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA). If Senators vote before the September 30 deadline, they only need 50 votes instead of the filibuster-proof 60 votes to pass amendments.

I’m twelve feet away from the northern eyewall of Hurricane Irma.  Seated behind floor to ceiling panes of glass that can’t be thick enough. “Are they thick enough?” I wonder while staring at the murderous velocity of rain and wind that just a few steps away would lift me whole and launch me into the lake, a tree or another house. With death defying, tornadic ferocity the wind drives rain sideways in every direction at once.  I hear tree trunks and limbs snapping like firecrackers off in the distance.

Billions More for Crony Capitalist Insurance or Improved Medicare for All

On August 2, 2017, The Nation published an article by Joshua Holland, “Medicare for All isn’t the Solution for Universal Health Care,” chastising Improved Medicare for All supporters because, in his view, the single payer movement has “failed to grapple with the difficulties of transitioning to a single-payer system.” The art

House Speaker Paul Ryan speaks during a news conference at the Republican National Committee Headquarters on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 8, 2017. (AP/J. Scott Applewhite)
WASHINGTON – The Republican plan to repeal most of the Affordable Care Act without a ready replacement would leave 32 million more people uninsured by 2026 than under current law, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Wednesday.

Why can’t we get there? The people with decision-making power lack confidence in the solution simply because doing so would require a level of understanding which they seem either incapable of or unwilling to embrace. The belief that you can legislate your goals into being has subverted the courage it would take to repeal everything that stands between us and a free market.

The introduction of the Republican legislation to “repeal and replace” Obamacare is no more than latest scrimmage in the ongoing one-sided war against the poor and working class. The “Affordable Care Act” (ACA, better known as Obamacare) proved to be both unaffordable and unable to provide comprehensive care for millions.

2017 is the make or break year for the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Seven years in, the flaws of the ACA are clear – tens of millions are still without health insurance, premiums and out-of-pocket costs are rising and causing people to either avoid and delay care or go into debt, and the US continues to rank poorly in health outcomes. There is one way to fix the ACA, and I call it the Private Extraction.
What are we to do?