94DCAg said:

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What is the solution? The GOP doesn't have one that wouldn't immediately result to massive loss of health insurance to millions. The result would be even more political instability---dare I say rising demands for single payer "socialist" solutions. Basic healthcare is good for us all and foundational for civil society. How we get there is the issue.

I like Mark Cubans ideas. I support anything that reduces the role of insurance companies. E.g., HSA accounts (realistically a mix of government/individual/employer contributions, doctors hospitals have prices upfront, etc.

I picked the HSA option at work mostly because the more traditional plans had too many hoops and denied most of the care I receive. HSA account gives me more freedom. Health insurance companies seem to only work to deny care, charge you more than market for care, make it impossible to use, etc.

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Everyone should be able to contribute to an HSA. Hell, everyone should be encouraged to contribute to an HSA. Restricting it to just people with HDHPs is just dumb and short-sighted.

The best solution is do away with "health insurance" all together. Free market pricing would work itself out. See the cost of lasik eye surgery over the years. Per the Google machine:

Quote:

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The average LASIK procedure today is approximately 20-30% less expensive than it was about 10-15 years ago when adjusted for inflation, and it takes less working time to afford compared to a decade ago.

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But let's assume that won't happen. Then the answer is:

• Decouple insurance from your employer. You should be able to buy health insurance from whomever you want - just like car insurance. Only 40% of us have changed car insurance carriers in the last 10 years. People tend to find what they like and to stick with it. Same would be true with health insurance. In theory, they would be better at providing carrots to live a healthier life. And if you keep your insurance with them for a long time - in theory they would be incented to cover things that make you healthier (like weight loss drugs).
• As stated above - let everyone invest in a HSA. Encouraging you to save for future medical expenses should be a thing!
• Up front, transparent pricing - you should know up front what a visit is going to cost.

Are there downsides to the above? Sure. And those would require some amount of regulation. But a lot less than is in place today.

FatZilla said:

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Malpractice/liability fraudulent claims by all the ambulance chaser lawyers is a huge driver of this inflated cost. Same with not enforcing billing based on actual cost to both private and public insurance services. Its quite obvious when you ask for an itemized breakdown for any procedure from a provider for cash and then also for insurance and you get radically different costs that proves pretty much every provider artificially inflates the cost for every procedure billed through insurance. RFK jr has the right idea to want to force all provuders to post actual costs publicly upfront for all and then actually hold them to that cost if they bill above it.

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The biggest driver of increases in healthcare costs in recent years has actually been pharmacy costs.

Correct on provider charges. Providers maintain different fee schedules because of the reimbursement limits imposed by CMS for Medicare and Medicaid. (Private insurers base their allowable charges on CMS to some extent, so CMS really is the proverbial 800lb gorilla.) Providers can charge whatever they want; I've seen out-of-network surgical charges exceeding $400k for procedures that would have been charged at 10% of that in-network. I know this will shock some of you, but providers have a business incentive to charge higher fees for self-pay and private insurance patients to make up for the shortfall in CMS reimbursement.

Tony Franklins Other Shoe said:

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AgGrad99 said:

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My company pays so much more, and gets so much less. We used to have so many more options...but the type of plans we used to choose are no longer available.

All that 'lower prices' and 'you can keep it if you like it' crap was such BS.

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I was part of an employee owned company back in 1994 until we went public in late 2000s. I distinctly remember the annual discussion and presentation how we shopped around for better alternatives every year for our health care plan costs. Those were the days.

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Yep. Same.

Every year we'd shop around...sometimes we'd switch, sometimes not.

There is no point now.

A roughly linear increase since 1999 and it's Obama's and the left's fault? It was already increasing linearly a decade before Obamacare became law. And, the slope doesn't appear to change when it did so.

If young people would stop Starbucks they could afford a house!!

Fightin_Aggie said:

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This is nuts.

In 1990 healthcare wasn’t the top employer in any state

In 2024 it’s the top employer in 39 states

We are the united states of healthcare pic.twitter.com/n72Py3YBaO

— Carnivore Aurelius ©🥩 ☀️🦙 (@AlpacaAurelius) July 11, 2025

This has to do with demographic changes not Obamacare

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To the extent that healthcare employers have been forced to hire more administrative and IT staff to comply with ever increasing regulatory requirements from federal and state governments (e.g., HIPAA, HITECH, ACA, and state equivalents), the change was not solely due to demographic trends.

I haven't read this, and may not.

However, as stated before, the laws of economics give exactly two ****s about your feelings, the color of your skin, "what every other country does", or how unfair it is to you.

IF you enact specific policies, you will achieve specific results. IF you enact some form, or a little bit, or even a lot, of socialized medicine, you will achieve higher prices across the board---period.

All hospital bills will go up, doctors visits will be more expensive, drugs will be more expensive, doctor time will be less, time to see a doctor will be months and months, licensed doctors will be less available, and the amount of expenses out of your monthly check will be higher.

It's guaranteed. I would bet my life on it because it has happened 100% of the time every single place it's been enacted, and will continue to happen when it's enacted in the future.

Everyone on TA was told.

This wasn't even Obama's idea, it was Pelosi's.

Out of our $7 trillion budget this year, Medicare/Medicaid, Obamacare, and VA health will take up a minimum of $2.2 trillion, which is what it cost in 2024.

If you like your wallet, you can keep your wallet. You just can't keep what's in it.

TA-OP said:

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A roughly linear increase since 1999 and it's Obama's and the left's fault? It was already increasing linearly a decade before Obamacare became law. And, the slope doesn't appear to change when it did so.

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Right but we were told by Obama and the Democrats that ACA would halt this trend. Remember our $2,500 we were promised?

Those of us on the right, who have common sense, knew this to be a lie and said so at the time. Was soon confirmed by Gruber, one of the architects of ACA, that the dumb voters were duped.

torrid said:

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If you like your wallet, you can keep your wallet. You just can't keep what's in it.

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TBH, that's basically the very shortened version of mine without my threats.

I have to repeat mine about every six months when this topic comes up, but it's brutal and it's true.

IMO, if anyone wants to genuinely avoid the deficit emergency that's coming by 2035 of $60 trillion, then the medical/healthcare portion of it is where the "fixing" has to be.

If there's a "what about me" comment, I understand. My response would be "what about you with 50%-100%/year inflation due to the dollar not being the worlds reserve currency", and severe civil strife to the point of conflict.

A minimum of 30% of the country want this, although it's unlikely they know it, or understand it. There's lots of other economic issues that will arise, and healthcare won't be a consideration, but regular burials will be.

That graph is pretty linear starting in 1999, 10 years pre-ACA. If it was solely due to obamacare I would expect a larger rate of change from 2010 to now.

To me that just says our population is fat and unhealthy in general (and the Boomer generation is aging), and we are paying for it.

Using the OPs data Healthcare premiums roughly doubled under W '99-'07

I guess that rise in cost was the ACA's fault
Not sure what the answer is but there's a reason Hillary-care was looked into Romney Care happened

Obama failed, which in this case was worse than a lie. He failed because he and his advisors had no idea how a business operates. He assumed that Unicorn farts could run the whole thing.

We are an unhealthy country that spends way too much money on end of life care. Until that changes prices won't go down

doubledog said:

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Obama failed, which in this case was worse than a lie. He failed because he and his advisors had no idea how a business operates. He assumed that Unicorn farts could run the whole thing.

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Sadly, he didn't fail.

He promised to "fundamentally transform America" and he did a damn good job of it. (Good as in accomplishing what he set out to do, not as in it being a good thing.)

backintexas2013 said:

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We are an unhealthy country that spends way too much money on end of life care. Until that changes prices won't go down

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When it is your loved one? I think you'll feel differently. You can talk tough now. But who should say how long someone should live?

YouBet said:

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TA-OP said:

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A roughly linear increase since 1999 and it's Obama's and the left's fault? It was already increasing linearly a decade before Obamacare became law. And, the slope doesn't appear to change when it did so.

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Right but we were told by Obama and the Democrats that ACA would halt this trend. Remember our $2,500 we were promised?

Those of us on the right, who have common sense, knew this to be a lie and said so at the time. Was soon confirmed by Gruber, one of the architects of ACA, that the dumb voters were duped.

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And continue to be duped.

If it's my loved one I would pay out of pocket. I have no problem with insurance paying. When it's federal dollars that changes things

annie88 said:

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backintexas2013 said:

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We are an unhealthy country that spends way too much money on end of life care. Until that changes prices won't go down

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When it is your loved one? I think you'll feel differently. You can talk tough now. But who should say how long someone should live?

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I believe what this refers to is care in the final months of life that has no chance of doing anything except making the family feel like they did everything possible for their loved one.

TA-OP said:

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A roughly linear increase since 1999 and it's Obama's and the left's fault? It was already increasing linearly a decade before Obamacare became law. And, the slope doesn't appear to change when it did so.

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Wasn't Obamcare suppposed lower insurance and improve health care outcomes?

What happened?
The same as with other democrat and government program.

Outcome is (at best) no better than before, but now its resulted in a massive bureaucracy, which is a bunch of jobs of questionable economic value that are nothing but a drag on the people/jobs that are actually producing. This is reflected in the other chart in this thread, which shows how HealthCare industry is now the major employer in most states.

Its all leading to a single payer system, the insurance industry with a few others have decimated the Healthcare industry.

BadMoonRisin said:

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That graph is pretty linear starting in 1999, 10 years pre-ACA. If it was solely due to obamacare I would expect a larger rate of change from 2010 to now.

To me that just says our population is fat and unhealthy in general (and the Boomer generation is aging), and we are paying for it.

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Except that Obamacare spent up to a Trillion, supposedly to give us better outcomes.
Bull***** It was bull**** then, and its bull**** now

We lost our "Cadillac" plan because our company deemed it was going to be unaffordable and OBama had promised to tax those. We all knew he was FOS because unions often have cadillac health care plans. He was never going to tax those. But companies played along. Premiums and costs still went up. Health insurance actually got worse

More money, for worse outcomes. As with every !@#!@! government program.
Trickle down poverty.

Can we just tell TA that a Democrat has a new healthcare policy where the government takes 100% of the healthcare system, that it's going to drive down costs , improve results, and save more lives?

Apparently, that's what he and his cohorts want to hear. Then, in 5-10 years, when it takes 2-3 months to get "immediate" surgery, 1 1/2 years to get elected surgery, patients are left on the gurney in the hall due to no available rooms, he can blame republicans like he's doing right now, cause that's what's going to happen.

What part of my first post above don't you understand. If government is involved in healthcare, certain adverse aspects to the health of Americans will happen----PERIOD! You may not hear about it, which is very likely. Hell, we rarely ever hear about the corruption of the feds since 2016 and are still digging around for that.

I'm sorry you don't understand or aren't capable of understanding, or more likely, don't want to understand. But like I said, no matter how unfair you think we mean conservatives are, specific results will happen.

Better yet, please move to your dream land in Canada to experience the bliss you so desire. All of the results you cherish and apparently believe have already happened there, and started in the UK in 1951. They already keep patients in gurneys in the hall due to no available rooms.

Oh for heaven's sake! Everyone with two brain cells to rub together knew how ObamaCare was going to fail. It has failed in every state in which it was tried.

aggiehawg said:

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Oh for heaven's sake! Everyone with two brain cells to rub together knew how ObamaCare was going to fail. It has failed in every state in which it was tried.

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At this point it started as about money…and now it is about control…again, those defending it don't realize the control they are losing.

TA-OP said:

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A roughly linear increase since 1999 and it's Obama's and the left's fault? It was already increasing linearly a decade before Obamacare became law. And, the slope doesn't appear to change when it did so.

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Give me a break. You're damn right it's their fault. All we heard for a solid year from the Democrats was how Obamacare was going to make healthcare affordable and bring costs down for every American citizen.

It was a bold faced lie and the Democrats in leadership at the time knew it. It was designed to ultimately fail and make healthcare so unaffordable that citizens would beg for more government intervention - aka single payer, government run and controlled healthcare.

The current healthcare mess sits 100% on the shoulders of Obama and his Democrat comrades in arms with the assist from RINO McCain.

MelvinUdall said:

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aggiehawg said:

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Oh for heaven's sake! Everyone with two brain cells to rub together knew how ObamaCare was going to fail. It has failed in every state in which it was tried.

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At this point it started as about money…and now it is about control…again, those defending it don't realize the control they are losing.

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Money for whom? Wasn't American consumers. Besides pharma and a few health insurence companies that have remained solvent (for now) who?

In addition, my taxes were increased because of this horse**** law.

aggiehawg said:

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MelvinUdall said:

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aggiehawg said:

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Oh for heaven's sake! Everyone with two brain cells to rub together knew how ObamaCare was going to fail. It has failed in every state in which it was tried.

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At this point it started as about money…and now it is about control…again, those defending it don't realize the control they are losing.

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Money for whom? Wasn't American consumers. Besides pharma and a few health insurence companies that have remained solvent (for now) who?

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At first insurance companies and then the government…this was just a tax, that is all it ever was.

TheEternalOptimist said:

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…,,,…,,,

The Democrats/Left wanted this to happen so that they got enough people dependent on a partially federal/state run system..... so that when it became unsustainable... they could more easily pivot toward single payer federal system to a now larger population of people on Obamacare.... therefore making it more politically 'palatable'.….,,,…

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Seems someone advocated this a while back.

• Control healthcare and you control the people

Saul Alinsky

from the search assistant on DuckDuckGo
Democrats who follow Saul Alinsky often draw inspiration from his community organizing principles and tactics outlined in his book "Rules for Radicals." His ideas have influenced various progressive movements and politicians, including notable figures like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who have been associated with his methods of grassroots organizing and activism.

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