From politico sourcing, so take it for what it's worth (possibly/probably garbage);

🚨DEVELOPING: Bipartisan senators, led by Susan Collins and Bernie Moreno, convened to negotiate a two-year extension of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies with new income caps and fraud safeguards, per Politico.

— SEEN (@seenshortnews) December 16, 2025

I think an extension with fraud/income caps might actually make sense, just my two cents.

Kenneth_2003 said:

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That steaming pile of garbage bill that had to be passed to find out what was truly in it has NEVER stood unsupported on it's own without additional massive spending. It's only accomplishment, really its only purpose, was to drive UP the cost of health care.

LET

IT

BURN!!!

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The purpose was to ultimately get Medicare for all. Government run healthcare.

This year, we sent $38 billion dollars in direct premiums to insurance companies for people that never used Obamacare. Probably most didn't even know they had it.

Cost skyrocketing, insurance ****ing people and hospitals charging 10x for folks without insurance than those with it all are piling on to the point that the American people will at some point cave and vote for Medicare for all.

That was the point of Obamacare. Get everything ****ed up so badly that the government can take over.

Rush Limbaugh called it when it was passed. He basically said if Obamacare passes, it's over. He knew as well as many of us that this was nothing but a precursor to single payer.

1. Get people hooked on the subsidies
2. Destroy the system by making it popular but unsustainable
3. Make it so a single payer system is the only politically viable option after the inevitable collapse

And here you have people griping that they didn't pass more subsidies. Stop it. Get government out of almost everything but public safety.

Healtcare has been garbage since we tied it to our employment, it has been a insurance boom and a gradual decline of choices, the Dr's were replaced by bean counters.

Everyone paying attention called it. Obama was on video before he was running for President talking about how Americans would never go for a single payer system, so you'd have to trick them by creating a government option and then slowly tweaking regulations to kill the private option. It wasn't AI, he really said that out loud in public. I think it was on Oprah.

UntoldSpirit said:

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captkirk said:

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DannyDuberstein said:

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This was a stupid band-aid rip that is going to cost the GOP a lot of votes. The system put in was bad, but this is not the way to unwind it

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So covid era subsidies should just continue in perpetuity?

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Republican's are just politically stupid. You can't fix things without power. You can't stay in power by increasing premiums by a factor of 2 or 3 for millions.

You have to make big changes and this will take time. Shoulda started a long time ago, but it is what it is. So while you are making these adjustments, you are going to need to continue to subsidize the broken system for a while. Do that in exchange for making changes that you need, or at least for changes that get us started.

This isn't going to work. We can't afford for Dems to be in power, but that's what we are going to get.

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That is exactly what is part of the problem. The subsidies are making it worse, and the sooner we can get rid of any of it as part of getting rid of all of it, the better off we will be.

Any person with a very basic understanding of economics could have told you from the beginning that the ACA was ******ed built on a foundation of stupid, built on a shifting hillside of corruption. From encouraging over-insuring to hiding real costs to encouraging middlemen at 40 different bureaucratic levels, every part of what we have been force fed with the ACA needs to die a sudden death. Anything else makes it that much harder to get rid of.

I feel sorry for anyone who had a big jump in premiums due to this.

But.....

You did the calculus when gaining employment that required Obamacare insurance. Your compensation package has now changed pretty drastically. Perhaps you need to redo the math.

My high deducible health insurance for me and my wife? About $200 a month. It doesn't pay a dime until I hit a $7k deducible. But that's fine.

Burpelson said:

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Healtcare has been garbage since we tied it to our employment, it has been a insurance boom and a gradual decline of choices, the Dr's were replaced by bean counters.

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You know the problem with thing it to employment? People have to work (for the most part). That gave Hussein the excuse to **** it up for everyone. There was little wrong with health insurance at the time. We could have directly paid for every single person without coverage at the time and it would have been far cheaper. As we said at the time.

If they had done that, who would have gotten the kickbacks? And of course the government wouldn't have control of this huge pile of money. Obamacare was the seizure of resources. It was always intended to be.

Bob Knights Liver said:

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Everyone paying attention called it. Obama was on video before he was running for President talking about how Americans would never go for a single payer system, so you'd have to trick them by creating a government option and then slowly tweaking regulations to kill the private option. It wasn't AI, he really said that out loud in public. I think it was on Oprah.

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One of his main architects is also on record ridiculing the general public as rubes for supporting it. IOW, you would have to be stupid to support it.

nortex97 said:

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From politico sourcing, so take it for what it's worth (possibly/probably garbage);

🚨DEVELOPING: Bipartisan senators, led by Susan Collins and Bernie Moreno, convened to negotiate a two-year extension of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies with new income caps and fraud safeguards, per Politico.

— SEEN (@seenshortnews) December 16, 2025

I think an extension with fraud/income caps might actually make sense, just my two cents.

---

Then what? Two years later going into a Presidential election year possibly with Democrats controlling the House then the enhanced subsidies will finally be removed? Not a snowballs chance in you know what. Also to even get a vote a permanent extension will be demanded by the Democrat house if not more concessions. Terrible idea in my opinion.

billydean05 said:

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Then what? Two years later going into a Presidential election year possibly with Democrats controlling the House then the enhanced subsidies will finally be removed? Not a snowballs chance in you know what. Also to even get a vote a permanent extension will be demanded by the Democrat house if not more concessions. Terrible idea in my opinion.

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Agree. IF -- and it's a big IF -- they extend the subsidies, it needs to be in exchange for structural reforms that evolve it over time from government-controlled to a free market model with individual responsibility. If we could get an agreement like that, extend it long enough to get past the 2028 election and allow the free market component enough time to demonstrate success.

The number #1 cost to employers is or will be Healthcare, as long as its in the hands of insurance companies, it juat seems like this is a no win situation.

nortex97 said:

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From politico sourcing, so take it for what it's worth (possibly/probably garbage);

🚨DEVELOPING: Bipartisan senators, led by Susan Collins and Bernie Moreno, convened to negotiate a two-year extension of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies with new income caps and fraud safeguards, per Politico.

— SEEN (@seenshortnews) December 16, 2025

I think an extension with fraud/income caps might actually make sense, just my two cents.

---

LOL. Yea, like the last "temporary extension" isn't being extended again now. Ahd what are "fraud/income caps"? Are there not current "fraud/iincome caps" now? Didn't Elon find billions in fraud before he was silenced?

End it. Period.

Burpelson said:

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Universal Healtcare for a $1,000......Alex

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If you think the middle class is pissed now, wait till you increase their wait times, reduce their choice on demand, and make them stand in line with a bunch of poor trash.

Here is the conundrum....It's never made sense to me that healthcare is issued via employers. I obviously understand the employee benefit argument side of it, but it's still not logical to me.

However, the left then jumps all over that and says, "We agree!!! That's why we need UHC!"

If we were to remove the obligation from employers, we would be extremely hard pressed not to then just jump right into UHC. What should happen is that we blow up the insurance market and ACA and let free market principles have more room to run here. I have zero confidence that would happen though. People want the sure thing even if it's wholly inferior government medicine so that's what we will ultimately do.

Science Denier said:

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nortex97 said:

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From politico sourcing, so take it for what it's worth (possibly/probably garbage);

🚨DEVELOPING: Bipartisan senators, led by Susan Collins and Bernie Moreno, convened to negotiate a two-year extension of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies with new income caps and fraud safeguards, per Politico.

— SEEN (@seenshortnews) December 16, 2025

I think an extension with fraud/income caps might actually make sense, just my two cents.

---

LOL. Yea, like the last "temporary extension" isn't being extended again now. Ahd what are "fraud/income caps"? Are there not current "fraud/iincome caps" now? Didn't Elon find billions in fraud before he was silenced?

End it. Period.

---

Oh MSM, just because Collins has an "(R)" behind her name on your screen doesn't mean she's actually supportive of normally "Republican" ideals and doesn't make her agreeing to something as "Bipartisan".

YouBet said:

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Here is the conundrum....It's never made sense to me that healthcare is issued via employers. I obviously understand the employee benefit argument side of it, but it's still not logical to me.

However, the left then jumps all over that and says, "We agree!!! That's why we need UHC!"

If we were to remove the obligation from employers, we would be extremely hard pressed not to then just jump right into UHC. What should happen is that we blow up the insurance market and ACA and let free market principles have more room to run here. I have zero confidence that would happen though. People want the sure thing even if it's wholly inferior government medicine so that's what we will ultimately do.

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Bennies like this started due to govt interference during WW2.

Just hit the AP

https://apnews.com/live/donald-trump-news-updates-12-17-2025

Quote:

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Four centrist Republicans broke with Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday and signed onto a Democratic-led petition that will force a House vole on extending for three years an enhanced pandemic-era subsidy that lowers health insurance costs for millions of Americans.

Democrats needed 218 signatures to force a floor vote on their bill, which would extend the subsides for three years. They reached the magic number with the signatures of Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Robert Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie, all from Pennsylvania, and Mike Lawler of New York.

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YouBet said:

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Here is the conundrum....It's never made sense to me that healthcare is issued via employers. I obviously understand the employee benefit argument side of it, but it's still not logical to me.

However, the left then jumps all over that and says, "We agree!!! That's why we need UHC!"

If we were to remove the obligation from employers, we would be extremely hard pressed not to then just jump right into UHC. What should happen is that we blow up the insurance market and ACA and let free market principles have more room to run here. I have zero confidence that would happen though. People want the sure thing even if it's wholly inferior government medicine so that's what we will ultimately do.

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Agree with the free market statement.

Would be strongly opposed to government interference with the employer insurance model. Employee benefits are to be negotiated in the market between employees and employers. Government needs to stay the hell out of it, which aligns with your free market statement.

The free market system/ insurance companies want guvment interference and that boat sailed a looooong time ago, do not see the 2 coming untangled at this point

Burpelson said:

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The free market system/ insurance companies want guvment interference and that boat sailed a looooong time ago, do not see the 2 coming untangled at this point

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It won't unfortunately. Going forward, Republicans will continue to tweak the existing margins of the current market setup, and the Democrats will continue incrementally destroying the same system, so we get to UHC.

YouBet said:

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Here is the conundrum....It's never made sense to me that healthcare is issued via employers. I obviously understand the employee benefit argument side of it, but it's still not logical to me.

However, the left then jumps all over that and says, "We agree!!! That's why we need UHC!"

If we were to remove the obligation from employers, we would be extremely hard pressed not to then just jump right into UHC. What should happen is that we blow up the insurance market and ACA and let free market principles have more room to run here. I have zero confidence that would happen though. People want the sure thing even if it's wholly inferior government medicine so that's what we will ultimately do.

---

It's wild to me that we want to build this great big, industrious nation. Strong, resilient, productive! Yet we can't even agree on how to take care of the very basic needs of humans, staying healthy and alive.

You can't be a "Great" nation without a healthy population. I don't understand the "get's mines, **** you figure it out" when it comes to your fellow American. No, for some reason making the very basics an outright struggle is how you reach greatness! "no pain no gain!" I guess.


Tying health insurance, and therefore healthcare, to employment is such an egg before the chicken to me. It's borderline ridiculous. Work to stay well instead of staying well to work.

Meh, oh well, I can afford our increases so **** my neighbor.

ETFan said:

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YouBet said:

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Here is the conundrum....It's never made sense to me that healthcare is issued via employers. I obviously understand the employee benefit argument side of it, but it's still not logical to me.

However, the left then jumps all over that and says, "We agree!!! That's why we need UHC!"

If we were to remove the obligation from employers, we would be extremely hard pressed not to then just jump right into UHC. What should happen is that we blow up the insurance market and ACA and let free market principles have more room to run here. I have zero confidence that would happen though. People want the sure thing even if it's wholly inferior government medicine so that's what we will ultimately do.

---

It's wild to me that we want to build this great big, industrious nation. Strong, resilient, productive! Yet we can't even agree on how to take care of the very basic needs of humans, staying healthy and alive.

You can't be a "Great" nation without a healthy population. I don't understand the "get's mines, **** you figure it out" when it comes to your fellow American. No, for some reason making the very basics an outright struggle is how you reach greatness! "no pain no gain!" I guess.


Tying health insurance, and therefore healthcare, to employment is such an egg before the chicken to me. It's borderline ridiculous. Work to stay well instead of staying well to work.

Meh, oh well, I can afford our increases so **** my neighbor.

---

So you want slavery then.





oh, and liberals, especially white libs, are the most selfish creatures on the ****ing planet!

Lower premiums don't do you much good if your insurer can drop you from your plan the moment you get sick or injured.

ETFan said:

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YouBet said:

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Here is the conundrum....It's never made sense to me that healthcare is issued via employers. I obviously understand the employee benefit argument side of it, but it's still not logical to me.

However, the left then jumps all over that and says, "We agree!!! That's why we need UHC!"

If we were to remove the obligation from employers, we would be extremely hard pressed not to then just jump right into UHC. What should happen is that we blow up the insurance market and ACA and let free market principles have more room to run here. I have zero confidence that would happen though. People want the sure thing even if it's wholly inferior government medicine so that's what we will ultimately do.

---

It's wild to me that we want to build this great big, industrious nation. Strong, resilient, productive! Yet we can't even agree on how to take care of the very basic needs of humans, staying healthy and alive.

You can't be a "Great" nation without a healthy population. I don't understand the "get's mines, **** you figure it out" when it comes to your fellow American. No, for some reason making the very basics an outright struggle is how you reach greatness! "no pain no gain!" I guess.


Tying health insurance, and therefore healthcare, to employment is such an egg before the chicken to me. It's borderline ridiculous. Work to stay well instead of staying well to work.

Meh, oh well, I can afford our increases so **** my neighbor.

---

As someone who started their career in healthcare, I'm more "liberal" than others on this board when it comes to this topic. Some people simply drew the short straw in life and through no fault of their own they get f'ed by a health issue. It's abhorrent to me that we would just go total Darwin and leave them behind on the side of the trail as the pack continues to move to the next location.

However, we also know that government managed healthcare is not the answer. We can simply look at what's already been done around the globe and see that with our own eyes with empirical evidence. Quality of care, wait times, etc. It's all bad. There are numerous studies and articles out there specifically on NHS in the UK and whatever Canada's system is called showing this, as a start. People that have grown up in it can attest to its failures as well and we have a few on here that have that experience.

You can also apply common sense and look at the absolute failure of what our own government tries to do in almost any endeavor that is not specifically designated by the Constitution. As an example, when they launched Obamacare, they couldn't even get the website built correctly. Took them forever to get it operable. All of the promises made by Obamacare were lies - keeping your doctor, $2,500, cost curve will bend, etc.

Another example is the VA and its notorious poor quality.

The primary thing we lament about our system in this country is the cost. We can look directly at the insurance companies as the largest driver of this. There is entirely too much administration creating zero pricing transparency in this sector. No one has any idea what anything will cost, and you just wait for bills to flow in up to a year or more after a procedure is done to know if you are done paying or not.

Now throw in you can't really shop plans inter-state, so you are limited to plans offered within your state. Reduces competition.

The desire by Democrats to provide free healthcare to illegal aliens which then drives up costs for everyone else who then has to pay for it. See the idiocy in California.

Culture - this one will be controversial for my conservative friends - too many of us obsess over keeping grandma alive regardless of QOL. Most of our costs occur end of life and we have to figure out a better balance here. I'm as nervous as anyone about death panels which the government would absolutely implement if you let them. See Canada who is pushing assisted suicide for just about anything at this point. But we do need to be honest and recognize the tradeoffs of throwing millions/billions of healthcare dollars at old people just to keep them alive for a few more days/weeks. I don't know what the answer for this is.

Appreciate the response. I do work in healthcare and I agree with a lot of what you've said. I think people assume when I say we need a single-payer or some sort of universal care, that I think it'll be all rainbows and unicorns and a perfect system! Yeah right.

I don't have a solid answer for how you solve a lot of the inefficiencies or potential issues of these alternatives, but I find it hard to believe we have so many Americans whose idea of fixing it is just "dunno, screw em". Unemployed? Existing conditions? Tough luck, this is America!

Some sort of universal coverage so all Americans can receive easy, consistent, regular preventative care would save the nation billions. Getting sick and then being cared for shouldn't depend on if you have a freaking job, are you kidding me? "Go to the ER" what a waste of taxpayer money.

I could go on. I'm not really here to dive headlong in to defending an alternative, because like I said, I don't think there's a perfect answer so we (collectively) could go on and on at different strawmen on both sides.

The discussion on geriatric LTC is a tough one... one we really should have, but we're light years away from that as a nation, imo.

Burpelson said:

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The number #1 cost to employers is or will be Healthcare, as long as its in the hands of insurance companies, it juat seems like this is a no win situation.

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Decades ago, way before obamacare, I almost always advised clients who had employees to not provide health insurance. Particularly if they had more than a few employees. Instead, my advice was to increase their pay and tell them to get on their spouse's insurance (if that was an option, often it was). In most cases, such as if their spouse was a teacher or worked for a big oil and gas company, they could get on their plan for hardly anything. If they had an employee or employees they could not afford to lose, then bonus them pretty generously. If they had a lot of younger employees, they were often more about pay than some benefits, at least back then.

All because insurance premium costs will increase rapidly (saw it in my own businesses) no matter how well or how poorly the business was doing. If the business was struggling, they had the power to control wages and wage increases, could tweak bonuses, but were stuck at the mercy of insurance companies when it came to those annual increases. They could shop their insurance with other insurance companies but the trend was always higher premiums.

ETFan said:

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Some sort of universal coverage so all Americans can receive easy, consistent, regular preventative care would save the nation billions.

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That is not true! It's the exact opposite! It just sounds good to the liberal mind.

Studies have shown that preventative care - for example, 5 year colonoscopies - cost way more than treating those who get colon cancer. The reason is that the vast majority of humans never get colon cancer. But you are paying for everyone every 5 years to have a colonoscopy. The mean cost of a colonoscopy across the US is about $2500. There are 124 million people aged 50+. That means it would cost $62 BILLION per year for those folks to have a colonoscopy every 5 years, assuming even distribution! It costs about $10 billion per year to treat colon cancer!

The same scenario applies to every other type of preventative care.

Healthcare is just another scam they sold us so that we wouldn't pay attention to them robbing us blind.

Logos Stick said:

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ETFan said:

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Some sort of universal coverage so all Americans can receive easy, consistent, regular preventative care would save the nation billions.

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That is not true! It's the exact opposite! It just sounds good to the liberal mind.

Studies have shown that preventative care - for example, 5 year colonoscopies - cost way more than treating those who get colon cancer. The reason is that the vast majority of humans never get colon cancer. But you are paying for everyone every 5 years to have a colonoscopy. The mean cost of a colonoscopy across the US is about $2500. There are 124 million people aged 50+. That means it would cost $62 BILLION per year for those folks to have a colonoscopy every 5 years, assuming even distribution! It costs about $10 billion per year to treat colon cancer!

The same scenario applies to every other type of preventative care.

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Like I said, I'm not here to dive in to all the strawmen. It's an extremely nuanced topic. As far as preventive care goes, sure, some isn't cost saving, some is wasteful. Some just simply leads to healthier Americans (see other points in my posts). Some doesn't and some has the potential to save us money.

So we'd need to rely on science, medical research, actuaries to figure out where the sweet spot is on these. That would be considered actually putting in the work to at least attempt a fix.

I definitely understand it wouldn't be some golden bullet fix.

Logos Stick said:

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Ellis Wyatt said:

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Love it! There should be NO Obamacare. It was and is theft.

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Unfortunately, the takers of society will still get their massive subsidies. This move screws the middle class.

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Go independent insurance

With ACA I was losing/ paying $2100/ month for three people family with $18000 deductible Basically catastrophic insurance but not health care

Now I get more coverage paying $600

ACA didn't help the middle class like me it may have helped helped middle class working for big companies but it basically was giving rich companies subsidies Different if it was equally distributed

ETFan said:

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Logos Stick said:

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ETFan said:

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Some sort of universal coverage so all Americans can receive easy, consistent, regular preventative care would save the nation billions.

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That is not true! It's the exact opposite! It just sounds good to the liberal mind.

Studies have shown that preventative care - for example, 5 year colonoscopies - cost way more than treating those who get colon cancer. The reason is that the vast majority of humans never get colon cancer. But you are paying for everyone every 5 years to have a colonoscopy. The mean cost of a colonoscopy across the US is about $2500. There are 124 million people aged 50+. That means it would cost $62 BILLION per year for those folks to have a colonoscopy every 5 years, assuming even distribution! It costs about $10 billion per year to treat colon cancer!

The same scenario applies to every other type of preventative care.

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Like I said, I'm not here to dive in to all the strawmen. It's an extremely nuanced topic. As far as preventive care goes, sure, some isn't cost saving, some is wasteful. Some just simply leads to healthier Americans (see other points in my posts). Some doesn't and some has the potential to save us money.

So we'd need to rely on science, medical research, actuaries to figure out where the sweet spot is on these. That would be considered actually putting in the work to at least attempt a fix.

I definitely understand it wouldn't be some golden bullet fix.

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I grew up in socialized healthcare, it's an evil on par with slavery and genocide.

diamondag said:

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Logos Stick said:

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Ellis Wyatt said:

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Love it! There should be NO Obamacare. It was and is theft.

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Unfortunately, the takers of society will still get their massive subsidies. This move screws the middle class.

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Go independent insurance

With ACA I was losing/ paying $2100/ month for three people family with $18000 deductible Basically catastrophic insurance but not health care

Now I get more coverage paying $600

ACA didn't help the middle class like me it may have helped helped middle class working for big companies but it basically was giving rich companies subsidies Different if it was equally distributed

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I think most people don't realize that it exists anymore. I have an independent insurance plan we just got through United Healthcare. It's $1,000 per month with a $12,000 deductible. That makes it somewhere around $500-800 per month cheaper than ACA with better coverage. However, they will deny you if you have preexisting conditions.

My cheat code for this (because I was going to have one albeit temporary) was to get Medishare on the side and get that issue handled via Medishare and not tell UHC about it. Medishare is $354 per month for us also with $12,000 deductible. Only reason I got the UHC plan is because I'm not 100% confident in Medishare if something really bad happens.

I haven't decided if I will drop one of them yet. As it stands, keeping both of them in case we need to use one over the other due to coverage is cheaper on a premium basis than just having ACA plus it gives me WAY more coverage. Obviously, I have two deductibles in play if I have to split coverage across both which sucks.

All of the ACA doctors I could fine were foreigners. No thanks.

The solution here is to the ability to get a catastrophic plan and let me pay cash for preventative or specialty procedures that I can handle out of pocket, but (1) catastrophic plans no longer exist and (2) can't necessarily just pay cash for specialty procedures as I learned through this whole ordeal.