Future of Credit

[Happy Monkey]

It's an issue if you're doing things piecemeal. Eliminating preexisting conditions has to be paired with universal (or very close) coverage.

Of course, if you're requiring people to buy insurance, you need to subsidize it for people who can't. And you need to lower the cost, to minimize the nuimber of people who need to be subsidized. If you don't have funding for subsidies and something the CBO predicts will lower costs, the bill is going nowhere. And getting an industry that is exempt from antitrust regulation to lower their prices isn't easy.

There may be some parts of this bill that could be done piecemeal, but not much of the meat of it.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

And getting an industry that is exempt from antitrust regulation to lower their prices isn't easy.

Solving the insurance problem only starts to address the issue. Once the insurance problem is addressed, only then will the next problem be confronted.

Insurance companies have something like a 2% profit margin. Big pharma and medical equipment suppliers average 17% and 20+% profit margins. Making it illegal to buy the same drug from Canada or Mexico - to keep American drug prices 40% higher - did not help anything. And yes, same viagra made in Ireland sells for 40% higher in America compared to both Canada and Mexico - because our bought and paid for politicians know where campaign funds come from.