(12-15-2018 08:32 PM)bullet Wrote: W.'s expansion of the drug benefit was necessary. People weren't taking their medicines and dying or getting sicker. Its not for a lay person or you to determine which medicines are needed.
W. gets derided for the drug benefit and No Child Left Behind from right and left, but those were both answers to real world problems. People couldn't afford their drugs. Schools were focusing on the good students and ignoring poor, minority and special needs kids, with the result that we had a lot of people with no HS diplomas and unfit for the workforce.
Unlike a lot of the Democrats and the Freedom Caucus, W. actually understood the real world in the US (had a little trouble with understanding Iraq).
bullet, I'm not sure your response here makes sense. As a conservative, I am reticent to endorse any large-scale expansion of government as a matter of course. That said, I am wondering about your characterization of the prescription drug entitlement as "necessary" because "people weren't taking their medicines and dying or getting sicker." People themselves need to decide if and how important taking their medications are to them individually. Many wish to consult with a doctor of their choice, some do not. That is their choice, not yours, or mine or especially the governent's.
The government has no business interfering, which is my point. The marketplace and market price are also a valid components of helping people determine their choice to take or not their medications and whether they are worth the cost. By interfering in the natural marketplace, the government is artificially skewing the decision tree by reducing or eliminating the vitally important market cost factor, which should be front and center in all health related decisions. This appears to be one of the primary causes of the introduction of the extraordinary waste factor that creates the unreasonably high costs in the first place.
While they may have been answers that W et al came up with, they appear to have been the wrong answers, and made problems worse by "fixing" them with more government intrusion where it did not seem warranted. To the extent people recognize this is the extent those "answers" suffer from deserved derision, as you put it. IOW, nice try, but try again. Further, without W's expansion we might well never have gotten the abomination of ACA. Ironically, W's action in many ways appears to have helped softened up the aptitude to pave the way for Obamacare.
People couldn't afford their drugs. Okay, what the heck does the government have to do with that? That's a cost-benefit problem. By introducing an artificial intrusion the problem only gets more complicated, expensive and overall, worse. If people can;t afford something, they will have to make an economic choice. If they can't afford it, they will have to get better educated, get better jobs, give up creature comforts (cable TV, fancy cars, vacations in the right places with the right people, too expensive housing, etc...
I speak as a single parent person with no health insurance, a special needs child, and limited resources I must choose how to utilize. The most inefficient use of my limited resources are public education, which is worthless, health "insurance" plans that do not do anything we need, and doctors who overcharge for their overblown services because of an artificially protected market fixing ponzi scheme started with medicare and perpetuated logarithmically until today's unaffordale ACA.
Yet, somehow my child gets the very best therapy-- negotiating skills and outside the box methods go a long way instead of paying through the nose, has improved his educational level beyond what any public school can or would provide due to extensive personal parental involvement (and admittedly forgoing more selfish pursuits I could be using the time I spend with him for) and we are seldom sick and almost never need doctors or drugs--basic hygiene, regular showers and keeping clothes and house clean (which many people do not do), constant hand washing (
62% of men and 40% of women don't wash hands--yeech), especially in winter, and a relatively inexpensive array of readily available over the counter generic store brand items takes care of 95% of our health care needs. How do we do this? By making rational choices and prioritizing what is really important over "needs" that are really "wants." Also, by self-educating whenever and wherever possible. And eating a normal diet that has some junk, but ensures I can always fit into the same pants and shirts I did in school, which is my baseline basic health check.
It is a lie that "healthcare" and health insurance have to be as expansive or as necessary as they are purported to be. It is a lie that people need most or in many cases any of their prescription meds. The socialists want you to think that you have to have these things and the truth is you do not. The only thing I might, stress might, go for is a universal catastrophic policy for all legal citizens. But it would have to be so basic as to only cover the very worst scenarios. Anything else is a lifestyle choice and largely a question of economic priorities, which is why removing cost from the decision tree is the very problem that keeps us spinning around these same artificial circles we have allowed to be created for us., Well, not for me, but for too many others, apparently.
W, god bless him,. lived a priveldged life and could not relate to real world economics. I wish he had beeen successful introducing the free market elements into Social Security like he wanted to in the speech I saw him give, but alsa, he bent to the political winds like they do from both sides when it comes to the important issues. W's expansion was a mistake. So was Obama's. And the next expansion will be just as wrong a band-aid of an "answer." Let the market and individual people handle it . If government wants to do anything, then mandate published prices for services so people can make better choices. Doctors are merely fancy service techs, hospitals are garages. Looking at them as they really are will decrease costs and improve health for all citizens.
Last time I had an x-ray a few years ago it cost me just $32 for 3 of them. Over the objections of some friends who had insisted I go to the emergency room and waste several thousands of dollars. I grew up working in a pharmacy and I was in the medical business for several years, dealt with doctors, hospitals and insurance and I am fully cognizant of the tremendous waste involved. But the very same x-ray at a hospital or doctor's office would have cost $500-$1500 or more (I know as I quoted out the prices at several locations before I made my decision on where to go get one--having been appalled at the rampant entitled greed and graft presented against my inquiries). Don't tell me what does and does not have to be expensive. I am a motivated parent to find and negotiate the very, very best price. But then, I'll drive across the street to save on gas, too. Would that the system encouraged more people to be as tenacious and careful in spending their family's money.