Wednesday, July 19, 2017

American Health Care

The Affordable Care Act, call it the ACA or ObamaCare, is an intrinsic part of the American economy.  It is, in no way, perfect.  It could be made much better, if not perfect, with tweaks and pats and new provisions in Congressional legislation.  It does not need to be repealed, which is the latest thing that the 45th President is now demanding, since the American Health Care Act that Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell pushed hard for has died a-borning.
    Right now, in America, our medical costs and requirements use 1/6 of our GPD.  The GDP, or gross domestic product, is one of the primary indicators used to gauge the health of a country's economy.  It represents the total dollar value of all goods and services produced over a specific time period; you can think of it as the size of the economy.
     The 2016 American GDP was estimated at 18.46 trillion dollars.  One-sixth of that amount is roughly 1.086 trillion dollars.  Most other countries have "socialized medicine" in that everyone in that country is covered by governmental medical care that comes from taxes, and no one is turned down or turned away for treatment.  The countries that have these programs spend only 1/8 of their GDP on health care, because it's available to everyone.  If America dropped down to 1/8 of the GDP, that would roughly be 148 billion dollars.
     The current President made tons of promises throughout his campaign, but one of the things that he promised most often (other than to "make America great again") was to "repeal and replace ObamaCare" with a much better health care system that would increase coverage, reduce costs, reduce insurance premiums, and make sure that everyone had good, economical medical coverage for everything.
     The Republicans have been complaining and whining and stating they would over-throw ObamaCare since the Act was passed - after 170 amendments and almost a year of debate previous to it being approved by Congress.  Wouldn't you think that some one in the Republican Party would have been working on a really good replacement plan for the ACA during the past seven years? Tomorrow will mark 6 months since the last Presidential Inauguration; the Republicans tied their Health Care Act to their Tax Reform Bill in the House, where Paul Ryan was the main crafter of the legislation.  It was sent to the Senate, where it has been re-written by 13 male Senators, and where it has failed in two presentations.   -  Do you think that the fact that more than 24 million people will be left without any medical coverage has anything to do with this?
     Now the Putin Puppet in the White House has decided that he'll just have Congress totally repeal ObamaCare, without any replacement plan in place...  That he'll let ObamaCare die on it's own.  Of the newly failed American Health Care Act, the President said, "We're not going to own it.  I'm not going to own it."   He sure doesn't seem like a strong and powerful negotiator to me.
      With word leaking out from Congress that the new Act would die in before birth, the White House suddenly proclaimed this week a "Made In America Week."  A top Republican told CNN on Tuesday, "He was playing with a firetruck and trying on a cowboy hat as the bill was collapsing and he had no clue," on Monday.   A pundit asked if the President was trying to mimic all of the Village People in one showing...
      One thing this President has shown to all the world is that he is an inveterate liar; that he can't even keep his lies straight; that he is a complete idiot when it comes to governmental affairs; and that he still truly loves his pal Vladimir Putin.   And did you see that the Puppet had a second tete-a-tete with Putin at the G20 for more than an hour, with no one in earshot except the Russian interpreter?  Wonder what was talked about then?  No one will ever know except those three men.....

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