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Saturday, January 14, 2017

Here Comes Trumpcare

Being the husband of a doctor I am watching closely the repeal of Obamacare and the replacement with Trumpcare. Unfortunately health care is very expensive in this country. You can cut the costs somewhat by reigning in the outrageous prices that pharmaceutical companies charge for drugs. You can also start a competitive bidding procedure where patients can shop around for the cheapest costs of their treatments.(i.e. a hip replacement can have several different prices in a given city and great price differences for different states.) You can also set up a system where health insurance companies sell nationwide and compete with each other. (Look at what happens when you're looking for other kinds of insurance and go to a website like esurance or others that give you bids of term insurance policies.) In the rush to replace Obamacare there will not be the time right now to do this.
People buying health insurance are enraged over high premiums and high deductibles. Trumpcare will move to address this. I have been telling everyone that the end product voted on by congress and signed off on by Donald Trump will have elements like what was done in Alaska. The 500 sickest and most expensive patients were taken out of the insurance pool. These patients cost insurance companies and the state of Alaska over $55,000,000 per year. When this happened premium increases dropped to 7% per year and deductibles dropped. In the case of Alaska it is a very rich state due to oil and gas revenues. The state appropriated another $55,000,000 to pay for these very sick patients.
The rest of the US is not wealthy in the sense that Alaska is. There will not be the money to pay for these very sick patients. This will be a challenge for the states,etc.

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