Who Lost The House? John McCain

[John Junge]

• OPINION 
•  COMMENTARY

Who Lost The House? John McCain

His July 2017 vote killed ObamaCare repeal and made Democratic lies impossible to refute.

755 Comments

By 

Jason Lewis

Nov. 11, 2018 3:33 p.m. ET

Sen. John McCain in Washington, D.C., July 27, 2017. PHOTO: AARON BERNSTEIN/REUTERS

The Republican Party lost its House majority on July 28, 2017, when Sen. John McCain ended the party’s seven-year quest to repeal ObamaCare. House leadership had done an admirable job herding cats. On the second try, we passed the American Health Care Act in May. Then McCain’s inscrutable vote against the Senate’s “skinny repeal” killed the reform effort.

McCain’s last-minute decision prompted a “green wave” of liberal special-interest money, which was used to propagate false claims that the House plan “gutted coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.” That line was the Democrats’ most potent attack in the midterms.

It was endlessly repeated by overt partisans in the media. An especially egregious column in Minneapolis’s Star Tribune asserted the AHCA would turn back the clock so that “insurers could consider sexual assaults and even pregnancy [to be] pre-existing conditions.” In fact, the bill prohibited sex discrimination and stated: “Nothing in this Act shall be construed as permitting insurers to limit access to health coverage for individuals with pre-existing conditions.”

The problem was—and still is—that under ObamaCare all policyholders are charged as if they are sick. If restoring a modicum of traditional underwriting by loosening the Affordable Care Act’s strict age-rating rule discriminated against the old, then ObamaCare was—and is—discriminating against the young. The AHCA would have relieved this problem by allowing states to opt out of ObamaCare’s most onerous mandates and instead cover the most difficult-to-insure with $138 billion worth of high-risk pools. That would have arrested the ObamaCare “death spiral” and, as the Congressional Budget Office admitted, reduced both premiums and the deficit.

Emerging in response to World War II-era wage and price controls, health insurance has been tied to employment. When older workers lose their coverage along with their job, it creates a serious barrier for entering the individual market, as pre-existing conditions are often the result of age. This is primarily due to an unfair tax code that gives employers but not individuals tax breaks for buying insurance.

Again, the AHCA sought to even the playing field by offering a refundable tax credit anyone could use to buy an individual plan. The bill also would have expanded tax-deferred health savings accounts to help cover deductibles, copayments and over-the-counter expenses.

All these provisions were an attempt to alleviate the pre-existing condition problem, not exacerbate it. To be sure, instead of running away from health-care reform after it failed, Republicans should have leaned in on the plan’s most important aspects. But because the AHCA didn’t pass, it was impossible to refute the lies about it.

The late Arizona senator’s grievance with all things Trump was well known, but this obsession on the part of “Never Trump” Republicans has to end. Disapprove of the president’s style if you like, but don’t sacrifice sound policy to pettiness.

Mr. Lewis, a Republican, represents Minnesota’s Second Congressional District. He was defeated for re-election last week.

Appeared in the November 12, 2018, print edition.

John Junge
201 Wyandotte # 303
Kansas City, MO 64105
Email: johna...@gmail.com
Tel. 816.914.6526

[Jim Doran]

The ONION is a scream, isn't it!

I'm going to start addressing you as 'No John', since you toss this stuff up against the wall but rarely if ever discuss anything. 

Jim  
 

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[Robert Kern Curtis]

Obviously, Trump lost the House!

[haustusstevemcclure]

Brothers -- 

You know, the underlying premises of this analysis of the significance of McCain's are incredibly revealing.

The basic business model for health insurance that the ACA tried to start to get rid of is this:

'The way to make money in health insurance was to sell what is in effect 'like' catastrophic coverage coupled with maintenance care [i.e.  increasingly limited coversge] by (1) insuring a marginally less likely-to-get-really-sick portion of the market, while (2) pushing the more likely-to-get-really- lsick portion of the market off eother onto one's competitors, ir onto the government or onto private charity or into the cohort that simply has no real access to health care at all.'

The point of this business model was to slice and dice the market up in terms of the likelihood of this or that portion of the market getting really sick or not and making money by insuring the marginally less sick.

This model concentrates on finding and marketing to a smaller and smaller segment of the market.

The ACA attempted -- and will in the end probably fail -- to return to the basic concept of insurance:  EXPAND the market of the insured to the broadest group possible, all of whom are charged the same, so that the greater group provides resources to cover the sickest.  

Insurance is fundamentally about "spreading the risk" covered to as large a market as possible so that the average cost paid by all and each member of the market equally provides enough to pay for the risky.

This znti-insurance business model that ACA fought was the opposite: that anti-insurance idea was to marginally decrease the risk by pushing the risky out of the insured population so that the "covered/insured" did NOT pay for the risky sick.

THAT analysis of (1) what was going on in the previous model and (2) the need for a direct attack on that model is why the whole issue of "pre-existing conditions" is at the core of the debate er are having now.

Now a good analysis and argument can be made that essentially "private" health care funding insurance models are inherently self-contradictory because the whole tendency and drive of "private" health insurabce is to "de-insure the sick," i.e., not provide averagely costed insurance coverage to those more likely to get really sick.

Such an analysis and argument tends to argue for "Medicare for all," which, in effect, makes ONE 'insurer' cover the whole market [where differences in risk-for-sickness sre ignored because ALL are by definition 'covered' to the exact same extent] at a cost to the insured simply unrelated to riskiness of getting really sick.  The cost is covered by taxation based on income rather than by premiums based on health condition.

[Indeed, mathematically, a wage taxation system tends to charge the really sick population  -- which is marginally less employed than the well population at any moment -- less than those well and fully employed at any point in time.  This is the precise opposite of the private health insurance model.]

And THIS is what is significant about the social revolution begun with Medicare and continuing through Obamacare and into the coming couple of decades.

The basic SOCIAL vision is this:  society rather than the individual is coming to understand that it is a SOCIAL DUTY -- that's right, duty, like the duty to punish/deter/prevent crime -- to care for the sick just because they are sick, and not because they can pay for care.

This 'caring for the sick' simply because they are sick is BECOMING, over time and in a stumbling, evolving way, a part of the core social COMPACT we are called upon to embrace if we want to be here in this society. 

Take another example, above alluded to.

Right now, as a group, we humans kind of 'assume' that society rather than individuals have the core task of "dealing with" crime,  by punishing/detering/preventing crime.  Kind of that this task about crime is somehow part of the very presumed core and essence of what a society is.  Having a criminal law system is just part of what a society just is supposed to do.

But please realize, deeply realize, that this 'modern' [about 2,500 years old?] presumptive part of the core was not always part of that core.

For literally 98% of human existence, this anti-crime function was quite precisely NOT part of the core function of SOCIETY, but was an individual's [and then the family's and then the tribe's] responsibility and duty.

This transition from (a) individual to family to tribe [all relationships where the fundamental relationship is within a group where everyone is 'manageably knowable' to each other because the group is not that large] to (b) nation and then to 'society' as a whole and ultimately to 'humanity as one' [where the fundamental idea is not only that you do not actually have to know everyone in the group, not only that you cannot know everyone in the group, but basically that your knowledge and/or lack thereof, regarding who is in the 'group of all humanity' is simply irrelevant] -- this is a key transition.

This transition from individuals znd individualized groupings to humanity as a whole is concomitant with the adoption of "universal duties" of humans to each other.

And this transition from the many to the one is in fits and starts, first in one area and then in another, three stumbles forward with some stumbling backward -- and also very dependent on perceived resources and practical feasibility. 

But this journey is one of the truly astounding pieces of the story of humankind, astounding, often frustrating and even annoying, even tragic, but beautiful too.

The probable failure of the whole idea of a private health insurance market and that often trivialized slogan "Medicare for All" has now led Steve, once again, into another round of grand philosophizing.  

Who woulda thunk?

For whstever it is worth, I promise you-- when I started reacting to the article John Junge posted, I had no idea I would end up thinking about the last 80,000 years of human history.  If I had known where I was going to end up, I probably would have thought it too bombastic to bother.

Oh, well......

Steve

Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone

[Jim Doran]

Oooops there goes another entire occupation, underwriting!  Insurance underwriters join the ranks of key punchers, telephone operators and factory workers. Ciao, Aldo! 

Now life Insurers don't accept people with any history of attempted self-destruction.

Auto insurers charge drivers with more than a single accident a gazillion dollars.

But your model rewards the relentless addict, those who refuse to eat reasonably or exercise, with our pot of gold.

Now, FOR THE RECORD, I do think that there are advantages to universal health care.

But what measures are there for reasonable discipline FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE ENTIRE COMMUNITY? 

Jim  
 

[haustusstevemcclure]

[A] The typist of the below were zoo annoying to me that I try to correct them hrte.

[B]  if true, the below comments also suggest that, once society realizes it is under a social duty to care for the sick [a key realization that 'conservatives' do not yet concede],  then after that, then the only question is "Ok, how are we going to do.that?" -- a very different and difficult question.

Steve

Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone

-------- Original message --------

From: haustusstevemcclure <haustusst...@cox.net>

Date: 11/13/18 7:17 AM (GMT-07:00)

To: hau...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: Who Lost The House? John McCain

Brothers -- 

You know, the underlying premises of this analysis of the significance of McCain's vote are incredibly revealing.

The basic business model for health insurance that the ACA tried to start to get rid of is this:

'The way to make money in health insurance was to sell what is in effect 'like' catastrophic coverage coupled with maintenance care [i.e.  increasingly limited coverage] by (1) insuring a marginally less likely-to-get-really-sick portion of the market, while (2) pushing the more likely-to-get-really- sick portion of the market off either onto one's competitors, or onto the government, or onto private charity, or into the cohort that simply has no real access to health care at all.'

The point of this business model was to slice and dice the market up in terms of the likelihood of this or that portion of the market getting really sick or not and making money by insuring the marginally less sick.

This model concentrates on finding and marketing to a smaller and smaller segment of the market, i.e., to those most likely not to get really sick..

The ACA attempted -- and will in the end probably fail -- to return to the basic concept of insurance:  EXPAND the market of the insured to the broadest group possible, all of whom are charged the same, so that the greater group provides resources to cover the sickest.  

Insurance is fundamentally about "spreading the risk" covered to as large a market as possible so that the average cost paid by all and each member of the market equally provides enough to pay for the risky.

This anti-insurance business model that ACA fought was the opposite: that anti-insurance idea was to marginally decrease the risk by pushing the risky out of the insured population so that the "covered/insured" did NOT pay for the risky sick.

THAT analysis of (1) what was going on in the previous model and (2) the need for a direct attack on that model is why the whole issue of "pre-existing conditions" is at the core of the debate we are having now.

Now a good analysis and argument can be made that essentially "private" health care funding insurance models are inherently self-contradictory because the whole tendency and drive of "private" health insurabce is to "de-insure the sick," i.e., not provide averagely costed insurance coverage to those more likely to get really sick.

Such an analysis and argument tends to argue for "Medicare for all," which, in effect, makes ONE 'insurer' cover the whole market [where differences in risk-for-sickness are ignored because ALL are by definition 'covered' to the same extent] at a cost to the insured simply unrelated to riskiness of getting really sick.  The cost is covered by taxation based on income rather than by premiums based on health condition.

[Indeed, mathematically, a wage taxation system tends to charge the really sick population  -- which is marginally less employed than the well population at any moment -- less than those well and fully employed at any point in time.  This is the precise opposite of the private health insurance model.]

And THIS is what is significant about the social revolution begun with Medicare and continuing through Obamacare and into the coming couple of decades.

The basic SOCIAL vision is this:  society rather than the individual is coming to understand that it is a SOCIAL DUTY -- that's right, duty, like the duty to punish/deter/prevent crime -- to care for the sick just because they are sick, and not because they can pay for care.

This 'caring for the sick' simply because they are sick is BECOMING, over time and in a stumbling, evolving way, a part of the core social COMPACT we are called upon to embrace if we want to be here in this society. 

Take another example, above alluded to.

Right now, as a group, we humans kind of 'assume' that society rather than individuals have the core task of "dealing with" crime,  by punishing/detering/preventing crime.  Kind of that this task about crime is somehow part of the very presumed core and essence of what a society is.  Having a criminal law system is just part of what a society is just supposed to do.

But please realize, deeply realize, that this 'modern' [about 2,500 years old?] presumptive part of the core was not always part of that core.

For literally 98% of human existence, this anti-crime function was quite precisely NOT part of the core function of SOCIETY, but was an individual's [and then the family's and then the tribe's] responsibility and duty.

This transition from (a) individual to family to tribe [all relationships where the fundamental relationship is within a group where everyone is 'manageably knowable' to each other because the group is not that large] to (b) nation and then to 'society' as a whole and ultimately to 'humanity as one' [where the fundamental idea is not only that you do not actually have to know everyone in the group, not only that you cannot know everyone in the group, but basically that your knowledge and/or lack thereof, regarding who is in the 'group of all humanity' is simply irrelevant to your social rights and duties] -- this is a key transition.

This transition from individuals znd individualized groupings to humanity as a whole is concomitant with the adoption of "universal duties" of humans to each other.

And this transition from the many to the one is in fits and starts, first in one area and then in another, three stumbles forward with some stumbling backward -- and also very dependent on perceived resources and practical feasibility. 

But this journey is one of the truly astounding pieces of the story of humankind, astounding, often frustrating and even annoying, even tragic, but beautiful too.

The probable failure of the whole idea of a private health insurance market and that often trivialized slogan "Medicare for All" has now led Steve, once again, into another round of grand philosophizing.  

Who woulda thunk?

For whstever it is worth, I promise you -- when I started reacting to the article John Junge posted, I had no idea I would end up thinking about the last 80,000 years of human history.  If I had known where I was going to end up, I probably would have thought it too bombastic to bother.

[haustusstevemcclure]

Now for at least one core irony:

This sentence:

"The typist of the below were zoo annoying to me that I try to correct them hrte."

Was supposed to read as this sentence:

'The typos in the below were so annoying to me that I try to correct them here.'

Oh well......

[George Brockway]

Interesting analysis Steve, and plausible.  I think you missed your calling (by going into the law).  You shoulda been a teacher.  Probably not philosophy, but sociology or political science.  You coulda been a campus super-star.

George

-----Original Message-----
From: haustusstevemcclure <haustusst...@cox.net>
To: haustus <hau...@googlegroups.com>

Sent: Tue, Nov 13, 2018 9:17 am
Subject: Re: Who Lost The House? John McCain

Brothers -- 

You know, the underlying premises of this analysis of the significance of McCain's are incredibly revealing.

The basic business model for health insurance that the ACA tried to start to get rid of is this:

'The way to make money in health insurance was to sell what is in effect 'like' catastrophic coverage coupled with maintenance care [i.e.  increasingly limited coversge] by (1) insuring a marginally less likely-to-get-really-sick portion of the market, while (2) pushing the more likely-to-get-really- lsick portion of the market off eother onto one's competitors, ir onto the government or onto private charity or into the cohort that simply has no real access to health care at all.'

The point of this business model was to slice and dice the market up in terms of the likelihood of this or that portion of the market getting really sick or not and making money by insuring the marginally less sick.

This model concentrates on finding and marketing to a smaller and smaller segment of the market.

The ACA attempted -- and will in the end probably fail -- to return to the basic concept of insurance:  EXPAND the market of the insured to the broadest group possible, all of whom are charged the same, so that the greater group provides resources to cover the sickest.  

Insurance is fundamentally about "spreading the risk" covered to as large a market as possible so that the average cost paid by all and each member of the market equally provides enough to pay for the risky.

This znti-insurance business model that ACA fought was the opposite: that anti-insurance idea was to marginally decrease the risk by pushing the risky out of the insured population so that the "covered/insured" did NOT pay for the risky sick.

THAT analysis of (1) what was going on in the previous model and (2) the need for a direct attack on that model is why the whole issue of "pre-existing conditions" is at the core of the debate er are having now.

Now a good analysis and argument can be made that essentially "private" health care funding insurance models are inherently self-contradictory because the whole tendency and drive of "private" health insurabce is to "de-insure the sick," i.e., not provide averagely costed insurance coverage to those more likely to get really sick.

Such an analysis and argument tends to argue for "Medicare for all," which, in effect, makes ONE 'insurer' cover the whole market [where differences in risk-for-sickness sre ignored because ALL are by definition 'covered' to the exact same extent] at a cost to the insured simply unrelated to riskiness of getting really sick.  The cost is covered by taxation based on income rather than by premiums based on health condition.

[Indeed, mathematically, a wage taxation system tends to charge the really sick population  -- which is marginally less employed than the well population at any moment -- less than those well and fully employed at any point in time.  This is the precise opposite of the private health insurance model.]

And THIS is what is significant about the social revolution begun with Medicare and continuing through Obamacare and into the coming couple of decades.

The basic SOCIAL vision is this:  society rather than the individual is coming to understand that it is a SOCIAL DUTY -- that's right, duty, like the duty to punish/deter/prevent crime -- to care for the sick just because they are sick, and not because they can pay for care.

This 'caring for the sick' simply because they are sick is BECOMING, over time and in a stumbling, evolving way, a part of the core social COMPACT we are called upon to embrace if we want to be here in this society. 

Take another example, above alluded to.

Right now, as a group, we humans kind of 'assume' that society rather than individuals have the core task of "dealing with" crime,  by punishing/detering/preventing crime.  Kind of that this task about crime is somehow part of the very presumed core and essence of what a society is.  Having a criminal law system is just part of what a society just is supposed to do.

But please realize, deeply realize, that this 'modern' [about 2,500 years old?] presumptive part of the core was not always part of that core.

For literally 98% of human existence, this anti-crime function was quite precisely NOT part of the core function of SOCIETY, but was an individual's [and then the family's and then the tribe's] responsibility and duty.

This transition from (a) individual to family to tribe [all relationships where the fundamental relationship is within a group where everyone is 'manageably knowable' to each other because the group is not that large] to (b) nation and then to 'society' as a whole and ultimately to 'humanity as one' [where the fundamental idea is not only that you do not actually have to know everyone in the group, not only that you cannot know everyone in the group, but basically that your knowledge and/or lack thereof, regarding who is in the 'group of all humanity' is simply irrelevant] -- this is a key transition.

This transition from individuals znd individualized groupings to humanity as a whole is concomitant with the adoption of "universal duties" of humans to each other.

And this transition from the many to the one is in fits and starts, first in one area and then in another, three stumbles forward with some stumbling backward -- and also very dependent on perceived resources and practical feasibility. 

But this journey is one of the truly astounding pieces of the story of humankind, astounding, often frustrating and even annoying, even tragic, but beautiful too.

The probable failure of the whole idea of a private health insurance market and that often trivialized slogan "Medicare for All" has now led Steve, once again, into another round of grand philosophizing.  

Who woulda thunk?

For whstever it is worth, I promise you-- when I started reacting to the article John Junge posted, I had no idea I would end up thinking about the last 80,000 years of human history.  If I had known where I was going to end up, I probably would have thought it too bombastic to bother.

Oh, well......

Steve

Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone

-------- Original message --------

From: John Junge <johna...@gmail.com>

Date: 11/12/18 11:12 AM (GMT-07:00)

To: hau...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Who Lost The House? John McCain

• OPINION 
•  COMMENTARY

Who Lost The House? John McCain

[jrbdo...@aol.com]

I looked at my email in reverse chrono and I found this. 

jd