re: #391 klys

That’s what gets me every time. Ok, so, where are their solutions?

Oh right, they’re pissy because the one major conservative health care proposal has been implemented and it’s called the ACA, so they’re pretty much left with “don’t get sick.”

Their solutions are very simple, and completely nonsensical:

1) Tort reform, based on the idea that what drives healthcare costs up is ‘defensive medicine’ and that all the increase in cost over the last few decades comes from frivolous lawsuits. Easily debunked, since several states have enacted their dream proposals, and health insurance is no cheaper there. Also, while malpractice insurance is not cheap, it’s a tiny percentage of total healthcare costs.

Further, ‘defensive medicine’ actually catches a significant number of low-probability, severe problems that would otherwise have not been noticed till the patient keeled over dead - estimates are about 90,000 additional preventable deaths per year, IIRC.

2) Selling insurance across state lines. The party of ‘States’ Rights’ wants to prohibit states from setting their own standards for health insurance, so eventually everyone’s getting their insurance from Alabama, and it’s cheap but unbelievably bad.

3) Healthcare Savings Accounts - because when you can’t afford to buy health insurance, you can certainly put away enough in savings to pay for that extended stay in the cardiac intensive care unit.

And that’s all of it.