Joe Biden thought he might have to sell his house to pay for his son’s cancer treatment. Here was Obama’s response. https://t.co/OjEQxfdccZ

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) January 12, 2016

Exhibit A on why health care, insurance, and provisioning of care is screwed up in the US.

When even the VP faces the possibility of having to sell their home and liquidate assets to make sure that they’ve got the funds to provide for a loved one’s health care, you know that the costs are out of control.

Someone with lesser means would have had to sell their home. Or declare bankruptcy. Or have to figure out some way to reduce their health care costs, which would likely reduce their quality of life and shorten the life of their loved one.

Obamacare only begins to bend those health care costs, but much more must be done.

What is the GOP response to this? Repeal Obamacare and return to the pre-ACA dysfunction that had premiums rising even higher than they are since the ACA took effect, and covered fewer people for less service.

We need to see how much medical related stuff costs - even more transparency. If you know that Procedure X costs $100,000 in one hospital, but $50,000 in another, with the same outcome, why would you go to the first hospital?

For instance, see this article, where the highest costs can be nearly $200,000 while the lowest cost for the same procedure is $15,000.

Then there are the drug costs, and as we’ve also seen, they’re manipulated by people who put their personal profits ahead of providing a social good. Never mind that many of these drugs are now generic, but pharmaceutical companies have figured out ways to extend the patent protections by compounding them with other drugs to create new formulations that are more expensive b/c of exclusivity, but not necessarily more successful at treating the condition.

There’s also the insane high costs to learn to be a doctor, and the doctors’ need to pay off said loans (which can be hundreds of thousands of dollars) and shift interest from general practice where the loan payoff will be decades to specialties where the payoff can be much quicker.

Home health care workers aren’t paid enough to do the work they do. Same goes for staff at nursing homes, rehab centers, and there aren’t enough people on staff to provide what should be a proper level of care. And as the nation ages, those classes of workers will be even more pressured to do more with less pay.

All these burdens/issues on the health care system, and the GOP solution is to think only of trashing the safety net, including Obamacare.