ACA opponent Walker wants us to believe he'll protect the uninsured and lower insurance rates?

Scott Walker wants us to forget about "the devil in the details," like how he would end up covering pre-existing conditions...if at all.

Republicans hate "ObamaCare" because it does just that, creating a large pool that spread the cost to everyone. Is this another "good cop" Scott Walker vs "bad cop" legislature? And don't think for one minute Walker isn't aware of public opinion?

The Democrats' strategy to focus on health care in the midterm elections has helped crack open opportunities in states they wouldn't have dreamed of winning two years ago.

Doing this would be costly for taxpayers and raise premiums for the insured, just so insurance companies could make money instead of spending it;

Would the Wisconsin Legislature be willing to adopt many of the provisions in the Affordable Care Act? That would have to happen ... The Trump administration is asking the court to strike down the protections for people with pre-existing conditions...

Insurers would have multiple ways to avoid covering people with pre-existing health conditions, even if required to sell them insurance.

If a health insurer didn’t want to attract people with high medical costs it could exclude expensive specialty drugs from its benefits or not cover drugs at all ... Impose limits on annual and lifetime out-of-pocket expenses.

Like Walker, Republicans on a national level are repeating the same lie. WaPo:

The Pinocchio Test: In many ways, the GOP pledge on preexisting conditions is the equivalent of Obama’s infamous pledge that under Obamacare, “if you like your plan you can keep it.” It may look great on paper, but the reality is that it is not a sustainable pledge. That was apparent with Obama’s promise when the ACA was being debated — as The Washington Post highlighted three times in 2009and 2010 — and that’s also the case here. The problems inherent in the structure are well documented in the CBO report.

Thus Cramer goes too far to claim that in the AHCA, there are “safeguards to make sure that there’s not price discrimination as a result of preexisting conditions.” In a state that did not seek a waiver, that might have been correct. But the proposed law gave states the option to seek waivers that would in effect nullify those promises, and it is quite possible North Dakota would have been one of those states. He earns Three Pinocchios

And funding those high-risk pools?

HIRSP also had a cost. It was funded by a tax on health insurance sold in Wisconsin. And health systems, physicians and other health care providers were paid rates slightly above those for Medicare but much lower than those paid by commercial insurers.

Walker throws taxpayer funded lifesaver to ACA Marketplaces while readying torpedoes to Sink ObamaCare. You Can't make this stuff Up.

This is so Republican; spend, spend, spend on ACA Marketplaces using taxpayer dollars in the most inefficient way, with no cost controls and no sustainable workable structure.

Gee, thanks Scott for saving us from your own Trump Party's dismantling of the Affordable Care Act? It's another desperate election-year scheme that never would have happened otherwise:

President Trump finally made good on his promise to yank funding from a key set of Obamacare subsidies. The administration would immediately stop supporting the cost-sharing subsidies that reimburse insurers for reducing the deductibles and co-pays of lower-income Obamacare enrollees. Trump has been paying the subsidies on a month-to-month basis, unnerving many insurers.

But Walker Voters are Okay Spending their Tax Money Anyway? So penny-pinching conservative voters are okay spending their tax dollars shoring up the Marketplaces right after their elected politician just tried to destroy them...raising premiums? My head is starting to hurt.

Walker gave Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel permission to join with attorneys general from other states to file a lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act.

Don't forget, this is another costly rescue, thanks to another Republican created problem that didn't exist before! It would be a mistake not to call this TrumpCare since the ACA is no longer recognizable after GOP "reform." Flip-flopping Walker was against taking federal dollars for Medicaid before he was for taking federal dollars for the Marketplace: 

The Trump’s administration has signed off on Gov. Scott Walker’s $200 million reinsurance plan to lower Obamacare premiums ... consumer costs are expected to go down by 5 percent next year for individuals through the marketplaces established by Obamacare (TRUMPCARE).

Wisconsin taxpayers will spend $34 million on Walker's plan. The remaining $166 million will come from federal taxpayers (that includes Wisconsin taxpayers). Sunday’s announcement gives Walker a chance to tout lowering insurance premiums as he seeks re-election.

...for actually NOT solving a problem he and Trump created? Amazingly, the Journal Sentinel was all too happy to use Walker's own skewed estimates:

According to estimates conducted for the Walker administration, the plan will lower monthly premiums in the state's Obamacare marketplaces to a projected $721 per consumer per month next year. That would be a reduction of more than 5 percent from the monthly fee of $762 now being charged.

Nope! Here's what Trump Republicans ADDED to TrumpCare costs per Congressional District, even with Walker's plan. These are the excess costs. Thank you Scott Walker and Trump:

The Urban Institute’s projections account for individual states’ efforts to stabilize the individual market through reinsurance programs, coverage mandates, and regulation of short-term plans.

 $200 million here, $10 billion there...imagine saving all that with National Health Insurance for all: With state and local government pensions straining and coming up short for retiree health care, not to mention the heavy burden on businesses, piecemeal health insurance needs one single universal plan. And how about veterans? We could take this off the table as well..:

Politico: Trump signed into law an updated version called the "VA Mission Act" that took away those specific parameters and made seeing a doctor in the private sector easier for veterans … giving veterans more choice in their health care. The program will then need close to $10 billion for each of the next two years to keep running. Veterans advocacy groups': "We are very concerned that without assurance of sufficient funding, reform and modernization of the VA health care system – which millions of ill and injured veterans rely on – could be delayed or endangered."

Without expanding health care, we could return to this pre-ACA 2013 map of uninsured Wisconsinites:

Or try expanding coverage...because the ACA was working:

Walker out to prove rising health care Obama's fault, not the insurers jacked up prices.

Scott Walker’s plan to raise health care insurance prices in Wisconsin is working. Why would he do that? To pour more money into for profit insurers pockets, and to make “ObamaCare” look like a failure. 

The fact is, the outrageous cost for medical services by three of the biggest insurers in the state raised everyone's premium.

And don't forget about the state insurance commissions hands off approach to premium increases on the exchange. Walker voters, I'm guessing, don't mind handing their property tax savings over to the insurance industry, as long as it supports a very costly "free market" system. JS-Guy Boulton:

Claims data for three of the country's largest health insurers, (UnitedHealthcare, Humana and Aetna) including two of the largest in southeastern Wisconsin, rank the state as having the second-highest medical prices in the country, behind only Alaska.

A study by the Health Care Cost Institute, a nonprofit organization created to make claims data from health insurers available to researchers, found that prices for 235 common medical services grouped as "care bundles," ranging from basic tests to back surgery, were on average 81% higher in Wisconsin than the national average.

The supposed "best health care system in the world," still inaccessible to millions of Americans, continues to pick our pockets...because they can in the private sector. After checking out the stat below, you have to wonder why every Republican continues to make the false claim that moving to a single payer system won't save money:

The United States spends 50% more on health care than any other developed country — an average of $9,523 a person, or $38,092 for a family of four in 2014. And health insurance is expensive because health care is expensive.

The corporate response from the health care lobbyists in the state was laughable, if not a tad bit insulting. They claimed the report wasn't fair because the 3 biggest insurers weren't major players in other parts of the state, so...?

"The fact that the three insurers that provided data to the HCCI are not major players in most markets around the state makes this study misleading to readers, and largely irrelevant in Wisconsin," Brian Potter, senior vice president of the Wisconsin Hospital Association, said in a statement.

But UnitedHealthcare had 54% of the Milwaukee market, 49% of the Green Bay market and 37% of the Appleton market in 2013, according to a study by the American Medical Association.

The states industry lobbyist are telling us the same thing they said after the GAO released their study last year. Will we ever really know if we're paying too much in Wisconsin? No. Are we really that happy about cost of health care costs? We must be:

The same contention — that the claims database is not representative of the state — also was raised about a study by the Government Accountability Office released last year that found that Milwaukee and Madison were among the seven most expensive metropolitan areas in the country for three common procedures.

Further, even if the claims data used in the recent study by the Health Care Cost Institute is not representative of prices in some markets, UnitedHealthcare, Humana and Aetna still are paying the prices — and those prices are much higher than the national average.

Here's the sad truth about treating health care like a consumer product, like a market product:

If nothing else, the wide variation in prices strongly suggests a market that isn't working like other markets.

Government health programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, set the prices they will pay.

The Republican argument against the Affordable Care Act has been successful because most people know little about it, and because they get coverage through their employer, which shields them from the actual cost:

But the U.S. health care system relies on the market to set prices paid by commercial health plans. It is a market in which the cost is largely hidden from the consumer — the patient — because medical bills are paid by health insurers and employers once someone hits his or her deductible and maximum out-of-pocket expenses. The result is that most patients are indifferent to the cost. 

And having gone through a futile attempt myself to get a hospital to tell me the actual price of their treatment, because prices vary depending on what insurer their working with (add to that a different price for cash), this might be the best argument against a market based system:

Getting information on prices also can be difficult. Even when insurers make prices available to the people in their health plans, few make use of the information.

When you're sick, injured or unconscious, how can anyone make the kind of choices necessary for the healthiest outcome? Who wants to burden relatives, even if you're lucky enough to have a few? The article wrapped up with this:

Employers have been reluctant to embrace health plans designed to encourage people to get care from doctors and hospitals that provide quality care at a lower cost.

For instance, few employers have moved to health plans based on so-called reference pricing or on tiers. A health plan based on reference pricing pays a set amount for certain medical services, ranging from MRIs to colonoscopies to back surgeries. People still are free to get care from anyone in a network. But they must pay the cost above the reference price.

Health plans tied to tiered networks give people an incentive, such as waiving the deductible, when they get care from hospitals and doctors that provide quality care at a lower cost. "Now the question is how do we fix health care. We know it is too expensive."

Having had cataract removal, the chart below is even more interesting to me. The U.S. average represents what I paid directly to the doctor and surgery center, bypassing my insurer and the $7,000 deductible. Yes, it was cheaper to pay directly than use the deductible and insurer. So is the the free market insurance model bad. Yes, and that's where Republicans want to take us:

 

Walker Came in like a wrecking ball!

The fact that the DNC will not allow the Democratic candidates for president go on the offensive via presidential policy debates is mind boggling to me. In the void created by this silence, voters might just get used to all these weird Republican ideas, thinking these are the choices they have. Wrong.

In response to Scott Walker's outrageous plans for our country, I've got a little something to say.

A. Walker had the nerve to brag that "conservative commentator after commentator, from the Wall Street Journal and National Review and plenty others out there, said this is the best plan out there." No, really? Looks like they're the only ones that matter now in Walker's one party world vision.

Walker said it was about "freedom." Yet how free are we, when we're forced to buy from insurance companies who've already decided how much we're going to pay for their services? How free are we when an insurer drops our coverage, or raises the rates at the same rate every other insurance company does? How free are we if we can't shop for a better or less expensive doctor or hospital because we're locked into an insurers network?

On Walker's health care subsidies, think about it; giving everyone who doesn't have insurance through their employer (at cheaper group rates) a subsidy, will open the door for every business to drop their own health care coverage. Why not right? Lower cost group coverage will disappear as an unintended consequence.

And spoken just like a career politician getting taxpayer health care for over 20 years, he's giving every conservative freeloader a pass, saying you can take your credit and "not buy health care insurance if they don't want." So it happens all over again folks, just like before the ACA; doctors and hospitals will make up for that uncompensated care by raising your skyrocketing monthly premiums. Oh, but Walker said that will lower costs. The deceiver and chief?



B. Scott Walker's Private Email System makes him the real "Deceiver and Chief."

Walker used a private email system when he was county executive … Walker aides set up a secret wireless router they used to conduct campaign business while on county time.

Who's Walker deceiving when he says he didn't know anything about the private email account and router right outside of his office? This should be an easy one for any Democratic candidate. Hillary's emails by the way are becoming "classified" because they're being released to the public, just like the Republicans wanted.

C. Our Big Bold Governor threw his Legislative leaders under the Walker bus again, this time on national television: I think Republican State Sen. Luther Olsen said it best:

"The thing is, we were all the guys facing the crowds every day coming in and out of our offices. We didn't have the police protection," he said. "Taking on your friends ... and saying you were the tough guy? Thanks a lot, buddy."

Will Walker's "Executive Ordered" ObamaCare repeal also force Politicians to shop across state lines for their own supposed "Patient Centered" insurance?

Walker promises to rule like king the first day: let the Executive Orders fly….

I hope the media finally comes to the realization that Obama’s vilified use of executive orders has more to do with race than the phony outrage over supposedly bypassing congress and acting like a king. Detect a little resentment? 

Scott Walker’s promise to issue executive orders on his first day will not surprisingly get support from angry Republican voters because they have as a party, a much higher purpose. Even executive orders are okay if in the end, they reverse the liberal socialist agenda.

That’s where repealing the Affordable Care Act with an executive order comes in (stripping subsidies from government staff), an entry level device Walker will use again and again to usher in a whole list of surprising uncompromising policy edicts. AP:

In announcing his plan, Walker vowed: "On Day One, I will sign an executive order removing President Obama's special deal for Congress.”   

This is no small revelation. Republicans have been pounding Obama on every one of his executive orders.

Walker's campaign says his executive order actually would direct Cabinet officials to "undertake rulemaking" — typically a drawn-out process … he would first strip away the federal health insurance subsidies that they and their staff get as government employees. That, he says, would expose them to the same premium increases that many Americans have to pay and prompt Congress to act on his plan. Walker said undoing the rule, and essentially raising insurance costs for members of Congress and their staffs, would serve as the motivation for lawmakers to repeal the health law and replace it with his plan.

But government employees would see the same kind of subsidies everyone else is seeing, which is no  horror story, unless they’re making too much to get the tax credits (the tax credits should have been phased out more slowly).

Will the Political Elite now have to Shop for Insurance? I’m now waiting to hear Walker tell Washington politicians to not just give up their government paid subsidies for ObamaCare, but to get out into the marketplace, where those supposed “patient centered” junk policies will be available to all. 

Would members of Congress really rally around his initiative after seeing their health subsidies disappear? And can he really end those subsidies without congressional action, as he vows he would do with an executive order on his first day as president?

"It shouldn't be taken seriously," Tim Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University in Virginia and an expert on the health law, said of Walker's plan. "It's just a political talking point."

But absent a national emergency, Walker wouldn't have the legal authority to amend the rule to remove the subsidy, said Jost, a supporter of the health care law. And even if the rule were changed, it wouldn't hurt members of Congress because most lawmakers are either independently wealthy, have coverage through their spouses or are old enough to quality for Medicare, Jost said. That would leave their staff members stuck with higher insurance costs, Jost said.