From 3 days ago:
www.nbcnews.com
Read more on Biden's site:
joebiden.com
Read the details here:
www.vox.com
1)"Whether youāre covered through your employer, buying your insurance on your own, or going without coverage altogether, the Biden Plan will give you the choice to purchase a public health insurance option like Medicare.ā
2)Biden is promising to unleash that same bargaining power on behalf of a public option available to all Americans ā which should generate an insurance option that is cheaper for patients and stingier to providers.
3)By using Medicare purchasing power, the public option would deliver lower premiums, which would make it a very attractive option for all kinds of people who currently have private insurance. Nobody would be āforcedā onto the public plan, but in practice lots of people would opt for it.
4)The ACA guarantees that preventative health care services must be provided with no patient cost-sharing, Biden proposes to make this whole scheme more generous across several dimensions, first by switching to the use of āgoldā plans as the benchmark (meaning lower deductibles and copayments), second by making subsidies more generous across the board by reducing the share of family income thatās supposed to go to premiums, and third by eliminating the cap on financial assistance so even more comfortable families would get at least some help from the government.
**This means more people will qualify for the " subsidy loopholes" i discussed earlier on another thread, and they will receive more funding than is currently made available**
5) It avoids middle-class tax hikes, addresses patientsā core complaint about the ACA, but instead is more generous in this way can be paid for through higher capital gains taxes on the rich.
6) A crackdown on pharmaceutical pricing and surprise medical billing:
Biden proposes a whole suite of measures to reduce prices, including allowing Medicare to negotiate bulk purchasing discounts, allowing consumers to buy cheap drugs from foreign countries that impose price controls, capping drug price increases at the overall rate of inflation, and a number of ideas designed to spur increased production of generic competition for out-of-patent medications.
A new rule that would bar providers from charging out-of-network rates in situations (like emergency surgery) when a patient has no choice over which provider she sees. Biden also promises to engage in more vigorous enforcement of existing antitrust legislation in order to block provider concentration to bring prices down and end surprise medical billing.
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By providing the public option available to all and in direct competition with Insurers, we are pretty much taking the same route Germany did to run insurers out of the market and gradually shift the population into a single payer system. You can expect to have to put up one hell of a fight to make it happen though as insurers and pharma are not going to take this lying down and you are pretty much guaranteed the unfounded rumors going around spreading nonsense about it likely are being started by those who are in their pocket as it is. This plan would be a massive improvement over what we have right now, and plugs many of the holes that were not filled when the ACA was initially passed. That is also why I see it taking one hell of a fight in congress to get it passed. It isn't happening unless democrats can obtain a supermajority in congress long enough to pass it though.

What's in, and out, of Biden's health care plan
Here's a look at some of what is in ā and not in ā Joe Biden's health care plan.

Plan to Protect and Build on Obamacare | Joe Biden
Joe Biden will protect and build on Obamacare by giving Americans more choice, reducing health care costs, and making the system less complex to navigate.


Joe Bidenās health care plan, explained
Itās not Medicare-for-all, but if it happened it would be a big, um, deal.
Highlights:"Joe Biden has a health care plan that, while not going nearly as far as āMedicare for allā in initiating a single big-bang transformation of the American health care system, would nonetheless, if implemented, arguably be the most dramatic piece of new social legislation since the Great Society.
Interestingly, both due to the contrast with the even more dramatic plans endorsed by some of his rivals and the political imperative to brandish his relationship with Barack Obama, Bidenās rhetoric around his plan underplays exactly how big of a deal it would be. "
"But the form of public option described in a fact sheet about the plan that the Biden campaign released to reporters is considerably more ambitious than the public option that was considered ā and ultimately rejected ā by congressional Democrats during the ACA debate.
Not coincidentally, while health care provider groups generally liked Obamacare (more people with health insurance meant more customers), the main industry group that was founded to oppose Medicare-for-all also blasted Bidenās proposal Monday morning, saying it would āultimately lead our nation down the path of a one-size-fits-all health care system run by Washington.ā
The main difference between Bidenās plan and Medicare-for-all is a BidenCare transition that would be more gradual and much less costly in terms of explicit tax increases. That likely makes it more politically palatable (though still almost certainly unrealistic in terms of congressional politics) but also much less likely to deliver some of the simplification and cost containment benefits of Medicare-for-all.
All told, however, both Biden and his more progressive rivals are somewhat downplaying exactly how much more left wing than the ACA this idea is ā while the industry groups, facing a different set of incentives, are having a more telling reaction.
BidenCare is not Medicare-for-all, but make no mistake, if it were somehow to happen, it would be a really big deal."
1)"Whether youāre covered through your employer, buying your insurance on your own, or going without coverage altogether, the Biden Plan will give you the choice to purchase a public health insurance option like Medicare.ā
2)Biden is promising to unleash that same bargaining power on behalf of a public option available to all Americans ā which should generate an insurance option that is cheaper for patients and stingier to providers.
3)By using Medicare purchasing power, the public option would deliver lower premiums, which would make it a very attractive option for all kinds of people who currently have private insurance. Nobody would be āforcedā onto the public plan, but in practice lots of people would opt for it.
4)The ACA guarantees that preventative health care services must be provided with no patient cost-sharing, Biden proposes to make this whole scheme more generous across several dimensions, first by switching to the use of āgoldā plans as the benchmark (meaning lower deductibles and copayments), second by making subsidies more generous across the board by reducing the share of family income thatās supposed to go to premiums, and third by eliminating the cap on financial assistance so even more comfortable families would get at least some help from the government.
**This means more people will qualify for the " subsidy loopholes" i discussed earlier on another thread, and they will receive more funding than is currently made available**
5) It avoids middle-class tax hikes, addresses patientsā core complaint about the ACA, but instead is more generous in this way can be paid for through higher capital gains taxes on the rich.
6) A crackdown on pharmaceutical pricing and surprise medical billing:
Biden proposes a whole suite of measures to reduce prices, including allowing Medicare to negotiate bulk purchasing discounts, allowing consumers to buy cheap drugs from foreign countries that impose price controls, capping drug price increases at the overall rate of inflation, and a number of ideas designed to spur increased production of generic competition for out-of-patent medications.
A new rule that would bar providers from charging out-of-network rates in situations (like emergency surgery) when a patient has no choice over which provider she sees. Biden also promises to engage in more vigorous enforcement of existing antitrust legislation in order to block provider concentration to bring prices down and end surprise medical billing.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By providing the public option available to all and in direct competition with Insurers, we are pretty much taking the same route Germany did to run insurers out of the market and gradually shift the population into a single payer system. You can expect to have to put up one hell of a fight to make it happen though as insurers and pharma are not going to take this lying down and you are pretty much guaranteed the unfounded rumors going around spreading nonsense about it likely are being started by those who are in their pocket as it is. This plan would be a massive improvement over what we have right now, and plugs many of the holes that were not filled when the ACA was initially passed. That is also why I see it taking one hell of a fight in congress to get it passed. It isn't happening unless democrats can obtain a supermajority in congress long enough to pass it though.
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