On the campaign trail, former President Donald Trump is once again promising to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act – a nebulous goal that became one of his administration’s splashiest policy failures.
It needs to be repealed but not replaced.
There's a robin outside my window that has a better understanding of healthcare than Trump and 90% of Americans.
Fixing your healthcare system is child's play.
Although it's abhorrent, what Congress needs to do is withhold Medicaid funding from the States until the State repeals the enabling laws and all insurance regulations, including the abomination known as the "Out-of-Network" regulation.
The Out-of-Network policy which became regulation was concocted by the American Hospital Association in 1936 in an attempt to force the 18% of hospitals that were members of the American Medical Association out of business or quite the AMA and join the American Hospital Association.
After the American Hospital Association created the Blue Cross it continued that policy to drive the Blue Shield (started by the AMA) out of business.
Because of that, employers paid and employees paid for two insurance policies so's their employees would be get stuck Out-of-Network which means the American Hospital Association stole money from Americans and employers
Can we all agree that is an immoral, unethical and anti-Free Market policy?
It's a simple question: Yes or No.
Then Congress needs to repeal one section of the IRS Tax Code.
Once that section is repealed, you can purchase a combined life/catastrophic healthcare policy.
You make payments for 10 years (120 months)
and then you're done.
You never make another payment but you and your spouse (and minor children) are covered to the day you die and when you die whatever you haven't spent on healthcare goes to your named beneficiaries like your spouse and children and grandchildren so's they have money to go to college, technical or vocational school, buy a home or start a business.
In 1954 when Congress hated poor people and passed that statute at the behest of the American Hospital Association and screw everybody over, the standard policy was $100,000 which due to all forms of inflation would be the equivalent of $1 Million today.
So you pay your $69.72 premiums for 120 months and you're done.
You'll probably want a $250,000 annual emergency room policy which'll cost you $6.54/month and maybe a few other things but if you don't want doctor office visits or birth control or pregnancy/maternity coverage then you don't have to pay for them.
Even a homeless person could panhandle $4.19/month for a $100,000 ER policy.
Then Congress needs to levy a tax on hospitals so that any hospital providing more than 3 services pays 50% of the revenues as taxes.
Since no hospital could possibly do that, they'd break up into clinics and policlinics and guess what? Your system would be
like Europe because excluding Britain, Spain and Portugal who have national healthcare systems prohibited by our Constitution all Euro-States use clinics and policlinics because they are more cost-effective and more efficient in healthcare delivery than hospitals.