the new health care act

one reason I went into the Indian Health Service was that I objected to the price controls in the HMO's and the fact they only treated their own people, i.e. the uninsured weren't seen.

 Of course, we did have rationing in the IHS too, but actually it wasn't much worse (and in many ways a lot better than working with the uninsured and under insured in my private rural practice.

So two items for later reading

Will th new version deny medical care to the most vulnerable and allow insurance companies to push suicide as a side effect of their cuts?

NotDeadYet, a disability rights group, discusses the problem:

The American Health Care Act (AHCA) is dangerous for people with disabilities. If passed, among other things, it will most likely eliminate affordable insurance coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, cut $834 billion from Medicaid over ten years (most people with disabilities, including seniors, rely on Medicaid for personal care, long-term care services and supports and durable medical equipment), and make drastic cuts in primary healthcare programs and services that low income people rely on. For people who live in states where assisted suicide is legal, this will be a deadly combination. Insurance companies will be more emboldened to deny people with life-threatening conditions the medications they need to save or prolong their lives, offering them, instead, the “option” of the suicide prescription. The lives of people with disabilities are already devalued, and doctors are likely to either intentionally or unintentionally influence, recommend or coerce their patients into assisted suicide, citing the financial burden they will be on their families. With services such as mental health on the chopping block in AHCA, newly disabled individuals, seniors or terminally ill people will have less access to these services, putting them at greater risk to succumb to coercion by unscrupulous family members, heirs, or caregivers ....

read the whole thing.

And then read Dilbert's take on the matter: No one understands the old bill except that it guarantees them health care, so replacing it will cause it to be unpopular.