Let the health care games begin!

It's no secret that I've never been a fan of Trump. However, I wasn't a fan of having another Clinton in the White House either. Still with me?

There was some thought that the Republican leadership were going to handle the day to day business of government. Trump was expected to be some sort of figurehead who rubber stamped what the leadership wanted.

It doesn't look like that's going to happen. The big issue that caught my attention was health care. Republicans have been trying to shut down the ACA for years. It appeared that their plan was to shut it down and figure out some sort of replacement later . . . maybe.

Then Trump comes around and promises health care for everybody, no preconditions, kids can stay on their parent's plan, and it's going to be cheaper for everyone. Plus, the unpopular mandate will be done away with. Turns out that Trump has a plan of his own. The Republican leadership is quietly have fits.

The big question is how is that going to be paid for? Trump is talking about cracking down on the drug companies. Okay, that should help, but it won't pay for the whole plan. I am very interested to see how this will turn out. There are ways to make it work. The most practical is a single payer plan, like the rest of the civilized world has. That is ideologically forbidden, so I'm curious to see what happens next.

I used to think that competition could lower prices, but we haven't seen that happen. Drug companies have raised essential medications to ridiculously high prices, because they can. Many drugs are controlled by just one company so competition isn't going to help; there isn't any.

The medical field is not like other industries. I've got one hospital within reasonable driving distance from my house. It's not like hospitals compete on a dollar to dollar basis with each other. The pricing is totally opaque so we don't' know what a procedure really costs. We can't shop around. Besides, this not like like buying a new smart phone. Our lives are on the line here so the pressures are different.

As for myself, I'm looking at heath insurance from the outside. Before Obama care my insurance, while fairly decent, was completely unaffordable. After the ACA appeared I could afford a minimal plan with a crazy high deductible. After two years even that got too expensive. Now my plan consists of going to the emergency room and stiffing them for the bill. That's not a great plan, but it's the one forced onto me.

To sum up, as much as I'm not a fan of Trump, I'm glad he made the promises that he did. Let's see if they can pull a rabbit out a hat.

-Sixbears