kcar wrote: 
True that but Trump will.  One of his goals ...  to negotiate drug prices for government purchases such as for Medicare, Medicaid.  Obama gave Big Pharma a wet kiss in April 2009, if you might remember.  It was his first sell out of us common people.

 rhahl wrote:

I totally agree but the issue is being able to separate out the exorbitant from the reasonable. Even if you could cut out the profiteering, you will still have to come up with a system that pays for the costs of the aging population without destroying the livelihood of younger people. You can't do it through payroll tax unless you start taxing the rich and businesses more.

 rhahl wrote:
That was a largely GOP decision, wasn't it?

If you're worried about medical costs and prices, don't expect the Republicans to help you. 

 haresfur wrote: 
The US healthcare system is far more expensive than other the systems of other comparably developed nations. The ACA was not going to dramatically alter that trend within a few years of its implementation, and any suggestion in this thread that the ACA is a failure because health care costs are still rising (albeit more slowly) is uninformed and/or misleading.

The ACA before Trump's election was a work in progress: it needed to strengthen the insurance mandate to bring young, healthy adults into the risk pool, increase subsidies to individuals and to provide more federal compensation to insurers as compensation for unforeseen costs of covering new customers who demanded more healthcare than predicted (this apparently was a bigger problem in smaller states with a smaller pool of customers. A public option may have been able to compensate for the pullout of insurance providers from some areas of the country.

But the ACA was definitely fixable. There is no credible Republican alternative at this time and likely won't be by the time the ACA is repealed. Many of the Republican healthcare reform plans (like Paul Ryan's) may provide lower premiums to individuals but offer less coverage. These plans tend to favor the young and healthy and indirectly allow insurance companies to decrease coverage of people with pre-existing conditions. Depending on the proposed plan and analyses of any plan, an estimated 3-21 million people will lose coverage. 

As for costs...

The growth in annual per-capita health care costs began slowing before the the ACA was enacted, due to the recession and slow recovery as well as declines in the cost of obtaining some classes of drugs due to the market arrival of generic alternatives. The Council of Economic Advisors also claims that the ACA's reduction in federal Medicare payments had a "significant" impact on the growth of healthcare costs, although other groups claim that the ACA had minimal impact on that growth. 

http://www.factcheck.org/2014/02/aca-impact-on-per-capita-cost-of-health-care/
This Atlantic.com piece has some good observations and charts that show how the growth in healthcare spending has declined: 

With slowly growing prices, even rising demand for healthcare has led to less-than-projected spending, in just about every category. (To be clear: This doesn't mean healthcare is getting cheaper; it means healthcare is getting more expensive slower than we anticipated.) The government is casually saving hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare thanks to both direct cuts and other reforms. Insurance companies, despite a rough year due to the arrival of some expensive new drugs, have been spending less than the actuaries projected in 2010. Even with growth in high-deductible plans, out-of-pocket spending is actually coming in below projections from five years ago.

Forecasts of medical spending have undergone round after round of major surgery. Six years ago, the Urban Institute projected that the country would spend $23 trillion between 2014 and 2019. After Obamacare became law, it raised its forecast by half-a-trillion dollars. But the latest projections, published this month, are lighter by $2 trillion and $2.5 trillion, respectively.

 haresfur wrote:
Well if a drug price is exorbitant it doesn't matter how old you are. In the case of multiple sclerosis, see "Escalating MS drug costs in the US - Puzzling, troubling, and suspicious"; Neurology 2015; 84:2105–2106; T. Jock Murray, MD..

"When the first disease-modifying therapy (DMT)
appeared in 1993, everything changed for patients
with MS, their families, and their neurologists.
...
"The disturbing escalation
of DMT prices in the United States is clearly
related to the political prohibition of US Medicare
to negotiate prices with the pharmaceutical industry.
What has happened defies common sense, logic, and
the expected rules of the marketplace. Since Food and
Drug Administration approval, and with increasing
product competition, Betaseron has gone from
$11,532 to $61,529, Avonex from $8,723 to
$62,394, glatiramer acetate from $8,292 to $59,158,
and Rebif from $15,262 to $66,394. These price increases,
and emerging evidence that long-term
outcomes are less than anticipated, undermine the
cost-effectiveness of MS DMTs. These counterintuitive
increases suggest the possibility of collusion among
the manufacturers, but the authors say they do not
have evidence.

"What justification does the pharmaceutical industry
in the United States offer for the remarkable
increase in the costs of these drugs? Well, they do
not have to explain, as they are allowed to set prices
in a black box, based on the business ethic of maximizing
profit, supported by a bizarre law that prevents
US Medicare (the US federal government
social insurance program) from negotiating prices
directly with the pharmaceutical industry. That this
is arbitrary and “just because they can” is shown by
comparisons with other countries, such as Canada,
Australia, and the United Kingdom, where the costs
of the same drugs are one-half to one-third as much.
What is even more striking is the contrast within the
United States, where the same drug covered by Medicaid
(insurance programs funded by the federal and
state governments and administered by the states)
may be 2 to over 4 times higher than to the federal
VA system (for armed service veterans), which is permitted
to negotiate prices (Betaseron is $49,146 via
Medicaid, but $10,583 via US VA).

 rhahl wrote: 
The US medical system and rising costs seem totally outrageous to me. However, the aging population should be considered in this. All you old farts are costing a lot. It would be interesting to see how much more different age groups are paying per person.

 Steely_D wrote: 

 R_P wrote: 
"clerical error" 

Trump Education Nominee Betsy DeVos Lied to the Senate

There are many reasons Betsy DeVos’s nomination to serve as Donald Trump’s education secretary could be justifiably quashed by the U.S. Senate. Her long public record indicates she is a religious Christian zealot who does not believe in the actual separation of church and state, wants public monies funneled into religious schools, and has contributed through family foundations to bigoted groups with a militant anti-gay agenda. During her confirmation hearing she gave disturbing answers to questions about her views of the Americans With Disabilities Act, standardized tests, and school vouchers. (...)

Newly elected Democratic senator Margaret Hassan pressed DeVos on these claims. She asked DeVos directly if she was on the board of her mother’s foundation during the period in which large donations were made to Focus on the Family. DeVos said that she was not on the foundation’s board.

When I heard that, I pulled up the 990 tax documents of the Prince Foundation, which I investigated for my book “Blackwater.” Betsy DeVos was clearly listed as a vice president of the foundation’s board, along with her brother Erik, for many years, at least until 2014. DeVos was a vice president during the precise period Hassan was referring to. I then began a tweet storm about this lie: (...)

 Steely_D wrote:I wasn't answering, your point was well taken. It was just a snarky comment meant to reinforce your point, but way too obscure. My wife often reacts the same way.

 Steely_D wrote:
 
The CPI does not count medical costs as 18% of the inflation rate, it's more like 6 - 8 %. Funny that.

 rhahl wrote: 
What were they rising before? Was it not necessary to stop them from bankrupting the nation?
Was the ACA enacted as it was intended or did other forces cause it to be an ineffective program?
Who/what were those forces that prevented proper implementation of a national healthcare system that controlled costs?
Are those people now back in control of your healthcare? Will the future be any different from the years before the ACA? Why would you expect that?


 
And do you see how bringing this up in the Trump section deflects from the real issues:

Tax returns
Russian involvement
Corporate cronies and incompetents in the cabinet
Practical improvement of jobs and the economy for those in the USA 

 rhahl wrote: 
IF all the states had agreed to Medicaid expansion it would have helped a lot. Congress has already taken the first steps toward repealing that provision, among others.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
Neither of them probably have a clue as to the sort of firearm it takes to actually take down a bear.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
I thought Obamacare was supposed to fix that. But I have to say that eliminating pre-existing conditions was a real achievement. Hope it lasts.

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
Sure, but being part of the Prince family is a lot more chilling. By the way, her "guns in schools because grizzly bears" argument is probably informed by her mother, who lives part-time, up west of here in the thick of the bears. 

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
Also married to Dick DeVos, of Amway fame.

I just put 2 + 2 together and realized that Betsy DeVos is the sister of Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater.

He's a great businessman...

 rhahl wrote: 
10% a year is about the typical amount it's risen every year of our adult lives. Cost to insure a family has risen 1000% since 1980.