Trump Releases Healthcare Plan

Healthcare Reform to Make America Great Again

1. Completely repeal Obamacare. Our elected representatives must eliminate the individual mandate. No person should be required to buy insurance unless he or she wants to.

I hate to post the entire thing, but I would like to post a section of the philosophy guiding it.:

The reforms outlined above will lower healthcare costs for all Americans. They are simply a place to start. There are other reforms that might be considered if they serve to lower costs, remove uncertainty and provide financial security for all Americans. And we must also take actions in other policy areas to lower healthcare costs and burdens. Enforcing immigration laws, eliminating fraud and waste and energizing our economy will relieve the economic pressures felt by every American. It is the moral responsibility of a nation’s government to do what is best for the people and what is in the interest of securing the future of the nation.

Providing healthcare to illegal immigrants costs us some $11 billion annually. If we were to simply enforce the current immigration laws and restrict the unbridled granting of visas to this country, we could relieve healthcare cost pressures on state and local governments.

To reduce the number of individuals needing access to programs like Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program we will need to install programs that grow the economy and bring capital and jobs back to America. The best social program has always been a job – and taking care of our economy will go a long way towards reducing our dependence on public health programs.

This is an absolutely wonderful plan, though I see no mention of tort reform unless that’s in another section.

With Trump, we appear to have gambled on a candidate and won the jackpot. He has been America-First since at least 1990, so I believe he can be trusted as well as can any politician.

Cruz has the mad zealots, but Trump has the common sense conservatives who are goal-oriented, putting First Things first. I expect this healthcare plan will go a long way in pulling support away from Cruz.

Zika Outbreak Caused by Genetically Modified Mosquitoes?

The Zika virus is spreading explosively. Zerohedge wonders if that isn’t due to genetically engineered mosquitoes. Oops.

Halting immigration would help thwart some diseases, but I don’t expect the mosquitoes to cross borders through a customs area.

Zika is feared to cause Guillain–Barré syndrome in adults and microcephaly in newborns. Hopefully, both fears prove false. A concern is that vaccines for expecting mothers will be difficult to develop (risk of vaccine causing damage to fetus; need for trials on pregnant women nevertheless).

Zika is obtained by humans from mosquitoes, not from infected humans.

Rough Ideas on How to Cut Healthcare Costs

Nationalized health care is all the rage nowadays, seems to have become all but a certainty.

However, I’d like to propose how costs might be cut to make healthcare more affordable in the free market.

Firstly, the US needs more doctors, which would lower their pay. Since the US is today very centralised, I suggest the US federal government build medical schools and subsidise tuition. In other areas, the federal government should largely get out of education, but that’s another topic.

Secondly, doctors suffer under malpractice insurance. While doctors should be liable for malpractice, most juries struggle to understand medical cases. So, a solution might be to fill malpractice trials with juries of medical doctors and professors. If necessary, these doctors could be from another area, to prevent bias.

Thirdly, drug companies. Americans are currently charged more than the rest of the world for drugs. Perhaps this is unfair. Bernie Sanders has been preaching on this, and I believe he’s the Ron Paul of the Democrats, worth listening to even if ultimately disagreeing.

Fourthly, Obamacare is inefficient and insecure. Medical records are to be digitised, transferred online, a security risk; and unnecessary regulations have been added to hospitals and doctors. Small practices have frequently joined hospitals to afford the new costs, reducing this segment of small business.

I agree with many on the so-called political Left that Wall Street is looting America, but I believe it would be better to thusly lower medical costs than to socialise healthcare. What America needs is higher wages and more jobs, not socialised healthcare.

Re. Vaccines, Ron Paul Has Nads of Steel

This is why I love this guy. While a lot of politicians are scurrying to get right with conventional wisdom, implicitly if not explicitly coming down on the side of mandates, Ron Paul gets it right, as usual. FTR, I am not anti-vaccine. I’m anti-mandate and pro-conscience.

If I were still a practicing ob-gyn and one of my patients said she was not going to vaccinate her child, I might try to persuade her to change her mind. But, if I were unsuccessful, I would respect her decision. I certainly would not lobby the government to pass a law mandating that children be vaccinated even if the children’s parents object. Sadly, the recent panic over the outbreak of measles has led many Americans, including some self-styled libertarians, to call for giving government new powers to force all children to be vaccinated.

Those who are willing to make an “exception” to the principle that parents should make health care decisions for their children should ask themselves when in history has a “limited” infringement on individual liberty stayed limited. By ceding the principle that individuals have the right to make their own health care decisions, supporters of mandatory vaccines are opening the door for future infringements on health freedom.

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