Mike Pence Attempts To Sell Governors On Trumpcare

The Senate vote on Trumpcare will not happen.  Two conservative senators indicated that they would not vote for the bill.  Conservatives  believe that Trumpcare is too similar to Obamacare.  Moderate Republican senators are not enthusiastic about Trumpcare either.  They might have supported it as a display of party loyalty, but they have been getting a lot of complaints from their constituents who prefer Obamacare to Trumpcare.

Many governors, including Republican governors, have expressed concerns about Trumpcare.  Vice President Pence made an effort to sell them on the bill at a meeting of governors.  The details of his defense may not interest most readers but I posted this article for a more general purpose.  Mike Pence is much slicker than Trump.  He understands the details of the bill and he either lied or misled the governors about the issues that concerned them.  His speech was reviewed critically by the fact checker employed by the Washington Post.  Our Vice President is as dishonest as his boss.  The major difference between them is Pence understands what he is talking about and he is much more clever than Trump is selling snake oil.  Trump is only capable of tweeting his stream of conscienceness to his followers on Twitter.

Trumpcare will not happen for good reasons.  However, Obamacare is not perfect and it does not deal with a major problem that must be addressed by any healthcare bill.  Spending on healthcare accounts for 17% of GDP.  We outspend other Western nations on healthcare and we do not get superior results. Spending on healthcare is also growing faster than the rate of inflation on other goods and services.  Unless we reduce the inflation rate we will run into another obstacle.  We won't be able to increase taxes to pay for the rising cost of healthcare.  One of the problems that we face is that 5% of those covered by Obamacare account for 50% of the spending.  Some of that spending is due to unavoidable problems that everyone faces.  However, some of the spending is the result personal behavior that leads to expensive care down the line.  We also need better ways to deal with the pricing of healthcare services.  They are not subject to market forces that drive price down for most commodities that we consume.  There are competent experts on these issues who might help us address these problems.  They are typically not consulted by politicians who create the rules.