WASHINGTON - eTradeWire -- Following up on reports that House Members Release Bipartisan 'Principles' for Extending Obamacare Subsidies, and House Dems Bend on Demand For "Ironclad" Shutdown Deal as Talks Ramp Up, it now appears that Moderate Senate Dems [Are] Plotting To Re-Open Government Behind Schumer's Back.

But whatever proposed deal might be made, it reportedly would force taxpayers to continue to pay for unnecessary medical expenses for some earning $400,000/yr - more than 20 times the poverty level, and among the top 1% - and would simply determine how long taxpayers will be forced to pay for medical expenses which are unnecessary, and do nothing to reduce them, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf.

Instead of fighting over who should bear these astronomical and ever growing health insurance costs - those who seek the medical treatment, or other taxpayers - we should be asking why the costs are so outrageously high, and what can be done to substantially reduce them so that everyone pays much less; not only for Obamacare subsidies, but also under Medicaid, veterans benefits, and many other government programs, says Banzhaf.

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Fortunately, there is an easy way to slash unnecessary health care costs simply by doing what politicians from both parties have been promising for many years but never following through on: imposing personal responsibility.

We should begin imposing some personal responsibility on the tiny minority of Americans responsible for more than half of the costs of Medicaid, and far too much of the costs of Obamacare, says the man whose legal actions have already saved millions of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.

It's been said that we should never let a crisis go to waste.  So, instead of simply debating whether taxpayers should be forced to pay some $1.5 trillion in order to end the current shutdown, we should also begin debating why we continue to permit a tiny proportion of adults to impose huge unnecessary medical care and other costs on all of us, and whether it's about time to require them to assume some personal responsibility for their own health or bear their far share of the resulting unnecessary costs.

It seems that the House members seeking to make a deal are proposing just what Prof. Banzhaf suggested days earlier; a temporary extension of Obamacare subsides with fixed phaseout dates and other conditions (e.g. changing income cutoffs and other conditions, work requirements, etc.) to end the shutdown.

http://banzhaf.net/   jbanzhaf3ATgmail.com   @profbanzhaf