....Actually a lot of it came from a previous Republican plan from the 90s that subsidized plans, set minimum standards, and created an exchange. Funny how Romneycare (which started before ACA) bears some resemblance to Obamacare.... So no..... no matter what the democrats did the Republicans were going to not play along. That's why we have universal healthcare.... AmIRite? Keep putting your fingers in your eyes.... No republicans sabotaged government in order to convince you rubes how government doesn't work. It's a fantastic racket. It's one thing to oppose something.... it's another to sabotage it. So where's the Republican plan to change that.....? I mean they wasted like 6 years trying to repeal something they knew they can't..... Are Republicans that incapable of solutions? Do you enjoy being made a fool of? How expensive is it going to be to provide medicare to a bunch of obese people who never regularly saw a doctor....? Well we are about to find out in this next decade... Republicans can't see 3 feet in front of them..... You Republicans just don't get it.... we are going to pay one or the other....
No you are one lying about ACA thought to be "amazing". Do you deny it may have worked better if Republicans didn't try and sabotage it? They wanted single payer, but they couldn't even get their own people to support it, so they did a measure they knew would fail so they could blame it's failure on Republicans and push for the single payer system that was rejected by Democrats.[/QUOTE] That's right. Democrats and Republicans don't vote as block for everything. Are you conservatives that dumb that you think by doing nothing that all the healthcare issues will magically disappear? The cost of preventative diseases won't be compounded as unhealthiness tends to be expensive to treat. Do you think by doing nothing, you are actually saving money in the long term?
And does Medicare not cover a guaranteed loss? I am sure the 65 and up crowd would love to hear your platform how you want to get rid of medicare since it mostly covers risky patients.... Let's get rid of the VA since caring for wounded soldiers is costly too.... Either you get rid of those money pit programs or you need to come up with a healthcare solution.
Lack of insurance does not equal lack of healthcare. No one was preventing people with pre-existing conditions from going to see a doctor, they were only refusing to take guaranteed or near guaranteed losses. The whole concept of insurance is that an insurer is willing to accept smaller guaranteed payments against a risk that they will have to make large payouts in the future. They offer policies with the hope that they will bring in more than they pay out, and they rely on data to make that determination. If someone already has cancer and is going to need $1,500 per month in care, it would be stupid for an insurance company to accept that responsibility for $300 per month premiums with no deductible, because they are guaranteeing themselves $1,200 per month in losses. If they government wanted people with pre-existing conditions to have subsidized health care, they should have just made government health care available to them. Forcing private insurers to accept anyone with a face means that all of the other customers that are using insurance for insurance purposes get stuck with the bill for the people using it as a discount on healthcare now. It doesn't matter how they sourced their ideas. 60 Democrat senators came to a consensus on what they would agree to pass, and then they passed it (well, technically 58 plus two independents who caucused with the Democrats). That this is what they chose cannot be blamed on Republicans who said they didn't want it, voted against it, said they would filibuster if they Dems didn't have a supermajority, have voted multiple times to repeal it, etc. There is no leg for you to stand on saying that Republicans are responsible for the PPACA. It is simply not true. They didn't need the Republicans to play along. That is the point. Not one Republican played along and it passed anyway. The Democrats could pass whatever would get out of their own caucus, and this is what they managed to put together. To blame it's failure on Republicans is like blaming Obama for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. First, we do have universal healthcare. We have it in a terrible way, that ERs are not allowed to turn patients away, but we do have it. Second, whatever problems you have with the PPACA, you need to take up with the people that wrote and passed it. That does not include a single Republican Senator. 60-39-1 Your definition of sabotage could use some work. Oh, the Republicans have not provided some grand solution that is going to solve everything. That was certainly not what I was arguing. I am just saying you cannot factually blame the Republicans for the PPACA, any more than you can blame the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I would propose a network of free clinics that provide some minimal level of health care that is funded by taxes, and otherwise repeal laws that allow people to get healthcare without paying for it (no showing up at the ER and demanding services with no payment and no insurance), then go back to more unregulated private insurance for those who want either more or better service than is provided at those free clinics. Get rid of medicare and medicaid while we are at it (medicaid immediately, medicare with a phased elimination of benefits and taxes, so the people that have paid into it all their working lives are not screwed).
Yea.... Except when you look at the health of your average American... Preventative diseases are more of the issue as those folks who didn't take care of themselves will be eligible for Medicare and it will be expensive to care for them. Health care isnt cheap but the republicans seem to prefer to pay a lot more in he future, and prefer to cut off their nose to spite their face.
This is an argument for single payer, not for the PPACA (which has things like high deductibles which discourage routine doctor visits). It also assumes that people are going to start living healthy lifestyles if they just have access to health insurance. Is there any evidence that people who were previously uninsured that signed up on one of the exchanges have started living healthier lifestyles?
Of course it matters. Had the democrats actually pushed forth something that was totally out of the question for conservatives then you would be right. Conservatives were in a position to contribute something but decided to play the country for fools. Because you are missing the point. The Republicans could have put their stamp on this but they CHOOSE not to. For a party about fiscal conservatism.... y'all sure do waste a lot of time on inaction. But hey.... if the Democrats didn't need Republicans to play along then.... why are Republicans working so hard to undue ACA? Seems like they wasted a bunch of time and resources to appeal to rubes who think inaction is praiseworthy. So then you are happy that Republicans wasted 6 years trying to repeal ACA instead of doing something productive? My point exactly.... Real easy to sit back and collect your checks as a Republican senator not doing a damn thing.... Real easy to complain instead of put forth solutions.... But hey.... you don't seem to be mind being made to look a fool. Nope... From webster..... Sabotage: any undermining of a cause. Seems like it describes the situation. I am factually blaming the Republicans. Everything they have done points to sabotaging ACA as much as possible while wasting time and money repealing something which wasn't going to happen in order to put on a show for the rubes.... If you are stupid enough to believe ACA had to be this difficult to implement then there's nothing else to tell you. Had both parties worked on something and tried to make it work and it still failed.... that's something else entirely. You definitely won't be getting any support from Republicans with those ideals.
No it's an argument for not spending a bunch of unnecessary money. Not my argument. In order to combat obesity you will need to battle the food and beverage industry for starters. I said this earlier, but healthcare solutions are moot point without doing something about obesity. Whether taxing unhealthy foods or requiring obese folks to pay more in taxes, doesn't matter to me. I would use google scholar and you can see what they have found. Here's one study: http://www.nber.org/papers/w17190 Most evidence points that the more people know about their health, better decision making will happen (in regards to health).
Nope. You were babbling about risk and socialism and free markets.... It was most definitely directed at you.
If by "work better" you mean "taken longer to inevitably fail" then possibly. The problem with Obamacare is that it's a fundamentally flawed bill. There was nothing that was gong to make that BS work. Look at how it's "working" in NY and California, two states that did all they could to make it work, they are suffering worse than most states. The false narrative that Obamacare failed due to Republicans just won't fly. It failed because it was always going to fail. Plenty of people could and did tell you that from the very beginning but the president and the Democrats in congress lied enough about it to where at one point you were convinced it would be a great thing.
It was more of a jab of those that think like that. Medicare is firmly entrenched and you'll have a large uphill battle against the AARP. If you want, you can provide me with a non-photo-shopped version as I really don't care that much to do it myself.
And how is the state of healthcare in CA and NY compared to Texas? Be a good comparison since the former has tried to make ACA work and the latter has tried not to. I didn't realize the book was closed on how a healthcare plan has performed after 6 years. I absolutely agree that it was oversold by Obama and those in Congress. Healthcare is expensive, especially when you have a relatively unhealthy population like the US has. There was no chance of it reducing premiums without more meat in it that deals more with the cost of services and products. The only reason I blame Republicans more is because of their sheer hypocrisy. They have complained the loudest about spending, the deficit, and debt and here was there chance to do something about it. They didn't even try and choose to play the blame game instead. And there you are happy that ACA has "failed" and America has wasted time and resources in the meantime. I truly am not understanding how you and the others are so happy to cut off your nose to spite your face.
Yeah and it's no better there than it is in Texas, that's my point. Trying to make ACA work won't help because it's fundamentally garbage. In fact, the average rate increase for the cheapest Obamacare plans are higher in both California and New York than in Texas this year. Wait, the ACA was a chance to do something about lowering spending, the deficit, and the debt? How? I mean, I'm highly critical of the Republicans too in those areas because they are nothing more than a "Democrat Light" party when it comes to spending, but I don't see how you seem to think a massive federal program was going to lower spending. I do have to give the Republicans credit though, they did come in and lower the annual deficit between 500 billion and 1 trillion dollars over the annual deficits that Obama and the Democrats were running when they were given the reigns of government. It still wasn't enough though. No, they didn't play along with the bad idea, they tried to get rid of it instead. Unfortunately, the president (as always) wasn't willing to negotiate that so Obamacare continues to die a slow death instead. The whole thing is a giant waste of time and taxpayer money....but that's pretty much the Democrats' MO
They did push through something that was totally out of the question for conservatives. You know how I can tell? Not a single Republican Senator voted for it. Scott Brown won a special election on the premise of being the 41st vote against Obamacare. You are living in a fantasyland where this is some sort of bipartisan bill. Whether they copied Romneycare (something a Republican governor in a far left state created with a Democrat state legislature), got stone tablets from the mountaintop, or cooked up in a drug induced haze, this law was the output of the Democratic Caucus and ONLY the Democratic Caucus. Did you miss the fact that the Republicans took control of both houses of Congress? They could not stop the Democrats when they had a supermajority and passed the PPACA. Now the Republicans have a majority and try to get rid of what they never wanted in the first place. They are appealing to people that didn't want Obamacare passed and want it gone. I don't see them as mutually exclusive. I would like to get rid of Obamacare, so yes, I am happy that they are trying to get rid of Obamacare. There are few things I think they could write bills for that Obama would be willing to sign that I would actually want them to do, so I would prefer the send over the next repeal Obamacare bill instead. If your point was that the Republican party had nothing to do with the passage of Obamacare, you had quite a bizarre way of expressing it. In what way does it describe the situation? The Democrats rammed through a bill that the Republicans didn't want. The bill functions as Republicans said that it would (ie poorly). Where is the sabotage? Where is the sabotage? As you say, they have continually tried to repeal it. The PPACA was broken to begin with. The bill is self-implementing. On a state level there may be some argument for sabotage, but the PPACA isn't working in blue states and failing in red states, it is a mess everywhere. Not doing everything possible to try to salvage something they didn't want in the first place is hardly sabotage. I never said the Republican party had all the answers.
All? How about any? The problem existed long before Obama became President, and the republicans have controlled both houses now for years... what answers have they come up with?
Really? No better? You think all those uninsured folks in Texas aren't a burden and costly? Because prevention is cheaper. We are going to pay either way, we can do nothing and pay a lot more when folks start hitting 65 or we can try to mitigate that cost. Sometimes you gotta spend money to save money. All those entitlement programs need to be shored up which will add debt short term but savings long term. Aside from ACA, where's the spending? The economic crash caused a lot of automatic spending in programs designed to help alleviate those type of economic hardships. They choose to not play along with anything.... Not even among their own party.... They tried to get rid of it despite not being possible... They had to do something to make it appear like they were doing something so the rubes would keep voting for them.... Right... because after the public option was dropped.... Republicans had no negotiating tools..... I mean... minimum standards... state exchanges... subsidies.... Those are certainly ultra liberal policies..... Why do you choose to live in a fantasy land? Why do you like being a rube? Remind where's the Republican plan after 6 years?
So you are just naïve then? And seem oblivious to the political nature of "politics". Never said it was a bipartisan bill, implied that ACA isn't some "liberal, ginger bread house, and everyone is a winner" policy but is based in ideals that you'd think would cross party lines. But hey.... take a look at the few ideas Republicans have pushed forth since 2008... Nothing too dissimilar than ACA.... Sorry but you've been played for a fool. And wasted a bunch of time and resources on something they knew they couldn't achieve.... But hey... its not their money. In the real world, things don't get paused because you want to get rid of ACA. In the real world people are racking up healthcare costs and adding to the federal debt while the GOP plays games. Inaction and perspective is a curious thing isn't it? Because GOP legislators went even further than simple inaction. They went out of their way to make ACA even harder to implement. Where the GOP went out of their way to make ACA implementation more burdensome. Look into Texas. So do you consider it to be failing in Texas based on how Texas legislators have treated healthcare? I don't expect any political party to have all the answers. I expect a political party to provide solutions to issues they care a lot about or at the very least do something.
