I'm not arguing whether the law is working as intended or even that it works really well. I am arguing that many states (Texas, for example) are intentionally sabotaging it to make it function worse than it could and should. I am arguing that people like Rubio take credit for gumming up the works to ensure things like the risk-corridors would not function well and thus run many viable health care startups out of business. Whatever you think of the law, if you actually care about people, you should *want* it to be implemented to work as well as it can, even if you don't think it will work out or want the law repealed. Being happy over the OP as giddyup's and glynch's comments suggest that people are more interested in winning political arguments than the actual well being of people. For 7 years, the GOP has known Obamacare is not being repealed. Yet they have not made one attempt to try to make it work better - there are plenty of things both parties actually agree could improve the system, but all they want to do is win a political argument. Repeal-or-bust, despite the fact that repeal is impossible. Let's not pretend there is an actual concern for the people affected.
I'm asking you for help. Could you give me an example of somewhere so I can start? It's easier than going on a wild goose chase. I have tried looking for places that did dramatic overhauls to their healthcare systems.
I'm not concerned for my job as I don't really on health insurance compensation to make a living. And while you continue to paint me as some sort of radical right winger who hates the poor and doesn't wish to expand access to care, nothing could be further from the truth. I don't believe single payer will work in this country for systemic reasons not ideological reasons. I support expanding Medicaid and support keeping the aca with tweaks. You know nothing about me and it appears your internet disfunctionality isn't limited to just poor quoting but also poor reading.
What evidence do you have single payer won't work, when medicare which covers a much sicker population has done a better job of controlling costs? http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/04/16/public-vs-private-health-insurance-on-controlling-spending/ The old system did not work. It costs too much. Obamacare is a system that will break. Might as well get single payer system in place sooner.
This logic is naive and ignorant. You still have yet to explain to me why it was a good idea to pass mass legislation that had absolutely no teeth in it other than to bind every citizen in this country. If politicians, states or insurance companies could gum up the system later on, why were measures not made to ensure this didnt happen? Are you really telling me the life support of Obamacare was left up to the good will of insurance companies and politicians of later time? Please tell me the liberals designed this system to fail, which I have long suspected. If not, this will forever hang over the Democratic party for decades to come. Because if not, the rich are laughing it up to the bank while they can afford premium health care while the rest are stuck going through red tape and struggling to find quality doctors. You're absolutely correct. It is a shame politicians are bound and determined to make it fail. What we do know is that most level headed people were ready for healthcare reform. They were long tired of the insurance companies. My two biggest complaints of Obama was the ACA and him constantly creating division. If he spent more time trying to unify people instead of passing ACA, we all would be sitting better. I am no fan of Hillary, but at least she understands politics.
Obamacare is not going to work. The root of the issue is the insurance companies. When doctors can simply drop out of the network anytime and insurance companies can drop hundreds of thousands of people, this will only continue to create havoc. People cant continue to risk losing their doctor (which they were promised over and over they could keep) because the insurance company no longer finds your plan suitable to their bottom line. No, they can't raise their rates, but they can certainly drop your plan. This sounds very similar to pre existing conditions. Single payer coupled with a premium private market is what we are going to need.
I don't think it was ever intended to succeed, it was just a stepping stone to get to a single payer system because even to get this through they had to essentially bribe multiple Democrats with billions worth of pork to coerce enough support to get it through a congress the Democrats completely controlled. There was no chance a single payer system would ever pass. The hope was that people would like this entitlement and once it failed they'd demand a single payer system. We'll see how that works.
Insurance companies aren't as a whole making out with bandits. A lot of y'all have incomplete knowledge here. Hell, so do I, and I've spent many hours researching this issue. Legislation forces huge payouts by insurance companies to subsidize the ACA. I'm no fan of the crap they pulled before the ACA, with weeding out bad risks, but some definitely struggle nowadays. The NY Times had a good article about the variance in payouts here: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...lth-care-arent-what-experts-thought.html?_r=1 In lieu of single-payer, you can still reap the same benefit of group negotiation and consistent prices if there wasn't such a lack of transparency in what is paid vs. the chargemaster prices. Hospital profit seeking and information hiding is just as much to blame for this mess as insurance company greed (which has been mitigated a bunch by the ACA...not their greed, but the effects of their greed).
Hey your moderateness has gotten you upset over some emotion with respect to this issue that you are getting silly. Hey be content with minor changes in the ACA over the next twenty years or whatever if that floats your vote. I am so gleeful over people's suffering.
Well you just look silly and frustrated trying unsuccessfully to twist the meaning of my original post to gain ideological advantage on the bbs:
I'm hearing a lot of bellyaching over ACA and a lot of criticism of contended moderates and liberals but what I'm not hearing is any sense of how any change was going to happen without taking on the ACA. Those of you arguing for single payer seem to have an idea that that was an actual option. If we couldn't even get a public option passed how was single payer even possible in the political climate? The options weren't ACA or single payer but ACA or nothing. Talk about short term memory many of you seem to forget that in 2011 there were more uninsured, people with pre-existing conditions couldn't get insurance while at the same time premiums and health care costs were still rising. ACA has been far from perfect. I never expected it to be and unless you really are so pollyanish that you believe that politicians actually will deliver everything the promise I don't see why anyone else wouldn't expect there would be problems. That said I don't think it's been the unmitigated disaster that many people think either. As I said before using an exchange I'm actually getting a substantial savings. Leaving aside personal anecdote uninsured has been dropping. As for the problems I agree there are many and they need to be fixed. Don't hold your breath though for single payer. If y'all think the battle for the essentially Republican private based ACA bad that will pale in comparison for an actual government takeover of health care in a single payer system.
Maybe "glee" isn't the right term but you certainly seem welcoming of all the suffering. You seem to be looking at them as necessary sacrifices to see the type of change you want. You like to rail about contended moderates I would say that people like Major, Justtxyank and myself are anything but contended. None of us have said that we should just accept where the ACA is but have pointed out needed changes. The difference between us and your position is that rather than pinning our hopes on some solution that is very unrealistic but instead looking for steps that can be taken to gradually improve the situation. Your view is basically hoping for enough disaster for radical change. My view is seeking to prevent or at least mitigate disaster for realistic change.
The democrats could have done it (Single Payer). They had enough votes to do it at one point I believe. Obama should had put his party in line and pushed it through.
Just because the Democrats had a super majority didn't mean they had the votes to push it through. Several Democrats were out rightly against a single payer option while more were skeptical. A single payer was pretty much DOA in the Congress and Obama knew that. The only area that I really fault Obama on is not pressing harder for a public option as part of ACA. With more party discipline the votes were probably there while a push for single payer probably would've fractured the party. I'm not saying that any of that is good or how it should be just that that is where the politics were. For those wanting single payer though the ACA is better step towards it than trying to ram it through in 2010. ACA has shown that there is a political willingness for massive health care reform that hadn't existed in 2010 since the 1960's. When the Clinton health care plan failed many didn't think it would be possible to do any major reform until the ACA passed.
That is complete horse**** and you know it. Obama: Its ACA or nothing Republicans: ok nothing Obama: Too bad. We are passing it anyways. I understand the Republicans are obstructionist and would not have passed anything that made the most sense, but Obama did nothing to negotiate. Nobody has forgotten any of that...and health care costs are still rising at an alarming rate. What most have forgotten is why many spoke out against ACA and the many problem that were not addressed and the promises that simply could not be guaranteed. And stating that more people are insured is a hollow victory to taunt. How many of those people can afford the deductibles to get the treatment they really need?
No chance, it cost billions worth of pork just to coerce enough support from congressional Democrats to get the current bill passed. Single payer would have died.....or it would have cost billions more in pork to bribe enough people to support it.
I don't think so. There simply was never the vote for Democrats to pass single payer. For example, the blue democrat were absolutely against it (too many knew they would lose their next election and many did anyway). It was ACA or nothing. In fact, not just ACA or nothing, but ACA-lite or nothing. Direct quote of one member of the blue coalition against the single payer from 2009:
It really was ACA or nothing, and the ACA was stripped down. There were so many back door deals just to get that legislation done. And then when Kennedy died, the shenanigans were even greater when they stripped down that Housing bill and did reconciliation, which is currently being challenged through the courts. And it's pretty disingenuous that the Repubs complained about lack of input on HC when they pulled that first when they controlled everything with the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003. And there were tons of shenanigans to get that done too. Edit: And geez, the republican plans were so far off the ACA, I don't know how middle ground could have been reached. Everything was about shifting the cost and choice to consumers, which again is problematic in a dysfunctional and non-transparent market. McCain wanted to eliminate employer-based insurance in favor of a tax credit. GOP wanted Medicare to switch to vouchers and Medicaid to switch to block grants (which they're still trying to do, which just leads to more uninsured http://www.cbpp.org/blog/proposed-m...ld-add-millions-to-uninsured-and-underinsured). So it's just complete BS that the Repubs were up for negotiations since they did the phase out years before on HC legislation, and then everything they proposed was about "free market" (even though they don't address market failure) and cost controls by increasing the number of uninsured (without addressing the side effects of emergency room costs).
