806 replies to this topic

[freedom78]

so it wasn't a problem when Obama broke everything and fucked over the middle class with increased premiums and increased costs across the board.

 

The great irony of "Obamacare" is that it was overwhelmingly a product of the Senate, which cut the feature most capable of keeping costs down, which was the public option.  So, yes, costs didn't go down as the might have.

 

It doesn't matter that the amount of people uninsured is about the same to before the ACA.

 

Completely false.  Take your BS to the Breitbart discussion boards.

 

All the anecdotal stories of people who had insurance now unable to afford it don't get news time, but the sob stories they can find about someone now covered are great articles.

 

Apparently we watch different news.  I can't imagine any theme of Obamacare more covered than these two: "you can keep your doctor" and "premium increases". 

 

 

I guess "TrumpCare"  (That's going to be it's name right?)

 

Nah, it's nothing like what then-candidate Trump promised.  I propose we call it The Billionaires Yachts Are More Important Than Insuring the Poor Deathcare Act.

 

Sadly, if Trump's promises were possible, they'd be better than what the GOP just rolled out.

 

It was ok to fuckover the middle class, but because we're not going to hand someone 25k so they can get insurance, the GOP is now the enemy of the people. 

 

I agree it was horribly flawed.  Let the GOP have their shot, which won't work, and then we can finally settle on some single payer or something else up to the standards of the civilized world.

 

And, no, the GOP is not the enemy of the people.  Unlike your boy, I won't so broadly paint an entire group.  But the House GOP are effectively the lobbyists for the wealthy, a small subcategory of "the people".

 

Obamacare doesn't work.  The healthy aren't buying into the plans, so major insurers are leaving the market.  So let's try the Republican model for a while and see if it works.  

 

No, Obamacare doesn't work.  Neither will the turd they're trying to polish in the House.

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[freedom78]

The very source you quote concludes with "Looking back, there’s no doubt the passage of the health care law expanded coverage for millions of Americans."

 

And the number of uninsured was more like 40-45 million, not 30 million. 

 

Agreed on the "not your own facts" thing.  Mine come from the Census Bureau.

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[Mr. Roboto]

so it wasn't a problem when Obama broke everything and fucked over the middle class with increased premiums and increased costs across the board.  It doesn't matter that the amount of people uninsured is about the same to before the ACA.  All the anecdotal stories of people who had insurance now unable to afford it don't get news time, but the sob stories they can find about someone now covered are great articles.  I guess "TrumpCare"  (That's going to be it's name right?) keeping pre-existing conditions doesn't get to piggy back.  It was ok to fuckover the middle class, but because we're not going to hand someone 25k so they can get insurance, the GOP is now the enemy of the people.  

 

Obamacare doesn't work.  The healthy aren't buying into the plans, so major insurers are leaving the market.  So let's try the Republican model for a while and see if it works.  

 

 

So your argument is: Obamacare does not work, lets replace it quickly with something much worse.

 

Your problem is instead of sincerely looking at the Trump plan, you just go to default mode: Look for anything you may find that is hypocritical so you can balance the ledger. We already know what your thoughts are on the ACA, why not provide some insight into Trump's new plan? 

 

The GOP could choose to build on the current system rather than erase and redo. For instance their plan allows subsidies up to 75k or so, while Obama's was 400% of poverty level. Why not just keep the subsidies in place and bump up the income level? That way the lower income don't lose out, but those who were negatively effected by ACA (premium increase and higher income) can get some relief? Things like that. They could tweak here and there and make improvements. But that's not what they want to do. They are salivating over destroying Obamacare. It's a victory FOR THEM, and for them only. They are clearly not thinking about Americans or how to help them.

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[freedom78]

But I do think tax credits are better than subsidies. I like keeping the pre-existing condition. I don't really care about being on a parents plan until 26, but I'm fine with that. I like the idea of penalizing people who jump around or only get insured when they're sick. If the insurers have to accept everyone, those who try to game the system should be financially penalized.

 

I wouldn't nitpick too much on any of this, except to note that the proposed tax credits are fairly mindless and don't in any way reflect the financial realities of today's poor and middle class.

 

Democrats used reconciliation to get it through after fighting amongst themselves for 2 years on what it should be (the exact thing you're taking delight in as the GOP fights). Its passage is what sparked the Tea Party and led to a GOP takeover of the house. So yea, finally having their mark and say on healthcare after being shut out for 8 years is a victory.

 

I know you get upset when we point out how this plan has similarities to GOP plans in Massachusetts and their alternative to HillaryCare back in the 90s, so I'm not going to go there.  Instead, let me make the case that this was the most conservative option to addressing the large scale uninsured problem.  This is, first and foremost, a market based solution.  If you believe, as I do, that we will HAVE to eventually put on our big boy pants and address our healthcare crisis, then the GOP should have jumped at the chance to craft a market-based plan.  Had they worked with Dems (because we all know they wouldn't...), they could have helped to craft quality legislation.  But, instead, they filibustered.  And the Senate got its tainted hooks into it and gutted some of its most important features.  And eventually we will have something much less market based as a consequence.  It may take a while.  Your party may have to boot millions from the roles to get that point across, which this bill makes it clear they're willing to do, but it'll happen. Public opinion reached a majority in favor of universal healthcare in the 2008 election.  The GOP spent the next eight years lying about it.  But when this plan fails to do what they've promised, it'll bounce back.

 

Maybe if politicians were more focused on doing what is right and in the best interest of everyone instead of "what will keep me in power", we'd all be better off.

 

Amen.

 

I'm hoping the smart Democrats come forward and work to add amendments on capping prescription drugs or other absurd medical costs like $100 for 2 ibuprofen.

 

Socialist.

 

But under any objective measure, the ACA has been a failure.

 

Except by the measure of reducing the uninsured rate. 

 

Or by eliminating the ability of companies to discriminate against the sick, who most need their services. 

 

Or by allowing responsible parents to insure their idiot children until they're 26.

 

It's failures are rising premiums (no public option) and less than universal coverage.  Fix those two problems and we're golden.

 

So let's try some of the GOP ideas and see what actual results are.

 

I feel like you're trying to talk us into anal.

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[Mr. Roboto]

The rise in premiums and insurance companies pulling out of the exchanges had a great deal to do with Marco Rubio. He put a provision in spending bill to gut the risk corridors. Once the companies were not able to be refunded as promised they incurred high costs causing them to fold, increase premiums and drop out of the exchanges. It was the most effective thing the Republicans have done against the ACA. Once they did that, then they could sit back and say "See, it was a disaster." 

 

It was as despicable as it comes IMO. Screw millions of Americans with their healthcare, kill businesses and then point the finger at Obama. 

[freedom78]

I don't feel like reliving 2010 again, but of the 30 million uninsured at the time as claimed by Obama, 15 million already qualified for some type of medical coverage under existing programs and simply chose not to enroll.  If your argument is that Obama made people more aware of their options, sure.  I just don't think that the hundreds of billions it's cost us so far was worth to make people more aware.  Something like 90% of the people cited by Obama fanboys were covered by Medicaid expansion.  So it wasn't his exchange that helped many, it was an existing government program that had nothing to do with the ACA:  

 

http://www.politifac...rance-coverage/

 

The rising premiums are a direct result of forcing insurers to take on the sick while not enforcing the individual mandate penalties and/or not enticing all these young, healthy people the plan required to work, to actually sign up.  

 

Continue to expand medicaid and charge for it based on ability to pay.  But the federal government shouldn't be footing the bill to expand medicaid all on its own.  That was OBAMA'S design, and we should continue that.  

 

The exchange, the meat of the entire thing (if you like your doctor you can keep him!) has been an objective failure.  If you want to try and count people who qualified for medicaid before and didn't enroll or those who it was expanded to, go for it.  But clarify you're only talking about the medicaid portion and not the part that fucked up everyone else's premiums.  No amount of selective spin is going to alter that.  A public option isn't happening.  Your party with total control of congress and reconciliation didn't try to make that happen because like Republicans, Democrats aren't one single thought bot.  But all these major cities that are willing to lose federal funding and are setting aside 20-30 million in legal fees to help illegals obviously have the income available to provide medicaid to their poorest people.  They don't need my tax dollars helping them.

 

Saying that the ACA gets no credit for the Medicaid expansion because Medicaid already existed is like saying a policy that improves education doesn't count because we already had schools in place.  Of course it counts!  The Medicaid expansion was a part of the law.  I don't know what about that idea you find controversial.

 

Beyond that, supporters of ObamaCare are usually qualified in their support.  We note the good and would very much like to fix the bad.  J noted one way in which a single GOP Senator intentionally put something into the legislation to make it fail.  I noted that the lack of a public option (as simple as allowing the public to buy in to Medicare), which would be operated on a not-for-profit basis, would have forced insurers to either lower premiums to compete or ignore the market of individuals seeking insurance.  This law has a couple of pretty easy fixes that would have made a huge difference.  But that's not what the GOP is interested in.  And so millions will lose their coverage.

[Mr. Roboto]

[Mr. Roboto]

The CBO report on the Republican replacement is pretty bad. 14  million lose coverage in 2018 and then another 10 million over the next 8 years. I can't imagine this would be good for the economy either.

 

My guess is that Trump and friends will go after the CBO just like anybody else that tells them the truth. Fake news! 

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[Zimbochick]

The ACA did not take away insurance from people, it prevented insurance companies from continuing to sell people "health insurance", aka catastrophic coverage, aka an unpolishable turd. Sure people could purchase a plan for $100 or $150 a month. Then when the SHTF it covered absolutely nothing. They did not have coverage, they had a plan. Big difference.

[freedom78]

They might as well call this plan "HA, You're Fucked!"