Speaking as a liberal, I don’t think you understand conservative political opinions in the slightest. What you’re surmising here is just as fanciful as conservative crackpots who insist that Democrats hoodwink African Americans to vote for them, but actually have never cared about policies that help the black community.
Do you know any conservatives in real life that you can talk to and exchange ideas with, just to hear what they think? Or do you just presume that any conservatives you talk to who aren’t part of the one percent have just been brainwashed?
I’m a conservative who could not pay a million dollar medical bill in cash, but I preferred the insurance system we had before ObamaCare. My personal insurance situation has gotten markedly worse under ObamaCare, and I’d like to see it repealed. Do you think I can’t determine what’s in my own best interest?
(my bold)
This is stretching the line between generalized insults and personal insults. Given there are certainly posters on this board who support repealing the ACA and it’s ostensibly related to the topic that you are engaging other posters about in this thread, I recommend staying away from this type of construction.
Is this your understanding of what the Graham-Cassidy bill would do? Where did you acquire that “information”? Can I politely suggest that you treat any future claims from that source with a healthy degree of skepticism?
You can argue that ObamaCare does not do a proper job, but the reality is that the big lie from the republicans in congress is that this is repealing and replacing it with something better. It is not. The reality is that after ObamaCare something better was needed and the Republicans in congress just decided that it was better to lie.
Ok, acknowledged. As a side note, if a position were idiotic on it’s face - that is, not supportable by any rational being with knowledge of the facts - can you state it as such? Can flat earthers be called idiots?
I’m simply wondering if you’re taking a viewpoint that there is a possible way to interpret the facts that supports repealing ACA if you don’t have a million dollars, or simply that there’s enough posters who support it that by definition they can’t all be dumb. So by induction, if there were, say, 10 flat earthers on this forum, I couldn’t call them idiots, either.
I would like to hear more from those who don’t support ACA. From what I know, it’s a cut and dried actuarial equation. No healthcare plan proposed by the republican party has an actuarial chance of preventing someone’s death better than the ACA, so there is an objective answer here.
The pre ACA world, the premiums were lower but the actual risk of having an uncovered medical event crop up was higher. This is objectively verifiable and true in the same way that in a world where all cars are replaced with motorcycles, your risk of death is higher. Even though, it is true, you are spending less on your vehicle.
Someone who disagrees is just as wrong as someone who disagrees with x+2 = 4, x=2. If you disagree about the value of x…ok, you’re wrong. Maybe the word idiot is a bit far, but if you are told the value of x is 2, shown how to do algebra, and then claim that Rush Limbaugh told you it was 3…that’s where I am coming from. That’s why I was using that word. I’m sorry for doing so, I was trying to say that millions of Florida rednecks or whoever else is a hardcore republican/racist/trump voter are all idiots, I wasn’t trying to address the claim at any specific poster.
Unless you assert that being alive and not bankrupt is the highest of all possible values, that is, outweighing self-determination and freedom.
How can you do that? How do you quantify those and weigh them against each other? How do you determine the value of living in a country in which people are generally free to keep what they earn and are not responsible for paying for others’ health costs? Can you show me, by proof, that this is so?
I am pretty confident your “undeniable proof,” is going to consist of postulates that you accept and I don’t, but I’m willing to learn. Trot it out.
The reason is that I believe there is value in establishing the norm that, whenever possible, people pay their own costs, as opposed to demanding that all of us share in a risk pool.
Now, this is obviously a non-falsifiable assertion on my part, since such value is not quantifiable. But the whole point of non-falsifiablity is that . . . wait for it . . . you cannot falsify it. It’s simply an assertion, a postulate just as its opposite number is.
You mention “death,” as a sort of a trump card (no pun intended). But death is preferable to many worse outcomes. I’d rather die, myself, than experience a whole host of other fates. How can you PROVE this is a poor choice on my part?
That’s a nice philosophical position to have. The issue here is that medical costs have risen past any level of reasonableness to a fantasy land of monopoly money. No one who is not literally in the top 0.1% of income can actually pay their own costs if they have to pay the cash rate. I would generally agree with you if we were talking about other goods, where the prices are reasonable or there is a straightforward way to get a fair price, such as food or housing.
Are you aware of this fact, do you deny it, or are you just not factoring it in?
As a side note, there are residents of low income neighborhoods who are not actually involved in crime. They are usually black, and poor by definition. If someone who must live there is hit by a stray bullet, how should it work? They can’t pay for their own rehab so they can go back to work, because the cash price is past any level of reasonableness. The stray bullet was not from an unhealthy lifestyle. The shooter, if they can be caught, does not have the assets to pay the liability. In this specific scenario, under your philosophy, what do you want to happen?
As I pointed many times before, I post not to convince people with sorry opinions like the ones you have. Suffice to say to you that you will always realize that someone will be alive to then get a better job that will pay taxes to support soon (if not now) your Medicare on your later years. As I pointed before too, you are welcome… even if you still oppose solutions that use risk pools.
I see that it is important to post for the ones that can be convinced that it is asinine that a developed nation is not capable of realizing that health care can be cheaper and accessible to all and it is not just philosophical point. The late Hans Rosling and many other economists and statisticians showed that health care in America costs much, much more than alternatives that most other developed nations have deployed (yes, that cost includes your taxes too); and on top of that they cover all their citizens so less of them die for lack of health care. And that was the case before ACA came along.
The ACA is IMHO just a small step forward, and it needed to be replaced by something better. The current solutions the Republicans have come up with are not better at all.
That the Republicans in congress have managed to convince some people to cut off their nose to spite their faces is not only dumb, it is also not reasonable nor sustainable.
And Bricker here has taken the position that the people with the bloody knives in their hand as they are cutting their own noses off are just going by a “different philosophy” that we cannot sit here and credibly say is better or worse, as it is a “non falsifiable assumption” to say mutilating yourself pointlessly is bad. (or risk your own death when you gain nothing by doing so)
Also, a side note, it actually is in fact falsifiable in several different ways.
Prior to the ACA, it was possible to buy individual health insurance plans, so even if I concede the claim, it’s not one addresses the provable absolute necessity of the ACA with irrefutable 2+2=4 level certainty.
I agree that cash payments for serious illnesses without insurance could bankrupt most people. So what?
It may have escaped your notice, but the country existed without the ACA and also without becoming an apocalyptic wasteland.
As another side note, that bullet may still fly today and kill such a resident. Why don’t you support an initiative to replace Sheetrock with hardened steel walls in every such neighborhood? I assume it’s not some sort of cost-benefit analysis in which you assign some sort of non-provable weight to human life as balanced against risks and costs, is it?
Read it again, the fact is that I’m alive to tell you once again that your opinion is not reasonable at all; your sorry opinion was made due to the pathological lies the Republicans in congress are using in the attempt to deny access to millions that already have it.
So it was the thought that house prices increasing and the number of bankruptcies due to that will never affect the Housing market. And that a then probable bubble bursting was not going to affect the overall economy.
After many years of looking at the issues I have to say that the health care market will be the next big bubble to burst.
That is what.
BTW in the past I pointed out that that was the trend with no ACA present, I know ACA is not much relevant to controlling costs, but as I pointed before ACA was dealing with access and help reduce bankruptcies. The next step needed yesterday (but that virtually all Republicans deny) was to finally realize that costs are unreasonable and unjustifiable. Hence the need for improvements for ACA and/or bigger and better reforms.