How many people do you know for whom access to health care does not equate to having health insurance, because they are rich enough to never have to worry about health care costs? Health care costs which are, incidentally, the #1 cause of personal bankruptcies in the US?
Can you seriously believe that health insurance is like broccoli or a gym membership? Is access to broccoli an overwhelming, life-determining necessity of mainstream employment in the US, so vital – and the loss of which is so fearsome – that there are programs for its potential continuation post-employment and post-retirement, so vital that there has been a national debate over it for nearly a century, with solutions for universal access opposed by an increasingly intransigent and increasingly wealthy and exploitative health insurance industry and its Republican supporters?
The equivalence between health care and privately purchased health insurance, as a necessary structural consequence of the health care system, exists in no civilized democracy on earth except the United States. That it’s an everyday fact of life in the US is the tragedy of this utterly failed system.
I’m seeing the word ‘wisdom’ being thrown about. Anyone have any idea what consequences adequate health insurance will lead to such that providing it is ‘unwise’?
Some weird-ass philosophical quirk about separation of powers is more necessary of the long term health of the nation than the lives of the people in it?
I don’t agree. The view is not remotely “weird-ass.” From my perspective, your view is the result of years of living without any emphasis being placed on the distinction between federal and state roles, so that anyone who insists on it is like an alchemist approaching Dow Chemical and asking if they have need of his Art.
But your lack of exposure to, or contemplation of, the proper federal role does not erase it. Indeed, it just illustrates how desperately this stand is needed.
I already linked to how unsustainable the American health care system is set up, this would had been indeed a great opportunity to at least setup a better alternative. But the Republicans in power decided to be unwise in the extreme.
The continued erosion of any understanding that there is even a difference between federal and state power. In this very thread, more than one poster has been seemingly unaware that federal and state legislatures have different grants of power.
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[li]I live in a democracy that has strong and distinct separation of powers between federal and state (provincial) powers, and which nevertheless managed to enact functional universal health care just fine, according to a model that would work just fine in the US with federal cost-sharing and state administration.[/li][/ul]
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[li]You claim you would support UHC – here, here, and here.[/li][/ul]
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[li]Your support for this Trump/Republican travesty appears to contradict the above rational claims, since you surely know that this particular political promise and this particular legislation has absolutely nothing to do with federalism or the constitution and has everything to do with political ideology.[/li][/ul]
I’ve weighed your concern against millions of people being declared ineligible for health insurance or having it priced beyond their reach, and your concern lost. Sorry.
The first two show my supporting a state, not a federal plan. The third signals my support for a federal plan that arises pursuant to a constitutional amendment.
Federalism and the constitution are political ideologies, and important ones.
Did I miss something about adequate provisions being made for those without the resources to contribute to their own participation? If so, I’d appreciate being directed to the part I missed. TIA.
The division of powers – three major branches of government – is an absolutely vital thing for the survival of our republic.
Federalism…not so much. It’s nice having fifty different watertight compartments, so, at need, we can seal off an infection in one from harming others, but, really, it is NOT vital to our survival as a nation that New York and Alabama can have different laws.
(Any more than it is vital to California’s survival that Los Angeles County and Siskiyou County can pass different laws, or that the city of Los Angeles and the City of Long Beach can pass different laws. This kind of regionalism is not important.)
I’d sacrifice health care for the people before I’d accept a one-party system government. But I’d happily sacrifice Federalism for universal health care, because Federalism really isn’t very important to us. The states are administrative regions, not sovereign entities: we gave that bit up a long time ago.
I would had thought that after the Dred Scott decision and a civil war to deal with it, I would think that that idea is not set on stone at all. Even before that the Constitution granted the federal government the right to collect taxes, regulate interstate commerce, raise an army and adjudicate legal disputes between states in 1789.
IIRC the issue of having insurance companies offering their services out of state, an idea mentioned many times by Republicans to get the AHCA to be approved, (there are actually no restrictions for that, the laws in the states are the reason why this is limited right now and I have seen that in Arizona a proposal to accept out of state insurers was vetoed by the Republican governor) does mean that in reality the federal government will have to get involved more than it was before. Nice job breaking it Republican congress heroes!
In any case, who gets the upper hand, the federal government or the states, does depend a lot on who has the power in Washington, so IMHO this talk about grants of power is a bit of a distraction.
This is a factually inaccurate claim, and your belief in its truth illustrates perfectly the importance of not relinquishing the sovereignty of states.
This New Yorker article offers a good perspective on why this whole thing is so shameful. Just a couple of small snippets to convey the flavor:
Ryan and his sidekick, the House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, pushed through a bill that, if it ever goes into effect, could upend one-sixth of the American economy and result in tens of millions of Americans losing their health coverage … the bill that was passed on Thursday was an amended version of a bill that the C.B.O. had previously determined would raise the number of uninsured people by twenty-four million over ten years, and increase premiums for many others, particularly the old and the sick …
… In jettisoning the principle that everybody, regardless of age or health, should be legally entitled to purchase insurance coverage, the House Republicans did something truly awful. The bill would give insurers a lot more leeway to charge higher premiums to old people. Many people in their sixties would see their premiums rise by thousands of dollars; some could see their premiums double. And, even then, they wouldn’t necessarily be getting the same level of coverage that they currently receive. The bill would allow states to opt out of providing all the benefits and treatments that were listed as “essential” under the Affordable Care Act.
On top of all this is another huge issue, which I’ve pointed to before. The bill passed on Thursday includes a substantial tax cut for the rich, financed by big cuts in Medicaid, the federal program that provides health care to the poor and indigent … In short, the bill the House just passed is one of the most regressive pieces of legislation in living memory. When Republicans cut taxes on the rich and slash funding for programs aimed at the poor, they usually go to great lengths to argue that the two things are unconnected. But in this instance they have done away with the subterfuge.
And another thing: I’m sure there’s a “substantial difference”, if I recall the phrase correctly, between health insurance laws written by a state legislature and those written federally, but I can’t imagine what it is.
But since I haven’t claimed that there was a substantial difference between health insurance laws written by a state legislature and those written federally, I’m not discomfited at not knowing.
Do you realize that the only solid argument that ObamaCare supporters have is that it gave (greatly subsidized) healthcare to a very small minority of the population?
Other than that, there wasn’t much good about it. Health care premiums have skyrocketed as have prescription drug costs. However, the most insidious effect that few people talk about is that high-deductible plans have become the norm under ObamaCare.
For those that don’t speak American, that means that, even if you sign up for an expensive plan, you still can’t go to the doctor without paying for it yourself until you have racked up thousands of dollars in costs (your insurance means little until then). It also resets every year so, God forbid, your little Billy gets into an accident on New Year’s Eve. You could run up a family medical bill of $10,000 or more overnight and still have to pay exorbitant insurance premiums for nothing.
That chilling effect is real. I have a few health conditions but I stopped going to the doctor several years ago once the high deductibles kicked in because of ObamaCare. I would have to pay for it myself even though both me and my employer pay many thousands of dollars a year for my (now almost useless) health insurance. It is simply too expensive now even though I have supposedly good health insurance.
I am fine with helping the lower 10 percent or so help get some form of health insurance but I am not willing to let the mechanism that enables that effectively disable my own. I have no idea why many people are so ideologically tied to ObamaCare. It started out as a Republican idea after all and has only been with us for a few years and has obviously failed miserably by almost every measure except for a small group of poor people that now have greatly subsidized health insurance at the expense of everyone else. That is not a good metric unless you are an illogical bleeding-heart. We can do much better.
