This overlooks the fact that some people were completely screwed under the previous status quo. The ACA helped people who desperately needed it, and the repeal effort would basically say to those people “no, on second thought, f*** you and here’s a tax break for the wealthy.”
That’s even supposing the bill exactly restores the previous status quo, which I don’t think is accurate.
Regarding “killing people” – no, obviously it isn’t the exact moral equivalent of pointing a gun at someone’s head and pulling the trigger. But I think somewhat hyperbolic language is justified here if it drives home the point that there are real lives hanging in the balance. This isn’t some sort of esoteric question about the proper role of government. It’s a question of life and death. And I think for Congress to lose site of that fact is a terrible mistake.
None of this contradicts anything I have said in this thread, but thank you.
FWIW, these seem like reasonable guidelines, and I don’t object to them particularly. They don’t seem to contradict Obergefell, so there’s no problem there.
Also, I find it hard to believe you seriously thought I was saying “we’d all be dead without the ACA”. That was never the issue. The issue is that some people were completely screwed under the old system… people who were too poor to afford decent insurance, people with preexisting conditions, etc. The purpose of the ACA was to address these gaps, which absolutely are a matter of life and death for the people affected by them.
But hey, maybe the Republicans will embrace that as their motto. “Health care – it’s not as serious as people say.” Or, “We survived the 18th century without ever paying for an MRI or a CAT scan… how important can they be?”
D’Anconia is a character from Atlas Shrugged who said:
“Money is made—before it can be looted or mooched—made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced.”
Again, this is a very cold comfort to anyone with a life-threatening condition who could afford health care last year, and won’t be able to next year. It’s a bizarre and sophistic argument that misses the point. This is a government service that people have gotten used to, and without which they would not be able to survive - akin to saying, “Okay, we’re no longer providing welfare or food stamps - we’re spending that money on buying rich people new yachts, have fun on your own.” Sure, technically the government isn’t killing anyone with that policy, but realistically a lot of people are going to starve as a result of it.
This applies equally to the American health care system, the black plague, the holocaust, the great leap forward, the HIV epidemic, and literally every other thing that didn’t wipe out humanity, no matter how horrific. The answer is, not everyone did. The state of the American health care system in the early 2000s was fucking scandalous, even if we remove comparisons to other places. Obamacare was an attempt to improve it. Not a perfectly successful attempt, but a hell of a lot better than it was before. And now, we’re going to remove those gains, and a lot of the people who suffered before will suffer again. A lot of the people who would have died without Obamacare are going to die again. Whether you wish to see this as “the government killing people” misses the point completely.
Although I would point out that most of the increases in life expectancy from that time period have been in child survival. (which is not to say that great swaths of people didn’t die of easily preventable things today, it’s just that you didn’t get to 45 and say “welp, that’s it for me…”)
For health care reform, there are basically two components to any reform: budgetary matters and policy matters. The Senate rules allow for purely budgetary matters to avoid a filibuster. When it comes time for non-budgetary matters to be addressed, Democrats may be able to filibuster that.
Are politicians who successfully support legislation EVER honest about the implications and motivations? We all remember Obama trumpeting that you could keep your doctor. I would find the Republican healthcare proposals more palatable if they didn’t say things like, “best health care ever!” If you think that certain classes of people should not have certain types of healthcare subsidized by the federal government, and if you want to reduce taxes on wealthy people and wealthy healthcare/insurance companies, just come out and say so.
Can you think of a major national legislation that was accurately sold?
With a few reasonable caveats (your doctor didn’t retire, your doctor remained part of your plan, the plan met the minimum requirements, etc.) wasn’t that true? Didn’t the vast, vast majority of us keep our doctors?
What about the phrase “repeal and replace”? Republicans, unless you actually plan to repeal and replace the ACA, go ahead and drop the meaningless talking point. If the ACA was a car in a parking lot in need of repair, walking around it and poking holes in it with a sharpened tire iron is not taking it away, and is not replacing it with something else.