Here’s a slogan for the Republicans:
“Tiered health care - first class for some, none for the rest. Brought to you by Republicans.”
The democrats did complain about the giveaway to the medicine companies due to Medicare plan D, there was even a very wasteful and bug ridden launch of the program (sounds familiar?).
What took place was that the Democrats stopped complaining once that law that was supported by many Republicans became a reality, the Democrats then concentrated on making the legislation better.
So what do Republicans are doing now? Unlike the Democrats the Republican solution is still to tell the ones with no health care to die quickly.
I guess a few sorry Republican leaders figure out that they will have to deal with just about 20,000 to 32,000 less likely Democratic voters every year. :mad:
Sure, and the republicans can use:
“We’re gonna make sure you don’t get any health care at all in order to advance our obstructionist agenda. You guys are cool with that, right?”
And even going for the low end of the numbers, one should realize that the Democratic slogans do write themselves:
18,000 people dying every year for lack of health care access should be unacceptable, that is like seeing the Republicans not willing to do anything to prevent the loss of lives like one would see in 11 Titanic ships sinking, every year.
That is equal to 0.7% of all deaths in the United States. Tobacco, for comparison, accounts for 17% all deaths in the United States.
By your own statistic, even limiting yourself to just the uninsured, there’s a 95% chance that having health insurance would not have stopped you dying.
Then I remember that even with Tobacco many Republicans did not do the right thing.
Sorry, but you can not win this one, when one knows that other developing countries do not have this issue you are then insisting on keeping up a system were many that would be alive will continue to die. It is indeed a very preventable condition. Incidentally one has to see the study from the National Academy of Sciences, they did go for very conservative numbers and many other conditions were not looked at, as they mentioned it in the study, it is very likely that the numbers are higher, hence the other larger ones.
And this is an argument against having health insurance how, exactly?
“Oh, well, you probably would have died anyway.”
The Republican slogans just keep writing themselves…
Dying? What about suffering? What about living while being unhealthy, and unable to do anything about it? What about children who lose the genetic lottery? The one’s that don’t die but are never exactly well, either.
Health care isn’t about stopping people from dying so much as caring that they are healthy. Très duh.
It is an argument against forcing people to buy health insurance because if you’re going to pretend that you’re doing this for their own good, you should care whether they actually get anything out of it. If you’re going to force people to spend an average of $160,000 buying a product, you should care that that product does not work nineteen times out of twenty.
This is still silly, we are talking about the current system, those with no access to care do not see it work, or many times until is very late.
Your beef is with medical science, then, and not with how it’s funded.
By your logic, if I have cancer, I should boycott seeing doctors, because they have only a certain chance of curing me. “You’re likely to die anyway, so why bother getting treatment?”
We’re doing it for everyone’s good. We’re doing it to try to help people see doctors earlier, to get the kind of preventive treatment that is known to be beneficial. This, in turn, will reduce costs, because we won’t have as many emergency-room cases of things that could have been dealt with at an earlier stage – because people don’t have health coverage.
BTW, where did you get that figure of $160,000? I’m presuming that’s a lifetime expense, not per year. One of the benefits of greater access to health care is that this expense can be lowered. Preventive care is only one of the ways that this is accomplished.
There’s no “pretend” about it. It actually works in other countries. Only U.S. conservatives are so hide-bound as to reject changes that really work, and only U.S. conservatives are so immoral as to reject changes that save lives.
All the Democrats have to do is campaign on the fact under the Republicans there would have been no expansion of Medicaid (and that there isn’t in most Republican-ruled states) and indeed due to the GOP scheme to block-grant Medicaid would have resulted in a reduction of services.
What matters isn’t how many deaths it is but by 1) how preventable the deaths are by pursuing different policies and on a political level 2) how much said number of deaths can be publicized. A tobacco ban is politically impossible to achieve along with (going by our experience with the War on Drugs) possibly not being effective. OTOH universal health insurance is within the realm of political possibility and are deaths that can be prevented.
In addition far smaller number of deaths have been used to successfully in political campaigns-for example despite the fact that deaths from assault weapons number only in the dozens it has been used to pursue assault weapon bans .
There will be a reduction in services - one caused by physicians opting out of medicaid and low-payment insurance plans - anyway. A significant number of doctors are choosing not to play ball under the rules being implemented by the ACA, due to reimbursements being too low.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/doctors-boycotting-californias-obamacare-exchange/article/2540272
According to the linked article, California’s Medi-Cal reimbursements are about one-third of the amount in other states, and many doctors are balking at making so little money. I know… greedy doctors.
Not all, of course. And I understand the complaint that Republicans have not offered up a workable alternative. I agree with that to a degree, but I find the knee-jerk reaction to defend Obamacare at all costs - against all complaints, legitimate or not - to be tiresome. There are huge problems with the ACA. To not acknowledge that reduces credibility to zero.
Wait until company-paid plans see dramatically higher insurance rates and huge copays, and pass on those costs to employers. That will be the other (or fifth or sixth) shoe falling.
Agreed.
Should the appropriate response to those problems be an effort to fix them to make it work. or should we just repeal it and go back to no plan at all for 50 million uninsured Americans?
Hint: One of these reduces credibility to zero.
Why are those the only two choices? If it ends up getting changed drastically, due to valid complaints, costs and inefficiencies, is it still “Obamacare” or “ACA”? I realize, of course, that politics and ego and “gotcha” are of the utmost importance. So there is no simpler, fairer solution on the horizon.
We can put a man on the moon, build the most powerful military machine in human history, but can’t provide decent health care for our people?
The health care disaster isn’t the one that’s coming, its the one we are trying to fix. We’re the Americans, if it can be done, we can do it, if it can’t be done, might take a bit longer.
So long as it provides healthcare to a significant number of those who don’t have it now, at a lower cost that the current market, and provides the services the ACA identifies and minimum benefits, I don’t care if you call it the Hagdalina Magdalina Act.
Even if insurance coverage becomes unaffordable to a significant number of other Americans, doctors remove themselves from covered practice or retire, people are forced to buy coverage they neither need nor want, and the formerly uninsured who got free health care at the ER still don’t pay for insurance and still get free care at the ER. But, hey, mandates and feel-good laws are the big-government answers, aren’t they?
Speaking of reaching for zero credibility points…
**Fear Itself *already told you that it can change a lot, and that change will very likely be based on the items you mentioned, the Republicans are free to then call it their baby or change the name in the future if they make those changes, **according to the dictates of their ego. **
*(And based on what I have seen, Democrats will also agree to do so)