Please join me in following the Republicans as they tap dance, shuffle, and obfuscate in the process of dismantling the highly popular* (yes, it is) and highly successful* (yes, it is) Affordable Care Act over the next few weeks, months. There won’t be any replacement (and everyone knows it), so that part is moot.
They’ve been promising it and now they have to deliver, in spite of the fact that many Trump supporters will feel the deepest pain. Oh well. We don’t need them any more. We got elected. Screw 'em.
I vote for, “They just don’t give a fuck about people who are sick and poor/middle class.” If they did give a rat’s ass about the health and welfare of the American people they would either save Obamacare, or they would have come up with a viable replacement during the EIGHT FUCKING YEARS they’ve been attacking it.
No, Obamacare is not perfect, but millions of people WHO NEED COVERAGE now have it. Ideally, we would have a single-payer system like the more enlightened countries in the world. The ACA is the next best thing. When the Republicans fall flat on their faces over this issue in the next few years, the public (even the most backward members of our community) may finally understand why other countries don’t dick around with health care. Or maybe they won’t. Never underestimate people’s ability to sabotage their own well-being through sheer ignorance and narrow-mindedness.
“Or perhaps—and this is what’s most likely—McConnell and Ryan are fully aware of the repeal’s political danger and the ghastly toll it will take on people’s lives, but they feel they have no choice. …”
No, that’s it. They see themselves as trapped in their own rhetoric. They totally lack an understanding of leadership that puts country before party, and are unable to rise above it. All they know how to do is to blame the Democrats somehow, and that’s what they’re busy working on. Not the vaunted “Republican replacement bill”; that has always been and continues to be a pathetic lie - not that it hasn’t had its true believers anyway.
They’re going to punt. They will set strict guidelines for establishing a committee to set the parameters for discussing the issue. Naturally, this will take some time, but once they have set those guidelines, they can then move swiftly forward to actually empaneling the committee. Two years, tops. OK, maybe three. But then!..
Ryan said at one point that they were going to repeal immediately and then officially delay “implementation” for up to two years. Yeah, that will fool everyone.
I’m glad that a lot of the country is clued in to the stated goals and (likely) dubious legislating of the party in power, when it comes to the ACA.
Unfortunately I think the ACA falls short of its own goal of making health care affordable, not necessarily due to its own design but the growing strength of other factors in play, like health care industry lobbying.
I don’t really expect a great compromiser to appear in Congress during this four-year term, but it would be nice if one did.
If it were as unpopular and as big a failure as the Republicans say it is, then it’d be a cinch and a political slam dunk to repeal it. They’d do it day one with no delay or replacement.
That they’re not doing this, in all likelihood, indicates that they don’t think it’s as unpopular as they say they do.
I think a big part of the issue is that people have different ideas of what constitutes “successful” in this regard, as well as their own points of view on the effect.
For example, those who couldn’t afford health insurance before, but can now, would view it as successful, as it made care more affordable for them.
Those whose insurance companies, in order to cut costs, raised their rates or cut their coverage would likely see it as a failure, as it made care less affordable, not more.
The same can likely be said for those who don’t have the money to even pay for insurance off the exchange but are now obligated to pay a tax penalty.
While there may be a net positive reaction, I would be hesitant to refer to it as “successful” with no qualifiers, since there are plenty of people who have a reason to not see it that way.
I completely agree that it is not “successful with no qualifiers,” which is why I put qualifiers in my footnote above. :dubious:
But millions of people who did not have and could not get insurance before (because of pre-existing conditions) now have coverage. People are now going to the doctor before they’re so sick that 1) either nothing can be done, or 2) the cost of their care would be through the roof.
If the Republicans had decided to get on board at the beginning of the ACA, it would be an unqualified success by now and both sides would be heroes. But blocking Obama at every turn was more important to the Republicans than serving the public.
Other people, both within in this argument & elsewhere, on the other hand…
It was a general point on the “was it successful or not” discussion–which is why I didn’t quote any particular post (like I’m doing now, as I’m replying to something directly).
That’s questionable.
There’s no way for something like this to have a 100% success rate, as there were people happy with the older system. There was no way to make any change without costing someone money, be it increased costs/taxes or hypothetical, opportunity costs. And people generally aren’t thrilled with things that cost them money.
Not to mention that, as we’ve seen, there are always people who can’t afford even one extra cent more than their current budget is calling for.
You are being one-sided. There are also lots of people like me who saw both our monthly costs AND deductibles skyrocket so high that it effectively disables our coverage except for the most dire emergencies. That means that not only do you have to pay the equivalent of one or two car payments per month, you can’t even go to the doctor anymore unless you have some serious cash saved up on top of that because you have to pay for everything yourself anyway.
Where do you think all of that money to cover the previously uninsured is coming from? It is coming from people like me in one of the most covert wealth redistribution schemes ever conceived. It is just one massive tax to certain types of people and, not only do we not get anything for it, the opposite happens. If you are broke, you get free or cheap healthcare. If you have some money, it effectively disables your healthcare completely unless you pay hard cash for it. The only people that think public policies like that are a good idea have last names like Castro or Chavez.
And it doesn’t have majority support in the first place. It does not even have plurality support.
The only way you get to “majority support” is you break it down to “all the free stuff” and “the part where people pay for it”. Not surprisingly, you get “majority support” for the former, but not the latter.