It’s kind of weird to condone price gorging, over-staffing and multiple charging
:dubious: It’s hardly “covert”; I don’t think anybody’s ever made any secret of the fact that broadening the risk pool to include previously poor and sick uninsured necessarily increases costs to some extent for the richer and healthier already-insured.
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It is just one massive tax to certain types of people and, not only do we not get anything for it
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That’s making the rather arbitrary assumption that having universal coverage doesn’t provide any benefit to those who were already insured. Really? The employers, families, friends, communities of poor people “don’t get anything for it” when those poor people gain access to health care?
That’s obviously false, as we see from the external benefits of providing public support for, say, vaccinations and birth control, just to name a couple. When the public as a whole has affordable access to healthcare, that benefits everybody.
:dubious: Or May or Merkel or Turnbull or Michel or Cazeneuve or Rasmussen or Kenny or Rutte or English or Solberg or Löfven or pretty much any other head of government of any developed nation.
Face it, the vast majority of rich countries worldwide (and some that aren’t so rich) recognize the importance of universal healthcare and have come up with ways to fund some version of it that are reasonably successful. I’m not trying to argue that the specific system that is Obamacare doesn’t have a lot of residual problems. but foaming at the mouth over the very concept of “socialized medicine” is obsolete.
Don’t worry, I am fully in on this one and ready to double down if necessary. I am pissed off because I was really sick last week and couldn’t go to the doctor because my plan-year hadn’t rolled over to 2017.
I will have to pay cash anyway no matter when I go despite having supposedly good insurance that I pay $500 a month for as a single but, if they found anything really wrong and I had to go the hospital, the $6000 deductible is completely dependent on the calendar. In other words, the financial implications are twice as bad if you get into an accident on December 31st versus January 1st. Meanwhile, a poor person can just walk right into the emergency room and get their standard level of service in 3 - 5 hours for little to no money. I would have to pay up to $12,000 if I timed it incorrectly.
I worked in the health benefits industry for years. It has always been really screwed up but ObamaCare somehow managed to make it even more retarded (that feat deserves some white-gloved soft applause on its own).
I think you misunderstood what I was replying to–a comment about a hypothetical act crafted with bipartisan support that would allegedly have both sides hailed as heroes.
As such an act doesn’t exist, no poll can accurately capture the sentiment of whether or not it would be “an unqualified success”, as was claimed.
My point was that even if we assume that this hypothetical act had majority support, that still wouldn’t make it the “unqualified success” that was claimed.
For the record, in such discussions, I do think it’s worth noting that, in Colorado, where Clinton received 47% of the vote to Trump’s 44% (so not even a red state), & citizens voted in favor of public marijuana use & a sugary beverage tax, a single payer healthcare amendment was downvoted so hard as to be considered obliterated.
It’s a single data point, but if even Democrats (who voted in favor of taxing sugary beverages) vote against single payer healthcare, I find it hard to believe that it would achieve majority support.
But, as I said, it’s strictly a hypothetical, so I provided the benefit of the doubt in my response, as it doesn’t change my meaning.
A couple of decades of Republicans stating “Everything the government does is fucked up…and we’re going to prove it to you, even if we have to fuck it up ourselves!”, and it’s a miracle ObamaCare works at all. It certainly wasn’t what he originally had in mind, but it is a damn sight better then what any Republican in power has offered.
BTW, do you know the difference between the “health benefits industry” and a con job?
No it isn’t. I live in Massachusetts and ObamaCare is modeled after Mitt Romney’s plan (he is a Republican for those that don’t know). The Massachusetts plan seemed to work for a while but then went to shit quickly when it was adopted nationally. The complaints are real despite all the shrieking that it simply cannot be so.
For the record, I am all for health insurance reform in general but no one has found the right solution yet. I was one of the best experts in the world at implementing the minutia of healthcare plans for some of the world’s largest companies. I work as a consultant to Big Pharma now. I am not coming at this question from a position of ignorance at all.
I am not a right-winger or a left-winger (I don’t have any wings at all). My position is that healthcare needs real reform and ObamaCare is not the solution. I don’t know what the real solution is and I doubt that any individual does because the problem is so complex but it is in everyone’s best interest to avoid reflexively showing their political badges on matters of social policy that are so complicated. The only way to solve a problem like this is to work through it analytically and slowly.
I agree with you. I never said Obamacare was the perfect solution. It has been good for millions of people.
A lot of taxes that are for the public good require paying into a pool that may never benefit you personally. I don’t have children, but when I was a homeowner (of three homes at the same time), I gladly paid school taxes. We all pay highway taxes whether or not we own a car. A viable universal health insurance program requires that many healthy people pay into it. It is in the public interest for citizens to be well-educated and healthy and for roads to be passable.
Also know in Congressional circles as “losing it in committee”. Taking away the only program we’ve got at this time and then saying “We’re going to replace it with something better…eventually. Trust us!” is not a solution…unless your problem is figuring out how to say “Fuck you!” to millions of people without getting bleeped on network television.
I don’t support the way all recent Congresses have worked either no matter which party controls it. Health care reform is a solvable problem but it is a difficult one. It would be much better if people stopped focusing on things like identity politics and forced their congressional representatives to actually do some work on truly important issues like this. There is a long list of others as well. Unfortunately, people to see politics like reality TV these days instead of what it really should be - a boring list of infrastructure projects and policy changes that are the ones that truly matter.
As Republicans, a party built around malice, I expect they actively enjoy the thought of all those people suffering and dying.
Not sure what you are referring to. The only Affordable Care Act I know about is the abortion referred to as Obamacare, which is a miserable failure and has caused many more people to either lose coverage (or settle for substandard coverage) than it has allowed to gain coverage. If it’s not the worst legislation to ever come out of Congress, it’s definitely in the top 5. It needs to be repealed in its entirety, and I sincerely hope Trump spearheads the effort to do exactly that.
Apart from you?
I was actually just wondering about what favor those numbers were in.
I expect you have a cite?
Maybe the next sensible administration, D or R, will build something better from the ashes Trump leaves behind.
I’ll be glad if the ACA gets repealed. If the people want it let it be funded through the general welfare clause and not as a tax.
I was told that, if I liked my plan, I could keep it.
The whole industry thrives on porking the public via drug costs. I saw that over twenty years ago as a pharmacy tech, and you think it’s complicated?
From context, I’m gathering that you did not, in fact, get to keep your plan.
Is that because the law said you couldn’t or because the insurance company opted to not offer it anymore?
Obviously insurance companies had to find money somewhere to offset their new costs, but, if they chose to do so by eliminating your plan, I don’t see what the law has to do with that or why you’d expect the government to be clairvoyant & see that coming.
If, however, the law banned your plan, that’s a different story.
What the hell makes you think it’s a tax, not a required purchase? Would you be happier if it were, in fact, covered by your taxes? That’s what you’re saying.
You’re making zero sense here.
That’s what requiring everyone to buy policies does.
Did anyone ever promise you that before?