Or someone who believed Pelosi’s statement about passing it so we can see what’s in it.
It will be up to the voters to decide if they believe that the Democrats created, and passed, ACA/Obamacare all by themselves. It will be up to the voters to decide if the Democrat Party should be held responsible for its creation. I wonder if the voters will chose to believe the Democrats who claim that ACA/Obamacare is not their responsibility/fault?
I’m surprised that more Democrats aren’t championing their party’s ACA/Obamacare creation? What are they ashamed of?
The GOP failed in their promise to repeal and replace. Why won’t they own that?
Who’s stopping them? They had seven years to craft the perfect plan. Where is it?
The how and who of the passage of the ACA is the past, this is the present where the GOP has the numbers to get rid of it yet they haven’t. Why?
What do you mean that it WILL be up to the voters?
According to the Republicans, and to Trump, the voters have already decided, by sending Trump to the White House and giving the GOP a majority in both houses of Congress. I’m happy to concede, as a lefty, that the Democrats were responsible, in considerable measure, for the creation and passing of the Affordable Care Act.
But that same GOP, as the law was being negotiated, did everything they possibly could to water it down and reduce its effectiveness. And they have spent every year since the ACA was passed complaining about it, and doing everything possible to misrepresent it, ignoring its successes and playing up its problems. And they also spent all that time claiming that they would, at the very first available opportunity, repeal it.
It’s easy to rail against something when that’s all you’re doing. All you need to do to whip up your base is froth at the mouth about socialism and death panels and rising premiums. But then you get control of the government, and have to face the fact that the same people who responded to your dishonest claims and voted you in are, in many cases, benefiting from the very same law that you’ve spent so much time criticizing and misrepresenting.
Of course, recognizing that a considerable portion of your constituents are about as smart as a doorhinge, you can continue to make hay by blaming the Democrats for your own failure to keep your promises.
By a strict literal definition, that’s not true (it had a singular Republican vote). But more importantly, in a figurative sense that’s not true either. I’ve never seen, before or since, a greater Presidential effort at including bi-partisan discussion in the creation of this bill.
Now, the bill itself was pretty damn long. But that’s because health care in this country is pretty damn complicated. Even Trump admitted to that just a month ago. But if you believe that nobody knew what was inside the bill, you’re just deluding yourself.
It was introduced in October of 2009 and signed into law in June of 2010. That’s 9 months to give it a go and if politicians had taken all the time they spent giving speeches about how long this bill was and nobody could read it and instead spent that time actually reading the bill, they could have probably managed to get it done.
Alternatively? It’s been 7 years since it passed. That’s also probably enough time to give it a once over.
As for why nobody takes credit for the ACA…well, I guess you’re not listening to those that do. Lots of people are extremely happy with the ACA when you compare it to what we had before that. Despite its funding being gutted to the point of near ineffectiveness, it’s still a hell of a lot better than what we had.
You’d have to be really, really stupid to think that that particular malinterpretation of a decontextualized snipped is an actual reflection of what she actually said
Your team is in charge of getting lunchs for the company meetings. Your team gets together to make lunches for everyone. You offer to let the other team make suggestions. They decline. They say it’s up to you.
The other team bitches and complains about the lunch you’ve made. The bread is too dry. The peanut butter is nasty. The fruit is bruised. It’s probably toxic and will kill everyone. It’s too complicated. They hate it. The complain about the lunches all year. They could do much better, they say.
Finally, the new year comes, and it is their turn to make lunches. They argue amongst themselves, and the first meeting, they produce… nothing. The company falls back on creating lunches from the old menu. The other team still bitches. But now, they say that **their **failure to create something better is all **your **fault.
Finally, they decide that instead of coming up with better lunches, or a better menu, they will just start spitting in all the sandwiches, just to show you how bad the lunches you made are.
The other team goes to the CEO of the company, and petitions him to throw away your menu. He says “no can do”. They repeat this again and again and again and again, begging him to throw your menu away, because the lunches are so horrible. They do it so frequently, that they’re wasting the company’s time. This is all they can seem to talk about - complain complain complain. “Wait until it’s your turn, then you can create whatever menu you like”, he says.
And at the end, after blaming your for their failure to come up with a better menu, the other team says “nobody could have expected that this would be so complicated”
I’m not sure the detractors of the ACA will relate to the metaphor. From their perspective, they don’t want the company to provide lunch. They want to decide lunch for themselves. And in the ACA world, they would be forced to contribute to lunch fund so the company can make sandwiches that they don’t want in the first place.
Of course, healthcare isn’t sandwiches and the consequences of doing without lunch isn’t the same as doing without healthcare. I’m convinced the detractors fit in one of these categories:
People who have insurance but don’t understand the cost because they get it for free or subsidized
People who have never had serious medical conditions with ongoing issues
Many people don’t seem to understand what it’s like to have a life-threatening medical condition that you can’t afford. They want to do without insurance, but then they want free treatment when they get a disease which costs $100k to treat and $10k/yr on an ongoing basis. Our representatives are supposed to rise above and use their wisdom to do the right thing, but it doesn’t look like that is going to happen.
But they also rely on the fact that if they fail to plan for lunch, or leave their wallet at home, or spend all their money on hookers and blow, there’s still a sandwich for them if they’re hungry.
Unless our society is willing to watch people die because they can’t afford care, our current system is untenable. No matter what, virtually everyone will receive life-saving care. That care has to be paid for. One of the pillars of the ACA was to move that cost from ER care (stupidly expensive, because it’s treating the worst symptoms of a condition) to preventative care and lifestyle choices (much cheaper).
Moderate Republicans have realized simply repealing the ACA is political suicide, given the public’s feelings about it. Freedom Caucus Republicans won’t vote for anything BUT repeal. Without both of those groups, Republicans need Democrats. If Schumer et al. don’t play ball, they can’t succeed on their core promise of the last election.
I agree. But lunch doesn’t have a big enough impact for them to understand the importance of the ACA. The detractors solution would be “Everyone is in charge of their own lunch”. But that only works because lunch is cheap and skipping lunch has almost no serious consequences.
While I like the metaphor, I think it could backfire with the detractors since they would just say it’s not the company’s responsibility to provide lunch.
Nitpick: I assume you’re talking about the period that the Dems had a filibuster-proof Senate majority. (That’s not the nitpick.) Their period of full control, by that definition, was later, and closer to four months:
The special election was on January 19, 2010.
This part’s still all too true. Especially because it didn’t pass the Senate until December 24, 2009, less than four weeks before the Dems lost full control of Congress.
Due to GOP opposition, there was no opportunity for the House and Senate bills’ differences to be ironed out in conference committee and passed once again by the respective houses, let alone time for shortcomings to be realized and fixes passed. The House had to pass the Senate bill exactly as it was, in order for it to become law without another Senate vote that the Dems no longer had the votes to break a filibuster of.
Some minor changes that reduced the cost of the bill were passed via reconciliation, but no other changes were possible.
Still, Obama had spent most of 2009 trying to involve the GOP in the discussion, so they had plenty of opportunity for input; they just decided to demonize it instead. And everybody involved knew the basics of what was in the bill. (Pelosi’s remark about having to pass the bill to find out what was in it was referring to the American people generally having to find out how it worked out in practice, in order to get past all the propaganda about death panels and whatnot.)
It will be up to the voters to decide if the Democrat Party should be held responsible for its (ACA/Obamacare) creation.
AFAIK, the outcome of future elections will still be up to the voters. Unless you know something you’d like to share with the rest of the class?
I wonder if the voters will chose to believe the Democrats who claim that ACA/Obamacare is not their responsibility/fault?
Perhaps you could explain how to cite a future event. I suppose I could ask the same pundits, polls, and politicians who predicted Hillary’s win.
I’m surprised that more Democrats aren’t championing their party’s ACA/Obamacare creation?
Why are the Democrats trying to hold the Republicans responsible for the pride and joy of the Obama administration? Claiming that the Republicans are responsible for ACA/Obamacare sounds like the Democrats are trying to distance themselves from ACA/Obamacare.
What are they ashamed of?
What would be the proper cite for a question? Hmmmm?
The Republicans know they haven’t yet repealed and replaced. It’s been on all the media outlets. Elected Republicans appear to be representing their constituents, and not the will of the party. Good government is based on the ability of elected representatives to reach a workable compromise. On the issue of ACA/Obamacare, the elected Republicans haven’t reached a workable compromise, yet.
