(5) but Congress acted unconstitutionally when they threatened to cut off all funding for all of a state’s Medicaid enrollees if a state decides not to expand Medicaid under the PPACA, a threat which was written into the PPACA.
(6) Congress does not have the constitutional authority to require persons to buy health insurance, but does have the authority to tax them if they do not do so.
(7) that the PPACA shared responsibility payment is in fact a tax despite the fact that the administration argued that it was not a tax in a Supreme Court oral argument that was heard one day before the oral argument in NFIB v Sebelius.
All of that is well known and ACA does little or nothing to address any of it, plus it’s not universal health care. Which makes me wonder why Democrats sacrificed so much political capital to pass it. They won’t get another bite at that apple anytime soon, probably not in our lifetimes.
They didn’t actually know what they were voting on. They actually might have believed that it was universal health care(“I wont’ sign a bill that doesn’t cover everyone”), they might have believed it would reduce health care costs(“I won’t sign a bill that doesn’t reduce health care costs”.)
Moral of the story: read the damn bill.
Meanwhile, someone should inform the President, who said this only five months ago:
Maybe I’ve been too hard on him. Maybe he isn’t a congenital liar. Maybe he’s just uninformed.
It’s no great mystery. It’s a major problem that we had such a large number of uninsured. The ACA is doing a lot to reduce this number by millions. It’s a major problem that insurance companies refused people with pre-existing conditions, meaning that such unlucky folks could choose between bankruptcy or death, unless they happened to be uber-wealthy. The ACA corrects this.
These were big, big problems that the ACA corrected. There’s still way more to be done, but we’re way better off now than before the ACA.
True. But they are still saying its universal. Lying, or simply uninformed?
Or could it simply be that they know they won’t be passing any more health care bills for a few decades, so need the narrative that they passed universal health care to make it seem like it was worth it?
I mean, is Barack Obama really willing to settle for a legacy of “Made health care a little better than it was”? Perhaps that’s why he keeps on insisting its UHC.
Who says it’s universal? The President has never said this is the end of health care, and has explicitly said he hopes it will be improved in the future. Perhaps he’s guilty of hyperbole, but in the long term the ACA (hopefully) will be part of “making sure” everyone has access to basic health care.
Wow, you’ve come a long way – now you acknowledge that the ACA makes health care better. It’s not just a little better, of course, and he doesn’t insist that it’s universal, but good on you for making such a drastic change in your opinion!
Can’t deny that ACA covers everyone who wants health insurance. But we’ll never have truly universal care because the American system and the American voter demands a certain level of choice. Single payer ain’t ever happening. And Democrats won’t acquire guts in the future that they didn’t have in 2009 when they thought what they were doing was actually popular. It’ll be a long time before they see total control of the government, much less 60 votes in the Senate. And even then, they won’t spend all their political capital on health care when there are other things that they want to get done. Health care sabotaged climate change and immigration for them.
Not to mention the Kings of Bad Timing managed to lose big in a redistricting year. Was that on no one’s mind when they were frittering away their political capital? Or did they actually think ACA would be popular in such a short time or that the charisma of Barack Obama would save them?
Their ambitions were greater and they still claim they did UHC. Your defense of the President here is similar to your defense of his “If you like your health care you can keep it” statement. He promised also that he would not sign a bill that didn’t cover everyone. And he claims today that ACA covers everyone. “Covers everyone” is UHC, unless you parse it to death. Are you Bill Clinton?
I’d also note the context. He dragged out the “only modern country that doesn’t have…” line, which makes absolutely ZERO sense if he isn’t talking about UHC. If we don’t have UHC, then we are still the only modern first world country without it.
I know, I know, now you’re going to explain to me that it’s absolutely normal for Presidents to just say gobbledygook that sounds good. And you’re right. I just think this guy resorts to it more than most.
What defense? He used hyperbole and he probably shouldn’t have. This kind of minor nit doesn’t deserve more than a sentence or two of discussion.
If so, he shouldn’t have said this, but so what? Another minor nit. ACA covers millions that were not covered before.
He said it’s part of making sure we have health care that covers everyone. And, hopefully, it is – hopefully, in the future, we will cover everyone.
Yes – we still don’t have it, but hopefully the ACA is part of the solution to this problem. “It is progress”. And as he’s said many times, it’s not the final answer to health care.
Your thoughts on this President have been shown to be so biased that they can’t be relied on for anything other than an example of how such bias can totally skew one’s understanding of reality.
Exactly. The CBO says there will be 30 to 33 million more non-elderly with health insurance in 2016 (pg. 2) who wouldn’t have had it without the ACA. You think that’s going to be a good campaign strategy to run on repealing Obamacare and taking health insurance away from 30+ million voters in 2016?