I hope that won’t always be the case, but as of right now, that is certainly true. And exactly what Democrats wish we didn’t know. It’s a very inconvenient truth for them right now.
Dear Og I think he’s trying to be clever.
Question for liberals: What exactly in the ACA is there to be enthusiastic about?
You don’t get single-payer health care out of it.
You don’t get a public health insurance option out of it.
The cost of health care in America, several years afterwards, is still extremely high.
So what exactly is there for a liberal to be glad about? Yes, many children can stay on their parents’ employee insurance until 26, and people with preexisting conditions can’t be denied, etc, but none of those are earth-shattering changes. Sure, the ACA probably won’t be repealed, the Democrats went through a bruising political battle without a whole lot to show for it, in my opinion. And it may even have led to some lost elections.
The way they’ve been fought they are each world-shattering changes. At least life-changing. The 26 year old rule has saved my family, and may ultimately save my son’s life. The cost of health insurance (and of health care) has decelerated considerably - a huge change from pre-PPACA. Millions of people have health coverage - and health care - who did not before. Hence the verbal gyrations of KY Sen. Mitch McConnell, among other GOP candidates. These are not small things for the people involved. They are literally life-and-death changes for the formerly unisured.
The Left did not get total victory in one fell swoop, but we got a lot in the face of incredible fanatic opposition. Further victories await in the future.
Without PPACA the health insurance system in the US was on a slow but definite path to total collapse. Within a couple of decades the US health insurance market would have consisted of the uninsured and Bill Gates. Not a sustainable market.
Bruising, expensive, and sometimes insane, but worth it.
Life is better for a lot of people. There is less needless suffering.
Millions of people have better lives. Including people who fought against it until bloody.
It’s not perfect, but because the GOP simply didn’t care about helping millions of people, it had to be the most conservative law that 60 Democrats would vote for. So it’s not perfect, but it’s orders of magnitude better than what came before.
Thanks. Good info.
Politics is the art of the possible. ACA is what was possible at the time. More would have been possible if one party hadn’t made its goal to simply oppose the President instead of serving the country.
And anyone else can get decent coverage for an affordable price, and no one is trapped in a particular job just to keep health coverage. To the people affected, yes, those changes are dramatic.
That’s a shame, but it’s due to the relentless campaign of lies by the once-grand old party that has chosen simple, reflexive opposition as its guiding principle, not due to the law’s merits, isn’t it? Pelosi was right about the public coming to embrace the law as they learn from actual experience what’s in it, not what they hear on the oppositionist party’s cable channel, but that will take time. Public service does sometimes means risking losing the next election in the cause of a higher, more durable good.
Well, ACA set you back. It’s a wonder what pollsters can find out when they ask the right questions:
Single payer got a lot less likely due to ACA.
“The right questions”, says our local expert on skewed polls? 
Well, I notice that pollsters stopped asking Repeal vs. Keep As-is after they got tired of polls showing that more people favored repeal.
But I do think Democrats are in for a wicked surprise about ACA’s political viability. Maybe it can’t be repealed anymore, but it can be scaled back, and as long as it remains unpopular Democrats will never be able to get to single payer. Who will trust them?
All previous careful explanations to you of the difference between going forward and going backward have been futile and need not be repeated.
Not that there was ever a remote possibility of getting that.
True. The law isn’t as good as it could be, but it was the best we could get.
What, were we expecting the cost of health care to drop like a rock once the ACA was implemented?
Without the ACA, the opposite fear was very much in play: that health care costs would continue to rise much faster than GDP, sucking up an ever-increasing portion of our wealth.
Now the rise in health care costs seems to have all but come to a halt. Too soon to be sure it’s due to the ACA, but there’s plenty of reason to think that’s the case. If that turns out to be true, then good job, ACA!
People with pre-existing conditions being able to afford insurance IS actually pretty earth-shaking, AFAIAC.
And the fact that 12 million more people have health insurance now than did at this time last year is a big fucking deal, and next year we’re liable to see a similar increase.
That number would be a good deal larger if John Roberts hadn’t created that bullshit that allowed the states to refuse the Medicaid expansion. But eventually Obamacare will be yesterday’s news, Republicans will have newer things to demonize, and governors in red states across the country will finally take the money and expand Medicaid in their states.
Oh, it did lead to some lost elections, especially in 2010, when the GOP cynically turned the end of the Medicare Advantage gravy train into “Dems cutting Medicare.” The GOP is much better at the scare-tactic game, and that’s just life.
But much as it sucked to lose control of Congress in 2010, the question is, why did you want to have political power in the first place? For us libruls, the answer is, to solve problems and improve people’s lives. The ACA is a bigger deal in this regard than anything the government’s done since Lyndon Johnson was President. If the cost of getting that done was losing big in 2010, I’ll take that deal every time.
In adaher math, probabilities apparently can be way less than zero. 
Glad to see you acknowledge that. ACA is the law of the land and likely will be for the next 100 years. ALthough it will be changed, possibly even scaled back.
If you loved adaher’s past predictions of just the near future, just wait until you hear his far future predictions!
Acknowledge what - that your version of math takes negative probabilities in stride? No big deal - just doing my civic duty! 
You’re implying that single payer has zero chance of passing, which means that my predictions that the chances went down are impossible.
I agree now that you mention it, but I do think that Americans no longer thinking government has a responsibility to provide everyone with health care is a very significant shift. Americans used to support UHC in theory by wide margins. Since ACA arrived and it’s less theoretical, support for UHC has dropped. A lot.
Well, I could be wrong. ACA could be repealed. We seem to all agree it could be repealed, we just disagree about what replaces it.
But you can’t simultaneously believe it will not be repealed because Americans will love it and believe it will be repealed because Americans will want single payer. Either Americans will like it or they won’t, and neither outcome results in single payer. Hasn’t worked that way in any other country, it won’t work that way here. Once countries get UHC, they keep whatever model they started with, with minor modifications. We will likely build on ACA to get to UHC, but it will still involve the model of private health insurance.
It’s hard to see Democrats trying to pass single payer without them anticipating an ACA-like backlash. Are red-state Democrats willing to take the risk?
Heh. Red state Democrats will never take one for the team again. They are already nearly extinct, and rather than being lauded for it, liberal Democrats have been like, “Good riddance”. There’s simply no benefit anymore for red state Democrats to support the national party on issues where their constituents don’t.