Haha, remember when the 2012 election was supposed to be a referendum on the ACA? You know, the election in which Obama was reelected by a landslide, the Democrats won the House PV by more than a million votes, and the Dem majority GAINED seats in the Senate? Yeah, that election.
Adaher, the US is not moving in the direction of DECREASED access to health insurance; that fact is certifiably true. If you have a problem with our newfangled HC system, you can always escape it by fleeing to Canada or Europe. Oh, wait…
This word “true”, it does not mean what you think it means. THe ACA may actually have the effect of creating MORE uninsured than we had before ACA. HHS can’t even promise that as of Jan. 1 we’ll have more people insured than we did the previous year.
That’s some epic fail there.
As for 2012, it was not a referendum on the ACA because Obama managed to change the subject and the law hadn’t taken much effect. Now people are actually living with the reality and the law isn’t working too well.
Loved the WSJ’s headline today: “Obama repeals Obamacare.”
He won re-election partly because there weren’t headlines then about the realities of the ACA. If there were a Presidential recall election today, I would very much doubt he’d win by the same margin or win at all. Just look at his job approval figures today.
Republicans have constituencies to answer to. Why let your constituencies be screwed to make a point?
You know, barring gay marriage is the wrong thing to do. But why not let public opinion run its course until the public is thoroughly and completely outraged at the homophobes? The more anger, the more passionate the voter, right?
Actually, there was a poll asking exactly that: would you recall the President. 52% of young voters said they would. Given that Cuccinelli won young voters in VA, it’s looking like ACA just handed the Republicans an important part of the ‘coalition of the ascendant’.
Cooch won voters 18-24 by 6 points. Not bad given his social conservatism. If he’d been more libertarian Sarvis wouldn’t have won 15% among that cohort.
For that matter, people still aren’t living with the realities of the law to begin with, given that none of the actual coverage expansions have taken place yet. Come back to me at the end of next week and that statement will start to be true.
Nobody is taking the long view on this thing, either, which is absolutely maddening to me. You CANNOT determine success or failure based on the enrollment numbers from the first year, or fuck, from the first two years. Let’s see how things are shaking out when the enrollment period begins for 2016.
Well, if the administration would deliver a little truth, rather than just self-serving press releases and holding other information close to the vest, then maybe the media wouldn’t have to rely on anecdotes and estimates.
That’s one heck of a goalpost move, although valid as far as predicting its longterm survival. But for the purposes of your thread, it’s another admission that this law isn’t even close to being actually enacted, and probably won’t be for some time.
As for the term “success”, that will mean different things to different voters. Those who pay more won’t regard it as a success except for those few lovable liberal souls who don’t mind paying a lot more to help out their wealthier elders. Those who have poorer insurance than they did are going to be pissed no matter how much Democrats appeal to social justice concerns. Some liberals might have signed up knowing they’d pay more, but I doubt any of them were willing to lose access to the best doctors and hospitals.
The winners are those who are now eligible for Medicaid who weren’t before, and those who are paying less or getting insurance for the first time with the help of subsidies. Indeed, whether there are more winners than losers in 2016 will decide the fate of the law. Unless of course the American voters send such a huge message in 2014 that Democrats can no longer support the President and help override a veto of repeal.
Oh yeah, forgot the millions of losers who will be charged the penalty. Although judging by how the administration is scrambling, it’s looking like the individual mandate is untenable politically if no one is complying anyway.
I’m the type that experienced the rate shock, but I’m not going to join the Tea Party just yet or call my Congressperson and demand yet another ACA repeal vote. I’ll just have to suck it up, pay higher premiums (which some people in this thread seem to be hand-waving away), and get poorer coverage (which again is being hand-waved away), and remind myself that it’s for the good of other people in American society (namely, the insurance companies, and the people with pre-existing conditions who couldn’t get insurance or affordable insurance before). Furthermore, the ACA simply furthers my belief that regulation is one thing, and intelligent regulation is another thing altogether. Regulation, in my opinion, isn’t necessarily evil, but most people still cling to a simplistic dichotomy. I’m not sure where the ACA lands on the sliding scale from poorly conceived regulation to intelligent regulation, but we’ll see. Right now it definitely falls under the category of poorly executed regulation.
I’m still hoping that once the ACA gets its wrinkles ironed out (or as it gets rolled out), I can eventually find comparable coverage for comparable rates to my old, employer-based plan. Right now, the bottom line is that I can’t, and it’s disappointing.
No, its fate was decided when Obama was reelected last year. It isn’t going anywhere, ever, until the state-by-state single-payer fiefdoms begin to supplant it over the next twenty years or so.
I read an article a couple of weeks ago that detailed the exact kind of fallacy that you and the GOP are constantly falling into. Namely, you guys are assuming that something bad happening now will ALWAYS be bad and will ALWAYS happen. To think that the ACA is going to be just as rocky two-three years from now, after millions of Americans will have owed their health insurance to its existence, is childish.
I mean, for crying out loud, you’ve said it yourself: when a country moves to a UHC system, they NEVER go back to their pre-UHC model. That isn’t going to happen in the US, period.
Again, when did legislative inertia become a measure of “good”?
Welfare is something that has been on politicians’ tongues since the 1980s. Welfare definitely has a lot of inertia behind its existence. But not everyone would say it is necessarily good.
If the program doesn’t satisfy the majority, it won’t last. Has any program ever lasted while being opposed by more people than who support it? Actually, that’s a dumb question, because programs like that don’t get started in the first place, since political parties usually know what’s good for them. The Democrats got a major case of the stupids in 2009, figuring they’d just pass whatever they could and pray.
No. If Republicans don’t win big time, as in win the Senate and gain a few seats in the House, then it’s clear they won’t be able to repeal it.
Right around Nov. 2014 is when the bad stuff will peak, with the new exchange insurance rates being known just before the election and probably much higher than they are now due to a bad risk pool.
Probably also be a few million pissed off penalty payers from April too.
I have had thirty-six years of employer health insurance and four purchasing insurance on my own.
I was healthy while others got sick. I am glad to know that all the rest of that premium money went to the corporate welfare providers of America and not to others who were sick (the way Obamacare is doing it)…
As in: "That’s not what you described. You described a situation where people enter the insurance with either the same risk and same premiums or paying premiums proportionate to the risk, and then, when/if they get unlucky, and the risk is realized, getting more than what they paid.
That’s insurance. That’s not ACA."
What I described in that quote is insurance. ACA isn’t insurance. It is welfare.
I was responding to the “Healthy subsidize the sick”. I have done so my entire life, but it never directly included all the sick. I am happy that the ACA will move us towards that.
I know that you object to (and seem to have have lived under) healthcare systems of compulsory insurance or universal care, but this country has to join the modern world, slow as we are.