Again, you’re running afoul of thinking that any of your proposals wouldn’t entail massive expenditures of political capital. Repeal is an outright impossibility now - and essentially has always been that way ever since Obama beat Romney by a landslide - especially given that implementation is moving apace all across the states and millions of people are getting facilitated coverage. Also, you can’t just undo the thousands of pages of regs that the administration has issued with the stroke of a pen & wishful thinking; there would be lawsuits galore in such a situation.
But I’m going back to what I said up-thread: The GOP will never have the numbers in Congress to carry out any of this nonsense. They would need a Republican POTUS first of all - which would run into 2017 at the earliest when the ACA will have been in effect for three years - not to mention a 60-vote threshold in the Senate and a majority in the House.
So look, I suppose rightwing propagandists can spout this bullshit in order to secure their salaries, but in the practical world none of those things are possible.
Also, you can’t run on a platform of taking health insurance AWAY from people. No matter how you spin it, that just isn’t a winning message.
Which is why the administration had to lie about it, I get it. So the Republicans won’t run on taking health insurance away from people. They’ll run on giving it BACK to those who lost it and were forced into the exchanges.
There are a lot more people who lost their insurance plan that they liked than gained a new one. The numbers are still with the GOP.
Which essentially *is *ACA, except with Obama’s name taken off of it. :rolleyes:
If that’s all it takes for you to consider it a victory, why not just stop calling it Obamacare? Your guys are the ones who started that, btw.
So, a “Republican alternative”, or nothing, either is acceptable to you as long as you can strip Obama of what you see as a victory, huh? The public welfare is not an actual consideration for you, it’s all about petty point-scoring, huh? That’s pretty damn sad.
Oh, as to your baldfaced claim that the government cannot mandate a purchase? False, always has been.
And, whenever you get told a story about Obamacare costing someone coverage, be just a little skeptical, okay? You’ll embarrass yourself a whole lot less.
Okay. So what? What’s that got to do with anything now?
Who said that? In any event, covering the uninsured required getting rid of the freeloaders.
Nope. The disruption will be temporary.
I don’t know, since that’s never been the way I’ve thought of the issue. The brief flirtation with the individual mandate aside, Republicans have always beeni n favor of voluntary insurance and opposed to government mandated insurance. The first iteration of Medicare was passed during the Eisenhower administration and it was voluntary. Eisenhower and most Republicans opposed mandatory insurance for the elderly. Opposition to mandatory insurance goes back a long way and wasn’t just discovered in 2009. the support of the mandate in the 90s was an aberration.
Republicans believe, as Democrats do, that the purpose of health care reform is to get health coverage to those who need it. Candidate Obama believed the same thing. One of many promises he broke. With more to come.
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Odd, isn’t it, how the horror stories keep meltingunder the light of investigation? If the reality was what **adaher **claims it to be, or even close, then there wouldn’t be any need to invent stories.
I enrolled in Obamacare, the website was indeed a total fuckup, but the healthcare is VERY affordable now, and I had no medical insurance prior, so I’m completely happy with it. So is my wife, and so are you if you’re not an idiot … we can get the maintenance drugs we need to avoid the sort of issues that lead to costly emergency room visits, which would have been indigent care visits prior to Obamacare. You know who pays for all that indigent care? You do. I’m glad I could spare you the expense.
A broader overview of the Pubs’ latest campaign of lies. At least they’ve been blatant enough to get the media stenographers off their asses. “Bette in Spokane”, the poster child of Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ SOTU rebuttal, refused even to look. Says the linked report:
This and the comments to the Washington Post article Lance linked to demonstrate that critical thought and rational decision making about healthcare have been replaced by political posturing and mindless repetition of political talking points. This thread also shows that tendency.
Anyone who has done even a modicum of research into healthcare systems around the world will quickly see that the US compares extremely poorly to other OECD countries.
Even though some of the government run US systems might compare more favorably and we develop world class medical technology, overall the US seems to be more in line with 2nd or even 3rd world healthcare systems.
The ACA is far from perfect, but we are trying to change. Going back to the pre-Obamacare status quo would be a national tragedy.
That’s all you’ve presented to us as “the” Republican alternative. I could be less kind and point out, again, that for years it’s been nothing more than “fuck off”.
So are you going to answer your own question and tell us what you would consider a “victory”, and why, or just let the obvious inferences stand? Do you wish the laughter to continue or to stop? :dubious:
There are a couple of differences. Mainly, there are no mandates. People can continue to buy “inadequate” insurance if they desire. I don’t remember this ever being a part of the discussion on the bill, that we had to make people buy better insurance than they already had. The opposite was said, actually.
The GOP plan is like ACA only if you consider the parts the GOP kept to be the most important. For those who think the mandate are vital, the law “guts” ACA. But if you want my opinion, the GOP plan is Obamacare with wings, where as ACA is Obamacare with horns.
So you actually think there is a single “Republican alternative”, and that’s the key difference? Cite for either?
And on what basis do you think premiums can be held low without mandated participation by a larger pool?
Is* that *what you’d consider a Republican “victory”, then? Retaining the ability to avoid paying and then freeload when you do need treatment? Care to expound?
This deserves calling out every time it is raised.
SCOTUS, in the same ruling that upheld the individual mandate as a constitutional tax, did not hold that it is permissible under the Commerce Clause or the Necessary and Proper Clause to mandate a purchase. Your cite is from an article published April 2012 that pre-dates the SCOTUS decision June of the same year.
Given the justice’s unwillingness to uphold the PPACA under the Commerce Clause or the Necessary and Proper Clause it seems highly doubtful that Congress can mandate you to purchase anything they choose. But they can tax you if you don’t.
