We elected Obama with the hope for single payer healthcare and received Romney Care in a rebrand effort called the ACA. The ACA was designed by a venture capitalist.
Ok…well. I see what you’re saying, but consider this.
Before the ACA, I didn’t have medical coverage at ALL. Hospitals just didn’t exist to me. There was a day in 2005 where I had incredible pain. Could not move. Like, could not move an inch. Otherwise the pain would get so much worse. Not that I was pain free laying still. I was still in tremendous pain. But it’s like the difference between a knife being stuck in your arm, and twisting the knife thats stuck in your arm.
And this pain was coming from the inside. After 3 days of laying in a pool of my own sweat, the pain subsidded enough for me to take a shower and use the bathroom. I was now peeing blood. I layed in my bathtub, called off work, and was 95% sure I was dying.
Eventually the pain went away on its own. I stopped peeing blood. 10 years later, I had the same thing, but not as painful. But it was a very distinct pain. It was like shards of glass were inside your nerve endings and kept traveling from your lower back, down to your balls, inside your balls.
Except this time, I had the ACA. Turns out I had several kidney stones that were too big to pass. After they did this thing where everybody stuck lazors up my pee hole, and shot them like star wars, they said some of them were smoothed over, which suggested I had them for years. I explained what had happened 10 years earlier, and he said "yeah that has been inside you, for 10 years. We broke it up, and it should be expelled via your pee over the next day or so.
Then I peed blood for a month.
Then a few years later I got cancer. They took a reading of red blood cells. They said a healthy blood count for a male my age and size would be a score between 14-18. Anything below 6 is considered potentially fatal. I was at like 4.6. They said I should have been so weak that I shouldn’t have been able to walk.
So I spent the next year in recovery. I’ve now beat cancer. I’ve expelled kidney stones that were bigger than my peehole, and thus would have been stuck forever causing me pain.
I looked at one of my 3 month quarterly “statement not a bill”, and without coverage, one quarter of cancer treatment would have been over 1 million dollars. I’d have been dead. Now due to my income, I haven’t paid a dime of that.
Sooooooooo, ACA may not be perfect, but I’m a big fan for sure.
Before the ACA, I didn’t have medical coverage at ALL.
The health care insurance companies literally created a shared database of blacklist victims who they denied health care to. It was at mib.com, which is now a completely different site.
And just think that our collective taxes could have paid for your life saving treatment instead of going to tax breaks for the rich.
Before the ACA I had no healthcare and nothing has changed. Glad it worked for you but even with your triumph it has left many more dead than need be for the greed of the few.
As long as people admit that the good isn’t perfect and that they’re gonna work to make it more perfect I don’t mind.
But Democrats passed the ACA and then decided that’s the best we could possibly do, and that anyone who wants more is somehow being more unreasonable than our current health care system.
Realistically, single payer isn’t going to pass without Democrats holding the house, senate, and presidency at levels that bypass filibusters. And then the Republicans will drag their feet as much as possible to do everything they can to delay progress.
Perfect would have been enacting laws that prevent corporations from owning our government. Single payer is the cake and we got crumbs to fill the masses appetite. The ACA was labeled as a stepping stone and was really just a law requiring you to buy into the insurance scam they had no real intentions of fixing.
Yeah mate, he tried. Congress didn’t pass single-payer and he didn’t anticipate that level of Republican hostility because it hadn’t happened on that scale in the modern era of politics. So we got the ACA instead, which has likely saved thousands of lives just through no denial of coverage for preexisting conditions, let alone everything else it did.
Honestly I blame the entire fraudulent system and those that refused to fight for the policies they campaigned on. Are the dems solely to blame, no. Did they fight, no. FDR knew how to wield the power of his office and he got shit done! Since the neoliberal takeover of the democratic party in the 90’s actually fighting for the people has taken a back seat to kissing up to corporate power and we are all living in that hell they willingly helped create.
Without the neoliberal takeover we might still have governance for and by the people and not some form of fascistic broligarchy masquerading as a democracy.
You say fuck Lieberman and rightly so, but fuck the entire system that made Lieberman possible in the first place. He is not the only dem to blame here, he was just the sacrificial lamb to keep the money machine churning people into profit.
And fuck the entire republican party in its entirety!
I truly think the last real republican was Ike, and the last real democrat had his brains spattered over the back of a motorcade. Sure there are sprinkles of hope like Sanders but he is literally fighting his own party as much as the opposition party.
Have you considered. That rather than a problem of the Obama administration. That perhaps that’s more an issue of you not setting realistic expectations?
Democrats with anything short of an unassailable commanding majority that could afford the attrition of 10 or more members. Would never be able to do that sort of thing. And they didn’t. Because the Democrat Party is a coalition. Not a monolithic party. It is made up of Democrats, and people who understand how the American election system works. And will do what they can to keep Republicans from as many offices as possible. Democrats at best had a tenuous veto proof majority for not even 2 weeks. And to even get what they got passed. Rapey drowny man who was only a year or two from death. Literally got up out of his hospital death bed to come in and vote.
No one I know who voted for Obama had any serious expectation that we were getting Single Payer. Did we hope that maybe a miracle would happen? Absolutely. But no one expected it. Most of us were pretty chuffed with what we got as lackluster as it was.
And no I’m not saying that we should all love and kiss the ass of liberal Democrats. They talk a good social Progressive talk. But are financially beholden to the problem. Therefore any solutions they have to offer are going to be handicapped at best.
But it’s kind of bullshit for us to attack them over it. If we cannot offer them similar resources and support so that they don’t have to rely on Wealthy oligarchs who are the problem. That’s an us problem. And not a problem of those trying to survive the system as it exists and get elected.
Short of a mass resurgence and re-energization of unions. Or some other similar solidarity group. It’s not going to change either. Because let’s be clear. We’re where we are today. Because back in the '80s unions thought they were so Irreplaceable and secure. They did what third-party voters do now. Withholding support for the only group with a chance of beating the fascist. Thinking that they would teach Democrats a lesson. Only to find out that they were the ones that were learning a lesson. That they were no longer relevant. When first they came for labor and unions. One of the worst miscalculations in post World War II American history. An epic self own. And no one learned.
Which is also an absolutely important thing to keep pointing out. Considering how much we are Awash in revisionist history no matter what side of the political divide you are on.
Almost everything you said I agree with. All but unrealistic expectations. Obama was not a fighter. If he wielded the power of his office like FDR or almost any republican we wouldn’t be having this conversation about health care. In retrospect I don’t believe for a second that he had any intention of doing much of anything. Just empty campaign lies.
Republicans can do that because they’ve been largely unified. If a Democrat tried that others in their own party with different agendas would sell them out immediately. Solidarity goes a long long way. And while I hate all the empty campaign lies. You cannot deny that they still work. Trump has made good on it twice now. Not fulfilling his promises that is. But promising the world and delivering nothing. All because Republicans generally have solidarity
FDR beat opposition in his own party by playing dirty and having an uncompromising will to do things that were unpopular in his own party as there were gilded lapdogs then just as now. He forced the opposition into bending to what was best for the people. He build the most prosperous economy that worked for the people the US has ever seen. He did so in spite of the opposition inside his own party.
The majority of the current dems have one agenda, line their pockets with corporate cash and get a job as a lobbyist if/when the have to fall on the sacrificial sword and kill popular legislation. Its about greed and greed has no party affiliation.
Your damn Skippy about the campaign lies working. This is why I don’t compromise when they try to feed me the shit they/anyone shovel about unrealistic expectations. God damn right I expected more and I’m still pissed we as citizenry didn’t stand up and demand what we deserve. It is also why I unregistered as a democrat. I know better than to think they represent me.
Also you can’t really call Trump a republican. He’s a con artist. They wear any mask that gives them what they want. He doesn’t have to deliver anything as his motives are purely selfish and he doesn’t care. Republicans eat the shit out of any strongman’s toilet. Even when they are the mark.
Republicans are also morally flexible, as in they have none. What they want is easily manipulated and varies with the last con artist they listened to. Their main consistent policy over the last 40 years is robbing women of their bodily autonomy and expanding corporate power. They see politics as a game of football. A team exercise of their side against the others while not noticing the hand that picks their pocket. Democrats fall for the same trick much of the time as well.
Honestly I don’t see compromising for crumbs as a viable strategy for us as the long game is always to make you settle for less while making you believe your getting more.
I’m still pissed we as citizenry didn’t stand up and demand what we deserve
This will only happen if there is someone that the progressive democrats can get behind. Someone like Bernie but younger and more angry. Someone that will call out the bullshit and do it in a way that will get the attention of the big media corporations. I hate to say it but a progressive trump, but smarter (which shouldn’t be difficult) and genuinely out to better the lives of the American citizens. And I genuinely hope that this unicorn exists.
That’s also literally the reason why everything FDR got has been gutted and is largely gone. He didn’t go about things properly. Instead of trying and hanging the people that plotted to overthrow him. He organized backroom deals allowing them to go free and undo everything he forced them to do.
The reason FDR’s policies are being undone is we have no actual representation, just corporate capture. His polices remained firm till Buckley VS Valeo, the beginning of the end of our democracy.
In retrospect I don’t believe for a second that he had any intention of doing much of anything. Just empty campaign lies.
We literally got everything Obama campaigned on in health care except the public option. This is what Obama promised you. If you say he promised something else, that’s your lie, not his.
Democrats at best had a tenuous veto proof majority for not even 2 weeks.
They had the house, the senate, and the POTUS. That’s “veto proof”. And it was for nearly two years.
If you mean “filibuster proof”, the filibuster is just a made up rule by the senate. A rule they could have, and should have, discarded the moment they took the senate.
A rule they could have, and should have, discarded the moment they took the senate.
Whoa, that would mean the democrats have to actually wield their authority in alignment with their purported popular agendas – the very thing they absolutely must never do!
We elected Obama with the hope for single payer healthcare and received Romney Care in a rebrand effort called the ACA.
Dude if you didn’t read Obama’s 2008 campaign proposal for health care reform that’s on you. The only thing we didn’t get was the public option, thanks to Joe Lieberman.
The public option was also torn out at the last minute because someone died and was replaced by a Republican. So we got 75% of the improvements we wanted instead of 100%.
I think 75% is far too generous an estimate, tbh. Every policy I’ve acquired through the ACA-mandated marketplace has been garbage, right from the start. For-profit health care is evil, and the ACA just served to further entrench this evil in our lives. It did some marginal good, and I’m certainly not advocating for its repeal in favor of ‘concepts of a plan’. But 75%? I can’t get on board with that.
It created the current version of the private health insurance industry and enabled it to systemically deny care care to people who are most vulnerable.
It technically forbids insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, but clearly they just realized they can take our money then deny services instead.
Also it threw a bone to the insurance companies by fining anyone not covered by insurance - incentivising new customers to just pay for insurance instead.
If you want to see how it was before the ACA, watch Michael Moore’s documentary “Sicko”. You’ll understand how the ACA is an improvement, regardless of its flaws and failure to be The Ideal One True Universal Healthcare we wish for.
Trying to get something, anything, passed to improve the HC situation took decades of fights. Read the history of it. Did you know Nixon tried to get universal coverage done back in the late '70’s, but Ted Kennedy decided to make the perfect be the enemy of the good and led the effort against it, killing it (before he died he said that was his biggest regret). He and the unions calculated that if they killed it they could deny Nixon a win (sound familiar?) and get single-payer next time there was a Dem president, which of course they couldn’t. Clinton tried to do it, HRC led the effort and they were inundated with massive opposition. It got nowhere, not even close.
Next up, Obama. However imperfect it is, it was a significant accomplishment to get the ACA done. It was hoped it could continue to be improved and worked on going forward. Instead it’s been a constant battle just to keep it from being repealed.
These limp dick positions just provides political cover for poor policy
If you want to criticize me for my position on the issue, my position is that we should have universal healthcare at least on a par with the other developed countries.
My post was me griping about how pretty much impossible it has been to do anything about health care in this country for decades, and even the little we’ve gained is still under threat of being taken away. It took decades to get even the protections of the ACA passed (not allowing them to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions being IMO the most important one, which IS an improvement that has saved a lot of suffering and my life, among others, followed by expansion of Medicaid, which has also saved lives).
So yes, I did say things were even worse before the ACA and they were. That’s a fact, whether you want to admit it or not. If they repeal the ACA, it will cause more suffering and death. That’s a fact.
Having watched from the outside, you guys were getting more for less for decades before ACA got passed. Then, for a brief moment, things got better overall and the downward trend continued. Blaming the cause of the one blip where quality improved for some small portion of the population (estimated to be over 10 million) for the overall downward trend before and after sounds silly.
Democrats passed ACA and removed student loans from being discharged in BK court.
Both parties actively fight against working class.
What’s wrong with the affordable care act?
We elected Obama with the hope for single payer healthcare and received Romney Care in a rebrand effort called the ACA. The ACA was designed by a venture capitalist.
Ok…well. I see what you’re saying, but consider this.
Before the ACA, I didn’t have medical coverage at ALL. Hospitals just didn’t exist to me. There was a day in 2005 where I had incredible pain. Could not move. Like, could not move an inch. Otherwise the pain would get so much worse. Not that I was pain free laying still. I was still in tremendous pain. But it’s like the difference between a knife being stuck in your arm, and twisting the knife thats stuck in your arm.
And this pain was coming from the inside. After 3 days of laying in a pool of my own sweat, the pain subsidded enough for me to take a shower and use the bathroom. I was now peeing blood. I layed in my bathtub, called off work, and was 95% sure I was dying.
Eventually the pain went away on its own. I stopped peeing blood. 10 years later, I had the same thing, but not as painful. But it was a very distinct pain. It was like shards of glass were inside your nerve endings and kept traveling from your lower back, down to your balls, inside your balls.
Except this time, I had the ACA. Turns out I had several kidney stones that were too big to pass. After they did this thing where everybody stuck lazors up my pee hole, and shot them like star wars, they said some of them were smoothed over, which suggested I had them for years. I explained what had happened 10 years earlier, and he said "yeah that has been inside you, for 10 years. We broke it up, and it should be expelled via your pee over the next day or so.
Then I peed blood for a month.
Then a few years later I got cancer. They took a reading of red blood cells. They said a healthy blood count for a male my age and size would be a score between 14-18. Anything below 6 is considered potentially fatal. I was at like 4.6. They said I should have been so weak that I shouldn’t have been able to walk.
So I spent the next year in recovery. I’ve now beat cancer. I’ve expelled kidney stones that were bigger than my peehole, and thus would have been stuck forever causing me pain.
I looked at one of my 3 month quarterly “statement not a bill”, and without coverage, one quarter of cancer treatment would have been over 1 million dollars. I’d have been dead. Now due to my income, I haven’t paid a dime of that.
Sooooooooo, ACA may not be perfect, but I’m a big fan for sure.
The health care insurance companies literally created a shared database of blacklist victims who they denied health care to. It was at mib.com, which is now a completely different site.
And just think that our collective taxes could have paid for your life saving treatment instead of going to tax breaks for the rich.
Before the ACA I had no healthcare and nothing has changed. Glad it worked for you but even with your triumph it has left many more dead than need be for the greed of the few.
I hate to speak for everyone else here, but I think its also important to remember to not let perfect be the enemy of good.
As long as people admit that the good isn’t perfect and that they’re gonna work to make it more perfect I don’t mind.
But Democrats passed the ACA and then decided that’s the best we could possibly do, and that anyone who wants more is somehow being more unreasonable than our current health care system.
Realistically, single payer isn’t going to pass without Democrats holding the house, senate, and presidency at levels that bypass filibusters. And then the Republicans will drag their feet as much as possible to do everything they can to delay progress.
What makes you think they would pass single payer even with all of that control?
Theres a reason the democrats just said “oh well, better luck next time” when they lost to trump this election.
Perfect would have been enacting laws that prevent corporations from owning our government. Single payer is the cake and we got crumbs to fill the masses appetite. The ACA was labeled as a stepping stone and was really just a law requiring you to buy into the insurance scam they had no real intentions of fixing.
Yeah mate, he tried. Congress didn’t pass single-payer and he didn’t anticipate that level of Republican hostility because it hadn’t happened on that scale in the modern era of politics. So we got the ACA instead, which has likely saved thousands of lives just through no denial of coverage for preexisting conditions, let alone everything else it did.
Obligatory fuck Joe Lieberman. To be clear, you’re not blaming the lack of a public option on Democrats right?
Honestly I blame the entire fraudulent system and those that refused to fight for the policies they campaigned on. Are the dems solely to blame, no. Did they fight, no. FDR knew how to wield the power of his office and he got shit done! Since the neoliberal takeover of the democratic party in the 90’s actually fighting for the people has taken a back seat to kissing up to corporate power and we are all living in that hell they willingly helped create.
Without the neoliberal takeover we might still have governance for and by the people and not some form of fascistic broligarchy masquerading as a democracy.
You say fuck Lieberman and rightly so, but fuck the entire system that made Lieberman possible in the first place. He is not the only dem to blame here, he was just the sacrificial lamb to keep the money machine churning people into profit.
And fuck the entire republican party in its entirety!
I truly think the last real republican was Ike, and the last real democrat had his brains spattered over the back of a motorcade. Sure there are sprinkles of hope like Sanders but he is literally fighting his own party as much as the opposition party.
Anyway that’s my 2¢.
Lieberman wasn’t a Democrat.
Have you considered. That rather than a problem of the Obama administration. That perhaps that’s more an issue of you not setting realistic expectations?
Democrats with anything short of an unassailable commanding majority that could afford the attrition of 10 or more members. Would never be able to do that sort of thing. And they didn’t. Because the Democrat Party is a coalition. Not a monolithic party. It is made up of Democrats, and people who understand how the American election system works. And will do what they can to keep Republicans from as many offices as possible. Democrats at best had a tenuous veto proof majority for not even 2 weeks. And to even get what they got passed. Rapey drowny man who was only a year or two from death. Literally got up out of his hospital death bed to come in and vote.
No one I know who voted for Obama had any serious expectation that we were getting Single Payer. Did we hope that maybe a miracle would happen? Absolutely. But no one expected it. Most of us were pretty chuffed with what we got as lackluster as it was.
And no I’m not saying that we should all love and kiss the ass of liberal Democrats. They talk a good social Progressive talk. But are financially beholden to the problem. Therefore any solutions they have to offer are going to be handicapped at best.
But it’s kind of bullshit for us to attack them over it. If we cannot offer them similar resources and support so that they don’t have to rely on Wealthy oligarchs who are the problem. That’s an us problem. And not a problem of those trying to survive the system as it exists and get elected.
Short of a mass resurgence and re-energization of unions. Or some other similar solidarity group. It’s not going to change either. Because let’s be clear. We’re where we are today. Because back in the '80s unions thought they were so Irreplaceable and secure. They did what third-party voters do now. Withholding support for the only group with a chance of beating the fascist. Thinking that they would teach Democrats a lesson. Only to find out that they were the ones that were learning a lesson. That they were no longer relevant. When first they came for labor and unions. One of the worst miscalculations in post World War II American history. An epic self own. And no one learned.
Because that was never his proposal.
https://www.kff.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/obama_health_care_reform_proposal.pdf
Which is also an absolutely important thing to keep pointing out. Considering how much we are Awash in revisionist history no matter what side of the political divide you are on.
Almost everything you said I agree with. All but unrealistic expectations. Obama was not a fighter. If he wielded the power of his office like FDR or almost any republican we wouldn’t be having this conversation about health care. In retrospect I don’t believe for a second that he had any intention of doing much of anything. Just empty campaign lies.
Republicans can do that because they’ve been largely unified. If a Democrat tried that others in their own party with different agendas would sell them out immediately. Solidarity goes a long long way. And while I hate all the empty campaign lies. You cannot deny that they still work. Trump has made good on it twice now. Not fulfilling his promises that is. But promising the world and delivering nothing. All because Republicans generally have solidarity
FDR beat opposition in his own party by playing dirty and having an uncompromising will to do things that were unpopular in his own party as there were gilded lapdogs then just as now. He forced the opposition into bending to what was best for the people. He build the most prosperous economy that worked for the people the US has ever seen. He did so in spite of the opposition inside his own party.
The majority of the current dems have one agenda, line their pockets with corporate cash and get a job as a lobbyist if/when the have to fall on the sacrificial sword and kill popular legislation. Its about greed and greed has no party affiliation.
Your damn Skippy about the campaign lies working. This is why I don’t compromise when they try to feed me the shit they/anyone shovel about unrealistic expectations. God damn right I expected more and I’m still pissed we as citizenry didn’t stand up and demand what we deserve. It is also why I unregistered as a democrat. I know better than to think they represent me.
Also you can’t really call Trump a republican. He’s a con artist. They wear any mask that gives them what they want. He doesn’t have to deliver anything as his motives are purely selfish and he doesn’t care. Republicans eat the shit out of any strongman’s toilet. Even when they are the mark.
Republicans are also morally flexible, as in they have none. What they want is easily manipulated and varies with the last con artist they listened to. Their main consistent policy over the last 40 years is robbing women of their bodily autonomy and expanding corporate power. They see politics as a game of football. A team exercise of their side against the others while not noticing the hand that picks their pocket. Democrats fall for the same trick much of the time as well.
Honestly I don’t see compromising for crumbs as a viable strategy for us as the long game is always to make you settle for less while making you believe your getting more.
This will only happen if there is someone that the progressive democrats can get behind. Someone like Bernie but younger and more angry. Someone that will call out the bullshit and do it in a way that will get the attention of the big media corporations. I hate to say it but a progressive trump, but smarter (which shouldn’t be difficult) and genuinely out to better the lives of the American citizens. And I genuinely hope that this unicorn exists.
That’s also literally the reason why everything FDR got has been gutted and is largely gone. He didn’t go about things properly. Instead of trying and hanging the people that plotted to overthrow him. He organized backroom deals allowing them to go free and undo everything he forced them to do.
The reason FDR’s policies are being undone is we have no actual representation, just corporate capture. His polices remained firm till Buckley VS Valeo, the beginning of the end of our democracy.
Or… the ones after him didn’t bother to finish the job, because they wanted it to fail.
It’s not like FDR was elected right before Reagan or something here.
We literally got everything Obama campaigned on in health care except the public option. This is what Obama promised you. If you say he promised something else, that’s your lie, not his.
https://www.kff.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/obama_health_care_reform_proposal.pdf
He ran on something quite different… Remember, he was running a campaign long before 2013… Like… 2007.
They had the house, the senate, and the POTUS. That’s “veto proof”. And it was for nearly two years.
If you mean “filibuster proof”, the filibuster is just a made up rule by the senate. A rule they could have, and should have, discarded the moment they took the senate.
Whoa, that would mean the democrats have to actually wield their authority in alignment with their purported popular agendas – the very thing they absolutely must never do!
Dude if you didn’t read Obama’s 2008 campaign proposal for health care reform that’s on you. The only thing we didn’t get was the public option, thanks to Joe Lieberman.
https://www.kff.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/obama_campaign_position_on_health_care.pdf
https://www.kff.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/obama_health_care_reform_proposal.pdf
The public option was also torn out at the last minute because someone died and was replaced by a Republican. So we got 75% of the improvements we wanted instead of 100%.
I think 75% is far too generous an estimate, tbh. Every policy I’ve acquired through the ACA-mandated marketplace has been garbage, right from the start. For-profit health care is evil, and the ACA just served to further entrench this evil in our lives. It did some marginal good, and I’m certainly not advocating for its repeal in favor of ‘concepts of a plan’. But 75%? I can’t get on board with that.
Fair enough. The point is we achieved things we wouldn’t have without it.
Regime whores always betray the working people after they get to elected.
A lot of things, but at least it got rid of insurance companies denying people over pre-existing conditions.
It got us the privilege of HAVING to pay insurance companies, who make up reasons to deny, delay, and depose.
And if the individual can’t afford it, we funnel tax dollars to those same corporations, who make up reasons to deny, delay, and depose.
Its a cash grab for the insurance industry, really.
It created the current version of the private health insurance industry and enabled it to systemically deny care care to people who are most vulnerable.
You are batshit if you think that was not happening before the ACA.
It was happening before the ACA as well.
So, the problem was never fixed.
So how is it an improvement?
It technically forbids insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, but clearly they just realized they can take our money then deny services instead.
Also it threw a bone to the insurance companies by fining anyone not covered by insurance - incentivising new customers to just pay for insurance instead.
So tbh it was indeed a flop imo
Not a flop at all. I used ACA for several years and was extremely glad to have it.
If you want to see how it was before the ACA, watch Michael Moore’s documentary “Sicko”. You’ll understand how the ACA is an improvement, regardless of its flaws and failure to be The Ideal One True Universal Healthcare we wish for.
Trying to get something, anything, passed to improve the HC situation took decades of fights. Read the history of it. Did you know Nixon tried to get universal coverage done back in the late '70’s, but Ted Kennedy decided to make the perfect be the enemy of the good and led the effort against it, killing it (before he died he said that was his biggest regret). He and the unions calculated that if they killed it they could deny Nixon a win (sound familiar?) and get single-payer next time there was a Dem president, which of course they couldn’t. Clinton tried to do it, HRC led the effort and they were inundated with massive opposition. It got nowhere, not even close.
Next up, Obama. However imperfect it is, it was a significant accomplishment to get the ACA done. It was hoped it could continue to be improved and worked on going forward. Instead it’s been a constant battle just to keep it from being repealed.
I have seen sicko…
Calling ACA an improvement is an insult though.
Sure it made a few people get access but rest of population pays more for less now and still get claims denied.
These limp dick positions just provides political cover for poor policy.
If you want to criticize me for my position on the issue, my position is that we should have universal healthcare at least on a par with the other developed countries.
My post was me griping about how pretty much impossible it has been to do anything about health care in this country for decades, and even the little we’ve gained is still under threat of being taken away. It took decades to get even the protections of the ACA passed (not allowing them to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions being IMO the most important one, which IS an improvement that has saved a lot of suffering and my life, among others, followed by expansion of Medicaid, which has also saved lives).
So yes, I did say things were even worse before the ACA and they were. That’s a fact, whether you want to admit it or not. If they repeal the ACA, it will cause more suffering and death. That’s a fact.
That’s all fair but defending a failed project after is failed is backwards looking.
ACA needs to be analyy and the reforms can’t repeat the same mistakes.
My position is that the justification how it was the best we gonna get, is how we got here.
Having watched from the outside, you guys were getting more for less for decades before ACA got passed. Then, for a brief moment, things got better overall and the downward trend continued. Blaming the cause of the one blip where quality improved for some small portion of the population (estimated to be over 10 million) for the overall downward trend before and after sounds silly.
So they got healthcare for tens of millions of people. That’s fantastic. I used it for awhile myself.