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.
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.