Obamacare is a mess

oftenreading said:

jeffbr said:

dignin said:

This conversation is illuminating. A lot of Americans really don't understand how single payer works, therefore they fear it and think there is no way it could work in their country. And that makes it all more understandable to me.

Good on my Canadian compatriots for their educational attempts. We are truly lucky to have had bold leadership in the past to have implemented single payer, warts and all.

Yup, I will admit that I was against single payer for most of my life because of things I'd heard and read about other systems, and because it just wasn't the way things were done here. But I've come around. Private insurance companies have completely destroyed the cost structure, patients aren't treated as consumers, and with businesses paying the premiums you had many people excluded from being able to get coverage, and even if you had coverage you were yet another step removed from being a consumer since in many cases your employer is paying your premium. If we (both private citizens and employers) paid what we're currently paying to insurance companies into a single payer system I'm reasonably certain we'd have a better, more patient focused system than we have now, with better access, less out of pocket (since we've already paid), and no more stories of people having to chose between getting healthcare or eating/paying rent/going bankrupt due to heath issues. I'm done knocking single payer until we get a chance to try it. If it fails us the way private insurance has, then I'll certainly fight against it, but until then I'm not convinced that anything we do would be much worse than what we have now which is unaffordable insurance premiums, outrageous deductibles, constant co-pays, low coverage limits and way too many policy exclusions.

Exactly.

The "free market system" was supposed to make healthcare more efficient due to competition, or so they said. But we all see how that went. It's a mess from top to bottom. Not that there aren't pockets of excellent care, because there are, but the huge diversion of resources into profit instead of patient care completely cancels that out.

It isn't a true free market when you are forced into it, and forced to buy things you don't want or need.
These regulations have made it easier for the insurance to price gouge the consumer with horrible coverage.

http://www.theonion.com/article/insurance-company-celebrates-50-billionth-fucking--29709

TICK TOCK MOTHERFUCKERS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEGpriv2TAc

rgambs said:

8 years to prepare and the GOP still has NO IDEA how to go about their Holy Grail mission of "repeal and replace"

Sad.

How is that any different than saying they had 8 years to figure out a version of Obamacare that didn't need to get replaced? Sad.

rgambs said:

mace1229 said:

rgambs said:

8 years to prepare and the GOP still has NO IDEA how to go about their Holy Grail mission of "repeal and replace"

Sad.

How is that any different than saying they had 8 years to figure out a version of Obamacare that didn't need to get replaced? Sad.

It's very different. Democrats weren't tripping over their own dicks to obstreperously oppose it without a clue of what to put in it's place. They were satisfied with it, and why would they give credence to the lunacy of right-wing nutjobs who think objective facts are fake news?

DEATH PANELS!!!

mace1229 said:

Here is my argument to your statement of them having 8 years to find a replacement.
One, they did not have 8 years. Obamacare was not rolled out until a few years into his term, you cant replace/improve on something that doesn't exist. It also took another couple years to see that it is a failure. So realistically they had 3-4 years to think of a replacement. Sure, maybe still enough time to get started, but not the 8 that you were claiming.
Obama Admin had over 8 years to come up with something that works. He ran his first campaign on having Obamacare, surely he had some ideas then, and was starting working with people on planning it before he was making it his campaign promise. So, what they couldn't do in 10 years, you're faulting the GOP for not doing a better job in 3?

You are twisting it up to suit yourself.
They have been screaming repeal and replace since it was passed, they haven't come up with a plan in that time.
That has nothing to do with Democrats' failures in the act.

mace1229 said:

okay, even in that scenario, why are you so critical that they couldn't get done in 5 years what they previously couldn't do in 10?
I don't actually think it is unreasonable at this point. They knew nothing would pass while Obama was in office, and every GOP candidate had a completely different idea on how to solve it. Some even just wanted to twink it and not even remove and replace it. So they haven't been working on a replacement for 8 years, or even 2 years. And probably not even since Trump won the Primary since most thought he'd lose. Probably just since November have they seriously been thinking about and working on a replacement plan.

Massachusetts has had a plan that was signed by Mitt Romney. Obama even offered to incorporate parts of that and other republican features but they wouldn't go along. The republicans had no intention of proposing another plan. Its only now with people screaming that they better not take it away without replacing it that they're claiming they have a plan. And they still don't have one. Height of irresponsibility. They voted 40+ times to overturn the ACA without ever having a semblance of something to replace it with. That is just being clueless and petty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_health_care_reform

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts passed a health care reform law in 2006 with the aim of providing health insurance to nearly all of its residents. The law mandated that nearly every resident of Massachusetts obtain a minimum level of insurance coverage, provided free health care insurance for residents earning less than 150% of the federal poverty level (FPL) and mandated employers with more than 10 "full-time" employees to provide healthcare insurance. The law was amended significantly in 2008 and twice in 2010 to make it consistent with the federal Affordable Care Act. Major revisions related to health care industry price controls were passed in August 2012, and the employer mandate was repealed in 2013 in favor of the federal mandate (even though enforcement of the federal mandate was delayed until January 2015).[1] Because Mitt Romney was the governor of Massachusetts at the time, the law has colloquially been called Romneycare, a reference to the nicknaming of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as "Obamacare".[2]

Among its many effects, the law established an independent public authority, the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, also known as the Massachusetts Health Connector. The Connector acts as an insurance broker to offer free, highly subsidized and full-price private insurance plans to residents, including through its web site. As such it is one of the models of the Affordable Care Act's health insurance exchanges. The 2006 Massachusetts law successfully covered approximately two-thirds of the state's then-uninsured residents, half via federal-government-paid-for Medicaid expansion (administered by MassHealth) and half via the Connector's free and subsidized network-tiered health care insurance for those not eligible for expanded Medicaid. Relatively few Massachusetts residents used the Connector to buy full-priced insurance.

Notice how Massachusetts has amended the law several times since passage? That's what republicans could have done, worked to make it better, build off of something, show initiative and that they cared. But because the black guy was president, all they could do was attempt to make him fail as their number one priority.

mace1229 said:

I wouldn't argue there were attempts to make him fail.
I would argue, however, the claims that those attempts were based on race. A lot of people don't like members of the opposing party. And if he happens to be black that doesn't make you racist. Is every black man who hates Trump a racist? Of course not. It wasn't about the race card.

Obama was shown a level of disrespect that was unprecedented. And it continues today. What do you make of Trump stating, "you finally have a president?" Hey douchebag? You're number 45. There were 44 before you. The lack of respect shown Obama was clearly due to his race and not democratic policies. It was all a concerted effort to delegitimize Obama because of his race.

mace1229 said:

I think that level of disrespect was surpassed in the first 48 hours of the Trump presidency.
People were very disrespectful of bush too. Obama was farther left than any previous president, makes sense that the criticism was greater.
If Pence were president, he'd receive the same level due to his far right stance.

Democrats have never, ever said, within moments of a president being sworn in, "that their number one priority was to see this president fail." Ever. You can believe it was partisan politics but I know better.