For starters, the original plan was gutted and made worse before the actual legislation was presented. Second, it was gutted and made worse afterwards.
One of the bigger issues people claim to have with it was their premiums went up. Well duh, they were going up at a higher clip than before. This slowed the rate. One good thing is it stopped junk plans form being a thing. You know the cheap, low premium, super high deductible catastrophic plans that didn’t really cover anything. That is until Trump and the GOP reversed that rule. Having a bare minimum of quality coverage was good.
Honestly we just need Medicare to be extended to everyone as a base. If you want supplemental health intop you are free to seek it out. This way everyone is covered for around few hundred a year paid for through taxes throughout the year for wage earners and monthly, quarterly, or at tax time for the rest. It makes Medicare’s rolls go from a few dozen million to almost 400M over night. Medicare could then offer higher payouts to be on par with private insurances, and would create a medical boon since 40-120M Americans would have quality healt insurance that they could now go seek the medical help they need.
But you got to remember, universal healthcare or Medicare for all was deemed DOA before the gang of 6 started negotiations, as the GOP said they won’t consider it, not to mention McConnell stated before Obama’s inauguration that his priority was to make him a 1 termer and stop any meaningful legislation from passing.
They also didn’t have 60 guaranteed votes in the Senate, so a compromise had to be had. Which is considered a bad word and weak from the GOP these days. There was no intention of letting something really good getting out to the public from the GOP standpoint. What we got was still better than what was in place.
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Please! You brought ACA as an example of a Democrat initiative that is helpful for women and minorities. I am going to show why it is not. Let’s not twist my use of “everyone” when it comes to coverage because this was how the public/voters at large understood the law. This is how it was marketed. Also, for the topic at hand 99% is “everyone,” so please don’t project by accusing me of using a straw man argument. ACA doesn’t need that.
Also, I am no discussing better health care systems, past legislation, or alternatives. I am responding to Shadout’s bringing the ACA as an example.
I cant speak to people misunderstanding things, but I recall exactly that it was always sold as not being able to ensure coverage for everyone. It was not how it was marketed.
I am not accusing you of building a strawman. I merely said that you shouldn’t try to build one based on ACA not reaching full coverage, as it was not designed or expected to do so.
Not really. Reaching the people who fall through the cracks of the systems is quite important.
Here is one estimate about ACA. I am not sure if this is the final bill, or an earlier version. But:
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has determined that the Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act is fully paid for, will provide coverage to more than 94% of Americans
https://www.dpc.senate.gov/healthreformbill/healthbill04.pdf
I hope I dont have to argue too strongly to convince anyone that 94% is different from both 99% and 100%
And 94% is a lot better than the 84-88% that had at least the bare minimum of coverages before the ACA. I feel many of the people arguing against it not covering 100%(in general) are just looking for perfection so they can claim failure.
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Excellent breakdown of ACA. It’s also worth noting which political party actively gutted the original plan.
I’m sure you can guess which one.
But the individual you’re arguing with compares CRT to Germany in the 30s and defends an abusive, manipulative pickup artist, the type who likely would have thrived at Blizzard had he coded, so be prepared for your very good points to fall on deaf ears.
Glad y’all are still arguing. I just can’t be bothered to do more homework for other people. After posting so many sources and making so many well supported claims, I think I’m going to stick to summaries and blocking.
- Trump bad and lost
- CRT good
- Green New Deal good
- Global warming definitely worse because of humans
- Manipulative pickup artists also bad
- Comparing things to NSP Germany very bad
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The big difference is CRT looks to see why, the Natzis just said Jews bad because. Huge difference. Unfortunately, some people in this thread are incapable of understanding the difference. Or they know and are just pushing an agenda, and are fitting of troll status.
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Add to the mix one or two who know the difference but are flat out racist and don’t care.
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One of the best things the ACA did, besides make medical coverage affordable even for those who work part time/no benefit jobs (many women and minorities) was make yearly routine care and birth control free.
The rate of unwanted pregnancies and abortions have dropped dramatically since access and affordability have improved. Women can decide when they want to have children and focus on their career if they decide to.
It also allows people who change jobs/get laid off/have a major life change where they lose their work insurance, to go to the market and buy a new reasonably priced plan. - and all the plans are free market insurance companies like BlueCross and BlueShield. I had to do this myself. It was actually easy and they had someone at the hospital who could walk me through how to apply for a new plan.
I want to point out prior to that you would pay over 1K a month for COBRA, or you were limited to a medical exam and VERY high cost private insurance plans - if they even cover you at all.
Now they HAVE to - and they have to cover mental health care, basic preventative care, etc. Things plans did not have to cover before.
I have benefited personally from all that:
- ACA market to get health care when you no longer have your work plan
- Birth control back when I needed it for medical reasons (yay surgery and then being too old now!)
- Mental Health coverage
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It is the difference between science and the laws of gravity.
Science is about trying to figure out why the world works the way it does.
The laws of gravity try and describe when you fall down when you jump off a roof.
Amazingly, a lot of people think science explains everything.
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They yearly free check ups and birth control was disproportionally beneficial to women and minorities but that is clearly overlooked by somone who recently asked for evidence of the sort.
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Or how some of them quickly love to claim science can’t be trusted since science has changed over time as new evidence comes to be.
Or someone in my situation, where you get a cancer that stops you from being able to work the jobs you did before. With covid, and it is extremely hard to find a job you have no experience for and you are 42.
Cancer treatments are expensive and I would not have been able to afford them. The surgery cost over $100k. Radiation treatments were $20k each, and I did that every weekday for a month. Then a year of chemotherapy and yeah…, I broke $1,000,000 in treatment.
Without ACA and I would have been 100% screwed. Or I could have died in extreme pain as the tumor slowly destroyed my brain.
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The whole ACA was beneficial to them really. Women very often end up working part time jobs while juggling family/child care/elder care. Those jobs don’t come with health care and don’t pay enough for a person to previously buy private insurance (if they took you). Same goes for folks working 2 or 3 jobs. Folks working part time and going back to school.
Service industry jobs also don’t usually come with any insurance options. As we saw with the pandemic, a lot of folks in the service industry are minorities.
None of them were insured, or if they were they had the junk high deductible plans which cover nothing (I had one too after college and before I had insurance through a full time career job).
Just having the ACA means:
- Affordable insurance that HAS to take you
- Coverage for basic health care, vaccines, checkups, mental health care, birth control
- Ability to go to the doctor without fear of not paying rent
- Healthier people who can participate in the work force, go to school, get better jobs!
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Or stopping companies from declining you for having a preexisting condition, or rescinding your coverage. A buddy at work at the time, 2006, his wife was approved for a back surgery by her UHC plan. On the day of the surgery, they pulled her coverage for being at risk, too expensive. He sued and 8 years later they had to pay for the surgery, but that didn’t happen with ACA at first.
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Yep, science is a process of study. The discoveries change what scientists think determines why things work the way they do, but the basic scientific method was used in ancient Greece.
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Or that NPR isn’t trustworthy. Or that some obscure blog is reputable.
What horrifies me is the absolutely awful levels of media literacy some folk are displaying. Basic evaluation of sources and biases, basic filtering, and nuance–all right out the window. It’s extra apparent when I ask people to post credible sources to substantiate some truly outlandish and insane claims, and they’re unable to do so, unable to answer basic questions about what they have and have not read. You and I in a few others have been able to almost immediately fact check some of these arguments into oblivion, but they still keep coughing up, and the common defense is almost always that this or that media source can’t be trusted. Again, this is a bad faith argument or a total lack of media literacy.
Many of the arguments being made in this thread are bad faith arguments, and they are completely devoid of anything resembling a substantiated viewpoint or opinion. I have some friends who are highly educated conservatives, and while I don’t agree with their opinions all the time, I have to concede when they’re making smart, well supported arguments. That is not what is going on in here.
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This gives me chills. So glad you were able to get coverage under ACA and I hope you are doing well now.
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Part of it is insecurity. They are afraid to have thier view be challenged because they don’t want to be wrong. So they seek out information that fits their viewpoint. That makes them feel good.
I know I was like this about 25 years ago. It’s easy to spot these types. But the fact they thought BBC was leftist speaks volumes to how far right they are. That they think center is left or even far left is scary. The fact some people view Bernie and AIC as far left loonies is laughable. I know they are left of Dems in this country but Dems are a center right party and have been for decades.
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In the end…
I Hope that justice prevails, and the truth comes out. I Will not think about any thing of ALL that atm.
You are very correct about the BBC and the American left. Like I said in the previous post we don’t have a real left wing. Never did aside from a few fringe figures.
And I think you’re right about where a lot of this resistance to good information comes from. I also think it’s been encouraged over the last four years to the point where people feel confident saying completely insane and ridiculous things, knowing that many other millions of people will take them very seriously.
74 million Americans voted for a complete lunatic who talked about injecting disinfectant into the lungs. Something has gone horribly, horribly awry for that to happen.