Yesterday, I noted the anger directed at the Chief Justice by Republicans furious that he failed to strike down the Affordable Care Act. It was yet another aspect of Republican fury over any effort to extend access to health insurance.
The Capitol Times, a Wisconsin newspaper, recently ran an article about the GOP’s fixation on repealing the hated “Obamacare.”
What is this Republican obsession about what was once so derisively called Obamacare?
It makes no difference if it’s a supposedly enlightened Republican like Paul Ryan or an over-the-top right-winger like Ted Cruz. Neither can get through a speech without blaming the Affordable Care Act for all of the nation’s problems and insisting that it be repealed — yesterday, if not sooner….
Evidence continues to pour in that Obamacare has dramatically changed for the better the lives of millions of Americans. None of that fazes the Republicans in Congress or those on the presidential trail.
Let’s be honest. If opposing Medicare wasn’t so politically damaging, most Republican conservatives would advocate its repeal, too. I’m old enough to remember the hysteria and outrage that accompanied passage of Medicare, and the dire predictions that it would erase incentives for people to go to medical school–after all, why spend all that time and money learning to heal people if you couldn’t make out like a bandit once you established a practice?
Apparently, people are still going through medical school, and Medicare has worked well enough that it has joined the “third rail” political status enjoyed by Social Security. Not so the Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare.” At least not yet.
The real question–to which I have no answer–is why every attempt by government to expand access to basic medical care meets with such deeply-seated animosity from conservatives.
Let me be very clear: objecting to the way a particular program is fashioned, disputing whether this or that provision is likely to achieve its goals, concerns over cost-benefit ratios and the like are perfectly appropriate matters for debate. To the extent that arguments about the ACA are “deep dives” into the policy weeds–legitimate differences of opinion about the best way to achieve a goal–they are both reasonable and productive; they can only help improve the law.
But no one who has actually followed the GOP’s multiple efforts to repeal Obamacare could conclude that the party’s objections are based upon anything other than a visceral rejection of the very idea that government has a role to play in extending access to health insurance to people struggling to afford it. That rejection is sometimes clothed in policy pretenses, but the pretense is obvious. Probably the most honest exchange was at the GOP Presidential debate that included Ron Paul (not Rand); when a moderator asked him how he proposed to make healthcare available to poor people, he basically said “let them die.”
And the audience, if you will recall, applauded wildly.
“Let them die” is at the bottom of this frantic rejection of the ACA, and it’s what I don’t get. Any psychiatrists or psychologists out there who can explain this particular lack of humanity and compassion?
The United States is the only modern western democracy that does not have universal access to healthcare. Our refusal to implement a single-payer system doesn’t just allow poor people to die, as I have previously explained, it actually costs us much more money and impedes economic development.
What’s wrong with us?
Unconscionable.
I think the health trade workers do not want to learn billing and accounting skills as individuals. As a welfare worker in the 70s-80s, I heard lots of complaints about Medicaid coverage for all those Hoosiers who could not obtain medicines or therapeutic advice through bankrupted programs and insufficient charity drives. Meanwhile, for government workers who are contracted to do business with members of the public, it took counselors to help workers tolerate free advice about doing business as government business. Then accountants regressed from accounting to ‘accountability.’ We had thousands of fraud reports from Medicaid-covered examiners of their billings before that was shut down. Then moved on or back to their missionary positions, separated accounted as one giant health system provider.
My response to Republican friends about their hatred of the ACA and socialism is always this: Do your parents or grandparents have Medicare insurance? They always answer yes. Then how is it ok for hard working Americans to pay taxes to support your parents and grandparents while they have no employer sponsored insurance and don’t earn enough to buy it on their own? How is it ok that your family members are enjoying socialized medical insurance off the backs of others?
They never once thought of it this way. Some walk away with their minds opened up. Others want to keep their hatred of all socialized programs, even if they have family members that benefit from them.
My final statement to these extremely small-minded people is: If you think taxpayers should not be paying for anyone’s health insurance then you better start demanding that Medicare be abolished. Yes, that means your parents and grandparents can go without health care too because they won’t be able to afford it on their own.
Of course, they cannot argue with the point I made because I just pointed out to them that they believe in taxpayer funded health insurance if it is for family members that they care about, but it is not okay for the other people who help pay for their family members to enjoy this benefit.
It is my hope that when the majority of people with employer sponsored health insurance cannot afford to use it after paying their premiums and deductibles that they will be in favor of and demand single payer Medicare for all.
One more comment.
For the people who have always enjoyed employer sponsored health insurance and don’t realize the financial benefit they get from their portion (and their employer’s) of the premium being paid without being subject to income taxes, I say let’s immediately remove this tax benefit. They can pay taxes on the income before they pay their insurance premiums. You can be assured that employers would end their company sponsored health insurance programs immediately!
Employers have already ended their company sponsored health care in Europe and gone with socialized medicine so that they can get bulk pricing for everything.
Socialized medicine is the only affordable care for massive populations and there is no iffs, ands or buts about it, in my opinion. The Dems caved on single payer and I’ll never forgive them for that, probably Ever. It’s the smartest thing a government can do for you as a citizen. Period.
Could the GOP’s continuing determination to repeal the ACA be based on the fact that anything connected to medical care has now become “big business”? This includes health care insurance, hospitals, medical clinics, labs, test facilities, primary physicians no longer practice medicine but specialize in referrals to expensive specialists for additional expensive testing, no need to remind anyone of of Big Pharma. My eye surgeon has facilities on all sides of town providing different services in addition to primary office in Methodist Hospital and and is part owner of the eye surgery hospital on the far north side (103rd and Pennsylvania). Most of the few urology surgeons specializing in bladder and vaginal wall reconstruction in Marion and all surrounding counties work from two urology clinics. I contacted St. Francis Hospital when IU Health agreed to let me go outside their service providers – they sent my request to one of the doctors in one of the two clinics who had refused to accept me as a patient because I am deaf. I only learned this when I recontacted the hospital after no response for 2-3 weeks.
Medical care is now at or near the top of the list of FOLLOW THE MONEY! It is virtually impossible to follow the connections and interconnections within medical providers today; their billing divisions are often “outsourced” to other cities or states and each contact costs us money. The same is true with all big business conglomerates which includes most medical care at all levels today. The once simple procedure of transferring my medical records within the IU Health system from 9600 East Washington Street to 2300 East 10th Street was done by a medical transfer company in Atlanta, Georgia, and cost $32. The transfer was not done in three months but I was billed a second time for non-payment. This caused serious problems during my first physician appointment at the new facility; 3 1/2 hours completing the interview to obtain my medical history before I could see the doctor. Evidently Indiana University is not qualified to train medical records transfer workers. Indiana University is another member of big business…but that is a story of another problem and another day regarding repeated buy-outs and change-overs from the original Metro Health system available through my City of Indianapolis employment. Confused yet?
“What is wrong with us?” I believe it is simply the fact that all medical care systems (as with all big business) slipped the changes past us so slowly and with so many changes, we weren’t aware of what was happening and didn’t see it coming! Yes; another long-winded comment from me but there is no way to make this “a long story short” due to the system…not me personally.
Sorry; I neglected to say the current IU Health coverage is my Medicare supplemental which began in 2011 as Senior Smart Choice, the Medicare supplemental portion of Metro Health. Metro Health was the first HMO in Indianapolis and provided excellent medical care through employment and at reasonable cost at all levels of care for many years.
Disease treatment and prevention protects society. Care for all is the duty society owes itself.
It is not just access to healthcare that right-wingers fight. Consider education, safe food and drinking water, housing, working conditions, and more. There is just disdain for the poor and low-income workers–a increasingly greater proportion of the population. I am dismayed, often depressed, at the disregard for humanity outside the circles of our elite decision makers. Who elects these people?
In an earlier Republican era, the Reagan era, the Republican response to the AIDS crisis was
” Shut up, Go home and DIE.”
No compassion then either. NONE. These were not Republican voters so let them die.
The most visceral hatred now is for Obama. Thus anything connected with him MUST GO if you are a good right wing Republican.
The fact that “that guy” is in THEIR White house just makes them crazy.
I don’t know f anyone noticed, but in 2010 when all those Congressmen were holding town halls, the angry white folks who were standing up and yelling that they should tell Obama to get government out of their health care were Medicare age and older. We never saw anyone call them on their hypocrisy.
The ACA was lifted from a plan proposed by the Heritage Foundation, a right winged think tank, in the 90s. It was designed as an alternative to single payer health care that was being put forward by the Democrats. Obama is a realist. He knew he could never pass a single payer plan, so he offered up something that Republicans had supported in the past, thinking they would vote for it. A better strategy would have been to offer a single payer system and let the Republicans offer ACA again. That way they would seem to have won. The only reason they hate it so much is because Obama proposed it.
Only one Candidate for President wants Medicare for all and that is Bernie Sanders. I thought he would garner millions of voters would realize what a superior system he was proposing. The attacks against his proposal began almost immediately by the Right Wing and his opponents in the Democratic Party. Bernie showed Americans pay more for heath care per capita, with less coverage than Canada, Western Europe and Japan in debates, town halls and on the stump. His proposal was attacked not with facts but with hyperbole by the Democratic Establishment, and the McMega-Media.
The Establishment Democrats and Republicans plans for health care are more of the same – the Market. So if you can afford health care fine if not go home and die.
Peggy; I believe there are countless seniors on Medicare who do not understand that what they have IS single-payer coverage so they are against it. If they don’t understand that, how can they understand ACA when the media is providing conflicting reports on what it provides, is it helping millions who wouldn’t otherwise have health care and cost effectiveness.
We are getting the same media conflicting reports about Bernie can be/cannot be our candidate; Hillary will be/won’t be our candidate. Bernie is/isn’t bad-mouthing Hillary; Hillary is/isn’t bad-mouthing Bernie. Also seeing conflicting reports on Bernie’s financial stability/instability and the amount of support for and/or against ACA and/or single-payer health care. The fact that the media took Sarah Palin’s Death Squad accusations and repeatedly reported it without explaining the truth of that section of ACA she referred to or even reading it to find the truth.
Many of our problems today – on all issues – rest with the media who don’t know the truth or where to find it or if they bother to seek the truth. This is especially true of the health care battle on all fronts; especially the funding of Planned Parenthood via the required amount from Medicaid to provide many forms of health care for the indigent – men as well as women.
“What’s wrong with us?” We allowed private markets to be established in what should be a common good (health care), and then allowed private markets in betting on the need for it (health insurance). Those markets will be difficult to undo, given the number of employees in the health insurance industry and the extraordinary profits health insurance companies are able to realize by interfering with the cost of health care. Meanwhile, I am now required to pay hundreds of dollars each month to bet against my need (health insurance), and then must pay many hundreds more for any health care I actually receive (in co-pays, deductibles, etc.). I was all for the ACA, but I was wrong. It has been a horrible mess. Expanding Medicare would have been the better way to go, and maybe Bernie will be able to help make that happen.
I always thought that the Republican’s motivation for being so vehemently opposed to the Affordable Care Act was their great worry about a potential Democratic African American president with the charisma of JFK and the accomplishments of LBJ.
Single payor is a worthy goal for our country, but it is not feasible in the near term. It could be achievable incrementally, but it will take time. My 35 year career in health insurance — including HMO consumer and provider relations, State insurance regulator, consumer educator/advocate, federal health insurance regulator, and academic — has taught me that. In countries like Great Britain, national healthcare grew out of post World War II devastation where the country pulled together to rebuild. Fortunately the U.S. has never had to deal with a situation like that. Still, over the past 20 years we have made significant improvements in access and affordability through laws like CHIP, HIPAA, Mental Health Parity , Women’s Healthcare and Cancer rights, and the giant step forward achieved by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). But to propose moving from where we are to single payor in a presidential term or two is disingenuous at best. As you mention, Republicans are still, after more than 50 attempts, trying to repeal the ACA. Every single Republican television ad for U.S. House and Senate candidates mentioned repealing the ACA even though several hundred thousand Hoosiers are covered by it. The law has addressed major problems like preexisting condition exclusions, full access, annual and lifetime limits, out-of-control premium increases, and loss ratios. I prefer the more realistic approach that might be possible in the near term of tweaking the ACA to include a public option (which could, over time, morph into a single player plan) and addressing some of the employer plan requirements . But, even after six years of successes, the numbers of Americans approving of the ACA still hovers just below 50%, even though none of the horrors predicted — death panels, loss of jobs, etc. — actually became reality. Exactly why would anyone think our country is ready to be told: “Here’s your health plan,” like it or lump it? Medicare-for-all may sound good, but Medicare only covers 80% of most services, insurance company policies are needed to fill the gaps. I can’t imagine insurance companies would stick around to offer only “gap” insurance because it wouldn’t be profitable. And, a single payor plan that offered first-dollar coverage would be prohibitively expensive. Even with a Democratic House and Senate, the ACA was the best President Obama could get passed. And, it’s important to note that the author of the Senate bill that became the ACA — Max Baucus — received more money from the health insurance industry than anyone else in Congress. THAT type of scenario is not going to go away, no matter who is President. As to your original question, “Why do they hate the ACA?” I think the politicians hate it because they weren’t able to come up with a plan as workable and successful. After six years they STILL don’t have a viable alternative. As for the public, I’ve never been able to figure out who those people are who have such great coverage and low medical bills that they would be against it, so I have to conclude that some of their dissatisfaction stems from their dislike (to put it politely) of President Obama, and some of it is just plain ignorance of the law.
I can’t remember which comedian went out and interviewed the ‘folks on the street’, I want to say Jay Leno. The majority of the people hated Obamacare but when educated about benefits of this neat program called the “Affordable Care Act” they were all for it. Imagine their surprise when they were told that Obamacare is the Affordable Care Act…one in the same. The majority thought they were two separate things and when given facts about the ACA they were for it. I was embarrassed by their lack of stupidity but delighted in the “F…you” moment when these people were told the truth.
I’ve been a nurse for 20 years and I have witnessed the financial devastation of too many families. I also worked in child psychiatry for 10 years where most diagnoses were not covered by private insurance not to mention some of the psychiatric medications were not covered and some of your newer psychotropic medications cost $600 per month for 30 tablets. Also, aware that even asthma was considered a pre-existing condition and the treatment and medications and the doctor visits for it would not be covered.
My husband’s dad had a heart attack at 42 and when he lost his job thus losing his insurance when he got another job the heart attack was not a pre-existing condition and his new insurance wouldn’t cover anything pertaining to it.
I am thrilled that the ACA got passed. It is not perfect but since it got passed it can be improved. I graduated from SPEA and took a health policy class through the School of Public Health an excellent class and we all learned that the number one bankruptcy is over medical bills.
I remember when I was 21 and took a break from school I got a crappy job as a collector, didn’t know what it was but I needed a job. It was awful. The calls were ‘cold’ calls where a computer would automatically call those who owe money and I would not get any information on their bill until someone answered and when they answered you would have this script…I had an 80 year old gentleman answer and I had to tell him he owed ‘local hospital’ $21,000 for his wife’s cancer treatments and how as he going to pay for it. His wife had just died from cancer and I am calling an 80 year old on a limited income on how they were going to find $21,000.
I hated that job but it was an eye opener at 20.
I think JoAnn has nailed it here – follow the money. While rational ordinary people cannot understand the logic of a system that costs far more per capita than our international peers, the political elite have a vested interest in making sure that those excess dollars continue to flow – to the big phama companies, the giant hospital systems, and the completely superfluous layer of insurance company profits. (and yes, some of the Democratic power players also join the game).
Down at the level of the average Joe, the misinformation propaganda campaign (death panels!) lands on fertile soil among those who would despise anything accomplished by the Obama administration. If you watch Fox news, you hear an endless stream of stories of individuals who “lost” their health insurance due to the ACA (mostly debunked), stories of huge projected premium increases (most of which don’t actually happen), and people who blame every confusing tactic practiced by their insurance carrier on the legislation itself.
I attended a town hall with Susan Brooks a few years ago, in which she happily invoked the audience-pleasing REPEAL refrain. In a one-on-one conversation, I tried to share with her that she did indeed have constituents who were benefiting from the ACA, but it was quite clear that her sentiments were with the mob mentality inspired by her Republican colleagues.
I notice that people IN the insurance system are the biggest problem. Hence, Sally’s prognostication that nothing can change, and resistance is futile. It will be until enough well-off people like Sheila start losing their benefits. If you want a middle class it has to be protected from the predator class like the medical insurance monopolies.
I am on Medicare plus a supplement, Plan C. My choice. My SS check is reduced by $104.90 to pay my share of Medicare. The Supplement pays for the deductions. That costs me $300.04 each month and that was purchased thru an insurance company. I often wonder if our congressmen and women have a better deal than I. But I don’t pay for treatment and I get my dope thru the V-A and I get my glasses there also. Life is good.
Perhaps what the vehement one party objections to ACA really are is the result of total blindness to the obvious, the failure of the health care industry to manage itself to be available for all rather than merely being a puppet of the wealthy. It’s the most revealing market of Capitalism in that make more money regardless of the impact on others does not automatically lead to Nirvana, but in the absence of real competition, to aristocracy. It’s anti democracy in the absence of effective competition.
So what needs to be replaced, at least in competitionless markets, is Capitalism, with Socialism, the antithesis of everything Republican.
The facts repudiate the foundation of the Republican Party, and their inability to let go of their myths is stronger than their ability to solve problems. If any one of us acted that way we would call it late stage denial.
It reveals unarguably a king naked as a jaybird.
ACA is also great political theater in that in reveals how extraordinary a politician President Obama is or perhaps Republicans ain’t. In the midst of their resurgence he got enough agreement to progress, a snub in itself of their vaunted super skills.
The camel is more in than out of the tent now because we desperately need him. It is inconceivable that we can compete with the rest of the world with 2X health care cost. While ACA is merely a market for and a subsidy of the aristocratic Capitalist health care racket, using the backdoor through the insurance business, it got the camel in.
Now we are free to effectively address the real problem. Capitalism in the absence of competition doesn’t work.
Now we are ready to leave the dream that health care can be managed through the insurance business and accept reality. The purpose of government is to share and manage risk. With essential services we don’t need an insurance market at all. We need the protection of the people hiring and firing the staff to manage in some businesses because competition cannot be maintained.
What’s even better political theater is the way that ACA is able to use conservative beliefs against them. They whine ACA is too expensive. Yes it is, yes it is. Let’s fix that. Insuring something too expensive doesn’t make it less expensive, it makes it more expensive.
Bernie’s wrong on this one, too timid. There is only one next step but fortunately other countries have taken the risk of the unknown for us and the figures tell the whole story. Health care doesn’t have to be a luxury for the wealthy. We can have a healthy workforce and healthy families and a competitive economy. We can avoid the impossible task of trying to find how to impose competition in inherently noncompetetive markets.
Socialised medicine. Predident Reagan, it’s a government solution not a problem. Your dream just went up in smoke.
Republicans like to claim that they can fix our biggest worry, jobs. First of all government has very little impact on jobs, innovation by business almost solely controls the job market, and secondly jobs aren’t our biggest worry.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/191126/healthcare-costs-top-families-financial-concerns.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_content=morelink&utm_campaign=syndication
Health care costs are.
Thanks Pete for sharing that article….now I am going from a recollection from that course I discussed earlier but apparently there was some talk about doing something about healthcare back in the late 60’s. It may have been close to socialized medicine but according to our teacher the AMA and its doctors were vehemently against it and felt private insurance was the way to continue as the belief was that private would pay better. I remember laughing out loud in class when that was mentioned…
I think there is a bigger picture here. The Republican elites have long been trying to destroy all of the social welfare programs, and Obama Care aka ACA is a big move in the wrong direction. They are afraid that if they don’t get rid of it quick, they will never be able to get rid of it, just like they have never been able to get rid of Social Security, and Medicare, and Medicaid (including HIP, CHIP and other programs for the poor). And the reason the economy is not growing is because the majority of people haven’t had a real raise (in constant dollars) since the late 1970s. The bubbles that have caused crashes have been caused either by upper class investing in the bubble or by people taking the value out of their house. I expect that one of the reasons that all of the money that could have gone to increase people’s pay instead has gone to COO, CFO, CIO, and CEO salaries and to increase stock market prices by giving dividends and doing stock buy backs, is that whether intentionally or through the machinations of the elite conservatives, they are trying to “Starve the Beast” and one of the ways you convince people that there isn’t enough money to support social services is to take money away from the middle class and then decrease taxes on the upper class.
It’s a sorry state we have come to, and the thing that worries me about Hillary is that I don’t know how vested she is in the neoliberalism, which has been playing into this scenario.
It is more of the fallout of turning health care systems over to accountants. I remember when health care was about patient care – before they asked for your insurance card before agreeing to treat you. As in government, health care for profit is not a good model for most.
GAL Jonson. It’s good to worry about Hillary and every candidate. It’s dysfunctional though to worry about them compared to perfect. They can only be compared to other electable choices.
The concept of ACA is good. I’ve no idea if it works well for those relying on it for health insurance. I have overheard conversations from various medical professionals who expressed concern that ACA did not include some measure of tort/liability reform which would reduce the practice of defensive medicine that drives up the costs for patients and insurance providers.
This CNN article describes this situation far better than I can.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/05/health/youn-liability-reform/
If Obama and the Democrats worked half as hard at getting a genuine single payer program passed –instead of the Heritage Foundation Care– as they have been at attempting to pass TPP &TTIP, we might have something. Btw,the public was promised tweaks and refinement just after the Heritage Foundation Care was passed. How many years have passed? How many refinements since? The word incrementalism sounds like the phrase “The Dream for Peace” Nixon was wont to incessantly use in his speeches,as if the phrase was used to pacify the masses to accept how things are going to be according to the PTB.
It’s amazing its staring the politicians in the face. The first party to pass single payer in the US will relegate the other as irrelevant. As far as why the Republicans hate the ACA,I think it’s just kayfabe. It makes great political theater. Republicans can act indignant over the Obama administration and Democrats can point their fingers and say REPUBLICANS! We can’t do nothing because of REPUBLICANS! But vote for us anyway!
It’s also revealing how our politicians and their sycophants decry the development of single payer or free college. Hell,America had free college in California until Reagan. So it’s possible. They say Bernie’s plans are impossible. This false accusation comes from the very same people who believe that we can spend trillions re-building and transforming the ME.
I guess doing the impossible as transforming the ME satiates the needs for specific interests than the development of genuine healthcare and education in the US.
Meanwhile,nothing really genuine transpires to fix real healthcare needs and both political tribes can keep collecting the monies from healthcare and insurance lobbyists. Just as they do from the contractors used to transform the impossible in the ME. Just as Goldman Sachs gets their needs and wants filled summarily from government. The people? Govt: Please accept our token efforts and please accept incrementalism.
On the day Obama was inaugurated, Mitch McConnell said his only goal was to see that he was to re-elected in 2012. They got stuck in saying No just like a two year old. I’m still waiting to hear their proposal for health care for all Americans. After saying No so long, they have become the party of No ideas.
William tells us daily that everybody in government and politics is stupid and crooked. My point is that they come from the same stock as business people, religion, parenting, teaching , law enforcement, welfare recipients, and entertainment.
Us humans are what we are and that’s quite a range.
So, rather than wish we were gods my approach is to make do with who we are. That’s where the concept of institutions came from. If you take the ones who are good organizers and leaders and align them with the right experts and doers and point them at threats and opportunities and accept both diversity and culture as givens truly great things can happen and do. Not every time, some threats and opportunities take 3 or 4 battles before the war is won but if you consider the time scale of modern humans our overall progress has been remarkable.
Government solves problems. Capitalistic businesses make more money regardless of the impact on others and that is truly powerful as a supplier of goods and services, some of which are actually useful, as long as competition can be maintained. Religion manages our need to explain what can’t be.
Education teaches us to be and how to be skeptical and entertainment teaches us to be cynical.
Skeptics solve problems, cynics don’t.
Pete,
“Skeptics solve problems, cynics don’t.”
ditto.
According to Pete,we should just accept things as they are and blindly follow the brand known as the Democrats. It doesn’t matter if they’re the problem as well. Brand loyalty is all that matters. His extensive use of eloquent word-salad says a lot without saying anything at all. Anyone with–not a differing view per se–but thinks things can be accomplished in a differing manner is met with backhanded ridicule and misinterpretation of their words.
Here’s two links wrt to the ACA:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/republican-victory-obamacare-federal-judge-ruling/482736/
And..An excerpt from this one: at the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/sunday-review/sorry-we-dont-take-obamacare.html?ref=opinion
“Some early studies of the impact of the Affordable Care Act plans are proving patients’ grumbling justified: Compared with the insurance that companies offer their employees, plans provide less coverage away from patients’ home states, require higher patient outlays for medicines and include a more limited number of doctors and hospitals, referred to as a narrow network policy”
I’m out.
Bernie 2016!
I have no trouble William with Bernie as President. I just consider him a longshot and Trump a disaster.
Both evaluations are pretty data based.
What do you propose as data to the contrary?
William believes that if your employer offers better insurance than ACA offers you should take it. I agree.
The purpose of ACA was to cover people not covered by employers so the rest of us didn’t end up covering their health care costs on our insurance.
It works exactly as planned.
Pete, leave William alone and concentrate on your own ‘word salad’ comments (which I usually skip). Don’t run off a commenter that has points that we can all learn from. You can post all of your words whenever you want and we can all skip them if we choose. Thanks, have a nice day.
Thank you for the kind words, AgingGirl. I guess I’ve walked into a circle jerk between a couple of insufferable ….well, jerks. I trust the majority of commenters here of having the ability to be reasonable and inquisitive. Instead of knowingly misinterpreting the contributions of others, and the obvious self aggrandizing. Having said that,this is an interesting commentary with regard to the ACA via Naked Capitalism. It’s worth the read.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/05/the-new-york-times-bestirs-itself-to-report-on-obamacare-problems-naked-capitalism-readers-have-known-about-for-years.html
Great link William.
It may seem overly simplistic, but I think the very term “Obama Care” contains within it the answer to why the GOP detests it so vehemently. The racist roots that still exists in this country run deep and those who share this bigotry will fight anything that comes—or is perceived to come from America’s first African American president. As sad as it is to believe, there are still those who can’t abide an “uppity n-word.”
Aging girl, I always enjoy debate so I have a hard time understanding people like you and William who don’t.
Why would you prefer a world of less intellectual diversity and exchange?
ALG, I’ve wanted to say that for many a day! I try to use a crazy little rule I have and it’s this: If the comment is as long as Sheila’s blog, or longer (likely), I am SO outta there. I may miss something, but that’s the risk I am willing to take.
OMG, You said so much in two short sentences. Thank you! For what you said and for keeping it short. Those who wish to drone on and on should get their own blogs.
Beautiful, Andy! As soon as the R’s tried to wreck the Affordable Care Act with their not-so-subtle use of the word ObamaCare, we knew there would be problems. The President of the United States is indeed biracial (not just black), and in his eight years, he has faced all the slurs, rudeness, and snide remarks that anybody should have to face in a lifetime. R’s will never ever get over it.
A very,very important read. The entire history of the ACA and its roots. Enlightening.
http://monthlyreview.org/2016/05/01/obamacare/
An excerpt:
After a brief excursion between 1969 and 1973 as vice president and then president of Litton Industries, a major military contractor, Enthoven joined the faculty at Stanford in 1973 as a professor of both management and health care economics. There his work on health policy incorporated several elements common to military and medical systems (Table 1): distrust of professionals, deference to managers, choice among competing alternatives, and cost-benefit analysis, but not necessarily cost reduction.
Written by:
Howard Waitzkin is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of New Mexico and practices internal medicine part-time in rural New Mexico and Illinois. His books include Medicine and Public Health at the End of Empire (Paradigm, 2011).
Ida Hellander is a longtime advocate for single-payer health reform in the United States.