For two years the president had a majority in both houses. He passed the porkulous stimulus package, bailed out the big three auto companies, the banks and his union cronies and bought everything on the democrat wish list during that time. Even now the democrats have the White House and the Senate. How is anything the republican's fault anymore? What has to happen before the democrats are somehow held accountable for all of the legislation and executive orders enacted in the last 5-6 years. With 20-20 hindsight Iraq was a bad idea. How is it any worse than Afganistan, Egypt, or Syria though? When it comes to foreign policy in the Middle East, Bush Jr and Obama are two flavors of the same ice cream. Obamacare is a boon to those with pre-existing conditions but for every one of them that now has insurance dozens are priced out. Universal care is not universal when less people are insured than before. There is a huge population of unemployed or underemployed young people who are healthier than the general population but are now burdened with the obligations to pay for older, wealthier individuals. I think somehow the republicans got this one right.
In case you missed it things are substantially better today then they were when the President took office. What blame are you talking about? The stimulus should have been bigger, we would have more growth. The Republicans are about to shut down the government. How do you think that's going to increase GDP? The sequester that was forced on the Democrats is the slowing GDP by at least a full point. The US isn't spending a huge amount of manpower, lives and treasury in the ME. That's substantially better for the US. We also just got Syria to sign on to the Chemical weapons ban without firing a shot. Compare and contrast to Iraq. Your simply wrong about the young people paying for everyone else. People who are healthier who are low wage earners will get substantial government subsidies paid for by taxes primarily paid for by older wealthier Americans. You simply have it ass backwards. Look at who pays the vast majority of taxes in this country. It isn't the young, uninsured low wage worker. The only problem is the penalty is way to low for none compliance. That has to be fixed. Insurance is always based on a pool. People who don't use it are paying for people who do use it. That's what insurance is. Not having Universal coverage is a terrible risk for the entire society. You telling me if you're healthy today and get cancer tomorrow you shouldn't be insurable?
Young people (age 26-36) use a tiny fraction of total health insurance. Given the rates that they are being asked to pay to obtain health insurance (assuming they do not have an employer to subsidize it) they are better off without insurance even if they do have to pay the penalty. There should be a greater correlation between the likelihood that an individual will need care and the amount they pay for care. There should also be incentives (or disincentives) to prevent waste. An example would be someone with a cold going to the emergency room to seek treatment. The biggest problem with health insurance is not that the government needs to get more involved but that the government is too involved.
The biggest problem is you can't get it if you get sick and if you get sick while you're insured you will use up the maximum payout and be uninsurable for the rest of your life. That's the system without government regulation. That's what the Tea Party advocates. A free market system of insurance wouldn't insure anyone who gets sick. Nobody who is healthy has any idea what their health care needs might be tomorrow. You get diagnosed with cancer and need surgery and chemo, your bankrupt and uninsurable for the rest of your life. That is what the Republicans stand for. The system is broken because we don't require Universal coverage.
Now I am getting confused about who the enemy is supposed to be. Is it the republicans, the tea party or George Bush? Setting aside your finger pointing at various bogeymen that want to deny us treatment, let's look at the big picture. 1. Everyone will need medical care at some point in their lives. 2. Health care does not grow on trees. Doctors and other medical professionals must be compensated for this service to cover costs including medical training, development of new drugs and equipment, malpractice insurance, compensation to victims of malpractice, administration, as well as their cost of living. 3. A patient in need of urgent or emergency care does not have the opportunity to shop around and which would give a health care provider an unfair advantage in a market free from government intervention. 4. The United States spends more of its resources on health care than any other country yet to say the quality of that care is the best would be debatable. 5. Despite the so called free market nature of the US healthcare system, more than half of the participants have government sponsored care (medicare, Medicaid, veterans, government employees, etc.). 6. So called free market participants are expected to make up for the losses that health care providers take from their government sponsored patients. Health care is a limited resource and depending on the level of care required can be quite expensive. Unless tough decisions are made (by doctors or others) and there is no limitation or charge for health care services, these resources will be exhausted and others will suffer from lack of care. Government or no government there can be no free unlimited care for everyone even if people were conscripted against their will to work in the health care industry "for free". Improvements in technology, checks on corruption, and other measures must be used to reduce the overall cost of health care. Instead of forcing individuals to participate, insurers should offer reasonably priced options that people will want to pay for. There is no such thing as a free lunch and more government is not always the right answer.
Who said anything about free health care? Health care today for those that aren't insured is being paid for by those that have insurance or by the taxpayer. The only way to get reasonable priced insurance in your scenario is to allow insurance companies to drop or cap coverage once someone gets sick. If you only insure the healthy, insurance would be cheap. Of course that doesn't impact the cost of health care one way or the other.
What does the cost of medical care have to do with insurance schemes that need to cover peoples needs. Regardless of what insurance scheme you come up with medical will have to be paid for. Reducing the cost or raising the cost will only increase or decrease the overall cost of insurance. It does nothing to change the risk pool. Having an unregulated insurance market, the Republican plan does nothing to reduce the cost of medical care. All it does is give insurance companies the right to sell cheap policies to people who aren't sick and throw sick people out of the insurance pool and onto the Medicaid. If you're advocating that medical care is a limited market and should be allocated based on ability to pay, that will always be the case. Those with the ability to pay will pay more. They are now.
You keep chirping about the wonders of universal medical care and how great it is without really going into any details about what it is. If what you mean by universal healthcare is that everyone no matter how sick can get health insurance (an likely treatment as well), then that could be good or bad. Good because these unfortunates won't just be left to their fate absent care. Bad because the cost of this care will be transferred to others and in a world of limited resources there must come a point where the efforts to treat someone might better be spent treating others who have a lower cost to treat or a higher probability of living a long and enjoyable life instead of buying a few days for a terminal patient who is suffering. If what you mean by universal care is that the government will divert yet even more scarce resources to our overfunded health care system, then yeah I would say you are talking about "free healthcare". There are many inefficiencies in our healthcare system. Our current system where the lucky majority has an overfunded corporate or government healthcare policy and everyone else has to pay full freight gives insurers and other providers little incentive to cut costs. The healthcare insurance industry is very heavily regulated. A decrease in regulation is very very different from no regulation. There are a lot of hands in the health care till. I do not think it is an unreasonable position to suggest that increased competition (resulting from a decrease in regulation) could serve to increase competition and lower costs as all of those feeding from the health care money train would make due with less. Efficiency and affordability go hand in hand. Yes, the quantity and quality of health care could potentially go down but there is no reason we should expend a higher percentage of our resources on healthcare than every other nation on Earth. Most health insurance companies are not all that profitable (although Obamacare has helped them there). Throwing stones at republicans and equating deregulation to malice gets us nowhere. It is more important to find out why it is necessary to charge over $1,000 for a ride in an ambulance, determine if all procedures are really necessary, and think of new ways to increase efficiency through the use of new technology. None of these things happen with Obamacare glossing over the real problems.
Healthcare insurance is regulated by the State. The Republican plan calls for allowing providers to compete across state lines. If you remember when credit was regulated by States you had various interest caps depending on the State you lived in. Once they allowed interstate completion all the credit issuers moved to unregulated States. That is exactly what would happen under the plan the Republicans proposed. We would effectively have all insurers move to the States with the least or in some cases no regulation. If you believe that health care is finite then we agree it has to be in some way denied to people. Now personally I would prefer the government where I have representatives denying me benefits than a private for profit company where I'm a liability the minute I get sick. The only wonder of Universal care is I have a stake in my fellow citizen having good health and that means availability to care. It also guarantees the largest pool to defer the cost over both healthy and chronically ill patients. Having a pool of healthy people is good for insurance companies but it doesn't deal with the reality that a good portion of our society is going to face a medical crisis either directly or a family member that is going to be very costly. Now while Universal care may be meaningless to you, a small pool of only healthy people doesn't exactly fit the needs of most Americans during their lifetime. I'm not willing to take on that risk. If we treat people without insurance or with insurance someone is going to pay the cost. That someone is either the insured or the taxpayer or both. Clearly there are plenty of countries with Universal health care that are getting very good results at a much lower cost. Hard to argue that it's the Universal nature of that coverage that's the problem.
The point you are missing is that they are two different flavors of the same rotten ice cream. The best part about having 50 states is that we have 50 different governments with their own decisions to make. Each state has the opportunity to look at what other states are doing and pick and choose the best things while trying to avoid what they perceive to be mistakes. This competition between the states is a good thing although economies of scale are lost when decisions are implemented at the state level instead of the federal level. Even better yet, individuals are free to move to the state that they believe is the best one to serve their needs. When the federal government stomps all over states rights and attempts to regulate healthcare or other state issues at a national level, competition and innovation are reduced to one size fits all as demanded by the US government. More than half of the population opposed Obamacare but those bastards passed it anyway. Are our elected officials in congress and the White House really any better than the CEOs running our biggest companies? Do you really consider Nancy Pelosi a bastion of righteousness? Do you really think Obamacare is good enough?
If you have a family member with any chronic problem you can't move and get insurance until that feature of Obamacare goes into effect. January of 2014. You can't move unless you and your family don't have a condition. The exceptions of course are NY and MA and a few other uber liberal states. You won't have competition across State Lines the Insurance industry will all move to the State or States with the least regulation. It will be just like the credit card industry.
So all you really care about is those with chronic pre-existing conditions. The fact that Obamacare is horrible for the many others does not seem to bother you. If so, your lack of objectivity really makes any further debate pointless.
Anyone can come up with better schemes but the reality is the Republicans want to go back to a system that was the most expensive in the world with crappy results. You are speculating without facts to back up your opinion. Obamacare is going to insure millions more with our without pre-existing conditions. That's a fact. It will also lower premiums for people who want to insure themselves. That will allow people to move, start businesses and otherwise de-couple from job based insurance. You are arguing that Obamacare is a disaster compared to some fantasy based system that you have in your head that isn't on the table. It's replacing a system that was the most expensive in the world and was failing a huge portion of the country. Obamacare will go into effect and be amended as needed once the right wing of the Republican party understands the majority of Americans are going to support it just like they overwhelmingly support SS and Medicare once it's in place. Once the public figures out they are better off Republicans and Democrats can amend it as needed without the threat of the right wing defunding it.
Ok, so you just make it up as you go along. Just pass along some of whatever it is that you are smoking.
If you know anything about our government, legislation is routinely updated and amended to make the law work better. Bush and the Republicans added an entire prescription drug amendment onto Medicare, a major change in legislation. All legislation is an ongoing process as is the law. That's our system. You may not like it but that's how democracy works. We do make it up as we go along just as every company, legislature and government in the world does restrained by custom and constitution.
So. As the Obama administration drifts to a desultory death, it's time to bump this particular stain of a thread. Not to make fun of Long Time Nit Wit and how laughably incorrect and ignorant he was. That would be fun, but pointless. Rather, lets consider the election of Barack Obama as the Blackest Day in the history of the Democratic Party. Here we have a two termer leaving office with the Republican party fully in control of all three branches of the federal government, a solid majority of state governorships and legislatures, and a fully formed and executable plan to gerrymander themselves into remaining in power for the conceivable future. Oh, and as seasoning for the dish, a quack reality gameshow host is poised to wreck the courts for a generation. Obama for all his rock star stature has spent none of his political capital on improving the party. His administration has groomed nobody as a viable national candidate, except maybe Elizabeth Warren. And, oh, the accomplishments. A shitty health care plan nobody likes. Gitmo still open for business. The Russians running scared about something we may or may not do to them some time in the future, maybe. This guy has just been a disaster for Democrats. Cheer me up, Br4d. (and yes, I get the irony there).
As much as I hate the affordable healthcare act and think its incredibly broken and worthless to my personal family( self employed / working for a small company that cannot provide affordable healthcare packages), it is a good stepping stone to creating actual useful available health insurance. If over the next 4 years some reforms can be made to actually make an "affordable" plan usable, Obama's legacy will look a whole lot brighter. If the Republicans tear it down and start from scratch, I really do not know what Obama will be remembered in history as other than the first black president. So much for "Change" and that "Hope" bullshit
I don't disagree with you. I think he was handed a golden opportunity and fumbled it largely because his people just did not understand the demographics in play at the time. He did get handed the worst financial crisis in 70 years + a perfect shitstorm of foreign policy mistakes by the people who preceded him but that's no excuse for what the Democrats did after he took power. Howard Dean and the 50 State Strategy was the future and Obama was neutral at best towards them and Nancy Pelosi was outright hostile to the idea. I think Obama is going to be seen as a Woodrow Wilson comparable when historians look back in 100 years. I think Trump is going to be seen as a Warren Harding. I hope that's the comparison because it could be much worse. Then you'll get Ben Sasse playing Herbert Hoover and along about 2030 we'll be ready for the telemarketed REAL New Deal (their hyped emphasis not mine) from whoever is left to pick up the pieces.
