Why it continues to be unpopular:
“Current and former administration officials . . . have been surprised at how steadfast the opposition has remained,” the Washington Post reported last summer, quoting MIT economist Jonathan Gruber saying, “It used to be you had a fight and it was over, and you moved on.” But few have moved on, for reasons which are not all that hard to tease out: It’s not working out, in fact it’s a disaster; it’s blowing holes in the federal budget; the win-to-lose balance is way out of kilter, as many more people are hurt than helped by it. Obamacare may collapse on its own for practical reasons, but there is a fourth strike against it that adds a dimension of weakness no comparable measure has faced: Much of the country believes it’s a fraud, passed dishonestly, and not deserving of moral authority. In short, they find it nearly illegal, highly immoral, and possibly fattening. And their minds won’t be changed.
Nor should they be. When you cram the biggest crap sandwich in the history of the world down the county’s throat on a lying, corrupt partisan basis, you deserve to lose credibility and power. Read the whole thing, though.
Government coverage mandates. Higher premiums for less coverage. What’s not to love?
I remain quite shocked that the Democrats in Congress haven’t rebelled on this law and joined in trying to repeal it. They’re the ones who will be punished–perhaps in large numbers–for this abomination, not Obama. It says something very bad about current politics that they aren’t evacuating the sinking ship already.
Personally, my insurance premiums have gone up substantially, my deductibles have doubled, and my insurer is regularly denying claims it used to cover without any issue. That’s all with employer insurance with a major carrier. I already pay through the nose for other people’s welfare and all the other spending, now they’re screwing up my medical coverage. Who, pray tell, among voters does this law benefit?
“Who, pray tell, among voters does this law benefit?”
There are people, like our own statist Jim, who get subsidizies under Obamacare to get cheaper insurance. They benefit at everyone else’s expense and it isn’t surprising they like the law. After all, “He who robs Peter to give to Paul can always count on the support of Paul.”
To clarify: I don’t receive any Obamacare subsidies, but for the first time I’m allowed to buy insurance for the same price as anyone else of my age in my state. Previously I was paying thousands more.
Y’ jess tol’ us y’ qualified fer de sub-si-dies a couple mont’s ‘go?
No, I never said I qualified for ACA subsidies. My income is above the threshold (400% of the poverty line).
“Previously I was paying thousands more.”
And you stated the reason why on a previous thread was the group as a whole was subsidizing you through their insurance premiums.
You misunderstood. It was a group policy, but we were the only ones in the group, so the “group as a whole” was us. Our premium was based on my and my wife’s health history, full stop.
No you said that your current premiums were lower because the group your insurance company placed you in under Obamacare subsidized your potential costs by sharing the risk over are larger and healthier population. That is how you got a cheaper premium.
That is different than buying “group” insurance with your wife. You don’t get placed into a group of two.
“Sharing the risk” is the cornerstone of Obamacare. It is why the risk corridors exist. It is why Obama is so concerned about how many and the demographic make up of the people enrolling. Just be honest about it.
In 2013 we had a group policy. In 2014 we have a (much cheaper) individual policy from Healthcare.gov. In 2013 the risk pool was just me and my wife. In 2014 it’s everyone in New Hampshire who chose the plan I chose (one of 10 available), i.e. thousands of people. That’s why our premium is so much lower.
Someone has to make up the difference in the cost, Jim. While the lower price is good for you, it isn’t for everyone else. Nothing is free. Someone always has to pay. Always.
You’re right, to a first approximation there’s the same amount of premiums being collected, so for every dollar saved by someone like me there’s a dollar being paid by someone else. Or, if you look at the situation before the law, you could say that back then every dollar saved by someone with cheaper-than-average insurance was being paid by someone else like me.
That fact alone should make Obamacare opponents reluctant to push too hard on the “Obamacare is raising everyone’s premiums” argument. It isn’t as if those extra dollars are going down a hole — people paying more for insurance are getting better coverage and/or making it possible for others to get coverage without paying exorbitant premiums.
The picture is complicated by the fact that most of the people getting insurance on the exchange are getting subsidies, which are paid for primarily by taxes on the wealthy. You can imagine the individual insurance market split into four quadrants, the poor+sick, the poor+well, the rich+sick and the rich+well (where “poor” means “eligible for subsidies”, i.e. making less than 400% of the poverty line, and “sick” means “has a higher-than-average health risk”). The biggest winners are the poor+sick: they stop being penalized for being sick, and get subsidies that help them afford good insurance or make it free altogether. The poor+well pay more for coverage, but it’s offset by subsidies. The rich+sick pay more in taxes, but stop having to pay extra for coverage. The rich+well pay more in taxes and stop getting such a good deal on coverage.
Politically this is a difficult thing to pull off, because the biggest losers are also the people with the most political clout. But it’s hard for someone blessed with money and good health to complain too hard about subsidizing health care for people who are less fortunate.
” Or, if you look at the situation before the law, you could say that back then every dollar saved by someone with cheaper-than-average insurance was being paid by someone else like me.”
No, because those people did not receive plans subsidized at your expense. Those prices of their plans were based on the actuarial factors of the group they were in. These groups were as large as the insurance companies could make them. They were priced according to their risk and probability of needing a payout.
You were not paying more so they would pay less.
Just because you want to take other people’s resources doesn’t mean that the resources they had prior to you taking them really belonged to you all along.
Also, there is some vindictiveness in your comment. You are saying that people who had better plans under the old system only did so at your expense and that they deserved to be punished for it. You know who isn’t to blame for the rise health insurance and health care costs? The people who already had plans they liked under the old system.
Those prices of their plans were based on the actuarial factors of the group they were in.
Yes, but insurers could affect the risk factors by keeping some people (e.g. me) out of those risk pools.
You were not paying more so they would pay less.
You can’t have it both ways. If letting me in raises other people’s premiums, then keeping me out lowers them.
Also, there is some vindictiveness in your comment.
It’s a simple fact that letting insurers discriminate on the basis of health history lets them offer lower premiums to some customers, while turning away or charging higher premiums of others. Those lower premiums are only possible if the insurer can discriminate.
“I remain quite shocked that the Democrats in Congress haven’t rebelled on this law and joined in trying to repeal it.”
It might have something to do with the delay of the employer mandate until 2016…
Democrats might be willing to repeal the employer mandate, but they aren’t willing to repeal the entire law just to get rid of the employer mandate. Republicans, on the other hand, probably aren’t willing to repeal just the employer mandate.
I had a discussion with a self-employed single mother last Friday night. At present, she’s covered by an existing policy but by the end of the year, she knows she’ll have to pay more for less insurance under Obamacare. She isn’t too happy about it, either.
“Democrats might be willing to repeal the employer mandate, but they aren’t willing to repeal the entire law just to get rid of the employer mandate.”
There is less pressure for them to do anything about any part of the law because the parts that haven’t been disastrously implemented already are being delayed for a few more years. If the law was implemented as it was written and similar problems we have already seen popped up, there would be a lot more pressure to get rid of the law all together because of one fail after another. This is why the employer mandate is being delayed.
actually at it’s Heart Obamacare is composed of about 4 basic ideas.
1) Commoditize and categorize all health insurance plans into 4 levels (Gold, Silver, Bronze, Catastrophic) with the principal difference being co-pays and deductibles.
2) Mandate all employers provide some basic level of health insurance (Bronze, )
3) Require anyone not working to get insurance (Individual Mandate) or qualify for Medicaid/Medicare.
4) adjust taxes and premium support to achieve 3.
That’s really all it is, it’s just Romneycare times 49.
Rand gets all puffy and whiney about it, but, it’s just Romneycare.
Massachusetts is still around, nobody is dying in the streets there.
It’s not communism, it’s not the greatest system, it’s just a way to make sure
everyone has health insurance.
“it’s just a way to make sure
everyone has health insurance.”
Obamacare takes an expensive product and mandates everyone buy it whether they can afford it or not. Then use subsidies and price controls to force the system to work but it will take constant adjustment of the entire system to maintain the illusion of control. It is similar to what Maduro and Chavez did with the Venezuelan economy.
There were three primary factors that caused people not to have insurance under the old system: cost, income, and choice. It is important to remember that many people who didn’t have insurance did so as a deliberate decision. I think people should have the freedom to choose but Obamacare took that away. The income part of the equation is solved with a healthy economy but Obama’s policies hurt the economy. To mitigate Obama’s handling of the economy, he is giving away money to buy insurance. Cost is much harder to deal with but is also the primary barrier. Obamacare doesn’t do anything to lower costs and actually causes them to go up in many areas. The way Obamacare deals with costs is by using price controls.
We didn’t need a massive government take over of the industry. Steps could have been taken to reduce costs, increase people’s incomes, and influencing people’s choices could have been accomplished through a sustained PR campaign.
“it’s just Romneycare.
Massachusetts is still around, nobody is dying in the streets there.”
yeah and Ma. has the highest medical costs of anywhere in the nation. It also has the highest premiums. It also has the longest doctor wait times.
I live in Ma. You know nothing about how well Romneycare is working – it’s failing,
“It’s not communism, it’s not the greatest system, it’s just a way to make sure
everyone has health insurance.”
Except that it fails even at that. It’s doomed to fail at that because it does not take into account freely made decisions by people. It canot since it cannot predict them
This is why, for example, Obama and Michelle are so aghast that young people are not doing their patriotic duty and signing up.
The more government tries to fine tune things, the worse they get.
influencing people’s choices could have been accomplished through a sustained PR campaign.
Do you support spending federal dollars on a sustained PR campaign to get people to sign up for health insurance, even when they’re healthy?
I continue to be amazed by the idea that “you lost a vote, so you may never fight it again” is proposed as a democratic ideal.
Especially since it’s proposed as one by people who would never accept such a constraint on their own opposition to the things they strongly oppose.
Democracy has its failings, but one strength is that you can’t make lasting changes that are significantly unpopular, because a democracy cannot (and will not) bind its future self to agree with the barely-managed consensus of the moment.
If the law you pass is sufficiently destructive, you can make going back to the way things were impossiple.
One weakness of our system is that it is very difficult to pass major legislation. You need to have the White House, the House, and a super-majority in the Senate all on the same page. That’s an alignment of political planets that does not come along very often. But by the same token it is very difficult to repeal major legislation — the law can’t just be unpopular, it has to be so unpopular that its opponents gain control of the White House, 218 House seats, and 60 Senate seats.
So it isn’t that “you many never fight against” a law like Obamacare, just that it will be a long uphill battle. It took the Democrats decades to pass health care reform; Republicans shouldn’t expect their efforts to be any quicker or easier.
“One weakness of our system is that it is very difficult to pass major legislation…it is very difficult to repeal major legislation”
You have this backwards Jim. It is a strength of our system and was put there by design. You want the best of both worlds where it is easy to pass legislation and hard to repeal it. That is until some other party is in power and you switch to wanting legislation hard to pass again.
My preference would be for it to be easier for the winners of an election to pass or repeal laws (passing and repealing are the same thing — you pass a law to repeal one). So I’d be happy if we switched to a parliamentary system — the people get what they voted for, and if they don’t like it they can vote for something else.
The problem with that is instability. We had systems like that historically but they usually were quite vulnerable to collapse.
Actually it’s the opposite — it’s presidential systems that are unstable, because both the executive and legislature can claim democratic legitimacy, leaving no good way to resolve conflicts between the two. Historically parliamentary systems have lasted much longer than presidential ones. Check out the work of Juan Linz.
Interesting that you would post that link. Our system is set up based on checks and balances yet it still relies on politicians to know the difference between unethical and illegal. Some would say our current politicians know the differences far too well.
But I don’t agree with this,
It is a good thing that states with less people still get a voice in government. It was specifically set up so that this would be the case and the same goes for making reforms more difficult. But maybe the guy should think a little bit more on it considering this question.
“When you wrote “The Perils of Presidentialism,” the United States was the exception to the rule. But do you think your critique of presidential systems is starting to apply here as well?”
Perhaps it is the safeguards put in place by our founders that made us the exception to the rule? But it still requires that the President act in the example of George Washington and not seek kingship even if it is only for eight years.
Obviously you’ve never read the constitution. We have a republican system for a reason.
Of course, getting rid of it was good for you, more freebies.
“One weakness of our system is that it is very difficult to pass major legislation.”
That was a purposefully created feature of our system – not a flaw. You sound just like Obama when he wistfully wishes he could be dictator.
You demonstrate that you know absolutely nothing about our system of government. And clearly you have no idea how and why the Constitution was set up the way it was. And so therefore you have not the slightest clue as to what can happen when the government is let out of it’s cage.
And just about everything you write – which always cedes more power to the government over the people – is deadly wrong.
You misunderstand. I want to give the people more power over the government. In 2010 the people voted strongly against Obamacare, and … nothing happened! When the voters elect policymakers promising X, they should get X.
As things are the minority party has the power and incentive to keep the voters from getting what they said they wanted. That’s an utterly perverse incentive structure, unanticipated by the founders.
I want to give the people more power over the government.
Isn’t it funny, then, that the policies you advocate almost invariably result in the government having more power over the people.
I am continually amazed that the Republican Party still doesn’t see the vote potential in fighting Obamacare.
Or I guess they might, but their corporate donors are looking to get well off of it and so have given them their marching orders.
First, both sides have corporate donors. The old “Republicans are the party of big business while Democrats are the party of the working people” has been a lie for generations. Second, while it’s true that some corporations do benefit from Obamacare (I’d wager they’re primarily insurance companies), a lot more won’t. Those larger numbers mean that any party paying attention will have to consider whether retaining support of those who benefit is worth losing the support of those who lose.
the Republican Party still doesn’t see the vote potential in fighting Obamacare
What more could the Republican Party do to fight Obamacare? Opposition to Obamacare has been the GOP’s #1 message since 2010.
The House GOP could Impeach Obama, and conduct a trial in the senate.
Rand thinks that should be the Agenda in 2015, but he won’t cowboy up
and demand it now.
Personally, if it’s a great idea in 2015, then it’s a good idea now.
Rand just lacks the courage of his convictions.
I lack nothing, but you lack complete intelligence.
Fortunately for you, you post pseudonymously, so there will be no repercussions in your person life for you moronic posts.
Though, I suppose, at long last, I could ban you for your non-stop idiocy.
The House GOP could Impeach Obama, and conduct a trial in the senate.
No it couldn’t, you moron. It would go nowhere in the Senate. It would be as big a waste of time and political capital as you are a waste of oxygen.
it’s blowing holes in the federal budget
A zombie idea that just won’t die. To reiterate once again: on net, Obamacare slightly reduces the deficit.
Much of the country believes it’s a fraud, passed dishonestly, and not deserving of moral authority.
They believe that because the GOP has pounded on that message for the last four years. Medicare Part D was passed dishonestly, but the Democrats did not make its destruction their top political priority, and today it’s quite popular — despite the fact that it was less popular than Obamacare at their respective beginnings.
The message of this experience is that if one of the parties unites itself around opposition to a law it can make that law unpopular and quasi-illegitimate to “much of the country” — regardless of the substance of the law.
“A zombie idea that just won’t die. To reiterate once again: on net, Obamacare slightly reduces the deficit.”
How can you believe that with such certainty considering the law isn’t even fully implemented yet? Administration predictions shouldn’t be trusted on blind faith. They haven’t exactly been honest over the last four years. And remember that projections are just that, projections. Only time will tell but there is good reason to think health care costs and the government’s share of them will be going up. Anytime someone says Obamacare will do x, all I can think of is just like the website and keeping people on their old and better plans.
“Medicare Part D was passed dishonestly, but the Democrats did not make its destruction their top political priority,”
Translation: Bush did something bad and Democrats were upset at the time but now Obama is doing something bad and it is ok because Bush did something bad and you should desist in any talk of reversing Obama’s bad actions because you owe us for Bush.
How can you believe that with such certainty
The person I quoted states with certainty that Obamacare is “blowing holes in the federal budget”. But there is absolutely zero evidence for that — it’s a myth. Every CBO analysis from 2009 to the present has shown the law reducing the deficit.
Administration predictions shouldn’t be trusted on blind faith
The CBO is not part of the administration, and there’s a big difference between skepticism about forecasts and blindly asserting the opposite of what every forecast has concluded.
in 2009, the Federal Budget deficit was $ 1.4 trillion
In 2009, Obamacare was passed.
in 2014, Obamacare went into 3rd gear.
in 2014, the federal budget deficit is 514 billion.
http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/04/news/economy/budget-outlook-deficits-cbo/
Rand isn’t even on a planet called reality regard budget deficits, but that’s okay,
“in 2014, the federal budget deficit is 514 billion.”
You can thank fracking for that not Obamacare.
“But there is absolutely zero evidence for that — it’s a myth. ”
People in glasses houses and all…
“Obamacare slightly reduces the deficit.” Uh, no: that was under the CBO’s assumption (which they are obligated to make) that the law will be implemented as written, and have the results that were being assumed. The head of the CBO said at the time that that seemed like an unlikely assumption because of the politics involved.
That was before the mandate was delayed. That was before the government guaranteed to recoup insurance companies’ losses. Etc. The costs of this bill are moving quickly in the direction that those of us who opposed it predicted from the first.
See a similar example: the Medicare doc fix. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_Sustainable_Growth_Rate
Pushed off every single year by Congress. By now they would have to cut doctor payments by more than 20%. They can never do it, never could.
Don’t mean to insult you, but quoting a mythical thing like as if it was serious would have been foolish five years ago. Quoting it now shows a “willing suspension of disbelief”.
that the law will be implemented as written
True, but the changes since (particularly the Supreme Court making Medicaid expansion optional) have made the Obamacare fiscal outlook better, not worse.
That was before the government guaranteed to recoup insurance companies’ losses.
Those risk corridors are in the law as written, and have two sides: insurers who get cheaper-than-expected customers pay into the government, insurers who get pricier-than-expected customers get money from the government. This month’s CBO report estimates that the net effect will be to reduce the deficit by $8 billion — i.e. more money will come in than go out.
The costs of this bill are moving quickly in the direction that those of us who opposed it predicted from the first
No, simply not true. Compare the spending estimates in this month’s CBO report to those in the previous forecast — they went down.
See a similar example: the Medicare doc fix
A non-sequitur. Obamacare, as written, reduces the deficit. If Congress changes Obamacare so that it costs more, then yes, it will cost more. But now you’re talking about the costs of legislation that hasn’t been proposed, much less passed and signed.
“Those risk corridors are in the law as written”
And yet what is paid out in those corridors is uncertain and depends on how well Obamacare is implemented and on how widely it is accepted by the population. Stretching out timelines increases the chances that transition costs will take place over a longer period of time placing a greater burden on those who pay the costs. Also, these changes will have an effect on any prior predictions.
Then there is a lot of uncertainty because the regulations regarding the risk corridors and the rest of Obamacare are rather fluid.
Medicare Part D was passed dishonestly, but the Democrats did not make its destruction their top political priority
Maybe because there was a dearth of stories like this one that identified it as a disaster. Go ahead Jimmy, point me to the story of pain, violation and death as a result of Medicare Part D.
Your link doesn’t have a target.
point me to the story of pain, violation and death as a result of Medicare Part D
Sure, how about this one:
You can google “Medicare Part D horror story” for more.
The Bush administration responded to the crisis by telling private insurers “that they must provide a 30-day supply of any drug that a beneficiary was previously taking, and it said that poor people must not be charged more than $5 for a covered drug” (provisions that were not part of the law). And no, leading Democrats did not assail Bush for his lawlessness.
And I see that my link doesn’t have a target either; not sure what’s up with that. Here’s the link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/13/AR2006011301738.html
Everything predicted by the critics to go wrong is coming to pass, and then some.
But the democrats won’t give up trying to “fix it”, morphing it into some other form of socialist/fascist “universal health care” plan. That would require admitting the critics were right and they were wrong, and giving up power.
Everything predicted by the critics to go wrong is coming to pass, and then some
Hardly. Critics predicted that exchange premiums would be much higher than forecast by the CBO; they came in 15% lower. Critics predicted that health care spending growth would continue to rise; instead it fell to the lowest level in decades. On some key metrics Obamacare is outperforming even optimistic expectations.
According to HHS, health care spending has continued to grow at 3.6 to 3.8% with the authors of the study crediting the slow growth to the economic recession. Saying health care spending fell is like saying spending fell when Congress cut the rate of growth. It’s a lie, Jim.
I didn’t say that that spending fell, I said that the spending growth rate fell. In fact, it fell to a level lower than the growth rate of the economy for the first time since 1997, meaning that the health care fraction of the overall economy fell.
When Obamacare was passed critics claimed it would increase the rate of growth of health care spending. Now that that the opposite has happened, they claim Obamacare has nothing to do with the change. But you know that if the rate had increased Obamacare would have gotten 100% of the blame.
The unanswered question is are people seeking out and paying for the same amount of services and getting a better value or if they are receiving less services and not seeking them out due to increased costs in the health care (and other industries) and stagnant wages?
It is great to look at growth rate as a metric but you have to understand the factors that create the equation. A lower growth in the spending rate isn’t good if it means people are cutting back because they can’t afford the higher prices.
When Obamacare was passed critics claimed it would increase the rate of growth of health care spending.
I have no idea what they said or didn’t say, but considering we are only a month and a half into the first quarter of Obamacare healthcare spending; I’d say you have no idea what so ever what effect it has had.
One thing we do know is Obamacare has spent several hundreds of millions on websites that don’t give a dime to healthcare providers and don’t work. In some states, over $20,000 an enrollee (using Obama’s definition of enrollee as someone that has selected a plan, but maybe hasn’t actually signed up or paid for it) was spent on these websites. So some lousy web programmers have made some money, while medical device companies have lost business and shed employees because of a foolish tax. It seems Obamacare is about reducing supply in healthcare, pretending to increase demand, but really just makes money for people who cut and paste code (and Spanish translations) they found on the web.
“Critics predicted that exchange premiums would be much higher than forecast by the CBO; they came in 15% lower. ”
Critics said health insurance costs will be much higher and in many cases they are. Even when there is some premium relief it comes with higher deductibles, restrictions on providers, and reduced access to medicine and treatments.
The CBO predicted an increases in costs then lowered their predicted increase. They still predicted an increase. You are trying to spin that as health insurance costs are 15% lower.
“Critics predicted that health care spending growth would continue to rise; instead it fell to the lowest level in decades.”
No, they predicted that costs would continue to rise. As costs rise people are priced out of seeking services especially in an economy that has been struggling like ours for so long. Spending growth going down means that people are not spending as much on their health care not that their health care costs have gone down. It means people are spending less on their healthcare because they can’t afford to. I think that is because of Obama’s policies you might imagine some other reason for why the economy has been doing so bad.
Health care spending as a fraction of the total economy shrank for the first time since 1997. That is exactly the opposite of what Obamacare critics predicted.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/33/1/67.abstract
Growth in private health insurance spending also remained near historically low rates in 2012, largely influenced by the nation’s modest economic recovery and its impact on enrollment.
You wanna cherry pick? So do I.
I urge you to immediately consult an online dictionary to study the differences between the terms “cost” and “spending”.
From the Washington Post:
“Obama administration: Health law’s new rules will increase costs for most small businesses”
“Nearly two-thirds of small businesses that currently offer health insurance to their workers will pay more for coverage as a result of new rules in the health care law, as will millions of small-business employees and their family members, according to new estimates released by the Obama administration.”
Note that…estimates released by the Obama administration. Even they admit they are failing.
More:
“The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which has spearheaded the implementation of the law, has acknowledged that new rules requiring insurers to offer guaranteed coverage and renewal options to small employers will likely drive up the price of insurance for some companies. So will rules banning insurance companies from varying their rates based on factors like a company’s industry or the age of its employees.”
Of course the rules increase costs. They also improve the quality of insurance being offered by small businesses, and are offset by substantial tax breaks.
The thing that the right always misses about Obamacare is that it’s a bunch of sometimes painful tradeoffs. People get better coverage, but it costs more. Insurers, hospitals and doctors get more paying customers, but more cost controls. Medical device makers get more customers, but pay a new tax. People who had preexisting conditions get affordable insurance, healthy people who had cheap or no insurance have to pay more. Poor people get subsidized or free coverage, rich people pay new taxes.
Obamacare would be much more popular if it was like Medicare Part D: drug companies and insurers get new customers, seniors get free drugs, everybody wins! Just pay no attention to the hundreds of billions added to the deficit.
To their credit, the Democrats who wrote the ACA were more responsible than the Republicans who wrote Medicare Part D. They set it up as a sustainable, self-financing system that would actually reduce the deficit both directly (by bringing in more than it spends) and indirectly (by slowing the rate of health care spending growth, the biggest factor in our long term debt problem). Obama isn’t dessert, it’s vegetables, and Republicans act like it’s a surprise that it doesn’t taste like candy.
It’s neither dessert or vegetables. It’s what happens to dessert and vegetables after they’ve passed through the alimentary tract.
I admit it, I laughed.
“Of course the rules increase costs. ”
Glad you noticed…..
“They also improve the quality of insurance being offered by small businesses, and are offset by substantial tax breaks.”
A lie. The full range of quality in health insurance was always available.
Always.
Do you understand that simple fact? ALWAYS.
The difference is that people and businesses used to have the ability to make choices based upon their needs and situation. So therefore 80 year old males weren’t required to pay for ob/gyn services.
People could choose where to emphasize coverage and where to take risks based upon their own situation and self-knowedge.
Now, the government forces everyone to buy what the government thinks they must buy The government tinkers with the coverage so as to try and tweak the economics.
The government will *always fail* at that kind of tinkering. Always has. Always will.
Always.
“The thing that the right always misses about Obamacare is that it’s a bunch of sometimes painful tradeoffs.”
The government will always fail picking winners and losers because the government cannot possibly understand a system so complex. Trades are much more efficiently selected by the population if they are allowed to make the trades.
You claim – claim mind you – to be an engineer. I would think this would be obvious even to you.
A lie.
The truth. Before the ACA employers could offer insurance that didn’t cover hospitalization, or that didn’t cover prescription drugs, or had a $10k payout limit. Now they can’t. That change does exactly what I said it does: it improves the quality of insurance being offered by small businesses.
The full range of quality in health insurance was always available.
Of course businesses could choose to offer the sort of coverage now required by the ACA, and many did (including mine). But many did not. Forcing those companies to offer better coverage (and giving them help paying for it) has improved the quality of employer-offered coverage.
” Before the ACA employers could offer insurance that didn’t cover hospitalization, or that didn’t cover prescription drugs, or had a $10k payout limit. Now they can’t. That change does exactly what I said it does: it improves the quality of insurance being offered by small businesses.”
You’ve altered your statement. Before you said:
““They also improve the quality of insurance being offered by small businesses, and are offset by substantial tax breaks.”
And you have zero data on what businesses offered. Especially since you claim to run your own business so you don’t even have the data resultant from working for someone else. You haven’t a clue.
You’ve created an unprovable straw man and then demolished it. Your forte.
Additionally, many business offered very good health care that their employees were completely happy with. But now the employees are forced to pay more for services they simply do not need.
So you are still lying.
On top of all of that, millions of (around 6 at last count)people had health insurance and doctors that they were perfectly happy with and now they don’t.
Obama lied.
And so did you.
“The thing that the right always misses about Obamacare is that it’s a bunch of sometimes painful tradeoffs. ”
It is not the government’s right to make those trades. That’s what YOU always miss.
And it’s also not a good idea for a central authority to make those trades. They will always fail. You miss that too.
And when they fail – as Obama-cide is now failing – the central authority doubles down and tries to tweak the system more to account for that which they were unable to see in the first place.
That also fails.
And you have said here, many many times, that you wish the GOP would help fix it.
It cannot be fixed.
It can never work.
That’s the second biggest thing you miss of all.
The first biggest thing you miss is how priceless the liberty is that you sell so cheaply.
“Of course businesses could choose to offer the sort of coverage now required by the ACA, and many did (including mine). But many did not.”
How many didn’t? How many did?
Which ones?
What fraction of businesses offered programs their employees were miserable with and who now rejoice at what they are forced to buy?
You have no idea what you’re talking about. You just live in this cotton candy fantasy world and never apply a single ounce of critical thinking to your own thoughts. You’re happy to say anything at all without wondering – even for a moment, whether or not you can justify it.