ETA: Paywall bypass link: https://archive.is/vyU15
Republicans have spent the last 40 years purchasing the entire system, obviously it works for them. They’re the ones that paid for it.
Democrats passed ACA and removed student loans from being discharged in BK court.
Both parties actively fight against working class.
A lot of things, but at least it got rid of insurance companies denying people over pre-existing conditions.
It got us the privilege of HAVING to pay insurance companies, who make up reasons to deny, delay, and depose.
And if the individual can’t afford it, we funnel tax dollars to those same corporations, who make up reasons to deny, delay, and depose.
Its a cash grab for the insurance industry, really.
We elected Obama with the hope for single payer healthcare and received Romney Care in a rebrand effort called the ACA. The ACA was designed by a venture capitalist.
We elected Obama with the hope for single payer healthcare and received Romney Care in a rebrand effort called the ACA.
Dude if you didn’t read Obama’s 2008 campaign proposal for health care reform that’s on you. The only thing we didn’t get was the public option, thanks to Joe Lieberman.
https://www.kff.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/obama_campaign_position_on_health_care.pdf
https://www.kff.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/obama_health_care_reform_proposal.pdf
Yeah mate, he tried. Congress didn’t pass single-payer and he didn’t anticipate that level of Republican hostility because it hadn’t happened on that scale in the modern era of politics. So we got the ACA instead, which has likely saved thousands of lives just through no denial of coverage for preexisting conditions, let alone everything else it did.
Have you considered. That rather than a problem of the Obama administration. That perhaps that’s more an issue of you not setting realistic expectations?
Democrats with anything short of an unassailable commanding majority that could afford the attrition of 10 or more members. Would never be able to do that sort of thing. And they didn’t. Because the Democrat Party is a coalition. Not a monolithic party. It is made up of Democrats, and people who understand how the American election system works. And will do what they can to keep Republicans from as many offices as possible. Democrats at best had a tenuous veto proof majority for not even 2 weeks. And to even get what they got passed. Rapey drowny man who was only a year or two from death. Literally got up out of his hospital death bed to come in and vote.
No one I know who voted for Obama had any serious expectation that we were getting Single Payer. Did we hope that maybe a miracle would happen? Absolutely. But no one expected it. Most of us were pretty chuffed with what we got as lackluster as it was.
And no I’m not saying that we should all love and kiss the ass of liberal Democrats. They talk a good social Progressive talk. But are financially beholden to the problem. Therefore any solutions they have to offer are going to be handicapped at best.
But it’s kind of bullshit for us to attack them over it. If we cannot offer them similar resources and support so that they don’t have to rely on Wealthy oligarchs who are the problem. That’s an us problem. And not a problem of those trying to survive the system as it exists and get elected.
Short of a mass resurgence and re-energization of unions. Or some other similar solidarity group. It’s not going to change either. Because let’s be clear. We’re where we are today. Because back in the '80s unions thought they were so Irreplaceable and secure. They did what third-party voters do now. Withholding support for the only group with a chance of beating the fascist. Thinking that they would teach Democrats a lesson. Only to find out that they were the ones that were learning a lesson. That they were no longer relevant. When first they came for labor and unions. One of the worst miscalculations in post World War II American history. An epic self own. And no one learned.
No one I know who voted for Obama had any serious expectation that we were getting Single Payer.
Because that was never his proposal.
https://www.kff.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/obama_health_care_reform_proposal.pdf
Democrats at best had a tenuous veto proof majority for not even 2 weeks.
They had the house, the senate, and the POTUS. That’s “veto proof”. And it was for nearly two years.
If you mean “filibuster proof”, the filibuster is just a made up rule by the senate. A rule they could have, and should have, discarded the moment they took the senate.
Almost everything you said I agree with. All but unrealistic expectations. Obama was not a fighter. If he wielded the power of his office like FDR or almost any republican we wouldn’t be having this conversation about health care. In retrospect I don’t believe for a second that he had any intention of doing much of anything. Just empty campaign lies.
In retrospect I don’t believe for a second that he had any intention of doing much of anything. Just empty campaign lies.
We literally got everything Obama campaigned on in health care except the public option. This is what Obama promised you. If you say he promised something else, that’s your lie, not his.
https://www.kff.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/obama_health_care_reform_proposal.pdf
Republicans can do that because they’ve been largely unified. If a Democrat tried that others in their own party with different agendas would sell them out immediately. Solidarity goes a long long way. And while I hate all the empty campaign lies. You cannot deny that they still work. Trump has made good on it twice now. Not fulfilling his promises that is. But promising the world and delivering nothing. All because Republicans generally have solidarity
Obligatory fuck Joe Lieberman. To be clear, you’re not blaming the lack of a public option on Democrats right?
Honestly I blame the entire fraudulent system and those that refused to fight for the policies they campaigned on. Are the dems solely to blame, no. Did they fight, no. FDR knew how to wield the power of his office and he got shit done! Since the neoliberal takeover of the democratic party in the 90’s actually fighting for the people has taken a back seat to kissing up to corporate power and we are all living in that hell they willingly helped create.
Without the neoliberal takeover we might still have governance for and by the people and not some form of fascistic broligarchy masquerading as a democracy.
You say fuck Lieberman and rightly so, but fuck the entire system that made Lieberman possible in the first place. He is not the only dem to blame here, he was just the sacrificial lamb to keep the money machine churning people into profit.
And fuck the entire republican party in its entirety!
I truly think the last real republican was Ike, and the last real democrat had his brains spattered over the back of a motorcade. Sure there are sprinkles of hope like Sanders but he is literally fighting his own party as much as the opposition party.
Anyway that’s my 2¢.
The public option was also torn out at the last minute because someone died and was replaced by a Republican. So we got 75% of the improvements we wanted instead of 100%.
I think 75% is far too generous an estimate, tbh. Every policy I’ve acquired through the ACA-mandated marketplace has been garbage, right from the start. For-profit health care is evil, and the ACA just served to further entrench this evil in our lives. It did some marginal good, and I’m certainly not advocating for its repeal in favor of ‘concepts of a plan’. But 75%? I can’t get on board with that.
Ok…well. I see what you’re saying, but consider this.
Before the ACA, I didn’t have medical coverage at ALL. Hospitals just didn’t exist to me. There was a day in 2005 where I had incredible pain. Could not move. Like, could not move an inch. Otherwise the pain would get so much worse. Not that I was pain free laying still. I was still in tremendous pain. But it’s like the difference between a knife being stuck in your arm, and twisting the knife thats stuck in your arm.
And this pain was coming from the inside. After 3 days of laying in a pool of my own sweat, the pain subsidded enough for me to take a shower and use the bathroom. I was now peeing blood. I layed in my bathtub, called off work, and was 95% sure I was dying.
Eventually the pain went away on its own. I stopped peeing blood. 10 years later, I had the same thing, but not as painful. But it was a very distinct pain. It was like shards of glass were inside your nerve endings and kept traveling from your lower back, down to your balls, inside your balls.
Except this time, I had the ACA. Turns out I had several kidney stones that were too big to pass. After they did this thing where everybody stuck lazors up my pee hole, and shot them like star wars, they said some of them were smoothed over, which suggested I had them for years. I explained what had happened 10 years earlier, and he said "yeah that has been inside you, for 10 years. We broke it up, and it should be expelled via your pee over the next day or so.
Then I peed blood for a month.
Then a few years later I got cancer. They took a reading of red blood cells. They said a healthy blood count for a male my age and size would be a score between 14-18. Anything below 6 is considered potentially fatal. I was at like 4.6. They said I should have been so weak that I shouldn’t have been able to walk.
So I spent the next year in recovery. I’ve now beat cancer. I’ve expelled kidney stones that were bigger than my peehole, and thus would have been stuck forever causing me pain.
I looked at one of my 3 month quarterly “statement not a bill”, and without coverage, one quarter of cancer treatment would have been over 1 million dollars. I’d have been dead. Now due to my income, I haven’t paid a dime of that.
Sooooooooo, ACA may not be perfect, but I’m a big fan for sure.
And just think that our collective taxes could have paid for your life saving treatment instead of going to tax breaks for the rich.
Before the ACA I had no healthcare and nothing has changed. Glad it worked for you but even with your triumph it has left many more dead than need be for the greed of the few.
I hate to speak for everyone else here, but I think its also important to remember to not let perfect be the enemy of good.
It created the current version of the private health insurance industry and enabled it to systemically deny care care to people who are most vulnerable.
If you want to see how it was before the ACA, watch Michael Moore’s documentary “Sicko”. You’ll understand how the ACA is an improvement, regardless of its flaws and failure to be The Ideal One True Universal Healthcare we wish for.
Trying to get something, anything, passed to improve the HC situation took decades of fights. Read the history of it. Did you know Nixon tried to get universal coverage done back in the late '70’s, but Ted Kennedy decided to make the perfect be the enemy of the good and led the effort against it, killing it (before he died he said that was his biggest regret). He and the unions calculated that if they killed it they could deny Nixon a win (sound familiar?) and get single-payer next time there was a Dem president, which of course they couldn’t. Clinton tried to do it, HRC led the effort and they were inundated with massive opposition. It got nowhere, not even close.
Next up, Obama. However imperfect it is, it was a significant accomplishment to get the ACA done. It was hoped it could continue to be improved and worked on going forward. Instead it’s been a constant battle just to keep it from being repealed.
It technically forbids insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, but clearly they just realized they can take our money then deny services instead.
Also it threw a bone to the insurance companies by fining anyone not covered by insurance - incentivising new customers to just pay for insurance instead.
So tbh it was indeed a flop imo
