Green Eggs and Ham

Turtle

Administrator
Staff member
Retired Expediter
How can it have failed, when it hasn't even begun?
It has begun. Two years ago. It just isn't yet fully implemented. it's already failed because of individual premiums being increased from between 38% and 400%. It's already failed because businesses are laying off people, reducing hiring, and cutting hours to help pay the increased costs of Obamacare. It's already failed because the big selling point of the Affordable Care Act (not an oxymoron) was its protection for the middle class, yet it puts customers into a giant exchange where certain things are covered according to government mandates, not market forces. The result of all these mandates and regulations is a much higher burden on the middle class. This burden takes many forms, such as increased premiums, job losses, and lower paychecks. It's already failed because the exchanges, which won't go live until October 1, is already costing $4.4 billion instead of the $2 billion budgeted, in order to pay for grants to help states set up exchanges. Not only that, but HHS now say they need an additional $1.5 billion (that's a total of $5.9 billion instead of $2 billion) to deal with the states that opt out of the exchanges. It's already failed because, at last count, insurers in 27 states have eliminated child-only healthcare plans out of fear that parents would enroll sick children under the preexisting condition mandate of Obamacare. It's already failed because what started out as a ridiculous 8000 pages of new regulations associated with Obamacare is now a ridiculously ridiculous 20,000 pages, with 848 pages released in just a single day in March.

Nancy Pelosi said we need to pass it so that we can find out what's in it, but she was wrong. It got passed and we still don't know what's in it. Harry Reid was more correct when he said Obamacare is a menu, we just don't know how to make all the dishes yet.

Obamacare costs too much and it's not working they way they said it would.

And if it has failed already, where in the analysis of blame is the Republican [Tea Party especially] efforts to defund, derail, and decry it?
Well, since all those efforts have been unsuccessful, they can't really be blamed for the failures of Obamacare, now can they?

I'm no fan of the ACA, but it is at least an effort to change the ridiculous lack of health care situation, and if there are objections to the program, why don't the legislators work on changing the parts they dislike, instead of throwing the whole thing out? Surely there are some parts they like, as it was a Republican idea before Obama promoted it, right?
I think a compromise would be good: delay the whole program until both sides can work out their differences and create a program that might succeed. But threatening to 'shut down' the government over it is just extortion, IMO, and that's in nobody's best interests.
I'm not sure what you mean by "ridiculous lack of health care situation" since only about 20% of the population was uninsured pre-Obamacare with more than 50% of them being uninsured by choice. As for the legislators working working to change the parts they dislike, that was made virtually impossible when the Democrat-controlled Congress rammed Obamacare down the throats of the American people with virtually no bipartisan support whatsoever.

As for universal health care being a Republican idea before Obama promoted it, not hardly. Obama's health care is one where he picked up the ball that Bill and Hillary dropped many years earlier. The Republican version of universal health care was based on need and market forces, not government mandates, and used the individual mandate by way of tax credits so that individuals could buy at least catastrophic coverage. The idea originated with economists in the late 1980s, and some republicans used that method as an alternative to the Clinton Nanny State approach. When the Clinton health care overhaul failed, Republicans dropped their plans. Then, Obama took the Clinton angle, and incorporated the individual mandate into it, and turned it all into something rather ugly.

In the 2008 primary campaign when Obama and Hillary were running against each other, in an effort to distinguish himself from her, playing on the public sentiment, he said, "What's she not telling you about her health care plan? It forces everyone to buy insurance, even if you can't afford it, and you pay a penalty if you don't." How rich. Less than one month after his election he met with Tom Daschle (his nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary) and other Democratic leaders and said that he would have to reconsider the individual mandate, even for those who can't afford it, including paying a penalty if they don't. Daschle recounts all that in his book, "Getting It Done: How Obama and Congress Finally Broke the Stalemate to Make Way for Health Care Reform."
 
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layoutshooter

Veteran Expediter
Retired Expediter
Then there is the fact that we now are REQUIRED to buy ONLY government APPROVED insurance, whether we can afford it or not, need it or not, or want it or not. It is being administered by an armed agency of the federal government. It takes away freedom and dictates what we can, or cannot do. That is tyranny.

It was government interference that has led to the problems we face and continuing government interference will make it worse.
 
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