If he had done more with healthcare it wouldn't have been an unpopular expensive handout to blue cross blue shield that you needed a spreadsheet to decipher. If he had made it a plan that actually made enough people lives better they would have come out in elections to defend it.
Healthcare
- Thread starter RDCR07
- Start date
-
In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
If he had done more with healthcare it wouldn't have been an unpopular expensive handout to blue cross blue shield that you needed a spreadsheet to decipher. If he had made it a plan that actually made enough people lives better they would have come out in elections to defend it.
I doubt he had the political capital to do more in any case, given how much it took out of him to do the part he did. In any case, Obamacare is largely popular today, which is part of why the Republicans are finding it so difficult to completely kill it off. They're trying to do it piece by piece, though.
It's not popular, which is why Republicans control both houses of Congress, the presidency and a huge majority of state legislatures and governorships. As someone who actually used it for several years and spent hours trying to find the right plan and then searching hundred page booklets to figure out if my doctor was in network and then saw my premiums raised 45% in one year and all of this for a byzantine system of co pays and fsa accounts and and an ambulance bill that cost hundreds of dollars let me tell you that it feckin sucked. And I'm one of the lucky ones. I dont have a chronic health problem or cancer or expensive prescription drugs and I dont live in the many many counties with 0 or 1 insurance companies. Obama had a mandate and huge majorities in Congress and he passed a heritage foundation plan. Not to mention his failure to protect acorn or prosecute any bankers for crashing the world economy or to even try to pass card check. He failed and it directly led to this.
ACA is +12 despite being "more popular than its ever been". Medicare is +32. Obamacare is not popular.
He was personally popular. Once in a generation charisma and popularity. His signature achirvenemtn isnt, which is why his party lost 1000 seats in 8 years while he won two easy victories.
It wasn't popular, which is why Republicans control Congress. I doubt the presidency has a lot to do with it, considering Obama already won re-election once and the Democrats lost the first post-Obama election on the back of an historically unpopular candidate (versus another historically unpopular candidate, mind, so take that for what you will).
There is polling to suggest that the ACA has been getting more and more popular (or less unpopular at least, which it certainly was for a long time).
https://www.kff.org/health-reform/p...l-future-directions-for-the-aca-and-medicaid/
This is the one I could find quickly, I don't really have time to look very hard right now. It's also over a year old, so take it with a grain of salt, but the trend was positive up to 2017 at least. There are definitely parts of it that are very unpopular, but similarly there are parts of it that are quite popular, which is making it hard for the Republicans to get everyone to agree on how to dismantle it.
Edit: I see @Carolina Red found a newer one, so ignore me I guess.
Surely that's more down to the rest of the party being completely disfunctional and disorganized.
maybe but the president is the leader of his party
In a democratic society, polling at +12 doesn’t make you “unpopular”... it just isn’t as popular as Medicare.
True, but that depends also on the whole party embracing his ideas. He does not have a complete executive control over it. The majority of party members "in power" are holding elected positions.
Spare me the anal retentive gotcha stuff. Plus 12 is literally the highest it's ever been. Look at the chart in the link you posted, it's never been a political winner and the proof is that Republicans control all levels of government. It's significantly less popular than Medicaid and medicare.
The roll out could have been managed a lot better, the policy selection could have been made simpler. The execution was pretty poor and it led to the conservatives calling it a classic case of government inefficiency, which is actually fair criticism. I personally never had to deal with it as I was on my parent's plan until I got my own job before switching over to my employer's plan so I don't know much about it.
You really are predictable, you know that?
I’m well aware that it’s the most popular it has ever been, as that’s exactly what I said a few posts ago. I just disagree with your assertion that something a majority of people like in a democratic society is “unpopular”. I also don’t buy your explanation that the ACA is the reason why the GOP is in power.
That’s not “anal retentive gotcha”, that’s just not buying what you are selling.
That's exactly what it is. You consistently pick apart minor points in peoples posts and get into long back and forths while ignoring the larger point they were making. It may impress schoolers but it's not working here.
You claimed the ACA is unpopular. I posted poll results showing that it isn’t.
I mean...
qed
The intense squabbling that broke out as Obama was pushing the ACA through congress and the incredible expenditure of political capital he exhausted to barely push it to the finish line in its wounded form should give everyone a bit of pause as to how difficult it will be to push a single payer bill through both houses of congress, even if they are at the time controlled by Dems. It will be exponentially more difficult to push such a bill through the house in particular, since members are extremely vulnerable from being challenged every two years. The fact that Obama actually got some form of healthcare reform through is actually astonishing given the intense political polarization we've seen over the past decade.
I remember chatting online with a friend in the US and insulin came up. She told me she'd started buying it in Canada, proudly declaring it was saving her over $1000/month. This is about 4 years back now. I thought she must be getting something really fancy, state of the art drugs and the latest injection system perhaps.
It turned out that wasn't the case, not only was she using the older cheaper formulations, she was using the basic vial and syringe system.
I told her what we were using. The latest formulations, easy dispense (dial a dose) - standard stuff in Europe and free under the health services in most countries. She said that even when she still had the right medical insurance cover, that was beyond what she could have let the doctor prescribe.
It's almost unimaginable for Europeans. When it's not even about a shortage of money going into the overall system, it just seems like deliberate cruelty.
Last edited:
That's one thing that gets lost when you look at things like GDP per capita. America has a high standard of living in many ways, but it just seems so far behind much of Europe when it comes to healthcare (unless you're rich), labour laws, tenancy laws, justice system... it's a long list. But hey, they have more choice in supermarkets.
During the campaign, the conservative WSJ estimated a 10-year cost of 18tr for all his campaign promises combined.
I thought this was a good explanation of some of the savings people were missing or choosing to miss in their analysis: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/01/vox-bernie-sanders-single-payer-ezra-klein-matt-yglesias/
They didn't really do a very good job of explaining it. The country is going to spend about 42 trillion on healthcare over the next decade by way of existing premiums, reduced salaries when employers share the cost of premiums, co-pays and deductibles, and through our regular taxes that pay for Medicare Medicaid, Obamacare and the VA health system. So if the government spends 32 trillion over the same period then that's a significant savings, but why is there such a massive disparity between this number and the number the WSJ (18 trillion) published a couple of years ago. Also complicating things is Sanders himself hasn't done his own assessment beyond saying where the money would come from on his website.
4.2 Trillion a year on healthcare would be terrifying, millions of Americans would live to like 250 and properly feck the planet. That's if it was spent on actual health instead of middlemen as happens now.
I think the 18 trillion was the expected additional expenditure, so current total us budget + an average of 1.8t a year over 10 years as worst case scenario for the WSJ which isn't generally fond a big government. And the budget is heading in that direction with or without Bernies policies.
I'm sure we can figure it out. Literally dozens of countries have done it.
More or less the soundbyte proponents should be using
The hilarity of a libertarian think tank accidentally making the argument that Universal Healthcare would actually save money has made my Monday and perhaps my whole week 
The hilarity of a libertarian think tank accidentally making the argument that Universal Healthcare would actually save money has made my Monday and perhaps my whole week
I wonder if it was even an accident. I've known libertarian leaning people that completely supported universal healthcare. They had seen the data from Europe, Asia, Australia and concluded they and their businesses would be more efficient with universal healthcare.
Really there is only a tiny minority that would not directly benefit - people who are tied to the for-profit medical industry. But since that was a huge mistake that never should have happened that's more than acceptable to end the horribly inefficient HMO system that never should have been implemented in the first place.
The hilarity of a libertarian think tank accidentally making the argument that Universal Healthcare would actually save money has made my Monday and perhaps my whole week
Oops!
Mate just let me have this one thing
These guys, who are apparently left leaning, came up with similar numbers.
https://www.urban.org/research/publ...expenditures-and-federal-and-private-spending
Its not too surprising though. There has been data for over a decade that pretty much every universal health care country irrespective of their specific details is more efficient than jury-rigged mess that USA medical insurance has been ever since HMO were introduced.
The key thing for politicians selling it is to not frame it as an expenditure but rather a net savings.
Also I think its important to emphasize the relationship between patient and doctor without a middleman looking to create profit by micro-examining every medical decision. Decisions should be made between doctor and their patient. Only after a decision is agreed between doctor and patient should insurance come into play. No bureaucratic middleman trying to shave 'cost' to increase the profits. Medical decisions should be between patient and doctor.