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Ben Smith has made a splash at Buzzfeed pointing out that the age-rating regulation in the ObamaCare bill will result in a subset of young people paying substantially more for health insurance. Since older people can only be charged three times as much as young people, some young people will see big rate increases next year.
Matt Yglesias thinks this analysis is too short-sighted since all young people will eventually grow old.
The primary flaw in that analysis, however, is that obviously today’s young people will be tomorrow’s old people. So even if the existing under-35 cohort has relatively few health care problems right now, it’s still in our interests to set up a system that will provide for future needs. [...]
But honestly the issue here isn’t in the details, it’s in the fact that today’s 25 year-old is tomorrow’s 55 year-old. Whether the Affordable Care Act is really in the interests of the young cohort just comes down to whether or not it’s a good idea overall.
The problem is that the Affordable Care Act is overall a bad idea if you look at it from this lifetime perspective. Let’s even leave aside the huge issue that it does nothing to address the fact that the government allow hospitals, drug companies and doctors to charge Americans prices way above international norms.
Let’s focus purely on its value as a social insurance scheme to pool resources to spread risk/fulfill needs. The minimum medical loss ratio in the ACA is only 80 percent for individual insurance policies. That means for every $100 you play in premiums the insurance company only needs to spend $80 on actual care.
This sounds bad but several factors mean that in reality it will probably be much worse. First, the exchange need to be self-funded so it is likely they will add some fee to your premiums that will not count towards the medical loss ratio. Second, insurance companies are redefining some administration activities to count as “care.” Finally, the byzantine nature of our private insurance claim system means some of the money spent on “care” is actually being eaten up by providers’ administrative spending to deal with theses insurers.
It is possible that over your lifetime roughly 20-25 cents of every dollar spent on the ACA exchange scheme will be completely wasted. By comparison, Medicare basically has a medical loss ratio just under 98% and Social Security spends less than 1 percent on administrative costs. The ACA, if it does work, will achieve its goal in a shockingly inefficient manner.
You can argue from a moral perspective that having any near-universal social insurance system, no matter how incredibly wasteful or ineffective, is better than letting people who get sick go bankrupt. That doesn’t change that fact that overall the design of the ACA is terrible.
Image by Brooks Elliott under Creative Commons license.
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That is one heck of a “moral perspective”, Jon.
It is equivalent to arguing that drones are morally superior to “feet on the ground” because we, the people, can more easily ignore the gore.
And, both “perspectives” allow the deeper moral implications to go unaddressed.
Beyond that, of course, you do realize that it is Obama’s 1st term “signature accomplishment” which you are dissing?
While, on the other foot, it is likely that it is his 2nd term “signature accomplishment” which I despair.
Ah, well …
Both accomplishments, are a “pretty terrible deal” only for the “targets” of those deals, presumably somebody else profits … immensely.
In a, “This is not a democracy it is a business” – world, these kinds of “things” are what pass as “pragmatic”, astute success and insightful political acumen, one imagines.
It is most unfortunate that our collective imagination, Too-Little-to-Consider-Something-Different, cannot conceive of ANY possible alternatives to the legacy political parties (all two of them) or any ideas and concepts beyond the stage-managed kabuki of the status quo …
But then, ’tis not ours to reason why …
It is said that Confucius spent the better part of his seventy-three years searching for a Prince who would embrace the sage’s wise and moral perspective that peace and justice are the best social conditions for the sustainable well-being of human beings.
I doubt that any of “our” Princes and Princesses have any more interest in those “things” … yet, peace and justice seem quite as desirable in our interesting times.
Perhaps, we must “grow” them from the bottom … up?
Starting with foundational moral principles that even little children can readily grasp?
And progressing, if we are wise, to the understanding that civil society MUST find the means of protecting itself from any concentration of wealth or power in the hands of a few … a few who will claim to always be right … as Timothy Geithner said, when asked if ever he had made any mistakes, perhaps done anything wrong, “We underestimated how right we were about everything” …
What do you think, Jon, have you any solutions to offer us in terms of how we, the people, might manage a better “deal”, might rebuild the Rule of Law, might “effectively” challenge the tyranny of money?
Isn’t that really the essential question of our time, the Divine Right of Money?
DW
The plan is just now emerging into view. From what I am reading it is ugly. http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/05/obamacare-a-deception/#.URlWqUsR9W0.google
Bronze, Silver, and Gold. What a total fail.
Thanks for continuing to point this out.
Yglesias’ argument is idiotic. You don’t buy health insurance for 30 years. You buy it for 12 months.
Plus, younger Americans are significantly poorer than older Americans.
Plus, health insurance isn’t descriptive of anything. A tent and a penthouse condo are both housing. Doesn’t mean they’re remotely comparable.
It has taken a while, but most Democrats with an IQ above room temperature now recognize that most of what Bill Clinton did was poison for the US economy and for the Democratic Party base. NAFTA, GATT, WTO, bailing out Goldman Sachs on their Fiasco Mexicano, giving a pass to unregulated OTC derivatives trading, signing Commodities and Futures Trading “Modernization” Act. Bill Clinton partied it up with Monica in the White House while America was hollowed out and the jobs he said he was going to focus on like a laser were shipped out to South of the Border and China, while Wall St was allowed to turn the Federal Reserve into their private money printing machine. Most of us understand that we are paying the price for all that now.
Hopefully it will not take so long for Democrats to figure out how they’ve brutally fucked by 0bama and their Party with the ACA. The Democratic Party is stuffed to the rafters with people so stupid you wonder how they feed and dress themselves, though. So it could take repeated rectal prolapse and sepsis before it dawns on them that they’ve been fucked, where they’ve been fucked, how hard, by whom and why.
In the end, Obamacare will be remembered and referenced like “NAFTA” – it will be used as a synonym for cunning, deliberate betrayal.
Left out Clinton’s signature on the repeal of Glass-Steagall from the list of destructive acts of the Clenis. The Clenis itself may be nothing out of the ordinary, but the list of Bill Clinton’s destructive actions and endorsements just in the realm of economics is very lengthy indeed.
It is not wise to consider those with whom you disagree to be lesser beings than yourself. In some locales the Dem Party is represented by some very smart individuals, who understand that local politics are important, too. Where I live, the GOP holds absolute sway, except locally, which is also increasingly contested. I believe local politics, the practitioners of which are generally much more answerable to their constituencies, are quite distinct from those of the national policy makers. It is hard to be a successful politician of any stripe w/o the backing of an organization, which provides all manner of material and personnel support.
I suppose that I am attempting to say that there are some very intelligent folks who are involved with the two major Parties, the Greens, and yes, even the Libertarians.
Not to say that I disagree with your major premise-I always say that Clinton was the best Republican Prez we have ever had-before Zero, that is. Now it has become painfully apparent that the uni-party dictates everything, always to those who have purchased them.
How do we achieve critical mass to change things?
Yes, the more one hears about the ACA the more it is painfully obvious this thing is little help. It is unfortunate to our young people that they will have to live with this.
You have to realize that an insurance company must pay income taxes, earn a profit, pay excessive admin costs, pay executive salaries and bonuses, pay for lobbying costs, pay for fancy seminars for the “key” staff, cultivate agreements with providers and corporate buyers of their services (aka cronyism).Is it any wonder medicare would be far more effective in delivering health care? Maybe some day, the public will wake up to these realities. Health care should be a public utility run by government.
How to win friends and influence people. I am sure that anyone you are trying to convince to listen to you is mightily impressed by your comments here. Those of us who don’t particularly want to join the Teabaggers and happen to believe in the actual principles of the Democratic Party, even though they are not actually upheld by a lot of the current politicians, don’t appreciate this.
Telling me to go joing the Greens or some other such tripe is not useful either. The “people” in the Democratic party are not responsible for the ACA mess. In case you hadn’t noticed – the “people” didn’t vote on this – just the a**holes in DC did, and apparently they don’t give a rat’s a** what the “people” think about it.
Thanks for nothing.
Any plan that leaves the criminal insurance companies and mercenary big pharma in the driver’s seat is a bad deal. And no amount of lipstick will ever make that pig look like anything but potential pork chops.
That kind of over the top rhetoric is why I’ve been hanging around less and less. Shit, I’ve got people standing in line to badmouth me. Why would I come here for it? This person clearly hates Clinton viscerally.
Why does Yglesias have a job?
Obamacare was and remains a huge bailout of the same health care insurance industry that fucked up American health care in the first place. There’s some good carrots in it, but overall the long term approach was poison.
Medicare for All was the way to go, but Obama bargained all that away behind closed doors long before the American public had any say.
What did you expect? This is the same guy that bailed out Wall St, the guys that crashed the world economy, and gave them trillions of dollars all in the name of “protecting” the little guy. What bullshit!
I think the fact is this one: the Public has woken up to the fact that the insurance companies have to pay for these things. But the Public knows damn well that there is a lot of padding going on.
That same Public has looked overseas to what the European folks have as their standard, and you know something – there aren’t any individuals making 700 million dollars a year just because they happen to have the title of “Administrator” or “CEO” hanging on to the end of their name. That same Public realizes that here in the USA, depending on who is looking at and presenting the figures, we are each paying about 60 to 130% MORE than the Europeans are paying and they are getting a better product. No one in Europe has to spend weeks arguing about whether a treatment their doctor recommends is “experimental” or not. Nor are there any sorry tales about the vast amount of corruption that is going on here in the USA.
One example of this corruption: Obama saw to it that the ACA included some 20 billion dollars so that the hospitals could implement computerized and digitized records for the patients. But this is all a sham.
In California, for example, most hospitals belong to one of only four or five franchises. The hospitals try to tell everyone in their local community that some $ 300,000 is needed for having programmers put together a system of computerizing the records. But that software already exists at the first hospital in the franchise to accomplish said task. So the $ 300,000 is put in someone’s back pocket, (probably the Administrator’s) while the computer software is simply passed from the first hospital to get the software to that particular hospital.
For whom? Not all.
Former Pres. Clinton is not a nice person. He got a sweet heart deal of all sweet heart deals, back at the time that he signed the Bank “Reform” and Modernization Act in his final months as President. For his helping to destroy the protections offered our economy by Glass Steagall, he was promised some $100K per speech at Corporate podiums. So much money in fact that he and Mrs Clinton went from near bankruptcy when they left the WH, to having close to 100 million bucks in some six years. Not bad work if you can 1) get it and 2) not be kept up at night thinking about your culpability in the destruction of the middle class.
Apparently Mr. O’barmey struck a nerve and whereas I can not speak for him, if I were he I’d be very satisfied with your response. A simple and more honest edit of your naive, self-serving defensiveness will make my point: “the Democratic a**holes in DC did”
And please show me where O’barmey suggested you join the Greens? That’s your tripe, not his.
“Current politicians?” I left the Democratic Party before Clinton was elected, when Clinton stopped his campaign to fly to his home state of Arkansas to oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, who’d killed a cop when he was a minor then shot himself in the head, leaving him essentially still a child and incapable of understanding his situation. Indeed, when asked what he wanted for his final dinner, he said he’d wait until after the execution. Clinton, with Hillary at his side, used him as an example of true justice – never mind that he was shilling for conservative votes.
And perhaps you are unaware that Jimmy Carter was the first neo-liberal president and was busting unions (while green lighting a genocide in East Timor) well before Reagan got the job. He was also the first to cut capital gains taxes and a simple googling of that topic would show you that it was the Democratic Party which consistently backed the oligarchs – over 4 decades – in upending the tax code for their greed quest re unearned, investment income. And surely you know by now that the Democrats rubber-stamped Reaganism all the way. In fact, Larry Summers, Clinton and Obama’s go to man on matters economic was given his first beltway job by… Ronald Reagan (Obama’s hero). Reaganomics morphed into the Democrats “third way” and ultimately into Rubinomics, the foundation upon which our current and never ending depression is built.
Did you know that, at a time when they held majorities in Congress, every Democratic senator voted to confirm Antonin Scalia to SCOTUS? I’ll assume you didn’t…
Those of us who refuse the cognitive dissonance resulting from all the lies chimed at us for decades by the long-failed Democratic Party gave up, long ago, trying to convince partisans of your folly. You’d apparently prefer that we STFU, but that ain’t gonna happen and you’ll have to work a lot harder to score any points for your team than with piqued responses to factually accurate and devastating truths about the party you need to defend.
Meanwhile we’ll continue exercising our right to speak our mind openly.
Thanks for a good laugh.
No one says it is a bad design for everyone. For instance, Rahm Emanuel got enough backing for his design of this legislation that he now occupies the mayorial office in Chicago. And the woman from one of the government agencies who helped Rahm, and Wellpoint executives, in designing the program went on to receiving a very lucrative position at one of the bigger health insurers.
The ACA is also good for anyone lucky enough to work for a larger company that pays their health insurance. But the program is actually unaffordable for anyone who is self-employed, and older, or self-employed and has a prior disability or prior condition, and makes only a middle class income. I have to pay $ 1,100 a month under the California exchange, to cover myself and my spouse, since we are both over the age of 58. Can’t afford to do it, so must also figure out a way to come up with the$ 700 mandate.
For me, this is one of very few political subjects really worth discussing these days. Yet, so few commentators ever discuss it.
Maybe that’s because we are all always focused on the latest shiny thing the media throws before us. Or maybe because it’s too hard to contemplate.
Worst of all, maybe there is nothing we can do at this point because we sat still too long and that is too hard to face.
There is no moral argument for imbecilic profligacy .Even a child could deduce that such a “moral argument”would be tantamount to advocating massive death , economic devastation, and indentured servitude via austerity .This Obamacare was crafted by the insurance cartel to be a bailout/giveaway for the oligopolies that comprise the health-care complex .If the citizenry had any control over its government we would have single-payer ,but we are toothless and cowardly , so we eat whatever cost-inefficent shit that is served to us ,and then come here and play pretend policy analysts .
Do my mean health care or payments for health care? I am not sure I want government taking out anyone’s appendix.
” The “people” in the Democratic party are not responsible for the ACA mess. In case you hadn’t noticed – the “people” didn’t vote on this – just the a**holes in DC did, and apparently they don’t give a rat’s a** what the “people” think about it.”
Democrats did vote on Obama’s first term. They did that only a few months ago.
How to win friends and influence people. I am sure that anyone you are trying to convince to listen to you is mightily impressed by your comments here. Those of us who don’t particularly want to join the Teabaggers and happen to believe in the actual principles of the Democratic Party, even though they are not actually upheld by a lot of the current politicians, don’t appreciate this.
“Telling me to go joing the Greens or some other such tripe is not useful either.”
Why is it not useful?
While in the 2008 campaign, Obama said single payer would never work in the U.S. He was either deceived (aka stupid) or lying.
I’m going with lying.
Hating Clinton viscerally?
As a person, he’s disarming, a real charmer and one of the smartest politicians I’ve ever heard speak in my life.
Hating the bills he signed, some of which he actively campaigned to get passed, though? Absolutely.
Nothing personal or visceral about that.
Every Democrat knows that Republicans are stupid (or adjective of your choice) for voting against their own economic interests.
When Democrats vote against their own economic interests, though, it’s considered more intelligent and mature than voting for a candidate with whom they actually agree on both economic issues and social issues.
All the Democratic Party needed was for the base to hail the Affordable Care Act as really, really swell when it was passed three years ago–and the base dutifully obliged, as it always does. How well or how poorly the ACA would actually function down the road was irrelevant and remains so, because now it’s etched in stone and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Feel better? It’s good to get things off your chest or chin, ain’t it. So, to what political affinity group do you gravitate to? ” Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one. ” Or are you the leader of your own political party? Let’s read the planks of your platform, please.
Rewriting history doesn’t make it true. The base never liked the ACA. Show me where there’s a majority approval among the base, please.
Yep, it’s as you say it is. And not only do we not have Single Payer, we have a system that allows for egregious rate hikes. Almost every insurance company is California has hiked its rates some 15% to 21% per year.
And which candidate would that be? Please tell us that candidate that you speak so well of. And, that we all agree with on the issues but vote against because of party loyalty and stupidity. Fell free to name, names. It’s your big chance!
I think what is happening between you and “Jon73″ is that the two of you are discussing different bases. Jon sounds like he is talking about the innermost sanctum of voters who are total party loyalists. That segment only makes up some 42% of all voters. It is possible that you are meaning people in general. All voters.
And Gallup polling shows that over 60% of all voters want Medical Marijuana, and over 50 percent want acceptance of the LGBT lifestyle, and over 70% of all voters want Single Payer Universal Health Care. It is possible to “google” the expression: “people don’t approve of the ACA,” and get tens of thousands of links.
Were his lips moving when he said that? Let me know, then I can answer said question.
Overall. I’ll vote for The Overall Party next chance I get. Where do I sign up? I’ve worn overalls for at least 15 years. I prefer Carharts or Lees. But, hey, if it gets me into the party, I’m flexible.
… excellent link splashoil … thank you … very complete rundown on what ACA may tend to be and not be.
It is becoming more plain and easier to see why year 2014 was selected as ACA Year One. By the time mid 2016 and then early 2017 rolls around Barack Obama will be packing up, getting ready to leave the WH and laying out his post WH Posh/Plush Life On EZ Street , the Obama POTUS Book Deal and Obama Library donors list. These guys just don’t go home like Harry Truman did anymore. Way too Imperial now.
Meanwhile large numbers of USians ( tens of millions to be sure ) will be drowning in ACA floodwaters of process,protocol and penalty ACA regime with significant money hardship and related stress being imposed daily,weekly and monthly and finally yearly.On the most vulnerable. The unemployed. The underemployed. The abused employed. The least able to negotiate with government on knowledgeable terms — the least educated Those who underqualify/overqualify and go into endless ACA cul-de-sacs.
But it was / is all done to “improve” these USians access and ability to afford healthcare. That will be the lasting ACA punchline. What healthcare? Who’s “healthcare”? Mine,yours or AHIPs?
MediCareForAll was what USA and USians needed. A proven decades old USG HC program expanded up and down with the current financial streams devoted to AHIP mismanaged HC all combined/recombined into MediCareForAll.
It would have been possible to begin with lower one third of USian national population correlated by income/employment/age/disability/family/social status and worked up from there and down from current age 65 Medicare threshold and meet in the middle somewhere by year 2015 with Year One placed at year 2011. Obama WH(D) sabotaged and torpedoed that concept.
This AHIPPROFITCARE Rube Goldberg contraption called ACA or ObamaCare was thrown into place with large boost from Obama WH and the D Party.
Why?
To keep the American healthcare for profit(s) regime in play for at least another decade before the whole ethically rotted and morally bankrupt AHIP edifice collapses.
From what?
From AHIP insatiable greed and inability to function without the greed for profit(s) being the first patient treated every minute,hour,day,week and year by AHIP.
Just a second, here. 42% of all voters are not Democratic party loyalists, either. I don’t need to google that. Try 21-25%, please. Then’s there’s that many Republicans, at least. So that’s the opposition. And, registered Independents maybe 20-25%, factored in next. Then there’s 30-35% who don’t bother to vote, period. So, I’m thinking your not accurate and neither is John unless we’re not talking about ” realpolitik “. But something else, like wishful thinking ,perhaps.
The DINO crowd didn’t eat the Affordable Care Act up with a spoon and attempt to shout down any criticism because, after all, it still had some pretty neat things in it and could always be expanded upon so let’s throw our full support behind the ACA because it’s the best we can do right now? Like hell they didn’t. Those people are the Democratic Party’s base. Who did you think I was talking about?
“total party loyalists”
Quite right–those are the people I was referring to. Thanks, elisemattu.
Dunno. I read his words–no video.
I’m still going with lying, though.
Being registered “independent” does not always mean the voter is actually independent. It may mean that the voter wants flexiblity in primary voting. Or, it may mean that you consider being registered “indie” advantageous for a variety of other reasons.
For example, in Massachusetts, if you register “unenrolled,” you ca vote in the primary of any party. Over 50% of Massachusetts voters are registered independent. Yet, there is no doubt that many of that 50% vote Democrat in every election.
When you make a serious post to me, I will give you a serious reply.
LOL! My big chance for what?
Wasn’t it passed thru Reconciliation so it has a 10year life unless reauthorized?
If ever there was a mandate from an election, reform of America’s health care system was the issue of the 2008 election.
This was the fight that Obama and Democrats were put into power to have. They were tasked to get affordable, quality medical treatment for everyone and they pledged to do it. It couldn’t have come at a more opportune time — The economic meltdown and the massive number of jobs lost in America. It was an opportunity for Obama and Democrats to turn the conservatives’ privatization and deregulation tide of the last three decades. A perfect storm had aligned, with our need for alternative clean and sustainable energy, affordable quality medical care for all, education and job training and the creation of millions of new jobs in the US. It was an opportunity for Obama to combine it all into a New New Deal project, which could have solved all of the problems left to him by Bush-Cheney and usher us into the 21st century as a competitive force to be reckoned with in a world economy.
Instead, Obama and Democrats did a masterful job of preserving the failed system, setting it in concrete actually, convincing the victims that it’s really a good thing (and hoping that by the time the People realize that it’s not a good thing, Obama and the Democrats who made it happen will have long since retired their offices).
I have to hand it to him, how he did it was masterful — In hindsight it’s really obvious that he had no intention of putting in a public option (what would keep insurance companies honest and costs down, if insurance companies were to remain in the equation). But in order to prevent a public option, he first had to get single payer off the table. Before negotiations began.
Obama took single payer off the table BEFORE negotiations ever began. Secretly. Clandestinely. Publicly he said he was staying out of the legislating, saying that it was Congress’s job (that was the same gambit he used when it came to letting Bush’s tax cuts for the rich expire, and apparently Obama’s ‘most ardent fans’ keep falling for it).
Then Obama went and made a secret deal with the pharmaceutical, insurance, hospital industries, the AMA, undercutting all of the Congressional committees working on legislation except one — Baucus’s committee (the Senate Finance committee) which Obama disavowed for months. Baucus’s committee’s bill was written by the insurance industry.
When word came out about the deal, the White House Iied it.
Obama took single payer off the table before negotiations ever began. Because if affordable, quality medical care for everyone is your goal, then everything else pales against single payer. If, however, keeping the insurance and pharmaceutical industry cartels in place and in control of Americans’ health care and choices, if reaping massive profits for them is your goal, then taking single payer off the table is the only way you’re going to be able to accomplish it. Because single payer had to be off the table before negotiations ever began so that a public option (the only method for keeping costs down) couldn’t be the “compromise” position.
It’ll be reauthorized. It’s far too sweet a deal for the industry that dictated its terms and oversaw its writing to ever be abandoned.
And how much more do you think older people should have to pay?
Passed via Reconciliation–and with none other than Obama making the final set of changes with his very own pen.
So much for blaming it on Lieberman and a small number of Blue Dogs.
As far as ACA expiring, fat chance. Why on earth would health insurers or the federal government give up the mandate/poverty tax?
While I am on the subject, why on earth would health insurers want the Medicare eligibility age to go up?
On the other hand, only AARP fights decreases to OASDI–and, like all believers in the LOTE myth, AARP is respectful of Democrats.
If both major parties want the decrease in OASDI payments, LOTE voters who are elderly, disabled or survivors will keep voting as they have for the last 20 or more years. So, no politician loses much, if anything, by decreasing OASDI.
And, like murder and adultery, the first time is the hardest. After that, additional decreases will be so much easier.
These are the real death panels.
Amen.
That is the absolute bottom line and you nailed it 100%.
Thank you.
Joe Biden was absolutely right, Obamacare was a “Big F______g Deal.” But not in a good way.
Heresy, Jon, heresy….How can you do this ? /s
Still, interesting that now the reality of Obamacare more or less financially eating many people alive is becoming clearer. It was as you say, obvious from the word “go” that this would be the case. A new kind of “medical bankruptcy” on the horizon even?
No, ACA is not “good for everyone lucky enough to work for a larger company that pays their health insurance.” That is a simplification of the deception that is ACA. Yes, they are shielded from the most immediate consequences, I will give you that. However most people with employee provided health care are also going to be down in the weeds with everyone else within a decade. The cadillac tax makes sure of that. By basing that little poison pill on premium cost and not on the actual benefits of the plan, AND with the lack of real premium cost controls every employer based health insurance plan is going to be hit with that tax. It is implicit in the design to make sure that every employer offer the mere base plan or take the fine within a decade. In fact the politicians are either going to be scrambling to protect the ‘bronze’ level plans from this tax like the AMT fix or more likely enact the real plan which is to end the entire sham of keeping health insurance employer based by eliminating the fines for employers entirely by 2025 to “protect small business” throwing everyone into the self insured market probably without any wage increase (giving the employers an immediate profit), mark my words. They will probably be smart and not increase the fines for individuals until the Presidential term after that happens. That is unless the public has had enough of the fraud and it is clear the choice for elected officials is tar and feathers or homemade drone strikes versus telling the insurance companies to go fuck themselves and establishing Medicare for All. This is all pretty much guaranteed by that Cadillac Tax AND the lack of insurance company regulation.
People have only begun to be recognize that the ACA is second only to the recent Bank Crash and Fraud bailout as a government endorsed ripoff of the American working and middle class.
I am 63. I live in Michigan. I took an ‘early’ retirement. I was unemployed, and likely unemployable. So, why not ‘retire’.
I just recently was carted off to the emergency room. I do not have private insurance. The bill was $1500 plus.
Based on income, I would quality for MI Medicaid. Based on assets, I would not.
My assets, after the (2008) have been cut in half.
What is a poor boy/girl to do?
Well said. Thank you.
So the fallout begins from Obama’s cowardice and duplicity—the man who ran on a promise for the public option and handed his country over to be raped while sick or injured by private profit. This is only the beginning—and the DNC will have a whole new slew of reasons why they’re the “less evil choice” in the next elections too. No doubt our faux progressives will buy that, too.
I don’t know if the statement that the average 25 year old is poorer than the average 70 year old paradigm is still true.
There are quite a few elderly that would live in poverty were it not for social security. It seems to me they are just as vulnerable or maybe even more vulnerable then the 25 year old who was allowed to remain on their parents plan for 7 years as an adult.
The states themselves are the largest argument against ACA in my opinion. It’s absurd to have 50 different standards on determining who qualifies for exchanges. There should be one universal standard and uniformity in coding, pricing and whatnot.
The ACA is nothing more than a regressive tax on middle class Americans who cannot afford access to health care even with government subsidies. It’s the only kind of legislation that is allowed by the corporate overlords sitting on a cash cow.
the other lie that Obama and his buddies trot out is the exchanges will keep costs down due to competiion. The insurance industry is exmept from the Sherman anti trust act so they can get together and charge any price they want! And there is no Universal coverage with tens of millions of people left out of the plan. The only universal coverage is givng to insurannce health care industries all of our money!
VERY F..ING INDEED, BLAMING CLINTON IS VERY POPULAR THESE DAYS, THE INK SUCKERS ARE VERY HAPPY PICKING CLINTON LATELY.
Pseudo AHCA is the biggest steal in America ever.
you wanted,you’ve got it.
And who would taht be those very smart individuals?
let me tell tou:
1) MONEY 2} MONEY 3) MONEY
Margaret indicates the blogger Jon Walker “hates Clinton viscerally”.
No, maybe he just totally despises him, as I do. And Obama surrounded himself with Clinton retreads. Since Obama seems to have little actual reasoning ability (notice I did not say intelligence, I said reasoning, the skill that would enable him to think through issues and come up with his own strongly held positions), he has absorbed and made Clinton positions his own.
The first guy was an Alabama politician, totally bought, a bogus man of the people, a phoney, etc., and BTW, I never hated the guy, I just think he’s scum. The second guy is the son of or shadow of scum.
Big difference between white hot hateing and cold despising. I save my hot emotions for the love and respect side of the love – hate scale.
Excellent, we can ask snake Pelosi.
Yep, insurers are vermins protected by the very politicians that are being payed under the table.
For the record, I think it’s important for understanding the past few years that it didn’t take hindsight to see Obama’s intentions. Many people advocated in real time to be wary of certain proposals, to demand to see details, to put all options on the table. These voices were systematically shouted down by party loyalists or operatives or whatever term you want to use.
I heartily agree with what you’re saying generally, but I think it is critically important to understand that there was contemporaneous dissent – it did not require hindsight to see the train wreck before it happened.
When they start arresting doctors for standing up for single payer you know something’s rotten in Denmark.
I think you’re absolutely correct, I being one of those advocates. I meant for those who didn’t see, who refused to believe their own lyin’ eyes, they should now see in hindsight just how deceitful Obama’s actions were. Unfortunately, many don’t (as we can see from his reelection numbers), and still hold out some hope, some belief that he’s really a good man, for the People. It’s these people, along with others, who think Hillary is different than Obama, and the One (for 2016).
What I was really trying to convey was something that never has been discussed: How a public option was never anything that Obama wanted, and that was the reason that he took single payer off the table before negotiations ever began – To make sure that a public option wouldn’t be the natural compromise position.
Once you get that, see just how deviously plotting Obama was, you can’t give him the benefit of any doubt.
Obama’s gotten where he is because of the likability factor. Those who keep making excuses for him do so because they see him as a nice guy, too nice, and that’s been the reason for his not taking Republicans on. In order to wake these people up, they’re going to have to see how both parties use each other for cover, and are taking their defenders for fools.
If we’re ever to get out of this mess, this oligarch one-party rule, we’re going to have to shake the ‘bot voters up and get them angry at the correct people – The politicians in both parties.
Thanks for the reply.
It seems that really identifies the problem – the politics of personality. I wonder sometimes how bad things will have to get to ‘shake up’ voters. What I find amazing, and a little scary, is the extent to which rank and file Democrats have been convinced to internalize problems as their own fault or blame innocent parties rather than the real perpetrators.