ACA was a compromise to get something changed. It was never supposed to be the final result. Republicans turned it into a boogeyman that had to be undone instead of doing the right thing for their constituents and proposing a better solution. It was always funny to see red states quote the soundbite that they hated Obamacare, then say they didn’t need it as long as they had their ACA.
Back before Trump 1, every Republican ran on repealing ACA. So in the second half of Obama’s second term, GOP had the House and Senate but not a veto-proof majority. They sent something like 80+ bills fully repealing ACA. Of course they all got vetoed.
Trump runs on getting rid of Obamacare and wins, maintaining the GOP majority.
Not a single bill lands on his desk fully repealing it. It was all performative. They knew their constituents would yell at them.
Let’s not forget the “We’ll have a new better healthplan in 2 weeks” nonsense.
Now here we are again. GOP controlled House and Senate and a president that is hell bent on destroying anything any Democrat did.
ACA still hasn’t been repealed.
They’re destroying the federal government, so some parts can be replaced by corporations and so that corporations can do what they want. These people saw cyberpunk and thought of it as something to achieve.
Maybe not in its entirety, but they are cutting medicaid right
Yeah, there are a lot of comments here berating it, but it barely passed as it was and has only been on the chopping block since. If people want something better, they need to work to help the republican voters demand it, cause it isn’t the democratic voters holding Healthcare change back.
The ACA is not good. It was a clear example of our political system failing and capitulating to capital interests and the fact that it exists and is in fact arguably the only liberal polical “success” in my lifetime is emblematic of the utter and complete failure of the American political system.
The ACA is not good.
Incorrect, see below for many examples and arguments
It was a clear example of our political system failing and capitulating to capital interests
Absolutely correct
the fact that it exists … is emblematic of the utter and complete failure of the American political system
You’d rather it didn’t exist?
is in fact arguably the only liberal polical “success” in my lifetime
The IRA reduced climate change emissions by about 40% from the peak.
Income inequality has actually been going down for the last few years, is that not a good thing?
Marijuana is legal now.
It’s not really “legislative,” so maybe this is sort of backing up what you were arguing in fact, but policing changed radically between 2014 and 2021, to the point that a lot of the abuses that were commonplace in 2014 actually are now these crazy outliers, and are usually punished with criminal charges for the cops.
I’ve talked before about how I feel like there are people who like to “paint the tape” of a comments section by leaving a handful of super-forceful comments in one particular direction, to paint the narrative they like to paint, if the comments section starts to develop in a way that they don’t like. Try sorting by “top” and compare it to the current comments section, if you want to get a better picture of what the consensus is.
I’ve talked before about how I feel like there are people who like to “paint the tape” of a comments section by leaving a handful of super-forceful comments in one particular direction, to paint the narrative they like to paint, if the comments section starts to develop in a way that they don’t like. Try sorting by “top” and compare it to the current comments section, if you want to get a better picture of what the consensus is.
Yeah, I think you’re right. I poked my head into these threads to see what was up, mostly because I was confused as to why Obama showed up on BlueSky talking about ACA when there’s other stuff going on (trying to understand what he’s attempting), and for some reason this topic seems to have gotten the weirdos stirred up hard, mostly as you said with very confidently-worded assertions that appeared suspiciously quickly.
I wonder if it’s because they’re trying to capitalize on any old hot-button emotional spittakes left over from Obama’s days as president. I mean, there’s a lot of very important things going on with DOGE and it might serve certain interests well if we’re distracted from THAT danger and instead talking about Obama who doesn’t seem to be doing anything pertinent at the moment.
I notice that whenever there’s a huge discrepancy between how the comments look in the default sort, and how they look when sorted by “top”, the topic is always some sort of politics, and the default-sort consensus is always “let’s all not vote for Democrats.” Usually, the comments are just the comments.
The passing of the ACA is something I see as a massive failure. How can we not? There was a chance to push for a real solution, universal healthcare, to get the private companies out of healthcare, and the DNC didn’t even try to make it happen.
Obama caving on universal healthcare was a warning sign of the kind of weak sauce that we’re seeing from many Washington Democrats this year, people who simply don’t believe in supporting the average American. If you didn’t see that at the time, I don’t blame you. Many people were fooled. By now, though, it should be apparent to all.
You want to argue that the ACA itself is good, but that’s a meaningless statement. Good compared to what? Meh. Putting a bandaid on a failing system that is now failing worse than it was a decade ago is better than nothing, sure, but it’s not particularly admirable.
I’m not the previous commenter, but in answer to your question, would I rather the ACA not exist? Of course I would! Anyone with half a brain who cares abut human beings around them would. Give us universal healthcare already. To hell with the ACA. Don’t give us broken systems that private companies will game to get rich while depriving our loved ones of live-saving care. We’ve had enough of that already… But many Americans are blindly patriotic, honestly believe that America is the greatest country in the world in every way, and can’t realize how much better life is in other places that actually have half-decent healthcare. So we’ll see if things ever take a change for the better.
Er… if we’re deciding to move the goalposts to “the ACA was a pitiful gift to the insurance companies and betrayal of what should have been, and the Democrats mostly haven’t done shit since then, we need real change” then I’ll completely agree with you.
If that’s what you’re saying, of course, then you need to have a chat with the people down below in the comments who said that right after the ACA passed, it started killing people, and we’d be better off without it.
If instead your argument is:
There was a chance to push for a real solution, universal healthcare
I’m not the previous commenter, but in answer to your question, would I rather the ACA not exist? Of course I would! Anyone with half a brain who cares abut human beings around them would. Give us universal healthcare already.
Are you under the impression that if the ACA didn’t exist, we would have universal health care?
That the systemic problems that fucked up genuine health care reform into the final mutated form of the ACA would suddenly not exist if only we attacked the ACA enough?
Yeah but people like you talk about it in a way that misses the important point fucking entirely. The ACA is the best the Republicunt party would let Obama get away with at the time, and they fought like hell against it.
Though the Republican party does seem to be getting away with a fucking lot these days…
That’s now what I remember, though. I remember the Dems barely even trying to get universal healthcare. They quickly threw in the towel, because (in my opinion) they wanted to appease their funders.
Then you are remembering incorrectly. I turned 18 the year Obama was elected. I was super dialed in and remember this process very clearly.
The ACA did give incremental change in updating things like the long overdue “no coverage for pre existing conditions” bullshit. That was admittedly a big win.
But the individual mandate with no financial assistance was tone deaf at best and corrupt at worst. People who were uninsured were uninsured because they couldn’t afford it, not because they thought it was cool to not buy health insurance. Now they were forced into a position of buying expensive coverage or penalized financially for not doing so. Huge win for the privatized insurance industry, which has been doing amazingly well since the ACA. And this ultimately weaponized a generation against healthcare reform! I would bet at least some trump voters are disgruntled people that are still furious that despite being barely able to get by their government forced them to spend $3-400 a month on a bullshit health plan that covered nothing because it still had a $4000 deductible
I would buy the whole “this was a compromise on the path to something better” if there was any movement whatsoever on healthcare reform since. The ACA was fifteen years ago. I work with high schoolers that are older than the ACA.
And what major reforms have we seen in those years? Not a ton:
Repealing the individual mandate - republican win in 2017, pulling those disgruntled voters in
Alt health plans - pooled and short term health plans. Short term health plans reintroduce denial based on health history, pooled plans are potentially unstable based on the pool, both limit coverage options fairly substantially compared to traditional plans
Medicaid funding cuts
Prescription drug pricing changes - some wins here but also some concerns about potential access to novel treatments for people on Medicaid and Medicare
The ACA did far more bad than good. Like typical democrat shit the good could not occur without padding the pockets of the donor class at the expense of the worker class.
The ACA immediately lowered the cost for insurance. I know because in 2007 my healthy, 28yr old, non-smoking ass tried to get private health insurance. The cheapest, emergency-only coverage I could get was over $600/mo. After the ACA was enacted I could get a similar plan for under $200. I hadnt had health insurance for 10 years by then cause I was kicked off my dad’s when I turned 18, not 26 like it is now.
People under 30 had a special low cost catastrophic plan… Those savings were gone by the time you hit 30 and cost has been rising higher than inflation for over a decade now.
With shittier outcomes
Yeah, who could forget how hard the donor class has been working to protect the ACA against people trying to get rid of it, because of how much they love it.
Wait
I feel like maybe something else has been happening. Help me out?
I feel like there’s no way you read my entire post in the 4 minutes since I posted but
The donor class wants to protect the flawed ACA because the benefits it brings, like protections against pre existing health conditions, are important. I said as much. They also don’t want to walk back what they see as the only bit of progress that has occurred, which is understandable
But do they really “love it”? This is battered partner syndrome. American health care is abusive. We can’t possibly love this. But we are so entrenched in this garbage system of administrative waste and obnoxiously overpaid staff that do not bill we cannot envision a better future
Early in her campaign Kamala co opted Medicare for all and described her proposal. On one hand it was nice to see someone finally describe healthcare reform again (though she was silent for the rest of her campaign). But on the other much worse hand her system was horrible, continuing the system of privatized Medicare with a 2 lane system. Basic Medicare for all Americans but premium Medicare via private companies if you had the means. This is an improvement, for sure, but ultimately it is the ACA and all of its flaws all over again. Excessive administrative overhead raising complexity and costs significantly, a 2 lane system creating a class divide and confusion for consumers as providers will not all work for everyone, and a return of the individual mandate via taxation (which to be fair is necessary, we need young healthy people paying in, but it’s not fair if it results in them getting substandard insurance again to fund the plans of the rich!)
The ACA and Kamala’s proposal, which is a more aggressive version of it co-opting Sanders terminology that polled well, is class warfare. The donor class works to defend it because they do not realize they are being sold a pittance and that they need to demand more
I feel like there’s no way you read my entire post in the 4 minutes since I posted but
I did not, no. I got enough of the flavor. Do you want a more detailed rebuttal?
I saw enough things in it that were the opposite of reality, that you were just saying because they matched the feels of the conclusion you wanted to reach, that I felt like I was safe in not exposing myself to the whole thing. I’ve now read the whole thing, and my conclusion was completely correct. I actually was a little bit surprised by how many wrong things you had to say.
But the individual mandate with no financial assistance was tone deaf at best and corrupt at worst. People who were uninsured were uninsured because they couldn’t afford it, not because they thought it was cool to not buy health insurance. Now they were forced into a position of buying expensive coverage or penalized financially for not doing so.
Except there is financial assistance if you can’t afford it.
The whole point was to force people who could afford health insurance to pay into the system, to subsidize the people who couldn’t afford it.
I would bet at least some trump voters are disgruntled people that are still furious that despite being barely able to get by their government forced them to spend $3-400 a month on a bullshit health plan that covered nothing because it still had a $4000 deductible
Many Trump voters are poor people who are dependent on the subsidized health care that the ACA provides them, which they wouldn’t be able to afford on their own.
I would buy the whole “this was a compromise on the path to something better” if there was any movement whatsoever on healthcare reform since. The ACA was fifteen years ago. I work with high schoolers that are older than the ACA.
The movement on health care that there’s been since then has been Republicans trying over and over again to repeal it. You mentioned this. You also mentioned some small but significant movement that the Democrats have been doing, although I completely agree with you that they don’t have the stones to break with their corporate backers and actually make something good.
The donor class wants to protect the flawed ACA because the benefits it brings, like protections against pre existing health conditions, are important. I said as much
You misunderstood my sarcasm. “Donor class” to me means the corporate interests who dominate elections, not the ordinary people. The donor class hates the ACA. That’s why the more-corrupted wing of the US government keeps trying to repeal it. The Democrats don’t want to do that, because even as corrupted as they are, they are a little bit beholden to the voters.
Trump voters who lose their health care will somehow blame the Democrats. Democratic voters who lose their health care will also blame the Democrats.
My argument here is that if the ACA was such an across-the-board win for the corporate class, they wouldn’t be trying so repeatedly or so hard to repeal it. They were doing fine before the ACA, and they’re still doing fine now, with it. But, it’s interfering in some ways to refuse to provide health care when it wouldn’t be profitable, and it also sets a little bit of a precedent that people have a right to health care (even if I agree with you it doesn’t go nearly far enough in that regard and still makes sure to carve out huge profits for the insurance companies at the expense of sick people), and both of those things, they really don’t like. That’s what I was saying through my sarcasm.
But do they really “love it”? This is battered partner syndrome. American health care is abusive. We can’t possibly love this. But we are so entrenched in this garbage system of administrative waste and obnoxiously overpaid staff that do not bill we cannot envision a better future
Again, you misunderstood my sarcasm. I was saying (sarcastically) that the donor class loves the ACA. They do not. Obviously, every non-corporate person involved in American health care on an personal level also hates American health care, but I’m saying that is independent of the ACA and getting rid of the ACA would do nothing to help it, and would in fact make it somehow even worse, which is why the donor class wants to do that.
Early in her campaign Kamala co opted Medicare for all and described her proposal. On one hand it was nice to see someone finally describe healthcare reform again (though she was silent for the rest of her campaign). But on the other much worse hand her system was horrible, continuing the system of privatized Medicare with a 2 lane system. Basic Medicare for all Americans but premium Medicare via private companies if you had the means. This is an improvement, for sure, but ultimately it is the ACA and all of its flaws all over again.
Can you link me to Kamala Harris’s proposal? I wasn’t even aware she had said anything of substance on health care. On the other hand, it hardly matters. Yes, doing Sanders-style actual human health care would be far better.
https://kamalaharris.medium.com/my-plan-for-medicare-for-all-7730370dd421
First I misunderstood “donor class”. I feel a bit silly. I interpreted as a class of people making small donations but it’s so obvious in retrospect and obviously I’ve seen this term used before. My reply is basically backwards as a result. Whoops
Financial assistance was woefully inadequate because it was mostly based on federally defined poverty guidelines (and still is). This, like the minimum wage, is not tied to inflation and is adjusted irregularly
As stated I understand the point of forcing people into the system to subsidize care. I do not think that it is fair to give them substandard insurance to benefit an elder generation that has higher rates of retirement savings, home ownership, Medicare enrollment, etc.
simply put the individual mandate does not work if it is contingent on giving the youngest generation garbage coverage in exchange for their premiums. Kamala’s proposal continued this
The donor class (im using it correctly now, hooray. I did misunderstand) greatly benefitted from the ACA. This does not mean they would not also benefit from its repeal. Both can be true. They benefitted in the short term from increased subscription rates but they would benefit in the long term from decreased regulatory oversight.
He is big mad about people calling ACA a dud now that we have a hindsight lol
All those statements are objectively true.
Dead CEO was enabled by the ACA to kill people for profit.
Sure it covered more people but over all healthcare quality went down and corporate parasite profit went up… Because ACA was drafted by health insurance and pharma.
Until the corporate trash is removed the process, we gonna keep getting more and more fucked
The speech of someone they never had to worry about healthcare being denied because of “pre-existing conditions” or losing access because you turned 18.
I happy that ACA worked for you dear… That’s all what matters here. We should make our national health policy around your needs. It is only fair.
I swear you guys all go to some sort of special school where they teach misunderstanding what the other person is saying as an art form
Agreed. My mother can’t understand and honestly engage with an argument to save her life. It’s irritating as fuck.
Ah yes, the extremely specific context of…turning 18? I’m happy that you’ve never needed to develop reading comprehension dear, maybe spend more time paying attention to your high school teachers.
They gave a couple of bones while robbing the bank… Similar to covid checks.
Instead of seeing this what it was… You get on here to defend a shiti healthcare regime created by the law.
I’m not defending a ‘shiti’ healthcare regime. I’m mocking you for being so mentally dense. I can hate our healthcare system and your abysmal trolling at the same time. Plus I don’t have to go around putting words in others mouths.
U go gurl!
Is your impression that insurance companies weren’t killing people for profit before the ACA came along?
It was much worse. Michael Moore did a darkly comic piece about a man who was guaranteed to die without treatment, whose insurance company was denying him treatment, and they showed up at the insurance company’s corporate office with him in tow and performed a funeral for him there. They eventually approved his coverage. But they had to work for years and years before they were able to recover the killing-people-on-purpose abilities that they had before the ACA became law, and they’re still missing some of them. They used to straight-up kick you off your health insurance if you got sick in a way that was going to be expensive for them to treat, for example. Now at least they have to be more subtle about it.
Key bench mark for health insurance is something like life expectancy… Among other factors.
The US life expectancy has been going down since mid 2000s.
You literally sent a link which shows the exact opposite in a separate comment, I posted the graph from your link.
over all healthcare quality went down
Source?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK600454/
Declining life expectancy is indirect but a very telling indicator.
What?
Here’s the relevant graph from the link you just posted:
Are you claiming that the difference between how the US life expectancy is rising compared to every other country’s life expectancy is rising, which has existed absolutely unmodified since Reagan both before and after the ACA, is the ACA’s fault?
Or are you saying that the decline in life expectancy which happened during Covid is the ACA’s fault?
Or something else? What do you mean “declining life expectancy” here?
US life expectancy barely increased since 2000 through 2019 while many countries leap frogged us.
During covid US saw larger drop in life expectancy vis a vis other countries. And recovery is worse them these countries too.
Us health care system is providing shitier outcomes today then it was 10 years ago. The system ACA set up is the key contributing factor in decline of quality.
You said that with the ACA, the quality of health care went down. That is absolute counterfactual nonsense, as someone pointed out to you. So, you claimed as your argument that life expectancy had declined, and linked to a study which showed life expectancy increasing (just not by as much as you wanted it to). Now you’re changing the subject to some variety of other things including Covid and the recovery and simply blandly going back to square 1 and re-asserting that the ACA is responsible for low life expectancy and for American health care being bad, instead of literally everything else about America and American health care.
Do I have that all correct? Anything you want to add or disagree with in that summary?
I clarified my position that’s how a discussion works.
By which measure did health care quality improve since ACA?
Can you clarify for me exactly how life expectancy has been declining since the ACA? You “clarified” by abandoning the claim that that’s been happening. So we’re agreed that that hasn’t been happening, you’re just unhappy that it hasn’t been increasing by more, and convinced (for some reason) that the ACA is responsible, yes?
By which measure did health care quality improve since ACA?
Are you familiar with Russel’s Teapot?
I’ve been clarifying my own position plenty of other places in these comments, and multiple other commenters have listed multiple specific ways in which health care improved when the ACA was passed.
That number includes affordability. If you include that metric, then yes health care is doing worse.
But that’s not declining quality.
lol
Broke: ACA helped a lot of people get access that were fucked before.
Woke: ACA was just for giving rich people money.
Bespoke: The ACA was the democrats leveraging a mandate to make a deal with the heath insurance companies that funded their campaigns to give concessions on the most heinous aspects of their industry in return for ever increasing profits.
Woke: The ACA was largely a giveaway to the insurance companies. It fixed the system from being cartoonishly killing-people-on-purpose evil, into at least featuring a passing resemblance to decency such as would make sense for any other industrialized country, but it did basically nothing to fix the systemic issues at play in health care, because of systemic issues in our politics that make government on behalf of the people basically impossible. And, things have gotten back worse again since it happened in several terrifying ways.
Bespoke: Let’s get involved in fighting to make the system better, including kicking out a bunch of the bums who are carrying the mantle of “liberalism” while basically being corporate whores. The success of the BLM protests, the legalization of marijuana, and of course the historical precedents of big things like OSHA, social security, medicare, and so on, make it clear that change is possible if we fight hard enough for it.
Broke: Fuck the Democrats, let’s let the Republicans win, what’s the worst that could happen.
