4 ms·

It wasn't Republicans that removed the "Public Option" or the Drug re-importation initiatives from the ACA. FWIW.

by im_down_w_otp 10y ago

ende 10y ago
I wonder how many people would trade individual mandate for public option.
- danielweber 10y ago
  You can't get rid of the individual mandate without completely destroying the whole law. It's the unpopular part of the law. But pretty much anything that works is going to have some unpopular component that needs to be swallowed in order for the whole thing to work. When Republicans talk about getting rid of the individual mandate, it's because they are, in actuality, trying to kill the law. When Democrats talk about it, I really don't know what's going through their heads. Leftist wonks like Krugman or Klein keep on telling them exactly why it's needed.
  - ende 10y ago
    Sure, but not really what I meant. Adding public option and subtracting individual mandate would basically be a step towards having single payer with secondary private market.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > Adding public option and subtracting individual mandate would basically be a step towards having single payer with secondary private market. I don't see how it would be, unless by "subtracting individual mandate" you mean "replacing an individual mandate backed with a fee/tax/penalty for failure to comply with a universal tax, an option to select a private option with the tax refunded as a subsidy, and a default of using the public option if no private option is selected". Which, really, is retaining the individual mandate, but making it impossible to break rather than penalizing breaking it.
SteveLAnderson 10y ago
Well ... you're strictly right, but just like the idiotic provision that forced Congress to give up their employer sponsored insurance and use the exchange instead was forced by the GOP, so to were these provisions dropped due to GOP pressure. You see, the GOP continually promised, on one hand, to tie the ACA up in legislative hurdles so it couldn't pass, or, on the other hand, vote for it if it met their requirements. So, foolishly it turned out, the Democrats played ball with the GOP. In the end, the GOP still did everything they could to block it and voted against it en masse. I think the error was that the Democrats believed the GOP would vote for the bill if they changed it enough. It was naive.
- im_down_w_otp 10y ago
  Um, no. Those provisions were the Democrats negotiating with themselves. At the time the Democrats had the votes to force the issue regardless of the Republican opposition. It was people like Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, and Max Baucus that played a rotating merry-go-round of scapegoats that the Democratic Party used to trump up reasons why they couldn't support more progressive reforms in the healthcare legislation. Also, it wasn't Republicans that put a WellPoint Executive Lobbyist (Elizabeth Fowler) in charge of writing large portions of the actual legislation and acting as the liaison between the White House and the Senate. In the end we got a big pageant and self-aggrandizing back-patting session from the Democrats who called it the greatest Democratic legislative accomplishment since the Civil Rights Act... which is ironic considering that the ACA is almost the spitting image of Republican Bob Dole's Heritage Foundation sourced (and AHIP sponsored) reform plan from just a few election cycles prior. So... the greatest Democratic policy achievement in at least a generation was to pass a Republican policy proposal. Well played Democrats. Well played.
  - eridius 10y ago
    A Republican policy proposal that wasn't passed back when it was proposed. Just because the Republicans proposed this first doesn't mean it's a bad idea. We're all human beings and we all have a lot of common ground. Not everything a Republican proposes is automatically hated by Democrats, and not everything a Democrat proposes should be automatically hated by Republicans (I say "should be" because lately the Republican party does seem to reflexively hate everything Democrats propose, even if it was originally a Republican idea like the ACA).

It wasn't Republicans that removed the "Public Option" or the Drug re-importation initiatives from the ACA. FWIW.

ende 10y ago

I wonder how many people would trade individual mandate for public option.

danielweber 10y ago
You can't get rid of the individual mandate without completely destroying the whole law. It's the unpopular part of the law. But pretty much anything that works is going to have some unpopular component that needs to be swallowed in order for the whole thing to work. When Republicans talk about getting rid of the individual mandate, it's because they are, in actuality, trying to kill the law. When Democrats talk about it, I really don't know what's going through their heads. Leftist wonks like Krugman or Klein keep on telling them exactly why it's needed.
- ende 10y ago
  Sure, but not really what I meant. Adding public option and subtracting individual mandate would basically be a step towards having single payer with secondary private market.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > Adding public option and subtracting individual mandate would basically be a step towards having single payer with secondary private market. I don't see how it would be, unless by "subtracting individual mandate" you mean "replacing an individual mandate backed with a fee/tax/penalty for failure to comply with a universal tax, an option to select a private option with the tax refunded as a subsidy, and a default of using the public option if no private option is selected". Which, really, is retaining the individual mandate, but making it impossible to break rather than penalizing breaking it.

SteveLAnderson 10y ago

Well ... you're strictly right, but just like the idiotic provision that forced Congress to give up their employer sponsored insurance and use the exchange instead was forced by the GOP, so to were these provisions dropped due to GOP pressure. You see, the GOP continually promised, on one hand, to tie the ACA up in legislative hurdles so it couldn't pass, or, on the other hand, vote for it if it met their requirements. So, foolishly it turned out, the Democrats played ball with the GOP. In the end, the GOP still did everything they could to block it and voted against it en masse. I think the error was that the Democrats believed the GOP would vote for the bill if they changed it enough. It was naive.

im_down_w_otp 10y ago
Um, no. Those provisions were the Democrats negotiating with themselves. At the time the Democrats had the votes to force the issue regardless of the Republican opposition. It was people like Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, and Max Baucus that played a rotating merry-go-round of scapegoats that the Democratic Party used to trump up reasons why they couldn't support more progressive reforms in the healthcare legislation. Also, it wasn't Republicans that put a WellPoint Executive Lobbyist (Elizabeth Fowler) in charge of writing large portions of the actual legislation and acting as the liaison between the White House and the Senate. In the end we got a big pageant and self-aggrandizing back-patting session from the Democrats who called it the greatest Democratic legislative accomplishment since the Civil Rights Act... which is ironic considering that the ACA is almost the spitting image of Republican Bob Dole's Heritage Foundation sourced (and AHIP sponsored) reform plan from just a few election cycles prior. So... the greatest Democratic policy achievement in at least a generation was to pass a Republican policy proposal. Well played Democrats. Well played.
- eridius 10y ago
  A Republican policy proposal that wasn't passed back when it was proposed. Just because the Republicans proposed this first doesn't mean it's a bad idea. We're all human beings and we all have a lot of common ground. Not everything a Republican proposes is automatically hated by Democrats, and not everything a Democrat proposes should be automatically hated by Republicans (I say "should be" because lately the Republican party does seem to reflexively hate everything Democrats propose, even if it was originally a Republican idea like the ACA).