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Oh, stop. There's no way a bill of any substance -- on any matter, let alone health care -- makes it through congress without unintended consequences. You could
by timr 8y ago
Oh, stop. There's no way a bill of any substance -- on any matter, let alone health care -- makes it through congress without unintended consequences. You could just as easily point at any of a thousand other laws, passed by both parties, and conclude the same thing. In a functioning system of government, you go back and fix the things that break, and not just, say, throw an eight-year political tantrum that gridlocks government and ultimately leaves the system in a partially broken heap of half-repealed regulations, simply because you cannot have 100% of your way.
It certainly doesn't help that the GOP systematically blocks any attempt to reduce the influence of private industry in health care. Medicare manages to control costs, but a Medicare-for-all proposal never had a chance of making it through congress because it needed GOP votes to pass.
If one party consists of "complete idiots", the other consists of corporate lackeys and paid shills.
- masonic 8y agoa Medicare-for-all proposal never had a chance of making it through congress because it needed GOP votes to pass. Incorrect. For awhile, Democrats controlled the Presidency and the House, and the Senate Democrat caucus had a cloture-capable 60 vote supermajority. They didn't need a single GOP vote for anything. For ACA, no GOP amendments were even given the dignity of a simple up/down floor vote.
- perl4ever 8y agoWhat do you make of the following: "the Democrat-controlled House and Senate committees adopted nearly 190 Republican amendments while writing the legislation, according to data compiled by The New York Times." Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/21/us/health-care-amendments.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/21/us/health-car...
- masonic 8y agoLook at the actual committee and floor votes in congress.gov (and that doesn't even count attempts that were not allowed a vote). NYT is a business, not an objective stenographer. To this day, NYT will not acknowledge how phony their financial assessments are with respect to the billions of losses via just the Risk Corridors and community centers. There was more than a $5.3 billion deficit in Risk Corridor spending for 2015 alone[0]. Enrollment was overestimated by the CBO by over 100% even while Obama was still in office[1]. And the numbers are still in flux as insurers who didn't get all the bailouts they were "promised" successfully sue for hundreds of millions[2]. [0] http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20161205/NEWS/161129937 http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20161205/NEWS/161129... [1] http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/309902-obamacares-risk-corridor-corruption-never-ends http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/309902-oba... [2] https://ecf.cofc.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2016cv0649-23-0 https://ecf.cofc.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2016cv...
- alphabettsy 8y agoDoesn’t match with the facts. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/08/01/set-health-record-straight-republicans-helped-craft-obamacare-ross-baker-column/523952001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/08/01/set-health...
- timr 8y ago"For awhile, Democrats controlled the Presidency and the House, and the Senate Democrat caucus had a cloture-capable 60 vote supermajority. They didn't need a single GOP vote for anything. For ACA, no GOP amendments were even given the dignity of a simple up/down floor vote." What crocodile tears! Democrats bent over backwards to convince moderate Republicans to support the bill, and adopted many changes in committee. No GOP senators were going to be caught dead actually voting for an amendment on the floor, so they made their changes in private. Plus, Scott Brown's election meant that the law couldn't be amended or reconciled anyway. But this has nothing to do with Medicare-for-all: it was killed because Joe Lieberman refused to vote for any bill containing such a provision. So if even one GOP senator had supported the idea, we'd all have access to Medicare. I made a factually true statement.
- ModernMech 8y agoWhat you describe the Democrats doing with the ACA did not happen, as others have pointed out. But it did happen last year, when the GOP blocked any amendments or involvement from Democrats in their failed healthcare reform process.