Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare)

[wart57]

All I know is what I pay for medical coverage keeps going up, and if my employer can find a way to get out of paying for my health benefits, they will jump at it, and my pay check won't go up at all. Then I have to find coverage elsewhere and pay for it out of my pocket.

[Vidor]

Who cares what is called, its awesome. So awesome that the people who wrote the bill essentially wrote themselves out of it.

(Room for 25 articles to refute.)

The PPACA protects you, as an individual with a serious health condition, from losing any chance at that organ transplant if you lose your job, and it also protects you from having your insurance cancelled

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescission#Insurance

if your insurer simply decides that they don't want to pay for your care anymore.

[heyzeus]

The death panels that Palin warned about are real. They're already here. They're called "insurance companies."

I appreciate that the ACA has measures to prevent insurers from dropping people for their conditions, or refusing to cover based on preexisting conditions. But to me the flaw of ACA is that it's built entirely on the idea of giving the health insurance co's more customers and thus more power and a bigger role in our healthcare system.

They are the death panels. The are the ones who will ultimately decide that, gosh, mom's cancer treatment is just too costly and experimental, so we're not going to pay for that. But you can pay out of pocket, or just pick a cheaper treatment. Have you heard about healing crystals? Prayer? Those are cheaper ways to deal with luekemia. Good luck with that.

[Socnorb11]

This is kinda funny:

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/08 ... rovisions/

The Huffington Post’s Jason Cherkis reports on a remarkable encounter between Reina Diaz-Dempsey, a Kentucky public health worker signing people up for insurance coverage under health care reform, and a middle-aged man who approached her booth at the State Fair. After Diaz-Dempsey explained that he will either qualify for tax credits to buy insurance through Kynect (the state’s new insurance marketplace) or an expanded Medicaid pool in October, the man seemed pleased and mused, “This beats Obamacare, I hope.”

So we now see how the Republicans have a way out. If they get back in power, they can pretend to repeal Obamacare and put in their own system. In reality, all they'd be doing is making a very minor tweak to Obamacare, but most importantly, they'd call it a different name (maybe "Rubio-care"). Then BANG: suddenly its the best thing since sliced bread.

I'll give credit where it's due of the Republicans can improve upon the current plan. So far, they've tried to repeal the current plan 40 times, without offering a single plan of their own.

[planet planet]

http://www.upworthy.com/his-first-4-sen ... tle-sick-2#!

[Radbird]

http://www.upworthy.com/his-first-4-sen ... tle-sick-2#!

Now why can't we have crazy people like that running our country?

[lukethedrifter]

http://www.upworthy.com/his-first-4-sen ... tle-sick-2#!

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20 ... rice/?_r=0

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/healt ... tures.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/healt ... wanted=all

sorry if some or all are behind paywall

[pioneer98]

Repubs are trying to defund Obamacare and threatening to shut down government over it. Yes, if you look at some poll where they ask "Do you support or oppose the health care law?" 52% of people say they oppose it. But this is such a giant and nuanced law that I bet if you broke it apart into segments and asked for example "Do you oppose or support people being able to get insurance with preexisting conditions?" You get different results. It is a giant leap from getting this poll result where people don't like a single law to using this to justify shut down the entire government. Hell, I don't even totally "like" Obamacare myself, but when put up against the alternative - nothing - I'll take Obamacare.

I think this tactic is going to blow up in their face. Obama was re-elected in spite of the law's unpopularity, so how unpopular is it, really?

And if we are going to use disapproval ratings to legislate...Congress' disapproval rating is up to 83% according to one poll. So, they should do the right thing and resign, I guess.

[heyzeus]

It's terrorism, plain and simple. Not democracy. Terrorism.

"Give us what we want, or we'll blow the whole damned country up." Shut down the government, default on the debt, send the economy from recovery to recession.

This extremist fringe of the Republican party has had 40 something votes in the house to repeal the ACA. That's failed, they don't own the senate.
They've had the 2010 and 2012 elections to put together a majority (or a number to prevent cloture) in the senate, so that they could repeal the law. They failed to do that.
They launched a dozen or so legal challenges to the law. That culminated in the Supreme Court finding it constitutional.

So, they've exhausted the avenues that democracy gives you to repeal a law they don't like. So what's left? Blackmail. Jeoplardize the livelihoods of Americans and the full faith and credit of the United States in one final tantrum. Good for them. Make us bleed if you don't get your way. Let's burn the whole place down, see how the voters like that (if they even remember) come next November.

[planet planet]

http://www.upworthy.com/his-first-4-sen ... tle-sick-2#!

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20 ... rice/?_r=0

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/healt ... tures.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/healt ... wanted=all

sorry if some or all are behind paywall

Thanks, Luke. The more I read about healthcare costs in the US and comparative costs elsewhere, the more my blood boils. Seriously, it's highway robbery. I can't even fathom how the healthcare industry can shape the argument to focus on death panels and scare tactics that we'd have substandard care when we're paying 4x more for way more procedures with no better health outcomes.