Affordable are Act aka Obamacare: Chance of Repeal

[Callie Del Noire]

Reminds me - I saw this the other day, thought of you, and ran it through Snopes just to make certain.

'Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.  There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things.  Among them are [ur=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Huntl]H. L. Hunt[/url] (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas.  Their number is negligible and they are stupid.'

Dwight D. Eisenhower - http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/ike.asp

Yeah.. Dwight was right THEN. Today, after forty years of planning and loading all three branches of the government with people towards a goal. There is a concerted effort to weight the courts, disrupt the balance of power between the branches, and to instill a unitary president that truly in charge with no counters. It's not ENTIRELY just the GOP doing this though they have done the lion's share.

Today.. I fear the man would be greatly mistaken. I am betting within two decades we'll see successful attacks on all those programs. Of course by then voter apathy will have ceded too much power to the parties.

[Sasquatch421]

I still think we need to get rid of the entire government and redo the whole thing. Get rid of the parties and make it so it's not only those who have the money can be president.

Do I like Obamacare? No... but there are parts that are good. I just don't think that the government should force people into buying healthcare. They should just change what we already have and make it more affordable. I mean it stays in what's next? Forcing everyone to buy a Prius to save on fuel?

[Trieste]

Well, first of all, it was ruled a tax. And second of all, it's a minuscule number of people who will be paying that tax. Thirdly, expanding current programs doesn't come without a price tag, which is what the tax penalty is going to help defray. And fourth, it isn't just bad housing loans that lead to massive numbers of bankruptcies - this country is drowning in bankruptcies due to medical bills. Medical care isn't something you can put off until you can better afford it - when a medical emergency happens, it happens. We NEED comprehensive preventative care, affordable emergency care, sane prescription coverage, and, yes, vision and dental coverage for -everyone- in this country. And if people don't want to pay into their own coverage, then they will pay the taxes because who will be picking up their coverage when - not if, but when - they need it? Other tax payers.

The difference between mandating a Prius and mandating health coverage is that a Prius is not a necessity or a right, and first-world medical coverage for our first-world country is both a necessity and a right.

[Callie Del Noire]

I am still out on the ACA but till the GOP offers something that helps more than there sponsors I won't be backing them. I mean come on, some are offering some insane ideas are drinking the denial koolaid.

[Oniya]

I was actually explaining it to my sister (the EMT) - who was initially saying that she didn't want her money going to enable the people that currently abuse the system (she told me this one story about a diabetic who would spike her blood sugar deliberately, call the ambulance, and while she was at the ER, she'd complain of pain to get pain meds).

I explained it this way:

Leave the abusers out of the picture for a minute - just put them over there for a little bit.  Let's talk about the responsible people who can't afford health care at the moment.  A responsible diabetic would much rather be able to get their insulin regularly.  They would much rather pay a small amount once a month to ensure that they don't accrue major bills for amputations, strokes, heart disease, etc.  By being on health insurance, that person is going to save the hospital money by not getting to the point where they need the ER.  And actually, there's probably a lot of these people out there.

[RubySlippers]

I am still out on the ACA but till the GOP offers something that helps more than there sponsors I won't be backing them. I mean come on, some are offering some insane ideas are drinking the denial koolaid.

The only issue I have with the GOP is the big one noone has a counter to the Medicaid expansion for the working poor, as in my group.

I purposefully work less than I could due to the fact I must qualify for charity law care if I go to the hospital and to access the free clinic and drug assistance programs for my prescriptions for diabetic supplies (I'm a Type 1 Diabetic). I work 32 hours a month. I could work three times that phsycially and make a fairly decent income still under the 133% of the Medicaid expansion but would be able to be more productive. Right now that is not an option but I have to do what I do for my health and I hate it. I love sidewalk performing and could work robust weekend hours and special events but then I lose my existing health care blanket.

But asking me to pay for insurance at market rates is crazy I would be working those hours to just pay for health care insurance if I could afford a policy at all.

[Callie Del Noire]

The only issue I have with the GOP is the big one noone has a counter to the Medicaid expansion for the working poor, as in my group.

I purposefully work less than I could due to the fact I must qualify for charity law care if I go to the hospital and to access the free clinic and drug assistance programs for my prescriptions for diabetic supplies (I'm a Type 1 Diabetic). I work 32 hours a month. I could work three times that phsycially and make a fairly decent income still under the 133% of the Medicaid expansion but would be able to be more productive. Right now that is not an option but I have to do what I do for my health and I hate it. I love sidewalk performing and could work robust weekend hours and special events but then I lose my existing health care blanket.

But asking me to pay for insurance at market rates is crazy I would be working those hours to just pay for health care insurance if I could afford a policy at all.

That is why I'm worried about it. When the HMOs first appeared I had a friend whose mother was an exceptional needs person, which meant at the time he was having to get health coverage for her in addition to the tricare coverage. Suddenly he had to justify every little bit of coverage to the other provider because the manager assigned to his mother. It came to the point, right after the tools in California deregulated the power industry, where it was less effort to pay the additional care through the tricare system than to have him or his wife fight with the manager for every damn treatment she needed. Not to mention he was having to go on deployment.

In the last 25 years, health care has become more and more about profit and less and less about care. In the US anyway. The ACA was an effort to fix a lot of the problems. Thanks to a GOP House empowered by groups who are profiting on the current situation a LOT of the issues were not fixed. (not that the GOP were the only ones manipulated by special interests but they are the majority in the house)

I've felt the problem with insurance companies in the US over the last few decades as they are more about profit for stockholders than providing a service. Profit is all fine and good but when you shit on your clients.. like they did with my friend.. to sketch a few points of profit out of human suffering.. No. Then more regulation is the right thing. One of the first points I liked about the ACA was making Health Care Providers keep a certain amount of their income to TREATING their clients.

If the special interests hadn't had their hooks in the legislative branch, particularly all the incoming Tea Partiers...we might have gotten something good out of it. Had the GOP not decided back in 1995 that the 'gentlemen's' social attitude of congress had to go, or either party since then worked to restore it, we might have gotten something closer to what we were promised.

Romney gets elected.. kiss ACA goodbye and I promise the abortion that the special intersts get to replace it will be.. interesting.

[TheGlyphstone]

Romney gets elected.. kiss ACA goodbye and I promise the abortion that the special intersts get to replace it will be.. interesting.

Pun intended?

[RubySlippers]

Romney is not a dictator the repeal must go through Congress and the Senate is where the repeal will face its big challenge there are no real repeal options. The Democrats can block a flat out full repeal, the partial repeal is not much of an option as I noted. And that is only if Obama is not returned to office and/or they lose a few Senate Seats. If one or the other (or both) favor the Democrats its over. And a reconciliation can be done once if they use it early on Health Care making the ACA left alot worse then they lose if when the budget talks hit later in the year or if any other major spending bill needs to be done. And they must act in 2013 or the law kicks in.

Seems to me the ACA is likely staying, with changes but not without the Senate Democrats approval making those muted.

And I will note if Obama is returned to office he is going to not have to worry about being reelected and can play hardball over this he will have nothing to lose, I would not want to be a state facing him at that point and trying to opt out.

[Callie Del Noire]

Romney is not a dictator the repeal must go through Congress and the Senate is where the repeal will face its big challenge there are no real repeal options. The Democrats can block a flat out full repeal, the partial repeal is not much of an option as I noted. And that is only if Obama is not returned to office and/or they lose a few Senate Seats. If one or the other (or both) favor the Democrats its over. And a reconciliation can be done once if they use it early on Health Care making the ACA left alot worse then they lose if when the budget talks hit later in the year or if any other major spending bill needs to be done. And they must act in 2013 or the law kicks in.

Seems to me the ACA is likely staying, with changes but not without the Senate Democrats approval making those muted.

And I will note if Obama is returned to office he is going to not have to worry about being reelected and can play hardball over this he will have nothing to lose, I would not want to be a state facing him at that point and trying to opt out.

I think you aren't considering how much the system has been gamed by 25 years of the GOP changing the rules. The GOP has control of the legislature..and I give it even odds to continue if not grow it given the local level party antics I'm seeing. In the senate, yes they have to gain 11 seats to get a full on majority BUT they can work their leverage as a block if they make ANY gains. The GOP is much more in lockstep with each other when it comes to party loyalty and they can do a LOT of things to slip in or defuse ACA.

If Romney gets elected without the democrats gaining in BOTH houses, they will do what they can to defeat it. Odds are he'll continue the 'Unitary' attitude of the Bush II white house and push the limits of Presidential power in a way that he lets laws affect his power. Check into it.. 'Unitary President'. Scary things.

[RubySlippers]

Perhaps but can they stop the law in time, their only real chance would be in my view November 2014 when more Senate seats come up and they could take over. But by then alot of states will likely opt into the Medicaid expansion and likely set-up exchanges with the money out there and then would anyone want to take that away from millions of working poor and with exchanges the lower middle class even more people?

They do have one year not exactly alot of time once sworn in to pass a full repeal through and a partial repeal will have problems far worse than the ACA alone. I suspect they will do a bipartisan law to change parts of the ACA to avoid a fight in the Senate since many agree some work is needed regardless of makeup.

It will be decided in November of this year if Obama is returned to office or the Senate is held by the Democrats the fight will be legislatively dead for two years or longer.

[Callie Del Noire]

Yeah.. but then they were too busy with 'more important' things like invading our privacy from all angles and looking to roll up our freedoms to 'protect' us.

[AndyZ]

(my italics)

It seems the question whether reconciliation could possibly be used to bury Obamacare is a whole debate topic unto itself. And then it's just whether it would be permitted, not whether such a move would be in line with the proper use of the reconciliation procedure. Seeing that the law package isn't mainly a budget issue and bears heavily on public health and - by extension - social security (sickness often works together with unemployment and social uprooting, so if the health care issues are not addressed, it's likely to balloon social security costs and continue to balloon on-the-spot hospital costs) it's hard to see how Obamacare could be pushed down into the grave with a reconciliation move. Especially when Romney enacted a similar package during his time as governor of Massachusetts.

Also, reconciliation vote can only be used once a year. Don't you think there are other issues Romney would want it for?

I think Callie is right, this is political theatre. I've seen similar things in other elections, an issue gets blown to the sky and dominates the campaign only to sink to the bottom of the sea once victory has been achieved. Romney's people already know that it will be very difficult and divisive to get rid of ACA, and that it could well become a millstone around their necks in 2016. There's a limit to how much recent legislation you can repeal without undermining the authority of your own office.

I'd rather not get back into the issue of whether it's a good law.  I'm out of ways on how to convince people that raising demand doesn't lower the price, but then, I still don't understand why people think that big insurance companies wouldn't want a bill which forces you to buy their product or get taxed.

If they can only use reconciliation once a year, is there anything keeping them from grouping together all kinds of stuff into that single use?  Since the CBO currently has the law at $2.6 Trillion instead of the $900 billion that was originally promised, there'd be all kinds of stuff for that money to get allocated into.

Maybe I just don't fully understand how reconciliation works.

[Serephino]

All the fear surrounding death panels really pisses me off.  I saw someone with a picture of a grave site on his facebook that had the caption; Obamacare, welcome to healthcare rationing.  Yeah, because it's so much better when a suit in an office does it....  I have a permanent disfigurement because of an HMO.  I had one through my mom's work when I was like 14.  I broke my arm in gym class. 

Now, to be fair, the attitude of my mother didn't help.  It wasn't swollen, and I could move it a little, so the gym teacher didn't think it was broken.  That, and I wasn't crying, so it couldn't have hurt that bad *sighs*  So, of course my mother didn't think a sprain was worth ducking out of work early.  I had to ride the bus home.  When my mom got home an hour after I did I pointed out that a person's forearm isn't supposed to be curved...

To get the HMO to pay for a trip to the ER we had to get permission from my listed family physician to go.  The really fun part was that the doctor I was going to moved, and the paperwork hadn't been processed by the insurance company yet.  We had to track him down.  I sat in my living room with broken arm waiting for the doctor's office to find the old one, get a hold of him, and for him to call us back.

Because treatment was delayed for so long I have a bone spur in my forearm.  It won't rotate more than 20 degrees.  I can't type with it.  I've learned to type one-handed, but I would never be able to get a job that involved typing, because I doubt most employers would look kindly on how I type, even though I can do it faster than the average person.  I wasn't allowed to do it one handed in typing class in school.  I had to wear a brace and elevate the keyboard with several books so my arm didn't have to rotate.

And let's not forget the day I had a 104F fever.  Yeah, my mom had to call for permission for that too.  The doctor's office told her to try Advil, and my temp did go down, and didn't get that high again.  I'm lucky.  Had it been more life threatening than that I would have died because we couldn't afford to not have an ER visit covered, and the damn HMO didn't want to pay out any more than they absolutely had to.     

[RubySlippers]

I'd rather not get back into the issue of whether it's a good law.  I'm out of ways on how to convince people that raising demand doesn't lower the price, but then, I still don't understand why people think that big insurance companies wouldn't want a bill which forces you to buy their product or get taxed.

If they can only use reconciliation once a year, is there anything keeping them from grouping together all kinds of stuff into that single use?  Since the CBO currently has the law at $2.6 Trillion instead of the $900 billion that was originally promised, there'd be all kinds of stuff for that money to get allocated into.

Maybe I just don't fully understand how reconciliation works.

That is over ten years so its really $260 billion year more for covering everyoneones health care as far as possible, education for health care delivery jobs, reforming medical records, setting up exchanges and lots of little things. A good deal of money but seeing the size of the health care pie is huge ($1.2 trillion a year) its not exactly earth shattering. And noone can say if its going to not have a good impact over a bad one we are talking a big economic boost, eliminating much of the need, shoring up hospitals that take the uninsured and eat the losses passing those on to everyone else, preventing the real risk of a plague being detected early over later (in Florida they had a bad TB outbreak among the homeless and poor) and state have to add to the law to make it work better. You could divert some discretionary funds from highways, enviornmental projects not impacting humans health, the military and others to easily dig up that money to expand health care.

My issue again doing nothing is not an option and I don't see a repeal on the table as an option unless the Senate falls hard to the Republicans in November and they take the White House.

[MasterMischief]

I just don't think that the government should force people into buying healthcare.

Wasn't it the Healthcare industry that insisted on the mandate?  They did not want their precious profits touched to ensure everyone had coverage.

[gaggedLouise]

Wasn't it the Healthcare industry that insisted on the mandate?  They did not want their precious profits touched to ensure everyone had coverage.

Washington had to get them on board too. But frankly I think Serephino's story touches on a key point. On many occasions, being able to act fast and not getting lost in the paperwork shuttled between various employers, bureaucrats and insurance people who want ever new documents and signatures to get off their butts for a minute saves a huge amount of money and future labour capacity, both to the family concerned and to society. If your eyes get infected and you have to put off seeing the doctor because you don't have fifty bucks to spare or your dad doesn't think it's important, it might result in serious impairment iof vision or even blindness. Most developed countries have long recognized that being able to toss up the bucks in that situation is not always 100% the responsibility of the individual.

[Trieste]

I think it's been long recognized that preventative care is the most cost-effective way to go about medical care. Emergency care, on the other hand, is the most expensive. It only make sense to cut costs by making preventative care accessible to everyone.

[OldSchoolGamer]

The GOP (if it gets the White House) will repeal all of the consumer protections but keep the individual mandate.  More money for their corporate masters that way.

[Trieste]

I sincerely think that they have a very narrow window of opportunity. I think that once Americans get a taste of what it's like to have the kind of modern medical coverage that we deserve nationwide - and the corresponding drop in wait times at the ER, etc - there will be very little national talk of 'repeal and replace'.

[Callie Del Noire]

I sincerely think that they have a very narrow window of opportunity. I think that once Americans get a taste of what it's like to have the kind of modern medical coverage that we deserve nationwide - and the corresponding drop in wait times at the ER, etc - there will be very little national talk of 'repeal and replace'.

Like the guys in charage of the GOP will care. They don't answer to their voters.. they answer to their corporate sponsors.

[Trieste]

I'm disheartened by the political climate we're seeing, too, but I do try to remind myself that these people DO need to be voted in, and for that they DO still need at least some support from, ah, Joe the Plumber. ::)

[Callie Del Noire]

I'm disheartened by the political climate we're seeing, too, but I do try to remind myself that these people DO need to be voted in, and for that they DO still need at least some support from, ah, Joe the Plumber. ::)

I know.. but with the truly epic amounts of money, lack of resposibility/oversight the SuperPacs can operate with very little of the truth is being used. They can, and do, use the cut and paste approach to slime their rivals and lie and lie and lie..

And too few of the people I talk to down here bother to do a little due dillagence to find out what is true and what isn't.. and the media is doing everything they can to hide it.

[Serephino]

That bugs the hell out of me too.  People twist words and whatnot so much it's hard to know which way is up.  Also, if you see/hear the same ad over and over again it tends to stick in your mind.  They don't even have to tell us who paid for the ad anymore, so who the hell knows where the money is coming from, and who the politicians will owe favors to.  So many people just sit in front of the TV and believe what they're told.  Five minutes on Facebook will prove that.  I saw this one thing; you know you are a Liberal if...  It was beyond offensive.  Apparently I'm pro- job killing, pro-death panel, and pro-murder.  Whoever posted that garbage believes it.

[Trieste]

There is some research to indicate that it doesn't matter whether they list who paid for it or not. The old adage of "if you hear something often enough, you start to believe it" applies to advertising as well. *shrug*

I don't really discuss politics on Facebook. I have made the conscious decision that my relationships with the people on my friends list mean more to me than internet debating, so I simply don't do it. If a friend makes a post asking for opinions on a topic, I'll state my opinion and then leave it at that. I don't debate on Facebook, at all. Ever.