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Obamacare Monstrosity
For all those liberals who said obamacare was better than nothing.
http://jacobinmag.com/2013/02/employ...eat-obamacare/
Actually it is better than what we had before.We had NONE of these before the law.
Businesses have been trying to get rid of giving health benefits to their workers for DECADES. Obamacare was just the easiest excuse by employers to justify the reasons to cut or just take the damage.
So you consider losing employer provided health insurance and being forced to pay more for healthcare coverage or paying a penalty better? The only upside will be the increase in people demanding universal healthcare.
No, but it was going to happen anyway. The Obama elections just accelerated capitalist's plans to get rid of it.
Which may be the most ironic thing. Businesses don't want to support universal healthcare, so it has to be the state to provide it. Unless most of the American population goes Ayn Rand on us.
Ah I see. Though the Ayn Rand thing unfortunately may put a stopper in that.
Exactly. Socialized Medicine. Like the rest of the (sensible) world.
Another plus: this so-called "ObamaCare" takes some power away from Capitalists.
Anything that takes power away from Capitalists is a good thing.
money is to politics as fertilizer is to garden weeds.
The provisions would actually empower private insurers more- it would empower a different set of capitalists.
The idea behind this reform was to expand the amount of people paying into the healthcare system. The justification was that in the long run this would help drive down costs. It is by and large an expansion of a private industry with some regulations tacked on.
The ironic thing here of course is that Republicans were long in favor of this kind of system when some democrats began to push for some form of single-payer medicine or at least a more robust government insurance program. The "individual mandate" at its core was a Republican counter-proposal to the attempts by the Clinton white house to push for universal healthcare. This also had the support of certain businesses who are now opposed to it.
This is a big problem though honestly. Employers are holding this as a threat that they will not provide health insurance to all their employees- either by cutting jobs or hours. This is especially pronounced in businesses hiring minimum wage or near minimum wage workers. Interesting that they often complain about unions holding the industry hostage, what do they call this?
One of the weird episodes to come out of this is that these businesses, while being fairly supportive of the Republican Party's efforts to repeal the act, have challenged some Republican governors' decisions to block expansion of medicaid in their states because it would have relieved them of the obligation to provide healthcare to their full-time lower employees.
The only consolation to Democrats and their supporters is that since Romney was unable to win the election and Republicans didn't capture the senate, the law will go into effect as planned and it will likely be difficult to repeal after that. For better or worse they will adjust, the question is how much an effect will this have on the workforce after 2014.
I don't know how this displeasure with this would increase support for single-payer medicine. Media paints the current system as a "government take over" or some other buzzword, so by association something that really is a larger government involvement would likely be poorly received in the wake of this bill. I mean the media was going nuts enough before hand demonizing single-payer medicine as seen in Europe and Canada as ineffective and making people wait in line (of course, the people in Europe and Canada are just jumping to adopt our system), I don't really see as the climate stands that people would want to adopt it, much less any other form of universal healthcare entailing government action.
All those liberals? You mean half the revleft forum, as evidenced by the responses your post has received in this very thread. If it wasn't already clear how young and consequently insulated many participants on this forum are from things like health insurance premiums, the response to this specific issue removes all doubt. A bunch of (poorly thought out and wrong, btw) theoretical declarations by people who don't have to pay the fucking bills.
How exactly do you go from maybe what, three responses to the OP to launching a tirade on the forum at large? Get off your high horse.
IIRC, with the exception of a handful of users, most of revleft in the aftermath of the bill's passage as well as the Supreme Court case of it do not view the bill warmly. Most users recognize that there is no real reform here and even those who support single-payer medicine should recognize this as a flawed bill that will likely shift costs on to the population already dealing with bad insurance. I do not agree with BSC's or Klaatu's assessments here, but I do not think "half" of the forum can be said to hold those views.
BTW: I am almost 30 years old with years paying medical bills and seeing friend and family being denied healthcare due to caps or just confirmation of cancer.
Obamacare is not the bill we would like to have, but remember some of us here live in the United States. There are many Americans who do not trust the idea of "Socialized" Medicine. A lot of them are even liberals. Hell, my state's Democratic Party had "Universal Healthcare" in their platform for decades and never touch on the idea again because it's not politically a good idea anymore. There is a good chance that Universal Healthcare would be a state by state basis because even the Federal government doesn't want universal healthcare in the way they are cutting Medicare, Medicaid, and many VA health benefits.
How? By remembering how I debated large numbers of them just months after I first joined this forum. It seemed that every thread about Obamacare was about 50-50, sometimes 60-40 in favor of the bill on the premise that "something is better than nothing," "don't let perfect be the enemy of the good," "my Aunt Petunia [or insert another cornercase anecdote here] can now purchase health insurance," and similar Democrat bullshit talking points they unwittingly absorbed. A small fraction of the Obamacare boosters ended up being restricted, the rest remaining on the whole forum.
If you want an example of these arguments, see the post just above this one. A classic case of two of the three talking points I mentioned.
And I wouldn't call what I said "launching a tirade at the forum." It's undeniably true that vast majority of the participants on this forum are under 35, with - i would argue - some size majority being under 21. These are the age brackets least likely to have any experience at all with health care issues. You sound like an offended ISO-er when the undeniable fact that the majority of its members are college students is pointed out to them. Facts are the facts, and pointing them out and drawing logical conclusions from it is not a "tirade."
What would be the best? Oppose Obamacare and let insurance deny me coverage because I got cancer? This is the United States of America. Most Americans are not ready or don't accept any fiscal liberal or any left wing ideal. Americans are fiscally conservative & socially liberal. My home state is a big example of that. "We want more money to education, but I don't want my taxes raised to pay for it!"
LOL, ya right. Thats why United heath, Kaiser, Aetna, Humana etc are wetting their pants in anticipation for this to start up. Obama gave capitalists profits like they've never experienced just like Mitt Romney did in his state.
This "capitalist were bound to attack medicare/medicaid/employer benifits and it just so happened under Obama's administration" line, while extolling the benefits of the new law is kinda dubious.
This is precisely the problem I was referring to above. I'm pretty damn certain that you don't have cancer. Your arguments aren't based on information drawn from your actual life experiences; they're based on hypotheticals drawn up on the basis of Obamabot talking points. The thanks you got from NGNM, one of the most notorious of the Obama boosters who was restricted during that time period, should really tell you all you need to know about your position.
I am somebody who doesn't make very much money. I live above the poverty line, but not so far above it that I would characterize my life as comfortable. I receive health coverage through my employer, and I've seen my health insurance contributions grow substantially, and coverage decline, as a direct result of Obamacare. I can go on and list similar stories from actual people I know in real life, not invented hypotheticals tailored around the talking points of bourgeois politicians.
I don't support the cuts to Medicare/Medicaid, the mandate to buy private insurance, the employee benefits on the chopping block and or anything about this new healthcare law and I have a mortgage, car payment, car insurance, PG&E, cable, food, gas, clothes, phone and a couple other bills to pay each month.
I don't have healthcare now because I can't afford it but my income level will tell the government I can afford it which is going to bring me a nice fine each year in the middle of one of the biggest economic rescission's of our lifetime. This is austerity plain and simple. Cutting hundreds of billions from Medicare/Medicaid while setting the stage for employers to cancel health benefits by using the coercive arm that is the IRS to police people into forking out more money to survive in a system already built on hamster wheel dynamics. I'm running out of gas here....at least when I die of exhaustion soon I'll have a hospital bed to die in? I suppose I could go without TV and a phone, buy no new clothes, eat top ramen and get another job.
+ YouTube Video
Got any sources, perhaps poll data, to back this up? Because it seems like hyperbole derived from anecdotes and the fabricated reality of the media. As far as I can remember, polls routinely showed that most Americans actually do want universal health care, with support only dropping in the wake of a huge media blitz to discredit Obamacare.
YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS
Yes, this is how Obamacare is being experienced by real people, and will be experienced more and more as additional aspects of its are implemented. I'm sure there is the occasional Aunt Petunia out there who actually does derive some marginal or temporary benefit from one or some of the provisions, but overall, the law is designed to make such cases rare. It is a giveaway to insurance companies, best summed up what you called it: a piece of austerity that can only be understood in the context of other such measures meant to bolster the sagging rate of profit in the wake of the Great Recession.
My problem with your post was not your swipe at the age of the users, but your position that most of us on this forum are, by association, liberals, because of some people you disagreed with on a thread from way back when.
I don't care about this stuff you are saying about the age of our users or whatever, but saying "You mean half the revleft forum" when the liberal position on the OP got brought up is rather odd. I don't really see how that is relevant or true. It reminds me of people complaining that this forum is simultaneously too anarchist, left com, trot, stalinist, liberal, anti-communist, what ever when they get into some disagreements with other users and blame the whole forum for it.
I guess I'm not just seeing this supposed widespread support for obamacare here, but then again I don't usually take what other people say as indicative of a whole forum.
Look. You can be upset or offended or feel however you choose to feel. I am stating what I think to be true from my memory of the experience of having multiple discussions about the bill/law on the forum. If you want a refresher, I am sure a search of "Obamacare" will yield results that correspond to my memory.
If the Democrats really wanted to increase the number of individuals insured, they should have simply made Medicare universal for all individuals (which Americans don't realize is socialized medicine). Granted, Obamacare is a slight improvement over what currently exists due to the expansion of medicaid and increased coverage, but the capitalists prevail because of the individual mandate, forcing one to buy a private health insurance plan; Which is how the plan passed in the first place - the corporate HMOs still make out with profits at the expense of the working class.
[FONT=Georgia][FONT=Microsoft Sans Serif]Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of government. - P.J. Proudhon[/FONT][FONT=Microsoft Sans Serif]
The State rests on the slavery of labor. If labor becomes free, the State is lost. - Max Stirner
None of my prevailing tastes center in things that can be bought. I want nothing but unadulterated pleasures, and money poisons all. - Jean-Jacques Rousseau[/FONT]
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