You’re right, the title doesn’t make sense. That’s the point. Jonah Goldberg:
Consider the fact that Obamacare is now simply untethered from law or policy. This week the administration announced that you can get a hardship waiver from Obamacare if your hardship is . . .wait for it . . . Obamacare. This is like getting out of doing push-ups during basic training if you can prove that doing push-ups would be difficult for you, defeating the point of doing push-ups in the first place. The White House is quite simply making it all up as they go along. You can’t really point to a thing that is Obamacare because doing so would be like pointing at the blob in a lava lamp and saying “that looks like Michael Caine eating a badger.” Maybe it looks like that right now. Give it a second. When you criticize Obamacare the response from its defenders gets meta really quickly.
Sure, the defenders will admit, more people have lost their insurance than gained insurance because of Obamacare. Yes, yes, the website is the screen-doored submarine of websites. Sure, the president is simply disregarding countless laws and regulations he and his supporters once considered so sacred only racists, psychopaths, and Koch brothers could oppose. But good God, “DON’T YOU WANT PEOPLE TO HAVE INSURANCE, YOU HEARTLESS BASTARD!?!?!”
Jonah goes on from there. Like he does.
Yeah, hopefully Republicans will start standing up to Democrats and their rather predictable personal attacks instead of cowering…
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Seriously, Obamacare was never about people’s healthcare, it was about getting power over people’s lives. If they seriously wanted to make it so people with pre-existing conditions could get affordable health insurance, it would have been fairly easy to go about it.
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1. Competition across state lines.
2. Make it so insurers couldn’t deny people based on pre-existing conditions, but there would also be a 5 year period in which the insurer wouldn’t have to cover said conditions (exceptions being children getting off parents insurance and onto their own for the first time)
a. This window wouldn’t apply for people that get insurance for 60 days after the law takes effect.
3. Allow small businesses to pool together and get joint policies as though they were a large corporation.
4. Tort reform
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There no individual mandate, and it prevents people from waiting till they get sick before getting insurance coverage, but then this was never about people’s healthcare, it was always about control.
That whole thing about pre-existing conditions puzzles me. My brother has one of the most expensive pre-existing conditions yet has never had any trouble getting insurance.
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I would add something to your list though:
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5. Immediate revocation on all restrictions on the amount of money anyone can have in a Health Savings Account.
Thank you, I forgot about that, I’d add it to my original comment but I can’t edit my prior comment.
Well if you were getting your insurance through work it was never a problem. But otherwise it depended on the state you lived in, mostly. Many states have (had?) high-risk pools that would take anyone. These were usually state-subsidized, although I think some states just required insurance companies to take a certain number of folks from them in exchange for the right to do business in the state.
I want people to have insurance, which is why I oppose Obamacare.
Heck, I want universal health care (provided for by individuals themselves rather than government coercion and manipulation) which is why I oppose Obamacare.
In all honesty when people bring up Obamacare, I can honestly say that the shear incompetitence demonstrated in building the website alone is enough to demonstrate why the government can’t be trusted with healthcare.
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It took me a few hours to set up an e-commerce site for my mother (once I got her to tell me what exactly she wanted). Getting the e-commerce part working, I’ll admit took a little longer (even though my bachelors is in Computer Graphics Technology, my emphasis was in Manufacturing Graphics not web), however once I had that part figured out, I got the paypal stuff set up correctly on the first attempt.
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I mean seriously, if I could put together a functioning e-commerce site in a few weeks (tops, and much of that was deciding on pictures, getting the client to tell me what exactly they wanted, and hashing out how the actual selling items would work (I wanted the thing to keep track of inventory, but the client didn’t see the need for it initially)), the “best in the business,” at building web sites (which the clowns that put together that website aren’t), should be able to build a functioning site in a matter of months (year tops).
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Then again, Obamacare was never intended to work like the Democrats advertised, it was all about power. They want to destroy the private insurance industry and replace it with government controlled healthcare.
Then again, Obamacare was never intended to work like the Democrats advertised, it was all about power. They want to destroy the private insurance industry and replace it with government controlled healthcare.
Yes, and they have quite likely succeeded on both counts. I have precisely zero faith that, even given super-majorities in both houses and the presidency, the GOP would ever do more than tinker about the edges of the ACA, declare it ‘fixed’ and crow about how ‘compassionate’ they are….
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It would be great to be proven wrong on this.
Drat, I need an edit function. I’m too accustomed to having one, now.
Considering that several of the proponents of the bill openly stated this as the goal…
The odds of you being proven wrong approach zero.
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Of course, those who noted this at the time were fear-mongering troglodytes, and shunned by polite company.