It’s too complex to avoid edge cases and unintended consequences. I’m even willing to believe the Ann Coulter anecdote. I think it’s pretty obvious, though, that expanding access to healthcare and even requiring people to carry it is far more likely to save lives than kill.
Guys, if someone is quoting Ann Coulter in order to prove his point, I think it’s pretty clear he’s not arguing in good faith. Why bother engaging at that point?
Exactly! And the other link is the WSJ, so. . . .
It’s in the WSJ, but it’s an opinion piece. It’s not reporting. While I have no doubt the writer is telling the truth as she knows it, there is more to the story about United Healthcare retreating from California. It’s not just “because Obamacare.”
Here’s a piece from the LA Times about it:
This newfound respect for human lives is interesting on the part of anti-ACA’ers. Where were they before when people were getting jettisoned from their healthcare plans for stupid reasons, or not able to get healthcare at all? Suddenly it’s all “can’t someone think of the children?!” faux concern.
Say what you want about the ACA - it certainly has its flaws - but at least it’s an attempt to actually fix things. Republicans sat on the sidelines for decades while our healthcare system got worse and worse and never once mounted a serious attempt to change things. They could have done it during the Bush years, but they had other priorities.
In short, take your weak shit out of here. You had your day in court, literally and figuratively, and it was proven to be weak shit. The rest of us will be over here, trying to make this country better.
From 1994 to 2006 (and I’m picking those years for a good reason) the per-person cost of health care in this nation more than doubled. Just sayin’.
This is part of what drives me crazy about the ACA sound bites we’re constantly hearing. If you read this LA Times article, it’s clear that the ACA likely had nothing at all to do with this woman losing her health insurance – but she has chosen to blame the ACA for it. Like so many other things in our society, we’re all viewing things through an ideological prism, and that’s just making the truth more and more difficult to understand.
I do wish there were more voices out there calling bullshit on both sides. The ACA isn’t going to solve all the problems in our health care system – particularly the issues around cost! – but it is going to mean that more people have insurance. It’s going to be years before we can judge whether the system is a success or failure. If it were simple, it would have been done years ago.
Thanks for digging that LA Times piece up, Oghier.
Look at all the polling around ACA. Break it down, it polls fairly well. Call it Obamacare in a red state, its polling plummets.
And people actually believe we have a liberal-biased MSM in America.
To be fair, it’s gone up elsewhere in that time span as well. 30-40%, generally. (Higher in the UK, but we had a hideously underfunded health service until ~'96 in first world terms).
Apologies for the negative tone I took in this thread. Ironically 2 years ago, Republican Arizona Governor Jan Brewer sat idly by and watched a guy die who needed a lung transplant. He was continually denied lungs due to his pre-existing condition and lack of healthcare. So the fake rage at outlier cases is infuriating when those very people are just as happy to have said “oh well, you’re poor, you didn’t deserve to live” in years past.
I just can’t understand how right-wing people can continue to justify their party when it is so very… horrible. You’ve got racism, bigotry, anti-women, anti-poor, anti-living wages, anti-“any religion that isn’t Christian”, anti-science, anti-facts, anti-education… it’s just like “mind explodes!”.
Meanwhile, our F-35 fighter jet program will cost over $1 trillion and be one of the expensive & difficult jets to maintain. But hey, $1 trillion, replacing rugged & wonderful jets like the A-10 Thunderbolt with a platform that can’t remotely perform the same task, and billions going into shareholder and executive pockets. http://www.politico.com/story/2014/02/f-35-fighter-plane-costs-103579.html
Right now the plane is $163 billion over budget because LH underbid to win. Everyone agrees if we had to do it over again we would not go “all-in-one”. Stupiud idea, the jet is worse in every capacity than it should be and more expensive and harder to maintain. But hey, it’s not “our” money! And it’s not like that alternate money could go towards HEALTHCARE and paying off our debt.
Hey, guess what? If you had taken half a second to click the link and then read, it wasn’t a quote by Ann Coulter at all. It was just what a man had written for her website about his sister dying because Obamacare took away her affordable insurance. As made evident by the part where it said, “GUEST COLUMN,” and, “by Doug Graham”. But if you can’t be bothered to actually do a little light reading, and automatically dismiss something you don’t agree with, it is pretty clear you’re not arguing in good faith. Why bother engaging that that point? Waste of typing going on right here I guess.
…
I appreciate that you guys don’t care for Ann Coulter. There are plenty of politicians I don’t care for, but to simply dismiss a man’s story of how his sister died simply because it was first published on Coulter’s website is pretty ridiculous. And then you guys go and say that it is the Right that is bigoted, anti-women, etc. Really? (And this isn’t me picking on what jpnaird said. I can’t go one page on this sub forum without somebody taking a bigoted shot at the stereotypical perception of “the Right”)
And as far as the WSJ article is concerned, you can just google the name Edie Sundby. I understand the WSJ only allows a few views per month before you have to pay to read, but there are plenty of hits on google for Sundby’s story.
I’d also like to sarcastically thank everybody who simply dismissed the points I was making, and the other story I posted about living people listed as dead, because “eww, Ann Coulter” and “oh well, paywall lololol!” This sub forum is such a left-wing circle jerk. I can totally understand not agreeing with somebody, but can we manage to have a mature dialogue about something without essentially resorting to name calling because you don’t like a website? You attempt to refute the substance of my post not with any counter-argument, but with what logicians call the ad hominem circumstantial fallacy. That is the fallacy of claiming to refute an argument merely by pointing to various circumstances about the person making the argument, or in the case the celebrity talking head associated with the website where a family’s experience with Obamacare was related. Arguments, however, stand or fall on their logical merits, not on whether you like the fact that an easily researchable story was first posted on a website with a paywall.
The fact of the matter is that, just as Obamacare’s regulation making insurance cover preexisting conditions is going to help people out, there are still tons of people suffering due to the costs increases associated with Obamacare, and there are people suffering due to the regulations that dictate their affordable and beneficial plans are now illegal, people that otherwise were fine the way they were with their insurance and doctors they wanted to keep. Address that. That is the argument. Screw Ann Coulter and your fear of the WSJ. Talk about people who are losing what they were counting on because Obama said it had to be so.
Just because a news story is posted on a website that isn’t in the pocket of progressives or the Democrats doesn’t mean it is some sort of blatant fraud. If you have other news articles calling into question the veracity of the pieces I’ve posted, I’m more than willing to read them and take them into consideration. But please do try to grow up and have a serious discussion about the points somebody is making.
Anyway.
Thank you for your response. I’d also like to say that it is too complex to avoid edge cases. Perhaps the original story is more of a edge case than you’d like to think? I haven’t heard too many of the “Obamacare saved my life!” stories, but there is plenty of evidence of people losing access to health care that they liked, losing their doctors, or having to pay more money than they were before, never mind the horror stories of people who needed healthcare and have hard times trying to access it through the exchanges implemented due to Obamacare.
I know there are certainly cases of people gaining access to health care due to Obamacare and the regulations about preexisting conditions, which I think most people agree is one of the few good things about Obamacare. But, as has already been pointed out, that could have been done easily and with bi-partisan support, without the monstrosity and headache that Obamacare has turned into. But I don’t know of any stories where somebody’s life was saved due to something other than that one new regulation. I’m interested in reading those stories if they do exist, however.
(edited for clarity and to expand my response to Oghier)
“that could have been done easily and with bi-partisan support”
Oh dear.
How? Not politically – leave that aside for now – but practically? If pre-existing conditions cannot be the basis for denial, you must require everyone to have health insurance. Otherwise, people wait until they’re sick to buy it. That doesn’t work, as long as we rely on private companies to supply that insurance.
Once you require everyone to have insurance, now you have to either subsidize it for the poor, or you expand medicaid.
As I’ve said before, it’s possible, or even likely that the drafters of Obamacare got too ambitious. But the notion that you can take the one part everyone likes and “just do that” seems to ignore how insurance actually works. It’s a bumper sticker, not a solution.
Indeed - look how insurance works in the EU countries which use it. Companies DON’T make money off the mandated-coverage basic packages. And it’s questionable if that model could work in America given the higher levels of inequality, which mean a lower percentage of the population could take up the optional elements they DO make money off.
Ummm where were the plans by Republicans and Libertarians to help people get affordable health insurance coverage? Everyone knows what we need is Universal basic coverage that is not profit oriented, and I have no doubt Democrats would have liked to do this. But the right wing absolutely would not do this so we end up with the poor design we have. I’m on disability and poor and my costs have gone up. But the fact some people are finally being saved makes me feel better about the situation.
BTW - your comment on how easy bipartison bill would/could have happened? Do you even live in America? If you do, then you’re incredibly ignorant about how Republicans and Libertarians work. Congress did the least amount of work of any Congress in history last year thanks to the political right. They are actually the antithesis of bi-partisan as all they care about is big business and their own little principalities… even if it meant driving the entire country into a Somalia like morass. There are Republicans who’ve said they’d vote for slavery if that’s what their population base asked for. This it the “United States of America”, not the “Independent Confederacy of Loosely Linked Selfish States”. Honestly, if you can’t see the writing on the wall about what the right really stands for, then it’s not our fault we’re moderate and you hate it.
The reason costs are high is because the insurance industry has their hands tied to representatives of all stripes. They already make insane profits, and taking on more paying people did not mean they had to limit doctor and hospital choices. Nor increase rates for everyone. That whole segment is entirely because that’s the only way it could get “any” republican votes. So when you want to play the blame game… blame the correct people.
BTW - if you think we’re liberal, head over to Broken Forum. They’ll eat you alive.
See, that’s part of the problem right there. You think that “everyone knows” we need this, but the opposition would disagree with the fundamental basis of your argument. It’s hard to come to the table, when both parties can’t even agree there needs to be a meeting.
Full disclosure: I agree that we should have universal healthcare.
Working as I do in health care, and dealing with insurance and medical billing on a daily basis, far be it from me to defend insurance companies (I’d love single payer. But then, I’m a dirty fucking hippy - I think GMI is an awesome idea, too. It’d be great if everyone could actually work on achieving their full potential, adding to sum total of human knowledge and culture, etc., rather than adding a few pennies to the coffers of the takers that are the 1%.). However… It is only true on an absolute dollar basis that health insurance makes a huge profit. However, on a percentage basis, it tends to hover in 3-8% range. Not exactly stellar returns.
Calelari - Thing is, you don’t even need single payer. Look at the system in the Netherlands, for example, which actually delivers a higher % of it’s care via private providers than America, and has a highly competitive market for add-ons to the basic healthcare insurance.
Serious suggestion: Spend three or four hours one night watching Fox News. You’ll see a wholly different version of reality, one where facts are merely minor obstacles to the conclusions they reach. For folks who get their information from Fox, arguments based on an assumption of common knowledge and mutually agreed facts will fail.
I don’t think this is the major issue. I agree that it is an issue, but it’s not the primary driver of our increasingly insane health care costs.
It’s fee-for-service. When the basis for paying medical professional is how many procedures they do, and when the immediate consumer is (or at least feels) insulated from the costs of those procedures, you get more procedures, and more expensive ones to boot. Incentives drive behavior.
That’s not the only issue either. Applying free market mechanisms to an area where the consumers have incomplete information and often no real choice of provider has so many problems it’s hard to pick one as the root cause. But if you did have to pick one, I don’t think the math ultimately points to the profits generated at United Health Care, Blue Cross or Humana.