ACA was a great idea that they purposefully let the Republicans destroy. Democrats don’t want progress, they just want the status quo and to be able to shrug and say, “We tried.”
Cowards.
I think its fairer to say about 25% of Democratic politicians are garbage (vs 100% of republicans) but it effectively means they will never pass any kind of uncorrupted reform unless they are absolutely terrified.
thats some obama awards obama stuff right there.
The ACA blows. Here are my issues with it:
- doesn’t go far enough - I would’ve been better off w/ ACA if my employer didn’t offer coverage (small company of <50 people), but switching would’ve eliminated my employer contribution and the credit
- goes too far - too opinionated about what care counts
The proper solution IMO would’ve been to:
- separate health insurance from employment - employers can offer cash incentives, but you should be able to choose if you want their group coverage or to apply the cash to your own plan
- simplify healthcare coverage terms - most people don’t understand their health coverage, though ACA plans are a bit easier to understand; they should have required all health insurance plans to simplify their coverage
- expand Medicare/Medicaid instead of creating a new healthcare marketplace
But no, they didn’t do any of that. Screw everyone involved. Republicans for neutering the bill, and Democrats for only fighting for the stuff that doesn’t matter as much.
Bro literally had the votes for single payer and didn’t take it.
There were a LOT of shitty liberal status-quo standards that Obama stamped down, solidified and made mandate for 8 years while paving the way for conservatism to run amuck across the country by not using his unprecedented power to actually implement and federally protect progressive politics and install judges. ACA was so watered-down from the public option we all wanted, that it was literally a plan invented by Republicans, Mitt Romney specifically.
I thought Obama was a great person, he was a great leader, he was inspiring and helped create prosperity and peace for many years. But I’m not a personality cultist, I have some serious criticisms of his presidency and how he managed the Democratic party (or failed to).
He had every opportunity to push America into a new era of social policies and protections for all people, and what actually happened is a lot of banks made a lot of money.
He thought he could compromise Republicans into behaving, he didn’t realize until it was too late that they’d never support a black man. And since the GOP knows that a black president is a possibility, they’ll never allow a Democrat to bring their voice above a whisper again
Bingo
Bro literally demonstrably didn’t because caucusing independent Joe Lieberman voted against Public Option leaving the DNC dead in the water with 59 and a Republican Filibuster. The DNC count was 58 + 2 ind, and only for 72 days.
Here’s an article from 2009 that analyzes this point about the White House during the 111th Congress bit: https://www.politico.com/story/2009/12/what-if-obama-hadnt-ostracized-dean-030752
Obama White House worked against itself on healthcare reform during that time period. Actively. Lieberman was essentially helping the White House’s mission.
Some of us who were fighting that fight back then haven’t forgotten or willfully pulled the wool over our eyes when the turn happened. Some of us were still pissed about abortion disappearing from legistlative priorities immediately after the election.
-
This ridiculous trend of people linking one or multiple opinion articles is as fucking annoying as Tankies leaving a giant wall of text pulling from various manifestos, you’ve basically done the same thing with an added middleman. A bunch of what-ifs and hypotheticals doesn’t change the facts. Getting 58 DNC senators wasn’t enough but it was still a huge accomplishment, and this “all or nothing” approach to reform is just childish. Just because Obama didn’t give Dean a bunch of positions doesn’t indicate any acts of malice, and his actual choice for HHS, Kathleen Sebelius was also a supporter for Public Option.
-
Overturning SCOTUS decisions isn’t as simple as electing a simple senate majority, you’re either wildly misinformed or you’re arguing in bad faith.
Overturning SCOTUS decisions isn’t as simple as electing a simple senate majority, you’re either wildly misinformed or you’re arguing in bad faith.
Are you referring to Dobbs? …In response to the Obama White House backing off codifying Roe v Wade in his first term?
Under Obama they had a supermajority of 58 plus 2 Independents for 72 days and it was still the most productive congress over a decade before and after it, and the SCOTUS had until much later on upheld the Roe v Wade decision so it was probably low on the priority list.
I mean, it’s not like anybody expected Obama’s last scotus nomination to be denied by congress and the next presidency to replace enough judges to completely flip the majority around.
“Childish” is framing opinion different than your own as lesser rather than engaging, and accusing others of bad faith.
Do i need to make myself more clear, young man? Or would that be uncivil? Sheesh, you’re as exhausting as a teenager
Oh I didn’t engage? Yes clearly I didn’t engage. Sorry for not engaging.
I’m sorry i have never found the proper combination of words to make empty fools discover shame, so i guess we’re both sad now.
-
I’m not from the us, what does it mean?
“Single payer” refers to the government being the one paying for healthcare and prescriptions, and thus having tons of leverage to negotiate lower costs while also providing healthcare to everybody.
Basically, it was one possible method to bring healthcare in the US up to the level of the rest of the developed world.
Single Payer is basically the system most countries have where healthcare is not a luxury good, but a human right.
He’s still got my vote
ACA sucks, but okay. ACA was a compromise. Not an example of inspiring change.
Yeah, Democrats compromising with Democrats.
change happens in many small steps
Have you been in a coma for the past couple months?
true, i should have said positive change, very easy to make things worse
only when you’re forced to compromise with deranged white supremacist apocalypse cultists who want to stop literally anything good from ever happening.
you can take really large steps really fast, or even bounding leaps, if you don’t hamstring yourself.
seems pretty simple alright you’ve convinced me, so how do we do it?
so, there area a few historical examples.
one of them was called ‘operation overlord’, and it didn’t quite work, but I think if you followed through a little better, you could be free of these bastards.
It was passed without Republican support, so I guess you’re describing centrist Democrats?
oh, so it was a compromise for literally no reason. cool
hey what do you call a compromise where you don’t get anything from the other side? is that ‘capitulation’ or ‘just doing what you always wanted to in the first place, without any excuse’?
This sold under the same banner as “any lasting change is non-violent.”
incrementalism is just another way to argue for mass passivity.
That’s how we’ve gotten here.
The ACA further enshrined the core rot of our healthcare system into it, FOR PROFIT health insurers.
this makes a lot of assumptions about the intent of my message.
I don’t believe in passivity, I believe direct action and violence are a necessary part of defending democracy.
However I also recognize if we expect every change to be immediate and sweeping we may neglect to continue building on that change as we have often done.
As for the ACA, no arguments here it was a smoldering pile of shit replacing a slightly larger, smoldering pile of shit.
It didn’t really replace anything. It was an attempt to build a useful and beneficial system that would support generations moving forward into the future.
But instead it was mashed to support the current generation by keeping a beneficial and useful healthcare system in the future.
People had voted for and candidates had run on healthcare reform and the head of the DNC was adamant about the Public Option as a minimum. Obama fired him once he was elected.
It wasn’t the people being demanding and impatient. It was the panicking oligarchy buying the government back from enacting the will of the people.
who was the person Obama removed? that’s wild
Howard Dean. The other guy from Vermont.
He was replaced with Tim Kaine.
thanks! always interesting to read about stuff i didn’t know
You included a picture of incremental change.
I’m not from US & can’t really comment on your best options now. Where I am is OK at the moment due to incremental steps, some forward & some backward.
I understand its different for you guys. I can only hope you survive the next few years & recover. I’m sure locals there will have better/more specific advice.Edit: *You
If you wait for the perfect solution, you likely will never get it. Similar to pedestrian friendly infrastructure and people’s expectations on day 1.
What did we actually get since ACA?
Asking for a friend
slightly less terrible care for millions of Americans
I think there was some really technical stuff in the FCC about the use of various spectra. it’s part of why we transitioned OTA TV to digital; it uses a narrower band that can be crunched tighter that way-those spectra are used for 5g now.
but that might’ve passed before and just taken a while to implement-those things do tend to take a while; IPv6 was finalized in like the 90s and still hasn’t fully rolled out. also the guy did the 5g thing was deported and the american version is kind of crippled garbage because of it, or so I hear. I am poor, and mostly use 4g.
if you let yourself celebrate eating shit, you will also never get anything but piles of delicious steaming shit.
The ACA was the best that could be done at the time, but it is a steaming turd and needs to be replaced with Universal Healthcare.
America: The best we can do is a steaming turd
But did you say thank you today to the president?
deleted by creator
I disagree. Democrats had the presidency, the house and the senate (filibuster proof). They chose a republican friendly solution that was just a bandaid on a broken system.
All it did was piss off republicans and give them a rallying point while doing nothing to encourage democrats to vote.
They should have had the balls to create a system that actually fixed the problems, but they didn’t.
There were like one or two very conservative Dems who derailed the single payer option when they had the filibuster proof majority. The main problem is not getting a solid party wide understanding of the goals they are aiming for ahead of the chances to do something about it.
Actually no, It was an independent who killed the Public Option vote. There was one Dem who opposed the rules in the original bill around Abortion but he still voted yay in the end and Joe Lieberman was the Nay vote. Because they only reached 59 it was filibustered, so they clearly were not filibuster-proof.
The last time DNC had an actual 60 without caucus was 1979.
you mean like the suddenly 10 conservative democrats who just happen to vote to allow trump to continue dismantling the government? including the democratic leader in the senate schumer? stop excusing their lack of accomplishments on a few bad applies. the bulk of the party is rotten.
It wouldnt have mattered if they had 90 members in the senate and 90% of the house they’d find the votes to prevent anything that helps the working class.
Democrats played controlled opposition and the normie still dont see it.
God I hate the term normies. It’s such a chronically online term. And it’s absolutely not normal to be so fucking stupid as to not realize that the democrats are controlled opposition. Every other country in the world can see it.
You are correct on both counts
Meanwhile Republicans can dissolve the Department of Education with a bare majority in both houses…
Yeah the Republicans are basically one mind. I think I remember hearing about Karl Rove back in the day going around to Republicans that didn’t follow that they would take them out if they didn’t toe the party line. I think it’s only gotten worse since then with only the sycophants left.
Dems are different. Like there’s no reason Bernie and AOC would be in the same party of Pelosi and Schumer but they are. This leads to compromises being necessary on the democratic party. Also, the voters for the Dems are just as diverse as no one ever seems happy with them either.
Maybe Dems should clean house
If you mean the progressive arm of the democratic party, then yes :)
I wanted to say the old people need to go but Bernie is old and I don’t want him going anywhere.
Joe Lieberman said no to single payer… He is the one who blocked it from happening because his state had some insurance companies.
But bootlickers running around frothing their their mouth how this is the best republicans would permit us to have 🤡
He was also an Independent and not a Democrat.
Political party Democratic (1960–2006, from 2013) Independent (2006–2013)
Thats what I said. The ACA was in 2010.
And i provided the facts so people can make their own judgement.
They only had a filibuster-proof senate counting the independent Joe Lieberman who caucused with democrats. Lieberman (and a few other dems tbh) wouldn’t support a single payer system, so the ACA was the best they could do.
controlled opposition.
IIRC, at the time Dems had the majority and still the ACA got bastardized before the pubes would let it pass. Personally, I’d consider it a failure.
ACA actually took a supermajority to pass, meaning the 58 Dems and 2 Independents of 2010 senate. They definitely faced the consequences of it, of outrage from both sides, too, since they haven’t even gotten 50 senators in an election since the 2013 congress.
the umpteenth bill to repeal it was introduced on jan 3rd but Luigi happened, ao I think they decided to put it on the backburner.
It is universal. I guarantee you Obama would agree 100% with a European style single payer system, which is what I think you mean.
It is not universal. There is a coverage gap just below the poverty line, between losing eligibility for Medicaid, and becoming eligible for ACA premium subsidies. Just a complete lack of coverage for the people with the greatest need.
(Edit: to be fair, that gap was supposed to be filled by Medicaid expansion, but that largely fell through)
The fundamental reliance on private insurers is the biggest gap in universality. Public healthcare is subject to the private sector’s willingness to permit treatment. With some companies boasting >30% denial rates, that “gap” is a gaping chasm.
Good old “welfare cliff”. It works this way with a lot of low income benefits.
Welp I learn something every day. Thanks for sharing.
What you learned is incomplete: the coverage gap only exists in states that chose not to expand Medicaid coverage, aka those with republican legislatures. As written, the ACA would subsidize an increasing fraction of health insurance cost until someone’s income was a certain level above the poverty line. If their income fell below this level, they would get coverage through Medicaid instead.
Medicaid historically didn’t cover people with incomes this high, so the ACA expanded coverage to higher income residents. The federal government covered 100% of the cost of Medicaid expansion for the first ~decade, and then 90% after that. Several states sued and the supreme court struck down part of the law that required states to go along with this. So they had to opt in to Medicaid expansion. The ones that didn’t (republican state govts) now have a coverage gap.
Its unfortunate because it harms those who needed help the most, but its a consequence of republicans at the state level for refusing expansion, and at republicans at the federal level for refusing to allow any changes to the ACA that would fix the issue.
It’s not universal, it’s based on income. When I signed up for the ACA I put down my income at $3,000 a month, which makes my monthly bill $30.19 a month. If my average income for the year exceeds $3,000, I owe the difference to the government.
My small income works for me because I live alone and don’t have any dependents. But if I had kids I would need to double or triple my income to support them, in which case my monthly ACA payment would also increase. It’s possible for people with families to be priced out of the ACA.
It’s definitely not universal.
Where are you getting $30 a month? When i looked at it, the cheapest is like $300 with a $10k deductible
Washington State. My deductible is $600. It’s income based, so my low rate requires me to make very little. That is fine with me, since I have no desire to work more than 32 hours a week and I’ve learned how to live cheaply.
The insurance my job offered me is $100 a month with a $4,500 deductible, which is absolutely awful in comparison.
lol do you guys seriously still have deductibles with the affordable care act? God I feel for you guys sometimes.
What I especially love is that providers charge a much higher price if you use insurance. A $100 procedure becomes a $1000 procedure if you try to use insurance to pay for it. Then your insurance says “sorry, you haven’t reached your deductible”, and the provider bills you the full amount.
That sounds like a fucking nightmare.
You can wake up from a nightmare.
$300 before or after the subsidy?
True, it’s universal but garbage. So not really universal.
No, it’s neither universal nor garbage. You didn’t bother to read my comment. If you had, you would’ve seen me mention how I pay $30.19 a month for health insurance. That is a fantastic deal. The ACA works well for people like me, it just has a limited scope and sends tax payer dollars to greedy health insurance companies.
That is not a fantastic deal. When insurers are denying 1/3 of claims, and providers are charging insured rates 10 times higher than uninsured rates, that is not a good deal at all.
It is a travesty that government props up this horseshit system. They should be arresting everyone involved with the health insurance industry for perpetrating a massive fraud on the American people.
Nah that would hurt our GDP too much and eliminate too many jobs.
Yeah might as well feed all those poor people to the GDP machine.
Think about the poor GDP!
You know how we can help the GDP? I’ll kick you in the nuts for $100, and then you can punch me in the nose for $100.
Then we’ll have increased the GDP by $200!
The ACA is the best he could do. It’s not like a US President can just go around like a wrecking ball ignoring all established law and checks and balances.
The Democrats briefly had a super majority in Obama’s first 2 years, and could have passed universal healthcare, not this limp dick ACA stuff, but yet here we are. Stuck with a patchwork of terrible private insurance where your policy has lifetime maximums, and the shareholders can sentence you to death so that line goes up.
Incorrect, it was 58 DNC and for only 72 days.
You can thank Schumer for that as well.
Ultimately, even Democratic politicians are beholden to wealthy donors, including those associated with the health insurance industry.
In this post-Citizens-United world, the only way to make real change is to have a bunch of people willing to not hold onto power to do the right thing simultaneously. Sadly, the likelihood of that happening is vanishingly small.
Who would support a citizen cooperative that offers a good private insurance? Under the given circumstances that could be the easiest way to get universal healthcare.
You mean like a health sharing ministry? Good ****ing luck, mate.
Starting our own competitive insurance companies that aim for a 25% of operating costs equivalent liquid asset stockpile and then after that 0% yoy profits could be wildly successful, but the major issue is still that medical prices get set by a cooperation between insurers and hospital corporations and state boards. If we have no method to control prices, like a government would, then people will still suffer and die due to unaffordable care.
It’s not like a US President can just go around like a wrecking ball ignoring all established law and checks and balances.
Ha… If this was sarcasm, it’s been underappreciated.
Thanks for dropping the “public option” after going into closed door negotiations with the insurance companies for three weeks and coming out with a mandate handing them millions of new captive market participants and putting few, very sacred few limitations or regulatory requirements for how to run their industry. Thanks for dismantling your campaign infrastructure when the GOP started playing “the heel”.
This is the reason why he stopped Bernie. He (and many others in the Democratic Party leadership) knew that only a huge populist movement like Bernie’s could tear power out of the hands of financial/industrial Oligarchs. He’s terrified that if we get some variation of universal healthcare in his lifetime, EEEEEEEVERYONE is going to go back through all that bullshit they said, all the excuses they made, and rub their faces in it. Not only that but also most of these crooked politicians are heeeeaaavily invested in the various private healthcare companies.
I am not a particularly religious person, but I know this to be true: You can’t serve two masters.
That’s not true at all, they never had a true supermajority because they only had 58 DNC, to begin with and the caucusing Independent Joe Lieberman voted against Public Option making it dead in the water.
I guarantee you that if you supported the DNC long enough to get an actual 60 supermajority the likes of which have not been achieved since 1979, then all of your current worries would become a thing of the past.
I recall they had to drop the public option after Ted Kennedy died and they no longer had a supermajority in the Senate. To get around a Republican filibuster, they had to rely on a less than ideal version of the bill through the reconciliation process
This is the constant Democratic Party refrain. We sure wish we could have done {insert good thing} but when the iron was hot, by golly, we just couldn’t find our hammer.
Then the iron got cold so we had to, shucks, pass a version of the bill that was much more attractive to our donors and screw over the voters.
Golly gee willickers, what rotten luck.
Meanwhile the GOP with the slimmest majority and 3 turncoat Dems. “Time to rewrite the tax code, no need to type it up frank just scribble it in the margin, we will figure out how many billions to give the wealthy once it’s passed”
Except that is literally what happened. Kennedy died while they were negotiating the bill with the GOP (that was fucking stupid and pointless. They got zero GOP votes). Massachusetts has a special election and barely elects Scott brown® to fill the seat for 2 years, the first time in 50+ years the state had a GOP senator (Of course, 2 years later, they vote him out. They had a GOP senator just long enough to break the Dems super majority and kill single payer. Thanks massholes.)
So who does that leave as the deciding vote? The “Independent” Joe Lieberman of connecticut, who was heavily funded by insurance companies HQ’d in his state, and refused to vote for the bill with single payer attached.
So Obama, being the poster boy of “compromise can save us”(also fucking stupid), went ahead as is and pulled it out.
That’s the actual history. Dems fucked up by trying to find middle ground with the GOP, back when social media didn’t have everyone in a vise and you could still lie yourself that that was possible.
Yea the part I’m talking about is when instead of just passing a bill to fix the problem they spent time negotiating with the GOP.
Instead of striking while the iron was hot, you know, passing a bill when they had a super majority. They waited until they lost their super majority, then decided that the filibuster was so sacrosanct that they had to pass a watered down bill that entrenches the power of the insurance companies.
Let not forget that at the time when the Dems were fucking around negotiating with the gop they had said publicly that their primary goal was to obstruct the Obama presidency. That’s also what literally happened.
Agreed. The Obama admin fucked that up by trying to “extend an olive branch” when the gop was slashing at them with knives.
They knew the knives were out, but thought they could turn the other cheek. The sad part is that some of these ancient fucks still think this works. They have nostalgia for the “good ol days” when social media was called “Friendster,” smart phones barely existed, and scandal was something that mattered. That time doesnt exist anymore.
Its knives out now, and anyone who doesn’t have a shiv in hand is gonna be dead soon, one way or another.
It was passed without Republican support, any negotiations were theater because they were bought and payed for. Fuck the ACA.
The ACA did NOT pass via reconciliation. It passed with supermajority after the DNC convinced 2 independents to vote with them.
why is it the only kennedies who died were the ones who didn’t deserve it
I don’t think it’s a pride thing as much as it is a money thing.
“It’s easy to thik that regular folks can’t make a difference… but look at Luigi!”
Thanks Obomber
Legitimate question: if there is a change to the term limits on the office of POTUS, passed by GOP to enable another Trump run, wouldn’t that also allow Obama to run again? If yes, what are the pros and cons of this? Just trying to game this out.
One congressman (who is also under an FBI investigation) proposed an amendment that would allow presidents who have not served two consecutive terms to run for a third; which takes care of the pesky Obama problem.
This seems like theater, though not without potential harm. An amendment tailored made to exempt only Trump from the 22nd amendment would be an odd one to see ratified by 75% of the states.
Absolutely agree. No way something like this would pass, but I have to almost commend the outside the box thinking when it comes to the Republicans trying to subvert the constitution.
Wouldn’t that need another change in 4 years time, if Trump manages to get two consecutive terms himself? (For argument sake, regardless of his age).
He was milquetoast compared to actual progressive politicians. He folded like all paid opposition party Democrats when it came to the public option.
He put his finger on the scale to get others to drop out all on the same day so Bernie wouldn’t win the nomination and you got Biden instead.
They would likely do away with term limits for Republicans only since they can make their own rules and even if they didn’t Obama wouldn’t run for another term because he would say it isn’t the way the founding fathers wanted and the all important parliamentarian said no.
I agree with most of this. I would rather have seen Bernie in 2016, but timeline jokes aside, we got what we got. I am not trying to ignore the past so much as look to the future.
You think they’d have an election?
Even some of the most established dictatorship and oligarchy governments in the world still have elections, though they are probably not free or fair in all cases. So, yes, I think there will be an election of some sort in 2028, if only to assuage the international community. I admit that I could be wrong, and that the possibility is very scary.
Cons: immediate civil war, making the last one look like a tea party. Pros:
To clarify, you think Obama being on the ballot would be the last straw before violent uprising against or violent repression by the existing administration? Or the removal of term limits?
Removing terms limits, and importantly, disallowing Obama from running due to his 2 consecutive terms as another commenter suggested. Yes I would violently uprise if that happened.
I believe I responded to the other comment you mentioned.
That this was even purposed is a dangerous attempt to test the waters or perhaps just distract from everything else that is going on while also giving those loyal to Trump to show that publicly with low risk. This is not normal.
Trump… A couple of days ago I ended the federal education department. I thought I might wanna check out what the little people are thinking.
…
People do remember that we ended up with a more conservative system than his Republican opponent wanted, right?
Dems defending the ACA and refusing to keep working on healthcare is a large reason why trump won.
Not to even get into how it’s been almost 20 years and the “incremental improvements” that dem ACA detractors never happened, they never even worked towards them…
Every time an elected moderate/neolineral speaks, they’re lying to someone. If they were honest they’d never get elected, at least not with a D next to their name
I’m more excited that Obama joined BlueSky but yes we’re long overdue for actual universal healthcare legislation. Like 15 years overdue.
While it was a good idea, putting the IRS in charge of it was the stupidest thing ever. If you’re not covered all 12 months you get a big fine. Last year I had issues with the website that was probably coded by some kid whose dad said he was “good with computers” and wasn’t able to get coverage for 4 months. It fucked me over. Fuck the IRS.
The individual mandate penalty went away in 2019
Well, I still owed about a thousand when I’d normally get a refund. I should really brush up on current tax laws.
