According to proponents of the Affordable care Act, (ACA), the law has insured more than 20 million Americans who before did not have Health Insurance.
Opponents say it is a bad law which drives up health care cost and forces Americans to sign up for a plan they may not want at the risk of being fined.
Sounds like two logical arguments right?
Well lets take a cursory look at the arguments from both sides.
Former President Barack Obama the President after whom the law was pejoratively nicknamed (Obama care), never missed an opportunity to remind Americans that the law is imperfect.
He has long argued that if anyone have better ideas how to insure all Americans while keeping costs down he would be happy to work with them on making the law better.
There were indeed hiccups on the roll out of the law. For example when the President famously told people if they liked their Doctor they could keep their Doctor.
That turned out to be impractical .
It is important to understand that a program of that magnitude would certainly have hiccups on it’s roll out and implementation.
Republicans brayed that Medicaid and Social security would be the death of the Republic when those programs were proposed . Those two programs are still here and so is the Republic.
The thing threatening the Republic is certainly not Medicaid , Social Security , or the ACA for that matter.
It is the ill prepared , ill-equipped occupant of the White House.
It goes without saying that elements of the law are vastly beneficial to and popular with the American people. Even those who benefit from the Affordable Care Act, yet are vehemently opposed to Obama Care…
Young people being able to stay on their parents insurance until they are twenty six(26) if they are unemployed is a huge positive.
What was once characterized as pre-existing conditions, which prevented people from buying health Insurance no longer the status quo is a big deal .
According to CNSNEWS.com the final word count of the ACA amounted to approximately 11,588,500 words of final Obamacare regulations.
It is one of the most consequential piece of entitlement regulation since FDR“s New Deal.
Of course this was going to have hiccups. Of course this was always going to need fine tuning. That’s just the way things work, it takes time to work out the kinks.
So what’s behind the Republicans incessant attempts to repeal the ACA?
Republicans have long embraced a fiscal model for big government and programs like Medicare and Social Security, which they want to privatize.
According to Forbes.com contributor John Wasik, the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has consistently endorsed a privatization model for Medicare that he’s proposed every year since 2011, although his party has always wanted to take apart the program.
The right wing Washington Examiner even though arguing for Republicans , admitted that there have actually been 54 votes to repeal so far — Those were votes that ranged from defunding measures that would have crippled Obamacare to delaying measures that would have put off some of the very same provisions in the law that President Obama has delayed unilaterally, to measures fixing portions of the law that passed both houses of Congress with bipartisan support and were signed by the president.
The single-minded assault by Republicans on the ACA has always been two-fold .
(1) a hatred for any program which will have to be funded from the Federal budget to assist poor Americans.
(2) A yet unspoken racist agenda to deny a program like healthcare to survive , having being one of the signature accomplishments of the Nations first black president.
If Republicans were interested in providing care for Americans needing health care, they would have joined forces with President Obama and Democrats in crafting a plan which would be fined tuned as problems emerge.
To a man they objected.
To a man they turned their back on a program which has at it’s Genesis the components of the Massachusetts health care championed by none other than Republican Governor Willard Mitt Romney.
Despite substantial amounts of data which shows that most of the people benefiting from Obama care are poor whites living in ruby-red Republican states. Republicans are steadfastly focused on repealing the law.
According to the https://www.washingtonpost.com , As Republicans barrel headlong towards repealing the Affordable Care Act, new factoids and data are slowly dribbling out to reveal just what a mess they are about to make, including for countless numbers of their own constituents.
In red states, a total of at least 3 million people are currently getting subsidies. This doesn’t include the swing states that Donald Trump won. If you add those in, that swells the total to over six million people. * Some of the states with the highest populations of people getting subsidies are represented by GOP Senators. This includes Florida (more than 1.4 million); Texas (more than 913,000); North Carolina (more than 499,000); Georgia (more than 427,000); and Pennsylvania (more than 321,000). Many other states with GOP senators also have sizable populations getting subsidies.
Ohio Republican Governor John Kasich is not a big fan of repeal, he has vowed not to sit idly by as Republics rip away health care protection from citizens of his state .
It is unclear at this time what options Kasich has at his disposal.
Sure Republicans want to cut entitlements , they have always ran on the need to have smaller Government. No really fiscally responsible person should be opposed to fiscal prudence.
But has Republican’s rhetoric matched the facts on fiscal conservatism?
How can a political party tell tax-payers that they are on their own on health-care?
Whether you agree that repealing the ACA amounts to “you are on your own” is immaterial. The fact is that for millions of Americans who previously did not have health care (Obama care) is a matter of life and death.
The fact that the GOP is now forced to talk about repeal and replace is testament to the complexities of taking away health Insurance of over twenty million people and leaving them to die.
Republican Congressional Representatives going back to their districts are getting an earful from their constituents who are not willing to have their health insurance ripped away.
The irony, and ultimate hypocrisy of the GOP’s zealotry on fiscal prudence makes no sense when the spending pie of the American Government is looked at.
Republicans have not seen a social program which would benefit taxpayers that they have not demonized. This is shocking when one consider that the money paying for these programs belong to the American taxpayers themselves .
On the contrary, they have never seen spending which benefits the Military Industrial Complex that they do not want to throw more money at.
Much of the hatred for the affordable care act is about Obama .
As I pointed out earlier, poor Republicans who are on the affordable care act, have been some of the most vocal opponents of Obama Care.
You can’t make this up.
Republican leadership knew that selling hatred for the law would be exponentially easier if they pejoratively Labeled it Obama Care.
From stories of death panels to endlessly long lines which would see Americans waiting to be seen by their doctors, all of the misinformation and lies have failed to materialize.
That’s now a problem for the Republicans.
As they struggle to come up with a plan which will insure more Americans , it seem that what will eventually emanate from Republican;s efforts is a fix of Obama Care.
Sure whatever comes out of the Congress will not be Obama Care. It may very well be Trump care.
What will not change is the fact that Barack Obama will go down as the President who gave all Americans the right to have Health Care.
That is a fact which cannot change.
It is a fact which will forever be recorded in American History.
Now they must repeal it, their base will not have it any other way. They will have to replace it. They simply cannot take health insurance from 20 million people and simply walk away without serious backlash.
They now own it , yet whatever they do Barack Obama will forever be the President who gave Americans the right to be able to purchase health care even if they are sick .