<p>Agree, his link shows For or Against, not despise. It gives no detail to suggest what the more specific reaction details actually are.<br>
Co-information was showing a segment of those opposed didn’t even know what ACA contained. They heard about it…from naysayers with their media anecdotes and hyperbole. </p>
<p>If a naysayer here has a point that could truly educate the rest of us, I don’t know why it hasn’t shown up in 984 pages. Instead, when challenged, the topic veers. Or the ad hominem shows up.</p>
<p>Many of us have hinted at or written some of our issues with ACA. It baffles me why none of the naysayers ever picked up on this, took a look or reinforced. </p>
In this discussion, truth’s what’s in the eye of the beholder.</p>
<p>If you’re embarrassed by the closest thing (VA) to that unmentionable option you secretly wanted anyway - figure the polling contingent mentioned by LasMa above - ignore that the VA is sole provider and talk about airline regulation.</p>
<p>If polling consistently tells you that the ACA needs a steak tied around it’s neck to be more popular, talk about how there’s a sizable contingent that, while defending it, hates it and that’s what’s skewing the numbers.</p>
<p>If, after too much pointing out of the Rube Goldberg unworkabilty of it’s execution & economics you feel the urge to reply, focus on the economic challenge of personally surviving what are essentially fatal diseases. Go figure, on that one - it’s perplexing no matter what you’ve been drinking.</p>
<p>You all might consider that the high ground of the values argument, the compassionate yet economically cluesless one that is at the heart of all this, doesn’t really translate to someone that doesn’t figure hanging on till that last dying breath - with the trusty colostomy bag in hand - exhibits much in the way of grace. Besides that, I’d much rather pass along that money I could have spent living - miserably - another few months to my children.</p>
<p>I think, when you scratch all the fluff away, this isn’t really about truth or compassion. It’s simply about the money, as so many things are.</p>
I don’t know what others want, but the option I would have liked is the equivalent of Medicare, not the VA. The problem with VA is that it historically has been essentially a closed network. Medicare is the opposite: the government pays the bulk of the bill, but the recipient can go almost anywhere they choose for treatment. Because just about everyone over age 65 has Medicare, and because people over age 65 are also the largest users of medical care – most doctors and medical facilities can’t afford to turn Medicare recipients away. </p>
<p>That’s true, but it’s true on both sides of the debate. But that’s what I mean by values: is spending money to increase insurance coverage a worthwhile enterprise, or not? If you don’t think it’s a worthwhile enterprise, then it doesn’t matter how well or poorly the money is spent-- you don’t think it ought to be spent at all. You can cheer at every misstep, but that’s just a sideshow, because even if the entire rollout were flawless you’d still oppose it. </p>
<p>That we often disagree isn’t news, calmom, and that Medicare would need like a billion fabulously rich uncles to expire tomorrow to bring funding and access in line with expectations isn’t either. It’s what it is.</p>
<p>I don’t think there are a whole lot of people who would have favored their premiums increasing and their access to providers decreasing to fund others. That’s why the sales pitch failed to include this information. It’s not lack of compassion, though. I don’t see anyone downsizing their home because there are homeless, either. And if the govt tried to do it, it would not fly. And, plenty of people still have no idea what’s going on with ACA. It’s actually amazing.</p>
<p>Mmm… once you wipe off that compassionate fluff, CF, what you find is wealth transfer. </p>
<p>If someone’s good with justifying appropriation to fund their compassionate impulses, I’d guess they’ve ended up feeling pretty satisfied but I’m afraid I feel just as justified in critiquing all the new and idiotic ways my money’s being spent. </p>
<p>Yeah, it’s a gimmick that the self-righteous politicians, regulators and bureaucrats have to live with the same crappy health plans they force on their unwilling constituents. Kind of like the Soviet apparatchiks who lived in the nice dachas and shopped at fully stocked stores while the rest of the people lived like paupers.</p>
<p>@catahoula - Medicare is funded by taxes. Right now it’s a rather large wealth transfer – young and middle aged people and their employers pay taxes to support the medical needs of the over-65 set. Any way you look, some people are paying more $$ to benefit others. If it isn’t via taxes, it is via premiums or via the costs that medical providers charge, which is raised to whatever it has to be to cover patients who are treated for free. </p>
<p>Insurance by definition is also a transfer of wealth, no matter what type of insurance. It works by having a lot of people pay more in premium dollars than they ever hope to collect in benefits. The only way to avoid paying for others in your own premium dollars is to (a) be one of the users who has high end costs yourself, or (b) opt out of the system altogether and opt to shoulder your own risk-- then you don’t pay for anyone else and no one else pays for you. </p>
<p>Bureaucrats and regulators don’t have constituencies, GP. They’re just people doing jobs. They may or may not be in favor of the ACA, and they have no responsibility for its passage. They regulate it because that’s their job. </p>
<p>I don’t see a justification for snatching away some state employee’s benefits because she happens to work in insurance regulation, when the guy at the next desk who works in transportation gets to keep his benefits.</p>
<p>While I’ll probably develop something debilitating within a week or so, I grocery shop for our parental unit and, amongst other things, realize that there’s a multitude of grossly obese people (without glandular disorders) that I’m staying target weight in order to live long enough to subsidize their diabetes treatments.</p>
<p>ACA, and wealth transfer, is going to change their eating habits?</p>
<p>CF, I also included politicians and your wrong - the bureaucrats and regulators running Covered Ca are making decisions which have enormous ramifications for the people who are forced to take Obamacare.</p>
<p>You have to realize the number of programs and services that function as “wealth transfer.” And supported by concerns that do not benefit all contributors. Anything federally funded, including in emergencies.</p>
<p>Or is it the particular people being supported that bothers? The easy stereotypes?
How much of this is really about “me and mine,” forgetting the very founding principles you now say are threatened?
Am I allowed to refer to democracy?</p>
<p>Yo, a second to refresh the screen and we’re back to fat people at the market? “Them,” they’re not “Us?” </p>
<p>What is your point? That poor people who have diabetes and are fat ought not to get health care until they’re 65? Again, that’s a matter of values. I do not support that position. It has nothing to do with whether we can save money treating diabetes earlier than later; I just don’t think we should abandon our sick people, even if their illness is in part their own fault. Or entirely their own fault, for that matter. I don’t think we should let drunk drivers bleed to death in the street if they crash their cars either.</p>
<p>With the poor fat people with diabetes, you can’t even make a moral hazard argument. They were already poor and fat before the ACA-- it’s not like the ACA is enticing people into obesity.</p>
<p>Seriously, GP, where have you been? We all contribute to what often benefits “Them.” With zip to Us. their schools, their forest fires, their drought, bridge repair, it’s endless. </p>
<p>Are thin poor people OK to support? You want a, ahem, Soviet style potato chip and soda marshal? </p>
<p>You had to be seriously dense not to realize that a program that subsidized poor people was wealth transfer. You knew it was wealth transfer. I knew it was wealth transfer. This was never a secret.</p>