As the efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act take a serious lurch from "Oh, look, more House GOP zaniness" to "Oh, look, now the GOP control both chambers," it's worth remembering something very simple: the ACA passed (and the general concept was talked about for decades, and a GOP/conservative-developed plan actually implemented) because more people die without health care coverage. And that needs to be a part of this debate.
'The fact that repealing Obamacare will kill some people does not settle the question of whether Obamacare is better than some imaginary alternative Republican health-care plan, or even whether it is better than the pre-reform status quo. Conservatives are within their rights to prefer freedom from taxes and regulation even at the cost of David Tedrow’s well being. But any morally serious position has to account for the brutal realities embedded in this trade-off. '
Any proposal that is made, any vote that is taken on this particular matter needs to at least ask the question, "Are more people doing to die because of this?" If that's an acceptable trade-off, then make it so, but not even asking the question is being disingenuous.
Yes, the Republican Obamacare Strategy Will Kill People
Man points out repealing Obamacare will kill him; conservatives enraged.
I know my opinion won’t make any more difference than a fart in the wind, but…
Really? Having it both ways much? Obamacare itself makes exactly the same trade0ff by leaving millions of people uncovered or underinsured. That means that many of those people are going to die. Yes, Obamacare is helping some people, even saving lives. Sadly, one result of that will be to actually lessen the political impetus to get around to those Obamacare leaves out in the cold — especially as its worst features become institutionalized and therefore harder to change. Divide and rule. It’s ugly to put things that way but “any morally serious position has to account for the brutal realities embedded in this trade-off”, right?
And no, we probably won’t “fix it later”, much less transition to a better system. All these years later neither Social Security nor Medicare offers universal coverage — people still fall through the cracks because of compromised design. Obamacare is even less likely to improve, due to an even more Rube Goldberg structure that leaves it wide open to right-wing tinkering. Just look at the Medicaid debacle, and we’re just getting started. This kind of failure was both predictable and predicted. It also doesn’t help to have the boosters celebrating Obamacare as “universal coverage” and “health care” when it is neither.
Isn’t it time to just accept the new order and get behind it? Well apparantly things are still far from being settled. Further, the logic of that position works just as well no matter how much Obamacare is degraded. “Best we can do”, “don’t let the perfect…”, yadda, yadda. Are the deaths caused by the very design of Obamacare somehow more acceptable than those caused by predictable Republican attacks? Not to me.
No. You can’t design something to fail and then complain when it does so. You don’t build your house on sand and call it good. Universal and equal coverage should have been a fundamental deal-breaker from the beginning.
@paintedjaguar – I agree that the ACA doesn’t provide the universal coverage that I’d prefer to see. I disagree that half a loaf is not better than none, and an NHS or Medicare-for-All or “universal and equal coverage” was never going to happen, especially as the intransigence of the Senate minority became clear. I also disagree that improvements cannot or will not be made over time; while even Social Security and Medicare are far from perfect they have much broader coverage than they initially had.
I think it’s possible to recognize the limitations and compromises in the ACA and lament them, and still see it as a better answer than the status quo — and beyond that still press, in fact, for improvement.