Will Obamacare succeed where term limits failed?

[Xiahou]

So says you and them. From the point of view of people trying to get and keep minimum wage jobs, it is pure exploitation. It is actually more profitable to be a community college student and survive on student loans than it is to attempt to get and keep a job that pays a living wage. The problem is the attitude of the employers, and the attitude of the country towards a failed system. These businesses aren't victims, they're assholes.

What are you talking about? So says me? It's not a problem if 41% of small businesses have stopped hiring?

Please explain. You've got plenty of rhetoric in there, now add some substance to it.

[a completely inoffensive name]

It's the same deal with unpaid internships. Businesses spin government regulations as "Now we can't train the next generation of workers" When in reality they are just frustrated that they no longer have free labor anymore.

[drone]

It's the same deal with unpaid internships. Businesses spin government regulations as "Now we can't train the next generation of workers" When in reality they are just frustrated that they no longer have free labor anymore.

And H1-Bs.

[a completely inoffensive name]

And H1-Bs.

I'm afraid I don't understand. H1-B is an immigrant visa?

[drone]

I'm afraid I don't understand. H1-B is an immigrant visa?

Companies are using them to depress wages in tech fields. They post job openings with crazy weird requirements, say no one is qualified when no matches are found, then push for more H1-B slots so they can hire an indentured servant on the cheap.

[Lemur]

Yeah, listened to an interview about this on the radio, manufacturer complaining that he couldn't get good robotics integration specialists. So I thought, "Wow, that's sad, I hope lots of kids are studying robotics in school."

Then he's pressed a bit, admits he doesn't' want to pay more than $10–$12 per hour, and doesn't see why he should pay more, and that's why he can't find his specialists. Yeah, by all means, let's get him some visas and some cheap labor.

Grrrrrrrr.

[Xiahou]

Everyone can find horror stories, but remember "anecdote" isn't the singular form of "data".
A study by the Brookings Institute asserts that visa workers actually make significantly more than their American peers in most categories.

There's a guy in my office that's on a worker visa- if you mention any of the stuff being spouted in this thread around him you had better brace yourself to be set straight with a lengthy dissertation from him. Another guy in our office was complaining about the proposed H1-B expansion within earshot and it turned into a 20 minute lecture. I have no problem with people who come into the country legally.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Everyone can find horror stories, but remember "anecdote" isn't the singular form of "data".
A study by the Brookings Institute asserts that visa workers actually make significantly more than their American peers in most categories.

True for "high tech" work, basically US firms will do a lot to avoid hiring Americans and even pay decent wages to tempt foreign workers. Doesn't really apply to the helpdesk drones, airline pilots or the pizza guys, though.

[Xiahou]

Pizza guys, huh? I'd love to see the job description for a pizza guy that would qualify for a H1B.

[Husar]

Pizza guys, huh? I'd love to see the job description for a pizza guy that would qualify for a H1B.

I could swear that sentence started with "Doesn't really apply to [...]" but maybe that's just me.

[lars573]

Not just you..

[Xiahou]

Another fun Obamacare fact, people on individual plans can expect to pay up to double... or more for the same coverage they have today.

But that’s not exactly right, because as Sam Richardson has shown, Obamacare Bronze plans aren’t that different from what you can buy today on the individual market in terms of co-pays, deductibles, and actuarial value. Richardson found two nearly-identical plans sponsored by Kaiser in Sacramento, with identical networks of hospitals and doctors.

As Richardson’s table to the right illustrates, the Obamacare plan had a higher out-of-pocket maximum and the same actuarial value as the 2013 Kaiser plan. Today’s plan costs $100 a month; the Obamacare version costs $205.

Here's the table(click to see it):

[Shaka_Khan]

Here's What Happens If You Don't Sign Up For Obamacare

"According to a recent survey, nearly two-thirds of uninsured Americans say they haven't decided whether or not they'll buy health insurance by the Jan. 1, 2014 deadline (even though they'll have to pay a penalty if they don't)."


The future of health insurance for uninsured Americans (Survey)

"Only 19 percent said they will get coverage by the deadline, while 10 percent said they plan to stay uninsured and pay the penalty, which in 2014 is the greater of $95 or one percent of income for an adult. For children under 18, the penalty is half the adult amount. The penalty increases each year, up to the greater of $695 or 2.5 percent of household income for an adult in 2016. And a family would pay a maximum of the greater of $2,085 or 2.5 percent of income then, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation."

[Lemur]

Republicans came up with most of the ideas that actually got implemented.

Yup, the whole thing is predicated on the Heritage Foundation's 1989 proposals, enacted by Repub Gov Mitt Romney is 2006, etc.

And I love how every evil and ill of our healthcare system is laid at the feet of ACA, which is nothing more than an attempt to flatten the market a bit (in a clumsy manner).

Those who complain loudest have no credible plan for reining in the excesses of our medical/insurance colossus. (Buy insurance across state lines! Malpractice caps! Deregulate everything! Yeah, that's about all they've got. Evidence that any of this would work? We don't need no stinkin' evidence.) But we need to maintain the status quo because FREEDOM AND MURICA.

Anyway ...

[Xiahou]

I wish people would stop calling it Obamacare. Its a ponzi-scheme that will enrich pharmaceutical companies while lowering the overall standard of care. And Republicans came up with most of the ideas that actually got implemented.

Obama doesn't mind people calling it Obamacare... because he does care.

Seriously though, you can try to blame whoever you want for the bill, but it was passed on a largely party-line vote and signed into law by President Obama and it's been championed by him ever since.

Yup, the whole thing is predicated on the Heritage Foundation's 1989 proposals, enacted by Repub Gov Mitt Romney is 2006, etc.

And I love how every evil and ill of our healthcare system is laid at the feet of ACA, which is nothing more than an attempt to flatten the market a bit (in a clumsy manner).

Those who complain loudest have no credible plan for reigning in the excesses of our medical/insurance colossus. (Buy insurance across state lines! Malpractice caps! Deregulate everything! Yeah, that's about all they've got. Evidence that any of this would work? We don't need no stinkin' evidence.) But we need to maintain the status quo because FREEDOM AND MURICA.

A few points:
"At least he did something!" isn't a good defense. The status quo was bad. Obamacare is worse. Keeping the status quo isn't a long term solution, but it's better than what we're getting now by almost any measure.

Heritage putting out a proposal does not equal widespread conservative- or even GOP support for a mandate.....

"In 1994 Sen. Don Nickles (R., Okla.) and Rep. Cliff Stearns (R., Fla.) turned the Heritage plan into a bill. Peter Ferrara and others, such as Tom Miller at the Cato Institute, rallied other conservatives against the plan. “By endorsing the concept of compulsory universal insurance coverage,” wrote Miller, “Nickles-Stearns undermines the traditional principles of personal liberty and individual responsibility that provide essential bulwarks against all-intrusive governmental control of health care.”

Ferrara convinced 37 leaders of the conservative movement, including Phyllis Schlafly, Grover Norquist, and Paul Weyrich, to sign a petition opposing the bill. “To this day,” Peter writes, “my relationship with Stuart Butler and Heritage has never recovered.”"

Lastly- speaking personally, I would have opposed the Heritage plan (if I wasn't 10 at the time) on the grounds of its individual mandate- but it would have been a vast improvement over Obamacare in that it only mandated catostrophic vs comprehensive plans and it leveled the tax structure between employer-based coverage and individual coverage. The latter was also part of the McCain plan- and is one of the few things proposed that makes some sense.

[Kralizec]

Big government and big business are responsible for employment in the US and all other industrialized countries. Also, the US defines "small business" as up to 500 employees... Not exactly your neighborhood bar, now is it?

Seriously? Lol...

Businesses are only considered "small" here when they have less than 50 employees and a maximum turnover of 10 million. I think the same norm is used throughout the EU.

[Montmorency]

the US defines "small business" as up to 500 employees

Isn't 50-500 defined as "medium"?

[Lemur]

"At least he did something!" isn't a good defense. The status quo was bad. Obamacare is worse. Keeping the status quo isn't a long term solution, but it's better than what we have now by almost any measure.

The obvious long-term solution is implementing what every other industrialized nation on Earth has, which is some sort of single-payer system. I know that's not what Ayn Rand (who wrote the Constitution and gave birth to George Washington) would want, but it's the only system demonstrated to control costs while providing a baseline of health for citizens.

Because Obamacare is entirely derived from a Republican think-tank and Republican politicians, it addresses none of the underlying problems. It's still trying to pretend that national private-sector healthcare can work, a proposition for which there is zero evidence.

It will be interesting to see if a measure as watered-down as Obamacare can be implemented despite the nihilist opposition of Republican governors. Time will tell. You take the fialure and costliness of Obamacare as a given, as a priori truth that only madmen and ideologues might question. I'd suggest there's a bit more divergence of thought on the overall cost of it, coming from sources such as the CBO.

And anyway, you have no positive agenda to put forward, just Obamacare bad bad bad. You can't defend the status quo ante because it is indefensible, and the only changes you can suggest are Randian free-market solutions which have never been demonstrated to work in the real world. They have exactly as much evidence for their efficacy as communist economic theory and crystal-powered healing.

Obamacare is a very mild start on reining in some of the worst practices of health insurance. It doesn't go nearly far enough, but neither does it appear to be the flaming disaster you tangibly yearn for it to be.

And if this amounts to an "At least he did something" defense, I'd say it has more heft than your "Oh no he did something" offense.

[Xiahou]

The obvious long-term solution is implementing what every other industrialized nation on Earth has, which is some sort of single-payer system. I know that's not what Ayn Rand (who wrote the Constitution and gave birth to George Washington) would want, but it's the only system demonstrated to control costs while providing a baseline of health for citizens.

There. Isn't that much more pleasant to read? All that's missing is some supporting statements.

Because Obamacare is entirely derived from a Republican think-tank and Republican politicians, it addresses none of the underlying problems. It's still trying to pretend that national private-sector healthcare can work, a proposition for which there is zero evidence.

Again, you can try to blame whoever you want for it, but it was passed by a Democrat congress and signed into law by Obama. Let's deal with reality. If the Democrats didn't like it, they need not have passed it.

And anyway, you have no positive agenda to put forward, just Obamacare bad bad bad. You can't defend the status quo ante because it is indefensible, and the only changes you can suggest are Randian free-market solutions which have never been demonstrated to work in the real world.

Nor have they been tried. If you had a hangnail and someone suggested sawing off your arm to fix it and I said we shouldn't, would you chastise me for not having a plan??

It's hardly a "Randian" suggestion... whatever that means. Employer-based coverage grew out of FDR era wage controls. That was a major factor in ballooning medical costs. I'm not even claiming it would solve everything- but beginning to separate coverage from employment by breaking down the tax favoritism would make it better than it is now.

[Lemur]

I'm not even claiming it would solve everything

You haven't got any evidence suggesting it would solve anything. Nor has any substantial proposal been put forward by the nihilists in Congress.

You appear to have an almost purely negative agenda, with no politically or financially realistic plan for what to do afterwards. See earlier quotes from Ramesh Ponnoru to see what I think of this.

Again, you can try to blame whoever you want for it

Not trying to "blame" anyone, just correctly and factually charting the legislative and published history of the initiatives that became Obamacare. It's all factual, it's all on record. Any resemblance between Grouch Marx singing "I'm Against It" and current Republican doom-sayers is purely voluntary.

If you had a hangnail and someone suggested sawing off your arm to fix it and I said we shouldn't, would you chastise me for not having a plan??

I'd say, "Show me successful hangnail removal, please," and you'd be able to do so. I can reel off dozens of countries that have successfully integrated some form of single-payer healthcare into their economy, and I can link to the overall healthcare results and cost savings. Hell, in this thread I already have. These aren't even controversial or contested statistics.

Single-payer healthcare has facts, empiricism, and real-world results. Private sector healthcare has ideology (and in the USA, inertia). Explain to me which of these proposals, on this basis, is more "conservative."

[Xiahou]

You haven't got any evidence suggesting it would solve anything. Nor has any substantial proposal been put forward by the nihilists in Congress.

You appear to have an almost purely negative agenda, with no politically or financially realistic plan for what to do afterwards. See earlier quotes from Ramesh Ponnoru to see what I think of this.

Let's be honest... would it make any difference if a congressional "nihilist" proposed an Obamacare alternative? There have been Republican proposals. The fact that you're seemingly unaware of them illustrates my point. The Republicans are nihilists with no plan of their own... even if they have several plans. There are many reasons they don't get any traction.... that the GOP isn't in power and the GOP electorate feels a far less pressing need for reform than the Democrat base are two big factors.

Not trying to "blame" anyone, just correctly and factually charting the legislative and published history of the initiatives that became Obamacare. It's all factual, it's all on record. Any resemblance between Grouch Marx singing "I'm Against It" and current Republican doom-sayers is purely voluntary.

The "Heritage Plan" never had widespread support among conservatives. If it had, something like it would have passed when the GOP had control of congress and the White House. Yet, it required Democrat control for it to get passed. To me, it doesn't seem fair to describe such that as a "Republican plan".

I'd say, "Show me successful hangnail removal, please," and you'd be able to do so. I can reel off dozens of countries that have successfully integrated some form of single-payer healthcare into their economy, and I can link to the overall healthcare results and cost savings. Hell, in this thread I already have. These aren't even controversial or contested statistics.

That's the problem with trying something new/innovative. There is no proven track record. A big difference between the recent conservative proposals and Obamacare is that they are incremental and each step could stand alone. Obamacare has popular provisions in it, to be sure- but they are completely unsustainable without the mandate and forcing people into paying for coverage they don't need.

Single-payer healthcare has facts, empiricism, and real-world results. Private sector healthcare has ideology (and in the USA, inertia). Explain to me which of these proposals, on this basis, is more "conservative."

Single-payer... as implemented in some countries... would be an improvement over what we have now. But Obamacare is not such a plan. It adds more expense and bureaucracy to an already bloated system while still trying to call itself "market based".

[Lemur]

There have been Republican proposals.

I appreciate that you can say that with a straight face. Yes, proposals were made, especially around the time Obamacare was being introduced. No, none of them were serious, or intended to do anything but prolong the status quo. (The more recent proposals are ... well, read for yourself.)

The "Heritage Plan" never had widespread support among conservatives. If it had, something like it would have passed when the GOP had control of congress and the White House.

So let's see what sorts of "reforms" the Republicans passed when they had control of the Federal government ... hmmm ... would it look like a massive, unfunded giveaway to seniors and the Pharma industry? Is that the sort of conservative reform we can look forward to?

That's the problem with trying something new/innovative. There is no proven track record.

Two thoughts:

(1) Basing national healthcare on principals and ideology that you self-describe as having "no proven track record" in this context is literally playing with people's lives. If the line where free-market absolutism meets reality is not as smooth as you believe it to be, you will get people killed for your grand theory. (And in such an occurrence you would probably argue that we just didn't apply Free-Market-Everything perfectly or purely enough; after all, a Sacred Truth cannot be wrong, it can only be wrongly applied.) Hence my repeated comparisons to communism in this thread. There really is a disturbing and precise parallel.

(2) Advocates of large-scale, untested, unproven new applications of ideology cannot ever be described as "conservative," unless we want to throw the English language under a large fleet of buses. The correct term is radical.

[Major Robert Dump]

Delayed a year.

L O Effing L. Republican blame game GOGOGOGOGO

[Xiahou]

Not trying to "blame" anyone, just correctly and factually charting the legislative and published history of the initiatives that became Obamacare. It's all factual, it's all on record. Any resemblance between Grouch Marx singing "I'm Against It" and current Republican doom-sayers is purely voluntary.

Again, the adoption of a mandate-type plan was an half-hearted response to Hillarycare that never enjoyed widespread support among Republicans or conservatives.

Single-payer healthcare has facts, empiricism, and real-world results. Private sector healthcare has ideology (and in the USA, inertia). Explain to me which of these proposals, on this basis, is more "conservative."

Single-payer, socialized medicine would not be my favored choice. I think it would almost certainly, however, lower the astronomical growth of medical costs. Would it lower them enough to make them sustainable? I doubt it- not without rationing. Regardless, Obamacare != single-payer healthcare. It is increasing costs. And it makes most of our problems worse.
------------

Delayed a year.

L O Effing L. Republican blame game GOGOGOGOGO

Conveniently, that puts the implementation after the mid-term elections. The Democrats know they're got a big steaming turd on their hands and the last thing they want is a year of suffering under the employer mandate leading up to the elections.

Edit:An exit question.. Under what authority can the administration postpone implementation? I'm not aware of the law having that flexibility in it. Anyone want to set me straight here?

[Lemur]

Looks like the new thing will be to blame all healthcare problems on Obamacare. Whih is quite clever—there are a lot of problems. Great summation:

[An anti-Obamacare] ad mentions not being able to choose your doctor, which would be bad. If you chose an insurance plan in an exchange established by Obamacare, that plan will probably have a network of doctors from which you have to choose if you want your care paid for, and if your doctor isn't on it, then you've been prevented from choosing your own doctor.

Of course, that isn't because of Obamacare, it's because of the way insurance works in America; it's how it worked before Obamacare, and it's how it'll work after Obamacare. But it's a lot simpler to say, "Now that we're under Obamacare, I didn't get to choose my doctor!" And did you know that under Obamacare, medications could come with dangerous side effects? Or that under Obamacare, kids who get shots will cry? Not only that, under Obamacare, you could get cancer and die—even if your doctor wanted to save you. In fact, under Obamacare, we're all going to die one day. Thanks for all the misery, pain, and death, Obama.

[Xiahou]

And what if you need to choose a new insurance plan due to Obamacare and none of the compatible new plans feature your current doctor in their networks?

Is it fair to blame Obamacare then? Think it won't happen?

[HoreTore]

No, because it was already so that in the event you had to swap insurance for some reason, you wouldn't necessarily get to keep the same doc.

You can't blame the new system for carry-over* faults in a new system, while at the same time praising the old system. You can whine about them both at the same time, but you can't pick and choose. Sorry.







*couldn't find a good word on the spot, suffer my norwenglish....

[Ironside]

Single-payer, socialized medicine would not be my favored choice. I think it would almost certainly, however, lower the astronomical growth of medical costs. Would it lower them enough to make them sustainable? I doubt it- not without rationing. Regardless, Obamacare != single-payer healthcare. It is increasing costs. And it makes most of our problems worse.

I'll point out that the US are beaten by a lot of countries in life length, child mortality, etc, etc, running around with 50-70% of the costs. To be fair the americans might be sicker than the rest, but that rationing does seem to work better than yours.

And Obamacare looks this way because the Republicans decided to think like you. The earlier versions were quite a bit stronger towards single-payer socialized medicine.

[Ironside]

Sometimes I like to put on my tin foil hat and consider the possibility that Obama and the entire democratic party are incompetent on purpose, in order to further the Republican agenda of discrediting government in every way possible, to further their own master plan of making us all corporate slave-bitches.

Then I take the tin-foil hat off, cuz those things give you a headache.

That would require the politicians to give up power, for money or something. Now power without purpose and getting payed extra for (ab)using that power, that fits your gloomy view.

[Ironside]

But the money is the power. After serving in Congress, many politicians go work for lobbyists. The entire system is self-perpetuating. Also, insider-trading laws don't apply to Congressmen, so conflicts of interest are just a-okay. I wouldn't put any level of corruption past our most venerable institution. It takes suspension of disbelief just to take it seriously.

You suggested that it was general party policy, ergo even the ancient ones. Yes the springboard politicians could very well be playing that game, but for the veterans, the pull would rather be to be flattered into appearing very important by changing laws. Bribery is a part of that, but not the main driving force. They would not intentionally outsource their own power though.