
Originally Posted by
Gelatinous Cube
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.

Originally Posted by
Lemur
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.
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