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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (24192)	7/16/2012 4:50:50 PM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Respond to of 42652

The main thing the law does is deliver 30 million new customers to the private* insurance industry.* It claims to, that doesn't mean it actually will. Some people who might have had insurance will decide not to get it because they can just get a plan when they develop a condition they want covered. Other people with relatively inexpensive catastrophic insurance plans will not be able to keep the plan because it doesn't meet the minimum coverage plan under the PPACA, so they might lose their insurance. Some companies, looking at the higher insurance costs from the forced coverage of preexisting conditions and the extensive coverage requirements might decide to drop people. A major part of Obamacare that was supposed to push insurance coverage up was the expansion of Medicaid, but the Supreme Court said the feds can't force states to accept that... There are elements of the law which will increase coverage, but all of the above acts against that. If more people are actually covered it will probably be a much smaller increase then the politicians pushing the law are claiming. If it does insure a lot more people it may be from Medicaid expansion, or other government programs. Even if it does insure a lot more people privately, its not unreasonable to call mandating this and many other things, something approximating a government take over. At most the term is an exaggeration, but it isn't outright false, let alone a lie (which would require both falsehood, and acceptance that its false, but spreading the idea anyway to deceive). Take overs don't have to be done through actual government ownership of the process (socialism), fascist/corporatist state control could also be called a government take over, and the PPACA is at least a major step in that direction. To the extent there is a profound difference of principle anywhere in this debate, it lies here. Then it should probably be called a "disagreement about Obamacare", not "an Obamacare myth". You’ve heard a lot about the Massachusetts law. You may not have heard about the seven other states that passed laws requiring insurers to offer coverage to all. Trying something and having it not work well at the state level, gives you information about what doesn't work, and helps improve what you try next. Trying something and having it not work well at the federal level, probably leaves you with a new not so good federal program. Sure if it spectacularly and obviously fails, its likely to be repealed, but short of that, the special interest that do benefit from it keep in in place. (They don't so as much on the state level because the states have less ability to borrow, and because the states provide some competition to each other, people change states a lot easier then they change countries, and just leaving the country isn't necessarily enough, for example the IRS will go after you anyway if you don't renounce your citizenship, or even if you do if it thinks its for tax reasons.) Unfortunately, the benefits of Obamacare do not go wide until 2014, so there are not yet testimonials from enthusiastic, family-next-door beneficiaries. A lot of the benefits, and a lot of the costs and problems, don't go wide until 2014. Even ignoring the later point, using the former to call "Obamacare is a loser", "a myth", isn't a reasonable argument. The claim is a political one, and right now its at least a mild loser, and there isn't much evidence that this will change in 2014. At most its "only slightly true now and it might change in the future", not "a myth".