Poor Americans receive a wide range of subsidies, which have broad popular support. Obamacare is being fought because it is a byzantine bureaucratic tar pit written in secrecy by industries lobbyists and passed by the worst sort of political manipulations. If someone could manage to put forward a sensible national health system, including the necessary constitutional amendment, it would get a landslide victory.
Its cost controls are weak, at best. There's no way the country will come out the other side of this with cheaper healthcare.
There will be, of course, (truly) great stories about people who were suffering because of the evil practice of dropping customers from coverage when they get sick, and their finally getting the treatment their agreement with the insurance company should have entitled them to, but the total costs, and the costs for nearly everyone, will increase considerably, and some nice examples aside, it's unlikely to improve the quality of care, either.
It's a bad bill. We didn't have a good bill on the table, either–the whole system is fundamentally flawed–but it's a bad bill, functionally speaking. Whether it's really Romneycare, Obamacare, Heritagecare, etc., is irrelevant–it's a horrible system, and people who spend a good amount of their day trying to optimize things really surprise me when they don't acknowledge its numerous and deep flaws.
"Its cost controls are weak, at best. There's no way the country will come out the other side of this with cheaper healthcare."
Thankfully the cost controls are existant, at least, which is by inspection better than the status quo. This existence also renders your conclusion on costs a complete non sequitur.
Trivia: as much as conservatives hate Obamacare (spoilers: a lot), they can't resist using the cost savings it generates in their stunt budgets because the numbers don't work without the Obamacare savings.
The existence of controls doesn't necessarily equate to effectiveness.
Pair ineffective cost controls with a massive, complex, bloated, ineffective framework, and it doesn't seem to follow that the result is by inspection necessarily better than the status quo. Nor was my conclusion on costs, therefore, a complete non-squitur.
And since when is marginally bettering a fairly lousy status quo somehow laudable? That's a remarkably disappointing outlook.
Many Republicans hate it because their team lost, which is a poor reason to hate a bill, but just as poor–and perhaps more insidious–is that many Democrats cheer its passage, while knowing very little about it. Because their team won.
We've seen that story played out time and time again, in both parties, on myriad issues.
We really, really can do better than that, on all sides.
Wow that is must be some good Kool Aid. Obamacare is basically HeritageCare, the 90's conservative response to "a sensible national health system" (single payer) that died without even getting a vote much less a landslide victory. If there was a chance to pass a less byzantine bill, someone should have told the democrats and Obama because I'm sure they would have been all for it.
A sensible national health system would be as simple as changing the Medicare minimum age to zero and abolishing Medicaid. Do you think this requires a constitutional ammendment? And do you think there's the slightest chance today's conservatives would vote for it?
