Quote:
Originally Posted by Red Slinger
Part of the ACA plan for those people was for the federal government to provide free money for the individual states for three years to cover those situations. 26 states refused that free money. All 26 are either run but a Republican Governor or a Repubic State House. Most of those States (like Louisiana, Mississippi, etc.) have the worst healthcare provisions in the union. So, these governments made a political choice to refuse coverage for their citizens.
It's by no means a perfect system. There are problems with gaps in coverage as you mentioned. There are also problems associated with the technical issues that have been widely panned. The Democrats have been trying to reform healthcare for decades. It finally got to the point where not only were there millions of Americans without coverage but the existing system was about to bankrupt the government. It basically reached the boiling point so something had to be done.
Let's not forget that Obama originally wanted single-payer universal coverage. That system was screamed down by Republicans and some Blue-dog Democrats. Eventually, Obama adopted the previous Republican proposal which is, more or less, the current ACA. I imagine that this system will eventually work out the wrinkles and will work well for most and not so well for some. But this is the first step in the evolution of healthcare in America. I think within 30-40 years, the USA will have a system similar to that in Canada.
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I don't disagree with most of what you wrote. I know my opinion has been jaded by people I know and am close to who I was convinced would be helped by the aca only to find our it left them in a far worse position. It is only a narrow scope of people that were going to be helped by the aca anyways. And that is self employed and hourly workers. To see that a rather large chunk of the people who need help the most is pretty crappy. The problems with the website, while on one hand could be viewed as just an inconvenience, the other side of that problem are that it allows people who are losing current insurance to not have any faith they have better options. And as someone who has tried to help people use that system, I can say that it is not just because it was busy. It is impossible based on inputs I've provided for people to get to a point where you can actually apply for insurance.
Maybe it will evolve into something good, I just fear the implementation of it was so poor that it will make the public so apprehensive, no one will ever try again.
And really the bottom line is who did this help? You said the government would have gone bankrupt, how does the aca save the government money?