Posted on May 15, 2015
LCpl Mark Lefler
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I was reading this and other articles, this may gut obamacare but without a good solution where does this leave republicans standing with a lot of voters who suddenly have no subsidies. I'm not a fan of the republican party but even if it wasn't republicans pushing for it, my view is if someone/someones want to get rid of something, it might be a good idea to have a good alternative other then "it sucks".

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/05/15/republicans-brace-for-for-glorious-victory-over-obamacare/
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GySgt Wayne A. Ekblad
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Hell, I am absolutely convinced the Republicans are going to hand this election to Clinton (assuming she remains the presumptive Democrat candidate) through infighting and pure stupidity.
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SPC Safety Technician
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That's what happened last-time, too, IMO.
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CPT Jack Durish
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The Affordable Care Act (of which "The" is the only accurate description) was doomed to failure. It was an attempt to create a single payer system without including the single payer provision which is necessary to insure universal coverage. The Republicans would have served their cause far better had they simply sat back and allowed the failure to occur on its own. Sadly, they have contributed just enough snark from the sidelines for the Democrats to transfer blame to them.

Interestingly, the government-run system was the subject of national scholastic debate when I joined my college debate team in my freshman year (1960). I heard many more reasonable suggestions during those debates (none of which found their way into the Democratic plan).
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1LT Aaron Barr
1LT Aaron Barr
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Yes and no on letting it fail; it's namesake has delayed parts of it over 20 times so far. That each time he did so was until after the next election should tell us all we need to know about what effect he predicted it would have. That said, some of the worst of it is still delayed until past the next election so it'll be Obama's successor that gets to decide to implement or not. As I doubt that whoever wins will want to inflict this type of pain on the American economy, it might just be delayed endlessly....
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Sgt Aaron Kennedy, MS
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The ACA is a "dividing" issue. It is so wildly unpopular that it should have never become law. That doesn't mean it didn't have some good pieces and some good Intent, but when 50% of the country doesn't want something, it probably shouldn't be forced on them.

Since it was passed, it has had countless lawsuits against it. It has had countless attempts to have it revoked legislatively. Like motorcycle accidents, it's not if, but when. Let's not fool ourselves, the ACA is going away. It's just a matter of time, and both parties will blame each other for it.

Before anyone accuses me of playing party favorites. I don't actually care. From a pragmatic standpoint, it's just "Bad Law." Good Intentions be damned, it was Bad Law. It was doomed to fail. It was unsustainable, as written, and it was going to implode.

I'll happily debate why we should or shouldn't take care of people (no we shouldn't let people die in the streets. And We $#&# don't). I'll happily debate why this does or doesn't make anything more affordable (it depends on which side of the equation you are on). But when it really boils down to it, was this law (as written) sustainable? The answer to that is No. In very simple terms No. It had too many flaws, and if you pulled the wrong thread, it unraveled the entire thing.

King v Burwell just happened to be the most recent thread. It was almost the Individual Payer requirement a few years back. If it isn't King, it will be something else in a couple more years. This law is build on a foundation of sand, and it will crumble, because it's bad law.

As for needing a replacement before getting rid of it? Horsepucky. You should get rid of bad law as soon as you identify it. Don't let it fester. That's how you end up having people relying on bad law. Then it becomes "too big to fail" and we become reliant on broken #%^#%^ machines, much like we're reliant on the broken #%^^#$& Dept of the VA.
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LCpl Mark Lefler
LCpl Mark Lefler
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well in what was it? 1865 the 13th amendment wasn't popular but it became law.
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Sgt Aaron Kennedy, MS
Sgt Aaron Kennedy, MS
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LCpl Mark Lefler The checks & Balances for an Amendment to be passed are a heck of a lot different than a Law to be passed. But again, my stance isn't about popularity, it's about practicality.

The law itself was "built" badly.
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King vs Burwell, could this be a bad deal for republicans?
SSG Gerhard S.
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Clearly it's NOT affordable. Nothing meaningful has been done to reduce the costs of Healthcare under the ACA, and government subsidies ALWAYS have the same result of causing the price of the subsidized product or service to remain high, or go even higher as more dollars are chasing the same, or fewer products or services at a PERCEIVED lower (subsidized) price. The Law of supply and demand still applies.
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SSG Gerhard S.
SSG Gerhard S.
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Lastly, I want to make clear that I'm NOT speaking from a political, or ideological perspective. I'm simply pointing out that ECONOMICALLY speaking, socialistic programs such as the ACA, Social Security, et al are, in the long run, fiscally unsustainable. We have nearly 100 years of failed socialistic regimes to prove it.
Regards
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SSG Gerhard S.
SSG Gerhard S.
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LCpl Mark Lefler , when you say the ACA is "very affordable", you understand, I hope, that it only appears affordable, that the ACTUAL cost is being subsidized by others to give it the illusion of being "affordable". As I stated above, nothing has been done to actually reduce the price of health care, so the costs are being borne if not by recipients, then by others, namely the infamous "unseen man" of economics.... the taxpayer.
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LCpl Mark Lefler
LCpl Mark Lefler
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so.. then... we should let people die so you can save a few bucks on your taxes?
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SSG Gerhard S.
SSG Gerhard S.
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No, that's not what I think, and you have your talking point down pretty firmly. There are plenty of alternatives to a straight single payer (government) or third party (insurance) payer system. People should be paying their everyday, mundane medical bills out of their pocket, or from a cumulative health savings account, leaving the greater costs of catastrophic health care to insurance. Whole foods has a great plan where they give each employee a health savings account of $1600.00 yearly in the form of a credit card for basic health care needs. They also provide a "high deductible" ($2300.00) catastrophic insurance policy to cover more expensive healthcare needs.

This doesn't work for everybody, but it is an illustration of a way to do things that do not involve the runaway costs of single or third party payer systems. At this point, billing and documentation eats up 30-40% of a doctor's income. Nobody knows what any given procedure will end up costing, and nobody asks. The patient doesn't ask, and if he did, the doctor wouldn't know what it costs. How screwed up is that?
I am just trying to point out here that there is an alternative between government paid health care ACA and death, as you alluded to above. These alternatives also have the benefit of NOT being unconstitutional.

Respectful regards.
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SSG Trevor S.
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Why does it need to lay on Republican shoulders? The last time I checked they didn't get much say about what was in the law in the first place. Republicans offered a few alternative solutions that were bullied out of debate or not even allowed debate by Democrat leadership. Here is an article on the alternative efforts that were ignored during the time of the ACA's passage.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/08/28/seriously-the-republicans-have-no-health-plan/
My question to you, if we are paying subsidies for people to afford it, is it really affordable?
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SSG Gerhard S.
SSG Gerhard S.
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Unfortunately the ACA has no value either. They had to lie to us to get it passed, Mr. Gruber admitted this, over, and over. The President first told us the ACA is NOT a TAX... but then when a portion of the law was being argued before the Court, his representative argued it WAS a tax. This "Health care" law cannot support itself without penalizing people who don't have insurance, and by taxing medical supplies, equipment, and prosthetics, which only serves to raise the price of all these commodities. Can you make an argument for the idea that the (Democrat) Congressmen, Senators and President who passed this law didn't even bother to read it first? Does it bother you even a little that one of it's architects (Johnathan Gruber) had to lie, repeatedly regarding the nature of the bill to people all over the country to get it passed? If this is such a great law, shouldn't it have been able to stand on it's merits instead of having to be lied about by it's advocates? In the Marketplace that would be called "False Advertising" and I'm certain people like you, and I would be calling for prosecution, not praising it. Food for thought.
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SSG Gerhard S.
SSG Gerhard S.
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SSG Trevor S.
SSG Trevor S.
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Comrade Gruber needs to be in jail in my opinion.
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SSG Trevor S.
SSG Trevor S.
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LCpl Mark Lefler You attest that the alternatives had no value, why then were they not debated and shown to have no value. I would like to ask you what you think of tort reform? This would limit liability claims causing insurance rates for providers to drop relative to inflation over time since malpractice insurance wouldn't have to pay $1million for a patient that had a hangnail removed and they complained in court that it bled. (as and example) This would actually drop the costs over time instead of spreading the costs to those who pay the taxes to support subsidies. I would argue this idea had an excellent potential for value.
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PO1 Dustin Adams
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ACA is slowly killing itself although at the cost of 100's of millions of dollars to the taxpayers.

Dem's want to blame the GOP for the subsidies SNAFU but it sits squarely on their shoulders, they wrote and passed a unilateral law without any idea of how it would be implemented. With the subsidies, the administration (on the face of it), was in violation of the law - the Supreme Court will be the final verdict on that.

The ACA as it is, is not sustainable. The formula the insurance companies presented showing lower insurance costs is a farce, it is overly dependent on a greater than available number of healthy insuree's premiums to offset the cost of those using the insurance in order to maintain profitability. It is also cheaper to pay the IRS fine than the insurance premiums for most young healthy single Americans and the evidence shows a lot are paying the "tax" penalty.

The state exchanges are folding after sucking in 100's of millions of dollars of tax payer money. Hawaii looks to be the 5th/6th state exchange to fail and fold.

The number of uninsured has only had a small improvement, depending on whose data you look at it is around 20-30% of the previously uninsured have gotten insurance. Number one reason for not getting it, is cost. Most of the people touted in the governments numbers as having gotten insurance through the exchanges (state and federal) are those that lost their insurance because of the ACA.

One long lasting fix would be to get away from the "business" of medicine run by administrators and insurance companies and turn health care back over to the doctor's to practice it.
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LCpl Mark Lefler
LCpl Mark Lefler
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Much of what you said from what I've read isnt true at all, they're not folding, there are millions of people on ACA. We can't let the insurance companies self regulate, they rip people off right and left and let people die in the name of money.
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PO1 Dustin Adams
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SSG Gerhard S.
SSG Gerhard S.
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LCpl Mark Lefler Really? The insurance industry is "self regulated"? The insurance industry is one of the MOST regulated industries in the US. And that is one of the reasons our healthcare costs have risen so high. (They're rising almost as fast as our education costs). Here's the problem with over-regulation. It breeds a culture of lobbyism, whereby insurance industries have to keep lobbying Congress for special cut-outs, for other regulations beneficial to one sector to the detriment of another, all the while limiting competition. The answer to our healthcare problems does not lie with government, but rather within our markets. There is only ONE entity that can reduce healthcare costs, and that is the competition that comes with more open and free markets. I believe we should cut the Insurance companies out of all but the catastrophic level of care and provision, leaving yearly physicals, doctor's visits, and minor injuries and illness to be handled on a cash basis, possibly through health savings accounts. When people start shopping around for work physicals, or sports physicals for their children because they have to pay for it, we will find that competition will drive prices down to a fair market price. It's important to add that using a pay as you go system for everyday healthcare will take the insurance industry out of the loop, and will also remove the 30-40% billing and documentation overhead expense from healthcare as well. For the record, I agree with you that Insurance companies can only be trusted so far, they are always willing to take our premiums, but also do everything they can to NOT pay any more than they have to for services. Again, I'm speaking from the perspective of Economics, in an effort to paint a frame of reference for alternatives to government/insurance managed healthcare which does nothing to control costs.
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MSG Brad Sand
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If the Republicans said the sky was blue the Democrats would say the Republicans are lying to the American people, and vice versa. The only time they seem to be telling the truth is when they say the other guy is lying.

The one thing everyone seems to forget that is the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) does not provide any plan for care and is not affordable. It is really only an additional tax for people not buying health insurance. The only people winning on the whole thing was insurance companies...and they are supposed to be evil right?

How about this for a plan. We expect adults to act like grown ups. You either get health insurance for yourself and family OR you shut up when you get sick or injured?

Cannot afford insurance...then let me see your cell phone, cable plan, nails, tattoos, ETC and if you are not bleeding out money for those, I will find you help.
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SSG Gerhard S.
SSG Gerhard S.
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SSG (Join to see) - Though I agree that one of the charters of our government IS to "promote the general welfare" I would point out that it does NOT say to "provide" for the general welfare. The Framers were careful in their words... They DID, for instance, tell us that it is the government's job to "Provide for a common defense" When the Framers used the phrase "general welfare" they were saying that the Federal government is to act "generally", and not specifically. That is, our government is only supposed to engage in activities that have a general positive effect for everybody, and not to benefit any person, group of persons, State, group of States, corporation, industry, or union of peoples. In short, they were tasked with creating an atmosphere where people, and businesses could thrive and prosper, not to pick winners and losers at the taxpayer expense as we see with Republican and Democrat administrations and Congress' alike. Madison did tell us that the spending of money by congress to meet this end was limited to the enumerated powers listed in Article I Section 8 and elsewhere in the Constitution. Regards.
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SSG Program Control Manager
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SSG Gerhard S. - I am inclined to defer to the subject matter experts in matters of law, which in the case is the SCOTUS. If the SCOTUS doesn't find it unconstitutional then the correct interpretation is that it isn't unconstitutional.
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SSG Gerhard S.
SSG Gerhard S.
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SSG (Join to see) - Like most, I'm certain you will stick with that sentiment right until you see SCOTUS make a decision you firmly believe to be Unconstitutional, or disagreeable.
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SSG Gerhard S.
SSG Gerhard S.
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When Scotus makes a decision that is extra-constitutional they are not acting Constitutionally.... unless you are suggesting that Supreme Court Justices are some sort of ideal person, perfectly focused on the Constitutionality of a law, absolutely uninfluenced by experiences or politics. Like some sort of infallible angel? When SCOTUS makes political decisions, instead of measuring their decisions against the Constituiton, and it's original intent, then they are not doing their jobs.... and they are not doing us any favors, as they create an even muddier slope upon which our system of laws and rights may slide.
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1LT Aaron Barr
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Frankly, the Republican's reactions to this abortion of a law are a large part of the reason Trump's doing so well. The Republican establishment has no spine, no balls, no heart and no brains; the power of the purse was the only real power they had. They could waste time passing repeal after repeal of this law that they knew would never clear the Senate, let alone get to Obama's desk for a veto, but when it really came to it, they funded it.
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I have no idea how it will fair for Republicans. The GOP has so many factions that I don't think general statements can be made about them anymore.

From the libertarian perspective, it disturbs me that people assume gov't must have a "solution" to healthcare, or that gov't must put some sort of system in place. It worries me that so many people fail to see how many things function perfectly well without the gov't telling them how to do so, or how many complex systems develop out of business necessity rather than by central planning. That a great many systems function in spite of gov't involvement rather than because of it.

Personally, it would be my dream come true that there was no "solution" from Washington for our healthcare. It is one of the, if not the, most heavily regulated and interfered-with sectors of the economy. The enforcement of an insurance-based payment system shields the involved parties from market forces, incentivizing inefficiency. Demand is better expressed to providers via lawsuits rather than with where consumers take their money. Supply is thrust upon consumers based on whatever plan they have. Endlessly increasing regulations and Medicare pricing codes force providers to spend money on hiring lawyers and clerks whose entire jobs revolve around making sure the providers color between ever more convoluted lines. I'd bet that healthcare costs would come crashing down and quality would skyrocket over the course of a decade or two if the healthcare system was left to "regulate" itself, without any input from the gov't except provision of the judicial system for malpractice and the like. And that can be handled at the state level, definitely not the federal.
LCpl Mark Lefler
LCpl Mark Lefler
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you "think" but you dont know.. and without insurance the poorest of people will not be able to afford insurance they need.
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LCpl Mark Lefler, indeed, I try to avoid presuming I know things, so I make an extra effort to note that I think something or that it is my opinion, even when I feel quite strongly about it. I agree that no matter what system you have, there will be poor people, and they will be worse off than others. I just think the best way to help them is to stop inflating costs. For the record, despite my libertarian-ness, I advocate a reformation of the welfare system to a sort of "minimum guaranteed income", with which the poor could use to pay for their healthcare needs.

But speaking of needs, I don't think a "need" creates a right. Healthcare requires a provider, and no one has a right to a doctor's services...that would be slavery. None of us are entitled to healthcare, it's a privilege of modern times that we enjoy IMHO. As such I wouldn't even say anyone "needs" healthcare, rather I think that healthcare is a nicety. Of course I'm sure there's a good chance I'd be spouting a different tune if I had chronic heart disease or something, but then I'd be relying upon an appeal to emotion.
LCpl Mark Lefler
LCpl Mark Lefler
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well, under the spirit of the country in fact we are entitled to a right to healthcare. "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."... the "life" part covers healthcare.
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LCpl Mark Lefler, I would strongly disagree with that interpretation. I think we all have a right to sustain our own lives without infringing upon the rights of others to sustain their own lives. I also think that is essentially the only right anyone has, and that other rights (such as freedom of speech, movement, religion, etc) are simply the right to sustain one's own life as applied to various actions. I base the existence of this one right upon the basic choice every individual has upon reaching the age of reason: to live or not to live. Those that choose to live use reason as their tool for survival, and thus their ability to reason cannot ethically be compromised. An initiation of force or fraud by another compromises that, as one must then abandon their own reason and subject themselves to the will of the aggressor in order to maintain the possibility of living. Additionally, fear inhibits the ability to reason. Considering this:

To say that we have a claim upon the labor and knowledge of another person is equivalent to saying we may rightfully force another person to perform a service for us. Force is nothing without the threat of violence or otherwise infringement upon an individual's ability to sustain their own life. As such, to argue that a right to live includes a right to healthcare is inherently contradictory, because the latter requires denying others the former. In any case, the interpreted spirit of anything be damned, I seek to only advocate/support/embrace/etc that which I consider to be rational rather than whatever the sentiment of a majority is. It is my very strong opinion that Nature defines our rights, not Law or emotion; and that they can thus be discovered via reason.
LCpl Mark Lefler
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This thread isn't going how I ment it to, I was more trying to start a debate about how, and really it could apply to any debate of this kind... that if a person/persons are going to say something sucks regardless of the reasons that they should have a plan of their own before dismantling something.
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