ACA was a compromise to get something changed. It was never supposed to be the final result. Republicans turned it into a boogeyman that had to be undone instead of doing the right thing for their constituents and proposing a better solution. It was always funny to see red states quote the soundbite that they hated Obamacare, then say they didn’t need it as long as they had their ACA.
Back before Trump 1, every Republican ran on repealing ACA. So in the second half of Obama’s second term, GOP had the House and Senate but not a veto-proof majority. They sent something like 80+ bills fully repealing ACA. Of course they all got vetoed.
Trump runs on getting rid of Obamacare and wins, maintaining the GOP majority.
Not a single bill lands on his desk fully repealing it. It was all performative. They knew their constituents would yell at them.
Let’s not forget the “We’ll have a new better healthplan in 2 weeks” nonsense.
Now here we are again. GOP controlled House and Senate and a president that is hell bent on destroying anything any Democrat did.
ACA still hasn’t been repealed.
They’re destroying the federal government, so some parts can be replaced by corporations and so that corporations can do what they want. These people saw cyberpunk and thought of it as something to achieve.
Maybe not in its entirety, but they are cutting medicaid right
Yeah, there are a lot of comments here berating it, but it barely passed as it was and has only been on the chopping block since. If people want something better, they need to work to help the republican voters demand it, cause it isn’t the democratic voters holding Healthcare change back.
The ACA is not good. It was a clear example of our political system failing and capitulating to capital interests and the fact that it exists and is in fact arguably the only liberal polical “success” in my lifetime is emblematic of the utter and complete failure of the American political system.
Yeah but people like you talk about it in a way that misses the important point fucking entirely. The ACA is the best the Republicunt party would let Obama get away with at the time, and they fought like hell against it.
Though the Republican party does seem to be getting away with a fucking lot these days…
That’s now what I remember, though. I remember the Dems barely even trying to get universal healthcare. They quickly threw in the towel, because (in my opinion) they wanted to appease their funders.
Then you are remembering incorrectly. I turned 18 the year Obama was elected. I was super dialed in and remember this process very clearly.
The ACA did give incremental change in updating things like the long overdue “no coverage for pre existing conditions” bullshit. That was admittedly a big win.
But the individual mandate with no financial assistance was tone deaf at best and corrupt at worst. People who were uninsured were uninsured because they couldn’t afford it, not because they thought it was cool to not buy health insurance. Now they were forced into a position of buying expensive coverage or penalized financially for not doing so. Huge win for the privatized insurance industry, which has been doing amazingly well since the ACA. And this ultimately weaponized a generation against healthcare reform! I would bet at least some trump voters are disgruntled people that are still furious that despite being barely able to get by their government forced them to spend $3-400 a month on a bullshit health plan that covered nothing because it still had a $4000 deductible
I would buy the whole “this was a compromise on the path to something better” if there was any movement whatsoever on healthcare reform since. The ACA was fifteen years ago. I work with high schoolers that are older than the ACA.
And what major reforms have we seen in those years? Not a ton:
Repealing the individual mandate - republican win in 2017, pulling those disgruntled voters in
Alt health plans - pooled and short term health plans. Short term health plans reintroduce denial based on health history, pooled plans are potentially unstable based on the pool, both limit coverage options fairly substantially compared to traditional plans
Medicaid funding cuts
Prescription drug pricing changes - some wins here but also some concerns about potential access to novel treatments for people on Medicaid and Medicare
The ACA did far more bad than good. Like typical democrat shit the good could not occur without padding the pockets of the donor class at the expense of the worker class.
The ACA immediately lowered the cost for insurance. I know because in 2007 my healthy, 28yr old, non-smoking ass tried to get private health insurance. The cheapest, emergency-only coverage I could get was over $600/mo. After the ACA was enacted I could get a similar plan for under $200. I hadnt had health insurance for 10 years by then cause I was kicked off my dad’s when I turned 18, not 26 like it is now.
Broke: ACA helped a lot of people get access that were fucked before.
Woke: ACA was just for giving rich people money.
Bespoke: The ACA was the democrats leveraging a mandate to make a deal with the heath insurance companies that funded their campaigns to give concessions on the most heinous aspects of their industry in return for ever increasing profits.
All those statements are objectively true.
