There are a lot of people who voted for our current president with the logic, “he can burn the country to the ground as long as he kills the Affordable Care Act and overturns Roe v. Wade.” We all have our hot-button issues.
I have a friend who might die if the ACA is repealed. I’m not making this shit up to create a straw man, so let me repeat myself. My friend, someone I worked with for several years, needs ongoing care to stay alive and without the ACA he won’t get it. He seriously might die.
He’s an interesting guy; if I have my stories straight he once taught unarmed combat at an anti-terrorism school in exchange for submachine gun training. You know, just your average liberal snowflake. He used to sit outside the office on his lunch breaks playing exotic (to me) musical instruments.
I wonder if any of the no-ACA right-to-lifers out there would like to sit in a room with him and explain their stand on the sanctity of life, and why they are so intent on letting him die.
How about we repeal the ACA, let people who want to buy insurance buy insurance, and let people who need medical welfare get medical welfare? Turn this around: what you’re asking us to do is burn down everybody else’s insurance (including mine: I don’t have insurance, because of the ACA), so that your friend can get welfare and call it insurance. You’re asking us to burn down everybody else’s medical *care* by doubling down on everything that we know makes medical care more expensive and less innovative, so that your friend can call his assistance “ACA” instead of “public assistance”.
What you’re asking is for uncounted, unknown other people to die, just so that your known friend can pretend that they have insurance, rather than public assistance.
If the “public assistance” is put in place at the same time the ACA is repealed, then I don’t really have a problem with that. Even better, if EVERYONE got medical care as “public assistance”, we could eliminate one of the three sets of evil leeches driving up health care costs.
Oops! I voted down by mistake! My apologies. Everyone (including politicians) should have the same access.
I think too, that the word “insurance” in this context is overloaded to the point it’s deceptive. Car insurance is where you pay a little to protect in the event of a disaster. Most people pay more into auto insurance than they even remotely collect. Disasters are, happily, rare.
Health insurance is different. It’s not strictly hedging against a disaster you hope never to have (though it does that, certainly), but collecting from the insurance is *certain*, steady, and unending. The longer you live the more you collect. “Health Collective” would probably be a better phrase for the way the system works.
As it stands now in our country there are a bajillion collectives fighting to stack themselves with the lowest-risk members while avoiding high-risk members. Generally good for the low-risk people, disastrous for the others.
Jerry S’s comment is the same as saying, “Right now I have oranges and your friend has oranges. Let’s turn this around and instead let me have oranges and your friend have oranges.”
?!?!?!
I also have a friend who WILL die without ACA. Repeal of this act will take away the right of millions of people who were recently given access to substantive medical care by the ACA. Most of them do not WANT a “free handout” They just want to be given a chance to live.
Our politicians(who work for us, are paid for us, and benefit from excellent, “free” healthcare, paid for by us) will kill tens of thousands of people, and they seem hell-bent on doing so, simply to protect a few bucks in their constituents’ wallets. If they want to repeal the ACA, as public servants, they should be subjected to the same free market healthcare system that the rest of us are required to pay dearly for. BTW, I am self-employed, and self-insured.
Where’s the compassion for the people have been dealt a shitty hand in life? Repeal truly reveals what the “Real America” is all about: selfishness and greed.