I know people who are literally alive today because of the ACA. Do their lives have no value?
What I'm arguing is that the ACA, as written, has established a non-sustainable model for healthcare in this country. It's done so at a huge risk to future populations and seems to try and legislate an outcome instead of working with stakeholders to solve the ACTUAL problem: rampantly rising costs for healthcare.
HOW do you explain the crazy high costs for care in this country relative to almost every single industrialized neighbor? What are the factors for that high cost? Overconsumption? Regulatory capture? Lifestyle factors? Perverse incentives? Administrative overhead? PROFIT?
We've done very very little with the ACA to tackle these problems head on because every problem seems to be owned by an interest group that is incentivized to keep that problem alive.
That's the point I'm trying to make here.
Going back to 2008 would make things worse, not better. And sure, improve the ACA, but build on it or in parallel to it, don't tear it down and cost lives in the process.
What did happen was that a whole lot of people suddenly became the beneficiaries of a brand new government welfare program that wasn't paid for in any way by cost savings anywhere. I've got CBO studies to back that up.
Yes, we raised taxes on some rich people. Big deal. A pittance on what the spending required.
What we DID do was shift a whole lot of insurance costs onto people who were already paying a bunch: the middle-class.
If you want to know who really carries the weight of the ACA, look no further than a family of 4 with two incomes making about $125K between them. They saw their premiums rise, their deductibles grow, and their choices shrink.
There were winners: primarily, under or unemployed adults and those with pre-existing conditions that couldn't get coverage anywhere. Single mothers in some cases who couldn't otherwise get coverage under Medicare.
Everyone else who already had coverage they were paying for got screwed.
I helped get him elected. I wanted reform. I wanted better outcomes. I wanted people to participate.
Consider me disillusioned.
