(11-04-2017 11:55 AM)UCF08 Wrote: (11-04-2017 11:12 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: (11-04-2017 09:27 AM)UCF08 Wrote: I just pointed out that the biggest thing Obama accomplished was literally a GOP proposal...
No, it wasn't. Not even remotely close. It's not even remotely close to Romneycare, which was signed by a republican governor but was passed by an overwhelmingly democrat state legislature. Romneycare is 100 pages, Obamacare is 2000+, that alone tells you that one is not the other. So tell me, what republican plan is literally the same as Obamacare? What republican ever, at any point in recorded history, proposed a plan that was literally the same as Obamacare?
Answer: None. That meme is just a lie cooked up by the left to obscure the truth, because they don't want to deal with the truth that they, on their own, cooked up a horrible health care bill.
I'm not sure that comparing the number of pages in a piece of widespread, far changing federal legislation to its state version is compelling, but I would be
very interested in the sources you use to come to this confusion. I don't like repeating false information, so I'd rather be more accurate.
The number of pages is just a simple way of saying one is not literally the same as the other. There is no way possible for that to be the case. And as noted, Romneycare is not a republican health care plan. At best, it's a compromise worked out between a republican governor and a heavily democrat legislature in a predominantly blue state.
The sources I use to come to this conclusion are my own brain plus reading the applicable bills, and other proposals.
Let's look at a couple of examples. The left likes to say that the exchanges are a republican idea. Actually, they are a German idea, as a way to facilitate out-of-state purchases of health insurance. In the German Bismarck system, each state has its own health insurance plans. You can buy from any state's plan, regardless of where you live. Since you don't have agents for every state just down the street, the exchanges are there to provide a place to purchase out of state policies. The idea was incorporated in the Heritage (not republican) health care proposal, as a way to facilitate out of state health insurance purchases in the US. If you are going to allow purchases across state lines, which Heritage and various republican plans have proposed, then you need some mechanism to accomplish that. So the republican idea is is not the exchanges themselves, but interstate purchases and sales of health insurance. And without interstate purchases and sales, the Obamacare exchanges are not a republican idea.
The left also likes to say that the mandates are a republican idea. Again this is an idea that Heritage took from several Bismarck systems. But here's the big difference. Bismarck mandates are accompanied by government funding or reimbursement of at least a basic health care plan for each individual. So you are required to buy insurance, but the cheapest policy costs you nothing. That is not how the Obamacare mandates work. Obamacare wanted to impose universal insurance without kicking in additional federal funds. The economics of that don't work. Their concept was that we'll make certain people overpay in order to subsidize letting other people underpay. The problem is that the potential overpowers aren't buying, so the system is failing financially.
I personally prefer the Bismarck approach--universal private insurance. No single payer, no NHS, it's basically private system--both nonprofit and profit-seeking in competition. Both exchanges and mandates are part of some (but not all) Bismarck systems (others solve those issues in different ways). But without the Bismarck concept, Obamacare is not incorporating those ideas.
Neither, by the way, does any republican plan other than Heritage, which is why I don't agree with republicans on this issue either.
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A turd in the punchbowl for our leftist posters
