Forum Overview :: Theme Hospital :: Fuckin' Obamacare! How does it work?

[quote name="Mischief Maker"][quote name="Too embarrassed to say"]This is not a troll post. I know it is going to sound like one but it is not. I have had health care from my employer since I started working. My father is in his late 50s and against Obamacare. I asked him how he could be against free healthcare. He said it's not free and you get fined if you don't have it and any other insurance. I didn't really have a response for this and I barely see my father because of Distance (the game, not the mileage haha just kidding). I could probably look all this up but I lurk here and this place has a unique way of discussing things. How does it work? You pay the government each month for healthcare? No wonder people hate it if that's the case? [/quote] The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act isn't free healthcare, it's a regulation of health insurance meant to ensure everyone has some basic insurance without abolishing the private health insurance industry. It's actually a Heritage Foundation (right-wing think tank) penned republican system that Mitt Romney signed into law for Massachusetts in 2006. Obama, master negotiator that he was, thought by offering up a republican plan, that republican legislators would look past his skin color, be won over by his reasonable centrism, and accept the plan. We all see how successful that was. It's certainly better than things were before, but in practice it's delivered much more on the "patient protection" and less so on the "affordable." Millions of people who would have been denied any health insurance except at exorbitant premiums now have insurance thanks to the PPACA. The "public option" people were talking about that never made it into Obamacare would have been a government-run health insurance that people would have the option to choose instead of private insurance, therefore giving a market-based check on health insurance shenanigans instead of direct regulations. Joe Lieberman is the Democrat/Independent most responsible for strangling the public option in the cradle. If the PPACA were repealed, millions of Americans would lose their health insurance and not be able to afford the medicine keeping them alive, so the public outcry was more than Republicans could handle. However, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and several executive orders from Donald Trump have broken several of the mechanisms that keep the PPACA financially solvent, like the individual mandate which penalizes people for not having <I>some</I> health insurance. (Insurance combines resources from people who get in trouble and people who never collect to spread the financial risk out in a common pool. By not making insurance mandatory, young and healthy people are going to start dropping out of the pool and raising the costs for the old and sick who have no choice but to get insurance). So for the forseeable future the PPACA is in a "death spiral" as costs get out of control. Progressives consider the PPACA a "good start" (or a "spineless copout," depending on how drunk they are) because of those millions who are now covered. But they now seek some form of "single payer" health insurance, like Medicare-for-all. Essentially single payer means all Americans would have government-provided basic health insurance (with the option for supplementary private insurance). You would pay more in taxes, but by eliminating private health insurance costs you'd come out ahead financially. In fact a Koch Brothers-funded study said just that, as the pimp mack-daddy himself explains: [twitter id=1024074723385401344] TL;DR: The PPACA is not free healthcare, it's about preventing you from being denied private health insurance with some govt. subsidies to keep the costs from getting out of control. Trump and the Republicans eliminated a lot of those subsidies so the costs are becoming out of control. Your father will not be penalized for not having insurance in 2019 due to the repeal of the individual mandate, but age kinda makes health insurance mandatory for everybody eventually. Progressives are pushing for a single-payer government-run health insurance (Medicare-for-all) to replace the private health insurance system and guarantee everyone is covered. Hospitals and doctors would still be private entities. You'd pay more in taxes but eliminate your health insurance bill and come out ahead financially. Hope this helps![/quote]