Wednesday, October 17, 2012

The ACA and political "cover"

(quoted from my own post on Facebook, regarding the political process at the beginning of the Obama presidency)

 The ACA is, in fact, a good example of the whole process. No one, not even conservative Republicans, believe that the American health system is in good shape. Even Republicans that believe that our health system is "the best in the world" (it's not) know, if they bother to read the projections, that the system is not sustainable in the long run. Almost no one believes it shouldn't change. So, Obama and the Democrats took a CONSERVATIVE healthcare insurance proposal (Mitt Romney's own, in fact, which was originally a Heritage Foundation counter proposal to the Clinton's health care proposals) which was actually written to make necessary changes while avoiding even a whiff of "socialism", and tried to get bipartisan support for it. The Republicans would have none of it, even though guys like Romney and Bill O'Reilly now say that much of it will need to be re-implemented after it is repealed (evidently the main problem with it is that it is Obama's). So, the Democrats in the Senate passed it, and then the House used that passage to pass it themselves with a bit of budget trickery, and the Democrats and the President took complete responsibility for it, despite the incredible political danger of it, because it HAD to be done. And now, we will cover a much larger group of people, and save a lot of money in the long run, in SPITE of the Republicans, but Obama might lose the election largely because of the ACA (which people hate, until you describe the things it actually does for them, and they find that they like all those things).

 Do you see now why Obama (and Reid and Pelosi) didn't just try ram a lot of stuff through when they had the votes? But now we know they should have, because the Republicans put politics above what is good for the country, to an extreme never seen before. about a minute ago · Like

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