Obamacare Architect: Lack of Transparency Was Key Because ‘Stupidity Of The American Voter’ Would Ha - Polidicks

[QUOTE=ilikecorn;46463913]Considering Congress only has a 12% approval rating. You're in the minority. The vast majority of Americans appear to disapprove of what congress is doing, and therefore don't trust them to do the "right" thing.[/QUOTE] yeah, 12% approve, and yet about [B]95% of the people in congress right now are incumbents[/B]. incumbents that were voted into office by the people. so what does that say about what the public [I]says[/I] vs what it [I]votes for[/I] [QUOTE=ilikecorn;46463418]Except it's not a tax. You're not paying the government. You're paying a private entity who isn't responsible to anyone. It'd be like paying social security to chase bank instead of the feds, and they don't actually charge you as a tax, instead you have to cut a check to the bank every month for the amount of what you're supposed to contribute for social security, would you be cool with that? Because I'm not. If the feds had set up a public insurance company, and then charged you taxes for using it, I literally would have no complaints. At all. Period. But since we're using the "amazing" free market, I have a HUGE problem.[/QUOTE] the reason that the individual mandate exists is to prevent insurance from suddenly not existing. because, you see, when you make it so that companies can't deny people for pre-existing conditions, you run the risk of people waiting until they're sick/injured to purchase health insurance. that's not how insurance works, however; you need healthy people to pay into the system in order for a sick person to draw from it. the mandate exists so that a cancer patient can't be told that he can't have insurance because of his "pre-existing" condition.

[QUOTE=ilikecorn;46468767]Bullshit. Insurance isn't going to magically "disappear". The individual mandate exists because the dems decided it would be a good idea to choke on the chodes of the GOP even though they didn't have to entertain a god damned idea the 'pubs had to offer. They could have passed a single payer system with NO VOTES from the GOP, and yet they were spineless, and cowards, and now we deal with the pathetic excuse for health care that is the ACA.[/QUOTE] your anger at a piece of paper seems to be blinding your rational judgment. [url]http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/07/todays-healthcare-refresher-heres-why-we-need-individual-mandate[/url] the reason the mandate exists is to make sure people pay into the system instead of getting insurance immediately when they get sick; i've said it twice now, and i'll say it a million times until you understand. that's the source on the mandate part. but i can't convince you if you're just going to deny basic fact and shout partisan rhetoric as your justification.

If only we'd accounted for how stupid voters were when we designed the country. Oh wait we did. We called it the Senate. Senators weren't supposed to be chosen via direct election. They were supposed to be chosen by state level legislators. The mess they teach in school about the Senate being about evening out the power of the states? Mostly bullshit. It was about the fact that people are morons. So they created an arm of the government intended to serve as a check on the House of Representatives. Likewise the House of Representatives was the check on the Senate. If it passed both houses, then both the governments of the states and the people (or at least their elected officials) agreed on the concept. The idea here being that sometimes the people don't know what is best for them. Likewise sometimes the government is way out of control and you are supposed to have someone who represents the people to keep them from gaining all the power. Then we fucked it up because we have this huge love affair with democracy. So much so that we had to invent the concept of a "representative democracy" because calling ourselves a "republic" (WHICH WE ARE) was apparently not appealing. Yes, unabated mob rule is really something to [I]strive[/I] for. You were generally only supposed to directly elect your representative. You would have ONE person who would serve to represent you in the federal government. He would live in your region and you would, to be a good citizen (at a federal level) only need to research him. This was thought to be (and probably is) a reasonable requirement. This is opposed to two senators, a representative, and the President/VP. We aren't even supposed to directly elect the president. The entire electoral college exists because people are stupid. You were supposed to vote for (or in some states, the state legislator chose the representative) a person that you believed would make a wise decision in choosing the president. You voted for a person that you trusted to do the research and come to a conclusion. The entire fucking system was designed to account for stupid goddamn voters. What it failed to account for was that the voters would be so goddamn retarded that they would vote to rid themselves of the fail safes that prevented them from fucking themselves with their own stupidity. tl;dr: The founders thought everyone was stupid too.

[QUOTE=Used Car Salesman;46462790] The charge that the bill somehow wasn't transparent is also completely without evidence. There was a yearlong debate in Congress that was extensively covered by the media. The bill was available in full for reading by anyone who pleased as a matter of public record. The idea that this law was somehow rushed through in secrecy is simply garbage. This law was more heavily reported on and scrutinized than any piece of legislation in recent memory...if there was any lack of transparency, it's due to Fox News and talk radio spewing misinformation and outright lies. The source is not credible. What some consultant said on some random panel doesn't prove anything, and no evidence at all is offered. Besides, he still says we're better off with the law than not having the law. If his general point is that Americans are too fucking stupid to recognize a good thing when it happens to them, I totally agree. But there was no lack of transparency. No part of the ACA was secret.[/QUOTE] This is simply not true. There was little to no information about this health care bill because the entire bill kept drastically changing. When the final version came out it was voted on before anyone completely read it. It wasn't possible to read the thing in the short amount of time. Pleas to delay the vote for public consideration were ignored. Nancy pelosi famously commented "we must pass the bill to find out what's in it".... That's not transparency- that's shoving a bill through because you have a majority.

I'm hoping for you Americans that the Republicans will repeal the Affordable Care Act. It's more like healthcare deform than reform. A disgrace to sound public healthcare policy.

In its current version, given Republican interference, it's an excuse to line the pockets of insurance companies. Antdawg, the Republicans MADE it this way. Like hell they'll want to repeal it. No, the USA needs proper socialized healthcare like Canada has. A basic level of insurance, including but not limited to complete coverage for all essential and life-saving procedures, should be given to every resident, regardless of their pre-existing conditions and risk factors.

[QUOTE=ilikecorn;46459642]I'd rather not have a law that you have to bullshit your way through congress to get passed. Obamacare is a shameful excuse for "progress" and all It did was put us in the pocket of the insurance companies. The American people might be poorly educated on their political system, but i'm pretty sure if you started implementing parts of the ACA as laws they wouldn't have had any issues with it (like making it illegal to deny insurance coverage for preexisting conditions)[/QUOTE] I have healthcare because of Obamacare, so does my girlfriend. That's helpful when my lung spontaneously collapsed and I had to have emergency surgery and a week in the hospital. It's not perfect, and far from what is really needed but it is better than nothing. Now lets sit back and see how the Republicans run things now.

Only Rand Paul can fix this

[QUOTE=MoonlessNight;46471699]Only Rand Paul can fix this[/QUOTE] not if we want a good healthcare system

[QUOTE=Ajacks;46471618]I have healthcare because of Obamacare, so does my girlfriend. That's helpful when my lung spontaneously collapsed and I had to have emergency surgery and a week in the hospital. It's not perfect, and far from what is really needed but it is better than nothing. Now lets sit back and see how the Republicans run things now.[/QUOTE]Same, but I really, really wish we had proper healthcare reform (like ilikecorn has been saying) rather than this bloated, painful piece of shit mess we got now.

[QUOTE=GunFox;46468848]If only we'd accounted for how stupid voters were when we designed the country. Oh wait we did. We called it the Senate. Senators weren't supposed to be chosen via direct election. They were supposed to be chosen by state level legislators. The mess they teach in school about the Senate being about evening out the power of the states? Mostly bullshit. It was about the fact that people are morons. So they created an arm of the government intended to serve as a check on the House of Representatives. Likewise the House of Representatives was the check on the Senate. If it passed both houses, then both the governments of the states and the people (or at least their elected officials) agreed on the concept. The idea here being that sometimes the people don't know what is best for them. Likewise sometimes the government is way out of control and you are supposed to have someone who represents the people to keep them from gaining all the power. Then we fucked it up because we have this huge love affair with democracy. So much so that we had to invent the concept of a "representative democracy" because calling ourselves a "republic" (WHICH WE ARE) was apparently not appealing. Yes, unabated mob rule is really something to [I]strive[/I] for. You were generally only supposed to directly elect your representative. You would have ONE person who would serve to represent you in the federal government. He would live in your region and you would, to be a good citizen (at a federal level) only need to research him. This was thought to be (and probably is) a reasonable requirement. This is opposed to two senators, a representative, and the President/VP. We aren't even supposed to directly elect the president. The entire electoral college exists because people are stupid. You were supposed to vote for (or in some states, the state legislator chose the representative) a person that you believed would make a wise decision in choosing the president. You voted for a person that you trusted to do the research and come to a conclusion. The entire fucking system was designed to account for stupid goddamn voters. What it failed to account for was that the voters would be so goddamn retarded that they would vote to rid themselves of the fail safes that prevented them from fucking themselves with their own stupidity. tl;dr: The founders thought everyone was stupid too.[/QUOTE] That sounds like a system where the mob/mafia/organized crime would end up being in control 100% of the time shortly after this is put in. Not that I disagree about majority of the people being stupid and buying into what the man on the tv says.

[QUOTE=Used Car Salesman;46462790]The charge that the bill somehow wasn't transparent is also completely without evidence. There was a yearlong debate in Congress that was extensively covered by the media.[/QUOTE] No it wasn't! It was almost entirely done in closed door deals. People got pissed off because Obama promised it would be open, so he relented and had a single day of open discussion with Paul Ryan and others about it on C-SPAN. Everything the GOP said was basically ignored, and the bill went on without their support. [editline]12th November 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=KnightSolaire;46467509]We'll send over our socialist NHS, watch the tears of republicans as it works out cheaper than current American system.[/QUOTE] Wasn't there just an article where a British doctor possibly infected like 40,000 people with various diseases? [editline]12th November 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=archangel125;46471419]In its current version, given Republican interference, it's an excuse to line the pockets of insurance companies. Antdawg, the Republicans MADE it this way. Like hell they'll want to repeal it.[/QUOTE] Republicans had no say in it, and not a single one of them voted for it. The Democrats are the sole owners of this shitty law.