Is it though? You look at something like the ACA for example, it was touted as some great step towards healthcare reform but all it really did is stop the momentum of healthcare reform dead in its tracks and did nothing besides force people to pay for private insurance that covers nothing. A generation has now lost out on the possibility of an actual functional healthcare system because people voted for “the good”.
I’m still uninsured, nothing has changed for me since the ACA. Here’s the thing – I’m not interested in “incremental generational change”, because I need healthcare myself in my lifetime. And I’m especially not interested in hearing that rhetoric from politicians who get a supermajority and do nothing with it.
Similarly, Biden’s climate change bill was nowhere close to the radical action needed to confront climate change. The house is burning down and you have someone throwing a single pale of water on it then two pales of gasoline then sitting back in a lawn chair and telling you to shut up about your house because they just threw a “historic amount of buckets of water” on the housefire.
Half-measures can indeed be worse than nothing, because nothing at least creates some kind of urgency, where as half-measures are paraded around as some great victory for decades that we don’t have.
did nothing besides force people to pay for private insurance that covers nothing.
Which also as a result gave insurance companies even more money to use to fight against any reform to healthcare.
They use our own money against us, and it’s insane we keep letting them, but rock and hard place.
I’m still uninsured, nothing has changed for me since the ACA. Here’s the thing – I’m not interested in “incremental generational change”, because I need healthcare myself in my lifetime. And I’m especially not interested in hearing that rhetoric from politicians who get a supermajority and do nothing with it.
I’ve lost good friends to healthcare costs. Incremental change doesn’t mean shit to me anymore. They’re dead, they’re not coming back.
The Republican gutting of the individual mandate and refusal to accept federal funds to expand Medicaid is what crippled the ACA.
We only got to see the actual ACA in action for like two years and it was working. It always comes down to the Republicans actively working to ruin any progress we make.
The repeal of the mandate is literally the only decent thing to come out of the Trump presidency. I was paying $375 a month for insurance with a $1200 co-pay that had no vision, dental and didn’t cover any medications I needed.
It was not working because it began its life as a republican-crafted bill designed to fill the coffers of private insurers by forcing those who couldn’t afford insurance to buy in anyway or get penalized. Democrats pointed to the fact that lots of people like me were now technically insured and started doing victory laps. Meanwhile I couldn’t afford my rent and still paid cash for medication.
What state are you in? Was it one that refused to expand Medicaid? Because here in Massachusetts, which is the model state for the ACA, our Medicaid (Masshealth) is actually the best insurance I’ve ever had in my entire life. The individual mandate HAS to be accompanied by subsidies and expansion of Medicaid or it doesn’t work.
I appreciate that some people are able to afford to forego insurance, but most people can’t in reality. (I can’t. I have a chronic illness. I require daily meds for life.) And when they get sick, their cost still exists in the system and it’s more expensive. It’s not different from being forced to carry car insurance, if you drive.
That said, housing costs are out of control. I advocate at every moment to increase the housing supply. (Currently in polite disagreement with my NIMBY neighbors over a proposed new housing development near us.) Drug costs are out of control and need to be regulated. (I prefer nationalized, actually. But I know that’s a nonstarter in the US).
Is it though? You look at something like the ACA for example, it was touted as some great step towards healthcare reform but all it really did is stop the momentum of healthcare reform dead in its tracks and did nothing besides force people to pay for private insurance that covers nothing. A generation has now lost out on the possibility of an actual functional healthcare system because people voted for “the good”.
I’m still uninsured, nothing has changed for me since the ACA. Here’s the thing – I’m not interested in “incremental generational change”, because I need healthcare myself in my lifetime. And I’m especially not interested in hearing that rhetoric from politicians who get a supermajority and do nothing with it.
Similarly, Biden’s climate change bill was nowhere close to the radical action needed to confront climate change. The house is burning down and you have someone throwing a single pale of water on it then two pales of gasoline then sitting back in a lawn chair and telling you to shut up about your house because they just threw a “historic amount of buckets of water” on the housefire.
Half-measures can indeed be worse than nothing, because nothing at least creates some kind of urgency, where as half-measures are paraded around as some great victory for decades that we don’t have.
Which also as a result gave insurance companies even more money to use to fight against any reform to healthcare.
They use our own money against us, and it’s insane we keep letting them, but rock and hard place.
I’ve lost good friends to healthcare costs. Incremental change doesn’t mean shit to me anymore. They’re dead, they’re not coming back.
The Republican gutting of the individual mandate and refusal to accept federal funds to expand Medicaid is what crippled the ACA.
We only got to see the actual ACA in action for like two years and it was working. It always comes down to the Republicans actively working to ruin any progress we make.
https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2019.01433
The repeal of the mandate is literally the only decent thing to come out of the Trump presidency. I was paying $375 a month for insurance with a $1200 co-pay that had no vision, dental and didn’t cover any medications I needed.
It was not working because it began its life as a republican-crafted bill designed to fill the coffers of private insurers by forcing those who couldn’t afford insurance to buy in anyway or get penalized. Democrats pointed to the fact that lots of people like me were now technically insured and started doing victory laps. Meanwhile I couldn’t afford my rent and still paid cash for medication.
What state are you in? Was it one that refused to expand Medicaid? Because here in Massachusetts, which is the model state for the ACA, our Medicaid (Masshealth) is actually the best insurance I’ve ever had in my entire life. The individual mandate HAS to be accompanied by subsidies and expansion of Medicaid or it doesn’t work.
I appreciate that some people are able to afford to forego insurance, but most people can’t in reality. (I can’t. I have a chronic illness. I require daily meds for life.) And when they get sick, their cost still exists in the system and it’s more expensive. It’s not different from being forced to carry car insurance, if you drive.
That said, housing costs are out of control. I advocate at every moment to increase the housing supply. (Currently in polite disagreement with my NIMBY neighbors over a proposed new housing development near us.) Drug costs are out of control and need to be regulated. (I prefer nationalized, actually. But I know that’s a nonstarter in the US).