Friday, August 03, 2012

I Need Help in Understanding PPACA

In case you are not familiar with the PPACA it stands for Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It is referred to as Obamacare by most conservatives or opponents. In Missouri, nearly every political ad for the primaries that are coming up have a conservative talking about how they will oppose Obamacare.

The thing that I really have a hard time understanding is when did this conservative proposal for health care reform become so distasteful to ... conservatives? I even wonder if these politicians know that it was a conservative think tank that came up with many of the ideas that are a part of the dreaded Obamacare. I wonder if they know that Republicans in Congress once backed the ideas that are included in the dreaded Obamacare. I know that the Republican candidate for the presidency once liked it enough to implement most of the ideas in reform for his state, but now says that it won't work nationally.

I just can't understand when or why these once conservative ideas became so ... liberal, just because they were proposed and enacted by the Democrats. I would have thought that the Republicans would have jumped all over that and taken credit for it at the time! They could have said, "Finally! We've been wondering when you guys would see the light! We will gladly support OUR ideas for health care reform!"

Unfortunately, when your only goal is to make sure that the president doesn't get re-elected, you have to oppose all of his ideas--even if they were once your ideas, I guess.

So, for everybody that opposes the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, please tell me why. Tell me if you supported it when it was a conservative idea and what changed your mind. Tell me if you oppose it because it took place as Obamacare and you were completely ignorant of its origin. Tell me how a proposal developed in a conservative think tank, once backed by Republicans in Congress, implemented by a Republican governor (and soon to be Republican Presidential Candidate) and upheld as Constitutional by a Republican led Supreme Court gets to be major talking point in a negative way among conservative candidates for any public office.

I am so confused.
Please help.

John <><

5 comments:

Mike said...

I know why you're confused. You're trying to be logical. You need to stop before your head explodes.

Sicilian said...

I have heard that it was the insurance companies who crafted "Obamacare". Our President in his effort to get everyone to talk about the issue of health care and to come to some conclusion stepped away from the debates and let them hash it out. The result is a very pro insurance bill. I voted for the President and I will vote for him again, but I think he did not address the real issue - cost. If people don't have the money, how can the pay for the insurance that is mandated. The real winner in the "Obamacare" debate is the insurance companies.
Ciao

John A Hill said...

I agree, Sicilian. The reform we got only addresses who pays for healthcare, not affordable healthcare. With the insurance mandate it's similar to socialized medicine with huge profits for the administrators (insurance companies).

MikeyP said...

The Affordable health Care Act is a a modest charge relative to the cost the uninsured impose on the rest of us by waiting until they get sick and going to the emergency room. Our premiums pay for those uncovered costs.

Additionally, it addresses the problems associated with preexisting conditions or having one's insurance revoked / or premiums jump because they get sick.

Here is a pretty interesting breakdown of the costs:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2018882836_apushealthcaretaxes.html

MikeyP said...

Dr. Jonathan Gruber, a professor of economics at MIT and director of the Health Care Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, helped design both the Affordable Care Act and the Massachusetts health care reform Romney signed as Governor in 2006.

As for Romney, Gruber, said he is "disappointed" with his fierce opposition to Obama's Affordable Care Act.

Healthcare reform has been "an outstanding success in Massachusetts," he says, calling it a "template" for the nation. Since 2006, the ranks of the states' uninsured have fallen by two-thirds, private health insurance coverage has risen even as it's fallen nationwide, and premiums have fallen by 50% relative to the rest of the country.

"I'm disappointed both at [Romney] and his party," Gruber says. "Republicans have been completely nihilistic on this topic saying 'they don't like it, they don't like, they don't like it' and never offering an alternative that will help the 50 million Americans who don't have health insurance and the millions more who lose it every year."

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/don-t-healthcare-screwed-why-scotus-ruling-matters-181455256.html