Actually the “massive health care reform” only further cemented private for profit health care instead of actually moving forward with a real solution: single payer. Sure it helped some people now, but it made the problem worst in the long run. It’s shortsighted at best, and malicious at worst.
Single payer was never going pass in 2008. Not enough dems to break the filibuster, and they needed 9 republicans to jump across the aisle to get to 60 votes.
If people voted in more dems, they’d be getting the healthcare plans that the rest of the modern world has.
I appreciate somebody in the comments actually knows how our government functions. The Dems have a lot of stuff to make up for and there’s more than a few really shitty corpo stooges but they’ve legitimately done a lot of good with what they had to work with. If we get another election like this past midterm we should see great things. Thank you again, Gen Z. You really turned out this past election cycle.
The first person to truly float insurance reform was a republican. Romney Care. The DEMs literally went no further than Republicans. That tells you how much they truly tried. Not a lot.
Insurance reform pushes are older than that. The democratic and republican healthcare reform plans from the Clinton era famously both had insurance reform as an element of the reform plans.
The ACA does have similarities to the old Massachusetts plan, but it does go farther in a number of places. Employer mandates are a good example of that. That was an element taken from the old Clinton plan. Most in the GOP never liked that mandate.
Given that most in the GOP moved pretty far to the right in the 15 years between the last national healthcare push, and the dems needed 9 GOP votes to get to 60 in the senate, what was the alternative? Most of the national GOP were basically for the “let the uninsured go bankrupt and die” plan.
And you can thank the Republicans and Joe Lieberman for that. When Obama was elected he walked a very middle line, since he was the first black man to be president, he didn’t want to be viewed as the ABM (Angry Black Man). So when the first draft of the ACA was introduced (as single payer) he welcomed his GOP “colleagues” to help amend the bill and pass a bipartian bill, showing that he can work with those he disagreed with. Hence the ample time of 2 years. Some of their suggestions were actually added and modified to show goodwill and was still light years better than what we had before. However two unforseen catastrophies happened during that time.
Ted Kennedy died and his seat when to a Republican in a heavy/historically blue district which shocked many and made the Senate vote even more razor thin.
Joe Lieberman decided to go “independent” and worked with the GOP to gut most of the things that would have made the ACA great for citizens (like forcing insurance companies to compete against themselves). Because now his vote was the difference between it passing and failing.
So when complaining on much better it COULD have been look no further than the GOP and people like Joe Lieberman. Granted I wish Obama just said fuck y’all here’s what we’re passing but hindsight is always 20/20 especially in politics.
Actually the “massive health care reform” only further cemented private for profit health care instead of actually moving forward with a real solution: single payer. Sure it helped some people now, but it made the problem worst in the long run. It’s shortsighted at best, and malicious at worst.
Single payer was never going pass in 2008. Not enough dems to break the filibuster, and they needed 9 republicans to jump across the aisle to get to 60 votes.
If people voted in more dems, they’d be getting the healthcare plans that the rest of the modern world has.
I appreciate somebody in the comments actually knows how our government functions. The Dems have a lot of stuff to make up for and there’s more than a few really shitty corpo stooges but they’ve legitimately done a lot of good with what they had to work with. If we get another election like this past midterm we should see great things. Thank you again, Gen Z. You really turned out this past election cycle.
These comments feel like a lot of people falling for the lie that “they’re all the same.” No, they’re not.
It just take more than putting in the minimum effort for a general election and then checking out.
The first person to truly float insurance reform was a republican. Romney Care. The DEMs literally went no further than Republicans. That tells you how much they truly tried. Not a lot.
Insurance reform pushes are older than that. The democratic and republican healthcare reform plans from the Clinton era famously both had insurance reform as an element of the reform plans.
The ACA does have similarities to the old Massachusetts plan, but it does go farther in a number of places. Employer mandates are a good example of that. That was an element taken from the old Clinton plan. Most in the GOP never liked that mandate.
Given that most in the GOP moved pretty far to the right in the 15 years between the last national healthcare push, and the dems needed 9 GOP votes to get to 60 in the senate, what was the alternative? Most of the national GOP were basically for the “let the uninsured go bankrupt and die” plan.
And you can thank the Republicans and Joe Lieberman for that. When Obama was elected he walked a very middle line, since he was the first black man to be president, he didn’t want to be viewed as the ABM (Angry Black Man). So when the first draft of the ACA was introduced (as single payer) he welcomed his GOP “colleagues” to help amend the bill and pass a bipartian bill, showing that he can work with those he disagreed with. Hence the ample time of 2 years. Some of their suggestions were actually added and modified to show goodwill and was still light years better than what we had before. However two unforseen catastrophies happened during that time.
Ted Kennedy died and his seat when to a Republican in a heavy/historically blue district which shocked many and made the Senate vote even more razor thin.
Joe Lieberman decided to go “independent” and worked with the GOP to gut most of the things that would have made the ACA great for citizens (like forcing insurance companies to compete against themselves). Because now his vote was the difference between it passing and failing.
So when complaining on much better it COULD have been look no further than the GOP and people like Joe Lieberman. Granted I wish Obama just said fuck y’all here’s what we’re passing but hindsight is always 20/20 especially in politics.