What parts of Obamacare do people find most worrisome?
I find two different things worrisome. The vast amount of misinformation, including that I've read in the answers to this question. The claims made, with no support and no evidence, are tremendous. For example, Congress does have to participate in the exchanges, not receive employer provided health insurance from their large employer (Federal Government) like every large employer must provide. So, they exempted the Federal Government from a portion of the employer mandate, not themselves from participating in the individual mandate or the exchanges. (see Administration moves to limit, but not end, health insurance subsidy for Congress for more info on what Congress did to themselves).My biggest concern is that it is not single-payer. If you really want to bend the cost curve, you would go with single-payer. All the arguments about government rationing health care ignores the fact that currently insurance companies ration health care. Some of the rules of the ACA force insurance companies to stop doing some of the rationing activities (e.g., cover those with pre-existing conditions, remove lifetime caps), but setting deductibles, limiting the number of mental health visits, etc. are all ways that the companies ration health care. It is necessary if we want to bend the cost curve, but none of the ACA provisions really do enough to bend the cost curve. A big way is to eliminate all the administrative paperwork for filing for insurance claims by everyone. It is a total productivity loss for consumers and a huge administrative cost for the doctors. You can do that through single payer. And before someone jumps with the socialist thing, Canada is not a socialist nation and their businessmen think we are crazy (see Canadians don’t understand Ted Cruz’s health-care battle). Given our crazy political process that thrives on invective and rhetoric over facts, I guess the ACA is the best we can get, but I am most worried we don't have single payer (with a private insurance system for people who want "platinum" benefits). But, given where we are, I'd rather have people insured and it is working in Massachusetts without most of the negatives people are claiming. Wherever one stands on the law, I'd suggest folks look at some fact-checkers like A guide to Obamacare claims, pro and con. There is way too much misinformation in this debate.
Which presidential candidates are the most reasonable?
While I personally agree with most of what Bernie Sanders says, I also recognize that the America he envisions is so far from what mainstream America is ready to embrace, or even tolerate, that he'd have almost no chance of translating his ideas into much of anything that could clear all the hurdles in the way of them ever being enacted.Nobody who calls themselves a Republican qualifies as "reasonable" as far as I'm concerned. Yes, I can understand the desire to limit the size and scope of government. But unfortunately, in the modern Republican party, every Republican politician of any national stature is required to embrace a huge variety of policy positions that really don't make much sense at all. The Republican party is, in effect, a coalition of advocates for a range of positions on a great variety of issues, and most of these are just wrong. A few examples:Opposition to a woman controlling her own reproductive decisions.Opposition to meaningful steps to address our looming climate crisis.Opposition to even the mildest common sense gun reforms, like closing the private sale loophole, or banning suspected terrorists from buying guns.Opposition to full equality for gay people.Opposition to the Iran nuclear deal.Support for increasing military spending, when we currently spend as much as the next 9 largest countries in military spending combined.Support for even more tax cuts for the rich, and a blind faith in trickle-down economic theory, despite it being thoroughly discredited by the last 35 years of experience.Ongoing support for the failed war on drugs.Continuing efforts to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, in spite of the fact that it used Republican ideas to finally address our horribly broken health care mess.I'll leave it at that, though I could list many more examples. Every single Republican candidate for president is simply on the wrong side of too many critically important issues.That leaves us with Hilary Clinton and Martin O'Malley. Either one could fairly be described as "reasonable".
Did President Obama “misspeak” when he repeatedly claimed, "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it"? Was it a lie? Will there be any political consequences now that it appears to be untrue?
At the moment President Obama made that statement, it was technically the truth - since he was basing that on what his team was proposing. It was not yet law, and Obama was trying to “sell” and also “explain” the proposal.Later, there were those in Congress who insisted that “big insurance” be allowed into the room, before they would ever consider voting for it. These congressmen insisted that Blue Cross, and Cigna, and all of the others be allowed into the negotiations. The major insurance corporations, who already were making the entire health care system in the U.S. such a disaster. [NOTE: I will leave it up to the reader to guess what political party those members of Congress might have belonged to, and remember that some members of Congress take a lot of money in contributions from those “big insurance” corporations.]At the moment Obama made that statement, it was true. He was describing his own plan. Before it was law.After big insurance was allowed to enter into the negotiations, that began to change. And, change. And, change.(The same is true of Obama’s other statement, that he made, where Obama claimed “you can keep your own doctor.”)Once the major insurance providers were allowed in, the ACA was now subject to something that would allow those major corporations to “stay alive,” and “keep their profits rolling in,” and “satisfy their corporate board.” The ACA was diminished, and altered, and changed, and modified.The ACA is flawed. It needs to be be fixed. However, right now, the Republicans will not touch it (since they spent the last six years campaigning on how it was the worst thing since cyanide — a terrible exaggeration.)So, as of today, we are stuck with a very flawed law. It is (honestly) better today, than those days when anyone with a pre-existing condition could not even get health coverage. But, it is far more expensive than it needs to be because “big insurance” is still collecting a huge chunk of everything that happens, every time you go to a doctor, or go the E.R., or visit a hospital, or dare to have a surgery.The rest of the planet has figured this out. The U.S. is the last “advanced” nation on this planet that still does not have the balls to tell the major insurance corporations that they can go fuck themselves.
Why won't people just let President Trump do his job?
Dear Perry (I Have Two Quora Accounts) Moore:Let me be clear. The only person who is “stopping” Donald Trump from doing his job as the duly elected President of the United States is….Donald Trump.His rise to power, aided in part by individuals who hate foreigners, Muslims, and liberals, as well as assistance by Russian hackers who used various techniques to spread false rumors, bought political ads on Facebook, and attempted to steal voter information from various states’ data banks, has placed Trump in the White House.He is only the second Republican President in the past 100 years to reach the White House with no previous experience as a politician. The last man to achieve this was General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower, the victorious commander who led the Allied forces in North Africa, the invasions of Sicily and Southern Italy, and the successful campaign in Northwest Europe during World War II.Unlike Trump, Ike was a respected (and respect-worthy) leader who led the nation through some of the toughest years of the Cold War. He wisely kept us out of the Suez Crisis in 1956, kept the tensions with the Soviet Union from getting hot for eight years, and actually focused on infrastructure improvements.The St. Lawrence Seaway? That was done under the Eisenhower Administration.The Interstate Highway system? Ditto.And Ike, unlike Trump, actually worked well with members of Congress from both parties.Plus, Ike was likable!“Your” President may have signed a few bills (Kate’s Law being one), but other than sabotaging the Affordable Care Act and making a mockery out of our democratic processes, Trump has accomplished nothing of great merit.Now, you seek, in this extremely loaded and insincere question, to pin the blame on liberals, protesters, and the “mainstream media” for “your” President’s ineffectiveness during his first nine months on the job.You seem to be saying, “If you naive liberals would just stop criticizing the President, he could do his job.”This would work extremely well if we lived in Cuba, North Korea, or the Galactic Empire. If that were so, dissent would be squelched, and we’d live in a dictatorship.