Earlier they were talking about drug use being a public health concern that has to be addressed when the people using drugs can only get treatment through state Medicaid.

I wonder if they know they should be conflicted.

I love talking about them like they aren't here. Lol.

Not a good sign that it took one of the looniest members of Congress to tweet that message.

haha good jokes

I dont pretend to know all the details of a US policy or have first-hand experience with the American healthcare system pre-Obamacare. Just one question:

If Obamacare was such a resounding success, why is healthcare still the number 1 issue for Democratic-leaning voters? Why has medicare for all, a healthcare reform which goes even much further than Obamacare, become the litmus test during the Democratic primary and not something else (say the wealth tax)? I understand it if you say "well, Republicans hating Obamacare can be explained by their partisanship/hatred for Obama/dulling of the mind by decades of Fox News propaganda". But obviously, even Democrats see huge tasks ahead on healthcare in spite of Obamacare.



Well, for someone who had coverage before, but a shitty one - which was the case for many millions of people - this is barely an improvement of their situation. Granted, Obamacare is a big difference maker for those who were uncovered before or who have preexisting conditions. But for the others, it made little difference, or in some cases even made things worse. Which supports the point I was making that Obamacare increased the redistribution within your healthcare system, but didnt tackle the underlying issues. Excessive costs, dysfunctional market places, worsening availability in rural areas, a general lack of regulation and oversight - Obamacare seems to have only made a small dent on all of those. Otherwise, healthcare would not still be such a high salience issue even among Democratic voters.


It seems like... say we're rating healthcare systems on a scale from -100 (Somalia) to +100 (Norway). Then it feels to me as if your healthcare before Obamacare was maybe a +10, and with Obamacare, it is a +20 now... while the rest of the first world sits at +60 or higher...

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Nov 14 2019 01:54am

Just because Obamacare was a huge success doesn't mean it solved every issue with the system. Obamacare was NOT a fundamental restructuring of healthcare in the United States, it was a band-aid over the most pressing problems experienced by consumers. It effectively fixed a dozen major healthcare problems in the United States, but since we have 3 or 4 dozen major problems...... yeah.

I'd say the numbering analogy is pretty accurate. Obamacare made a big difference, but it wasn't nearly enough. If you have a ton of money healthcare in the U.S. is a solid 110, but anything less than hundreds of millions of dollars it drops sharply to a 40 or lower even with good coverage, and below 0 if you don't have medicare, medicaid, or private insurance. Prior to Obamacare that drop from 40 to <0 could happen just by your insurance company saying "fuck you that's why".

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Nov 14 2019 01:58am

Ok. Note that my main argument was that Obamacare didnt fix the underlying issues of your healthcare system... which seems a correct assessment?
So we only disagree slightly in how to rate the difference it did make on some pressing issues. I'll admit that I might be wrong on that, or arguing based on a too narrow knowledge of the specifics.


I still stand by my other point though: Obamacare fixed or improved many major problems, but left a ton of people without notable improvement of their personal healthcare situation. It seems to have helped some people a ton and done nothing tangible for many many others.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Nov 14 2019 02:05am

I mean, if you are judging Obamacare by if it made changes to the fundamentals of the system, then yes it was a failure, but that was never the point of the legislation. It did fix some underlying problems, left others alone, and increased access, which was it's intent.

You gotta judge a fish by how well it climbs a tree Thor.