Affordable Care Act for dummies version (Page 5)

I was just in the gym here at work and on the TV there was a "hearing" with Sebelius in front of some House committee. What a joke!  Are all hearings like that, where the committee members make speeches and grind axes instead of really trying to get answers to questions?

When in reality they are only impotant. 

lol, so true

I'm probably the last to defend the administration, but I would suspect the insurance companies factor this in to some extent.  Yes, we have to provide maternity coverage for men, but the payout will be $0 so therefore it doesn't effect the rates.

I could be wrong of course, and it does look really silly for sure.  

New spin about why everyone's policies are getting canceled.  Contrary to what my employees and I thought we must have had a "cut-rate plan that didn't offer real financial protection in the event of a serious illness or an accident."  It all makes sense now.  Thanks Obama.  

Obama blames ‘bad apple insurers’ for canceled insurance plans

I just want to say that you guys are awesome.  If I ever move to NE or wherever Jackemy is from, I know where I'm going to knock on the door when I'm looking for a job.

Are you using this as an example of why congressional hearing are a joke or to highlight the fact that Rep. Ellmers is a grandstanding beeawch? 

(no disrespect to anyone related to, or otherwise associated with,  the Honorable Rep. Ellmers)

can I just x2 this

Boom, in your face Rep. Ellmers!

(labor-of-love.jpg)

Or x3??

I saw this exchange and it is one of the reasons I posed my question. This one, and the guy who kept asking her why she didn't sign up for "Obamacare", and she kept saying "I'm not eligible", but he kept on her about why she didn't sign up. 

Was it Ellmers who was saying something about the government and how "they" do this and "they" did that? My head almost exploded... HEY, LADY, you ARE the government!!

For entertainment value.  

'SNL' Obamacare website parody not far from truth (Video)

Bolding is mine, but x2 to everything said here.

Why because she actually threw in questions that weren't softballs, and pointed out how ridiculous most of this Law(Tax) is?

Nancy Pelosi said we had to pass it to find out what was in it.....now that we are finding out, it's a big heaping pile of bovine excrement.

Um, no, she didn't say anything about the Dems. She said "Government" and "They". In that regard she literally is they.

I do have to say I chuckle every time I read an Obama supporter trying to convince people that Obamacare was a republican idea.  It almost makes one think the Democrats are trying to distance themselves from the Presidents largest accomplishment.  ;-)  Wonder why that is?

btw, here's Heritage's response to what they recommended back in the 90's and I'd say it's a stretch to say it's Obamacare.  http://blog.heritage.org/2012/02/06/dont-blame-heritage-for-obamacare-mandate/

I personally believe a "mandate" to purchase insurance is a part of the solution, but it needs to be a mandate with affordable catastrophic insurance options.  If everyone is mandated to purchase plans that are too expensive then the mandate is nothing more than an additional tax on everyone.

I think Mr. Butler is trying to rewrite history just a bit.  First off, he says he was proposing a viable alternative to President Clinton's universal health care plan. All well and good, except that he wrote his original views in 1989, just a short time after Bush Sr. was sworn in to office. You can read his entire original piece here  Heritage proposal

He also says that his proposal was for insurance to cover catastrophic costs, in the same way automobile insurance does.  While he does use the analogy of automobile owners being required to carry liability insurance, he never says that mandate was only for catastrophic costs.  The bullet point header is "Mandate all households to obtain adequate insurance".  Maybe he intended to say that the mandate was for catastrophic coverage and not comprehensive insurance, but in nine pages of written text, somehow that failed to make it in.

Finally, he calls out several liberals for perpetuating the "myth" and states that Heritage did not invent the individual mandate, yet doesn't say where the idea came from.  Which I find odd given that this article came out several months after the GOP debate in which Romney accused Newt of creating the individual mandate and Newt replying no way buddy, it was the Heritage Foundation that thought it up. (GOP debate, skip to about 2:10)  So when the Dems are crediting the Heritage Foundation for the individual mandate, and the GOP is blaming the Heritage Foundation for the individual mandate, and the Heritage Foundation can't provide an alternative source for inventing the individual mandate, then I'm going to assume it was the brain child of the Heritage Foundation.

On a related note, once Clinton did become president and started pushing for Hillarycare, Republicans introduced a piece of legislation in that was loosely based on the Heritage Foundation's proposals and surprisingly similar to Obamacare.  The text of the "Health Equity and Access Reform Today Act of 1993" can be read here, along with a listing of its 20 Republican co-sponsors.  Kit Bond, Orrin Hatch, Arlen Spector, Bob Dole, Ted Stevens, yada yada.  You can skip the official text and read a pretty good summary of its provisions here.  Employer mandates (with excise taxes imposed on companies that fail to comply), individual mandates, formation of purchasing groups for individuals and small businesses, can't be rejected for pre-existing conditions, vouchers for low income families that do not qualify for Medicaid.  Sounds a whole lot like Obamacare to me.

If Obamacare wasn't originally a Republican idea, then the Republicans spent a whole lot of time in the 90's fighting for a Democratic idea.

I actually agree with the idea of mandating a catastrophic insurance policy, so I'm not sure what the big controversy is there.  However, I'm still trying to understand why the supporters of the ACA are trying so hard to say Obamacare is actually just the Democrats implementing a Republican idea.  It's almost like things aren't going too well so they're desperately trying to find somebody else to blame.

Also, the individual mandate isn't the problem with the ACA, it's all of the mandatory coverages in addition to the mandate that are the problem.  If the ACA were simply an individual mandate that required everyone to get coverage (of some kind) and then provided subsidies for lower income individuals it would be considerably better than what it is from a financial standpoint.  Unfortunately, the administration went a lot further than just requiring a mandate.  They required a mandate in addition to massive new minimum coverages (right or wrong) which are driving the cost of the insurance policies up significantly.

Either way, good luck getting it to stick that the ACA was the Republicans fault when not a single one of them voted for it and they "shut down the government" trying to stop it.

then you are misinformed.  you need to do some googling. 

funny thing about the internet these days is, that no matter what you believe, if you go searching for it, you'll find an article or an opinion that confirms your hypothesis.  the article you linked was pretty weak; claiming that it heritage's 1989 paper wasn't the same as the ACA.  Well, it wasn't exactly the same, but it operated off exactly the same principles (that the GOP is running away from today), and promoted the idea that all americans should be guaranteed access to affordable healthcare and that we should mandate households to purchase insurance.  

funny thing is, you don't need to go back to 1989. the mandate based healthcare system was the cornerstone of GOP policy not only through the 1990's, but as late as 2009 and into 2010.  There are plenty of videos and quotes from nearly all the GOP spokespeople and leadership during that period.

So chuckle all you want. And, be against a mandate based healthcare model all you want.  But to deny that it was the prior GOP plan is being willfully ignorant.