this post was submitted on 17 May 2024
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While Democrat incompetence is incredible, a lot of it is, as people in this comment section are showing, active attempts to denigrate any success the Democrats have.
Because a lot of what the claim as success is a half measure at best and actually makes things worse in a lot of instances. For example, thanks to the ACA we now have more people giving health insurance companies more money than ever before, money they use to lobby and lock in their political advantages, but meanwhile lots of insured people are still being crushed by healthcare costs because the insurance they get is crap.
But, just to prove I'm not just a Democratic party/Biden hater -
e; actually, nevermind
I know you’re not a trumper or a troll, your history is solid left and I get it, we probably agree on just about everything. But if the first thing you’re on about with the ACA is money to the insurance companies, in the context of this thread, I’d suggest you’re missing what an enormous win it was.
I know more than two people - real life people, now - who had chronic conditions that they were just miserably living with. The ACA actually got them to a doctor and a dentist for the first time in a long, long time. And it made them better. They became happier people. They did more good in the world.
Is the ACA a republican band-aid to a horribly crooked system? Of course. Single-payer must happen. But the people I know will likely die before it does. We’re in more danger of becoming a fascist dictatorship than we are of getting single-payer.
But the only reason these people got anything at all was because the Democrats made something happen. And it was huge. For them, for me, and thousands of others. So while I’m all onboard for keeping pushing, we’re on the clock here with regards to averting disaster and that has to come first.
If we survive November, we’ll meet back up and hassle the newly-electeds together.
Thank you for the sincere and thought out reply, that was honestly really refreshing.
I'm really, truly, glad for your people and that they're doing better and doing more good in the world, and very much believe that's exactly what healthcare can and should do for people and society. However, I know one person who spent years dealing with medical debt because their insurance basically did a bait and switch (hospital was in network but the doctor wasn't), probably a dozen who spent years at jobs they hated because they needed the insurance, and one person who worked in healthcare and basically had to switch jobs and move to a different specialty because having to fight insurance companies for her patients and losing those fights was destroying her mental health.
Also - and this feels kinda petty and I'm sorry if it comes off as disrespecting your story but I've just gotta say - I'm pretty certain dental coverage isn't mandated for employers under the ACA, or for adults on state Medicaid plans. So, though the ACA certainly may have helped or played a role in the people you know getting dental care (like, some states do provide dental, and there's probably matching money or a grant or some other mechanism somewhere in the ACA to support that), it didn't do it alone, and there's all too many people who don't get that treatment because they have a lousy employer plan and/or live in a red state.
And my problem with the ACA is that it really serves to lock a lot of these problems in and just completely neutralize any political will to change them. Beyond shoveling money at health insurance companies, it's made them a central player in healthcare policy, both through their lobbying work and through the kinds of influence they're more able to exercise over healthcare providers (e.g. what health insurance will and won't cover determines what departments get what kind of staffing, let alone the impact it has on what individual providers can and can't do). The deeper these things set in to our various bureaucratic and political systems the harder it becomes to even imagine another way to do things because the administrative and intellectual resources to do all the nifty gritty detail work of healthcare are owned outright or deeply intertwined with this inefficient and unjust market system.
Also, there's a deeper historical conversation to be had about how the politics of 2008-10 played out, and how bank bailouts and the ACA both gave Tea Party assholes material to work with, but frankly I don't have the mental energy to disentangle that from the fact that straight up racism and lies did a lot to propel them. Like, to discuss that 2 year period properly really would take a whole book, but the harm that was done to this country by the 2010 election and the census and gerrymanderings that came after it is really hard to overstate, and I really think that the mishandling of policy and messaging around the foreclosure crisis and healthcare reform by Democratic lawmakers really set the stage for that disaster.
That all being said,
Hear hear, that's something I'll look forward to while holding my nose and filling out my ballot. Good luck to you and your people, whatever may come.
Okay, the ACA has a lot of problems, but I want to make sure this isn't a motte-and-bailey I'm dealing with here - your position is then, that the ACA is worse than the situation was before?