In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
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On September 30 2013 13:23 xDaunt wrote: Have we already forgotten that Obamacare was passed in the House and Senate without a single republican vote? By definition, that means two things:
1) There were no concessions to republicans. 2) To whatever extent that liberal democrats didn't get what they wanted in Obamacare (ie single payer), that was a purely a consequence of dissension within the democrat party.
Or party politics and voting as a block has become much stronger over the years. In Canada a lot of votes are simply whipped votes. Majority government votes yes, opposition parties all vote no and the bill is passed. Four to five years later (less if it is a minority government) if Canadians think the government has done a poor job, they're turfed. Otherwise they're voted back in to rule. That was not always the case.
At Confederation, John A Macdonald talked about rounding up the fish- you couldn't count on your own party voting for your own bill, plus you needed to garner votes from the other side. For better or for worse that simply is not a fact of political life anymore as voting along party lines has become extremely important. (Now we do need to reform on how the Whip can control the Questions and we have some movement there, but that's another matter altogether.)
I understand the US system is supposed to prevent tyranny, but with stronger party politics it seems to prevent any sort of governing at all.
It does if you actually compromise. Like the previous two administrations. I mean, both sides are polarized, at least within government. The Democrat party almost never breaks rank, and the conservatives (not necessarily the same as the Republicans) don't always make deals either. Mainly it's Democrats and moderate Republicans. I think Reagan was the last guy to really get a significant number of bipartisan votes. "Reagan Democrats" they were called.
That's the thing with party politics. The more it becomes entrenched, the less compromises with opposition work. To some extent anyways. You need to govern competently so that you can defend your actions come election time. But at least the government isn't threatening to shut down every couple of months or so. A little hard for government to do any sort of long term planning. If I understand you correctly, Bush & Clinton had some compromises, but you have to go back to the 80's to get real bi-partisan compromises? Sounds to me the party solidary has grown in strength. No Clinton-Republicans, Bush-Democracts, and Obama-Republicans?
Not on the same scale as the 80's. Though the work with Bill "BJ" (Bill Jefferson!) Clinton had some good things to it, they did have to shut the government down on Clinton a couple times. But even Bush made some deals, he signed many a budget (a big spending budget). For as much as they hated him, Bush wasn't the most conservative politician ever. And no, no such thing as an "Obama Republican," especially after they won the house. And it is really Obama's fault, he's really given up very little. The most bipartisan things were the previous debt ceilings, CRs (where the moderate Republicans voted for it) and gun laws (which several Democrats voted against.) But neither one involved a single Democrat concession.
Edit: and the way the Congress is set up, minority parties do have sway, as intended. It is a Republic after all.
I don't know what you concede in the Affordable Health Care Act until you get nothing. If the issue is no concessions, it seems to me that Obama should have started with single-payer healthcare and then conceded to this alternative government insurance program.
It may be that in a Republic, minority parties are supposed to have some sway. But if party discipline begins to match that of parliamentary democracies, I think you run more and more into a gridlock system.
On September 30 2013 15:23 Falling wrote: I don't know what you concede in the Affordable Health Care Act until you get nothing. If the issue is no concessions, it seems to me that Obama should have started with single-payer healthcare and then conceded to this alternative government insurance program.
It may be that in a Republic, minority parties are supposed to have some sway. But if party discipline begins to match that of parliamentary democracies, I think you run more and more into a gridlock system.
As has been pointed out, the ACA passed with zero Republican support. All effective opposition to single payer came from other Democrats. There just wasn't any way he was going to convince enough Americans that single payer was acceptable.
But Obama doesn't have a history of bipartisanship, anyway. He seemed to view his first election as a mandate from God Himself and didn't lower himself to make any deals since he didn't have to. (Maybe the sequester? But that wasn't even supposed to actually happen.) So now that everyone is riled up, you aren't going to get the Tea Party guys to compromise.
I personally like the idea of a 1 year delay, let the American public see how much of a disaster the bill is. (And fight the inevitable argument from Obama "see, now we need single payer!")
Combine Obama's far left bent (for America) and his unwillingness to make deals, he isn't going to make any friends, he just has to try and bully people.
Edit: To prove the point of his arrogance, Obama continually delays or abandons parts of the ACA when he doesn't like it. He had no authority to delay the employer mandate, but he did it anyway.
What was he supposed to compromise on? Beyond 'don't do ACA at all.' Maybe my memory is foggy, but I don't recall many strong arguments being made for tinkering with ACA or even making larger changes to it. I mostly remember the battleground being fought over the very existence of the bill. It's hard to compromise on a bill if the compromise is supposed to be 'throw the entire thing out.' More like capitulation. But again my memory might be faulty.
On September 30 2013 13:23 xDaunt wrote: Have we already forgotten that Obamacare was passed in the House and Senate without a single republican vote? By definition, that means two things:
1) There were no concessions to republicans. 2) To whatever extent that liberal democrats didn't get what they wanted in Obamacare (ie single payer), that was a purely a consequence of dissension within the democrat party.
What sort of things were republicans looking for? All I see them do is bitch and moan without proposing an alternative. The current system is expensive and ineffective. What is the republican replacement for the ACA?
Frankly, I don't even remember what the republicans wanted other than tort reform.
For my part, I'd provide a public option that has limited funding and only gives minimal coverage to everyone, which can be supplemented by purchasing optional, private plans.
This is literally nationalised healthcare. The degree of care offered will vary depending upon the budget you give it (healthcare is a black hole that will swallow whatever money you put in) but giving everyone coverage for the basics (emergency care, cheap drugs, access to doctors for diagnosis etc) free at the point of demand with the option to forfeit that option and instead get private insurance is basically the model we have in the UK. We give the NHS quite a lot of money because the kind of society we want is one where the vast majority of people, regardless of race or class, get the same healthcare so the public option is very good but what is covered varies based upon how much money they have and what they think is a cost effective way of spending it. We have an institute of doctors, statisticians, clinicians and so forth who try and measure the social benefit of various different things the NHS could provide against the cost to decide how best to spend the money, which new drugs are sufficiently cost effective to provide for free and so forth. Given half the money they'd reduce what they covered but the same principles would still apply.
I wonder how you'd resolve the actual implementation though. Would you have public hospitals providing the things you cover to those with no insurance (perhaps selling the stuff not covered) or would you use a voucher system in a private hospital system with vouchers covering the basics available to anyone who needed them?
On September 30 2013 15:54 Falling wrote: What was he supposed to compromise on? Beyond 'don't do ACA at all.' Maybe my memory is foggy, but I don't recall many strong arguments being made for tinkering with ACA or even making larger changes to it. I mostly remember the battleground being fought over the very existence of the bill. It's hard to compromise on a bill if the compromise is supposed to be 'throw the entire thing out.' More like capitulation. But again my memory might be faulty.
How much good, even discussion were you going to get on TL about it I don't know when some of the objectors in this thread made their TL debut.
The conservative/republican objections to the ACA were (in no particular order): 1. The way it was handled. Lots of backdoor BS. 2. The (correct) assessment that certain, core aspects of the bill were unconstitutional. This point is important because these parts were crucial to the bill as Obama wanted it. He could have opened up state lines for competition or the like, but refused. Instead he added a "tax" and mandatory coverage. 3. The idea that the government was going to screw it up while at the same time driving private insurers out of business. Not a far fetched notion, considering Obama's support of single payer. Also reasonable, since the government has a long history of making messes. 4. The fact that it's a bad law.
Basically, they disagreed about fundamental aspects of the law. It wasn't ABOUT tweaking healthcare, it was about completely revamping the system all at once. Like I said, there were no small bills here and there to make things better, it had to be a massive, powerful bill that was passed too quickly so no one could even debate more than one or two things that were actually in it.
So on Obamacare, I agree. The options for compromise are limited. But the problem is he started VERY far to one extreme and, once he got enough democrats, never gave up any more. The individual mandate, as most people know, is crucial for the very existence and implementation of the law. because of the extreme nature of the law, it's now being fought to defund it, using something the president apparently considers more extreme: The continuing resolution (and debt limit).
On March 23, 2010, the day that President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, fourteen state attorneys general filed suit against the law’s requirement that most Americans purchase health insurance, on the ground that it was unconstitutional. It was hard to find a law professor in the country who took them seriously. “The argument about constitutionality is, if not frivolous, close to it,” Sanford Levinson, a University of Texas law-school professor, told the McClatchy newspapers. Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school at the University of California at Irvine, told the Times, “There is no case law, post 1937, that would support an individual’s right not to buy health care if the government wants to mandate it.” Orin Kerr, a George Washington University professor who had clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy, said, “There is a less than one-per-cent chance that the courts will invalidate the individual mandate.” Today, as the Supreme Court prepares to hand down its decision on the law, Kerr puts the chance that it will overturn the mandate—almost certainly on a party-line vote—at closer to “fifty-fifty.” The Republicans have made the individual mandate the element most likely to undo the President’s health-care law. The irony is that the Democrats adopted it in the first place because they thought that it would help them secure conservative support. It had, after all, been at the heart of Republican health-care reforms for two decades.
Apart from the "it's against 'merica/it's unconstitutional" bit, I wonder why some people believe that it's some kind of terrible thing. All it aims to do is ensure that we don't enter into a "death spiral" situation whereby as premiums go up and up, more and more drop coverage, which causes higher premiums, more drop outs, and so on, until there's nothing left. If not the individual mandate, then what? Can't fuck around forever hoping that everything works out. There's a need to get shit done at some point, and that's the purpose of the individual mandate.
On March 23, 2010, the day that President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, fourteen state attorneys general filed suit against the law’s requirement that most Americans purchase health insurance, on the ground that it was unconstitutional. It was hard to find a law professor in the country who took them seriously. “The argument about constitutionality is, if not frivolous, close to it,” Sanford Levinson, a University of Texas law-school professor, told the McClatchy newspapers. Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school at the University of California at Irvine, told the Times, “There is no case law, post 1937, that would support an individual’s right not to buy health care if the government wants to mandate it.” Orin Kerr, a George Washington University professor who had clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy, said, “There is a less than one-per-cent chance that the courts will invalidate the individual mandate.” Today, as the Supreme Court prepares to hand down its decision on the law, Kerr puts the chance that it will overturn the mandate—almost certainly on a party-line vote—at closer to “fifty-fifty.” The Republicans have made the individual mandate the element most likely to undo the President’s health-care law. The irony is that the Democrats adopted it in the first place because they thought that it would help them secure conservative support. It had, after all, been at the heart of Republican health-care reforms for two decades.
Apart from the "it's against 'merica/it's unconstitutional" bit, I wonder why some people believe that it's some kind of terrible thing. All it aims to do is ensure that we don't enter into a "death spiral" situation whereby as premiums go up and up, more and more drop coverage, which causes higher premiums, more drop outs, and so on, until there's nothing left. If not the individual mandate, then what? Can't fuck around forever hoping that everything works out. There's a need to get shit done at some point, and that's the purpose of the individual mandate.
The article is just about the politics of it, it throws those quotes in the beginning to set up the negative picture it's trying to paint. There WAS a dissent on the bench. It's not like the professors are any less political than the justices. I wonder how many of those geniuses thought it was ok under the commerce clause? Most likely all of them.
The court based a large part of its decision on previous rulings and definition based tricks. An abnormally large amount, I would say. They create the unconstitutional precedent from other rulings and laws decades old and then ran with it. I've already gone over this a bit already, but clearly a tax of this sort has never been imposed before. They created a new power of the federal government.
Anyway, this law, as time will show, is NOT going to help people. And, as seems rational, these things should be judged by result. So i don't really care what it was supposed to do (beyond the fact that it was illegal). I agree, things needed the change, but the IM was not the way to do it. This is a country of law, not a happy land of good intentions. It's foolish to endorse something because "well, at least it's SOMETHING!" That's absurd. And if that was the goal, why did the Democrats pass it in the sleezy manner that they did?
~24 hours until government shut down. In my opinion, Democrats would be stupid to concede anything to the Republicans. It seems certain that Republicans will be blamed for any damage done by the government shut down because it is a Republican tactic designed to circumvent the fact that they do not have the votes to repeal Obamacare. Do others disagree and believe that Democrats and the President will primarily be blamed for the shutdown if it happens?
On September 30 2013 17:02 NovaTheFeared wrote: ~24 hours until government shut down. In my opinion, Democrats would be stupid to concede anything to the Republicans. It seems certain that Republicans will be blamed for any damage done by the government shut down because it is a Republican tactic designed to circumvent the fact that they do not have the votes to repeal Obamacare. Do others disagree and believe that Democrats and the President will primarily be blamed for the shutdown if it happens?
Yes, because no matter the reality, DC pundits have a way of framing it so that it's always either the Democrats' fault, or a "both sides do it" kind of thing.
On September 30 2013 15:23 Falling wrote: I don't know what you concede in the Affordable Health Care Act until you get nothing. If the issue is no concessions, it seems to me that Obama should have started with single-payer healthcare and then conceded to this alternative government insurance program.
It may be that in a Republic, minority parties are supposed to have some sway. But if party discipline begins to match that of parliamentary democracies, I think you run more and more into a gridlock system.
As has been pointed out, the ACA passed with zero Republican support. All effective opposition to single payer came from other Democrats. There just wasn't any way he was going to convince enough Americans that single payer was acceptable.
Senate Democrats spent about 4 months trying to get Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins a bill that they would vote for. The narrative (liberal) media came up with is that they were just stalling the bill for as long as possible and had no intention of supporting ACA.
Also, during this time Palin and Bachmann were running around screaming death panels and pulling the plug on grandma.
Compromise! Compromise! I must repeat the talking head's awful argument because I can't think for myself! Compromise my ass. It's more like the GOP has alienated every minority group and can't win elections and now they want a 'compromise' and by compromise they mean repeal ACA or we will intentionally damage the economy. The scariest part of this whole debacle is how readily the lowest common denominator is willing to lap this shit up. Anyways it's been interesting watching the GOP slowly destroy themselves, voting a black man into the white house has been a brilliant move.
People are complaining that Obama does not compromise enough but have you all forgotten what the very first statement of the Republican Party was after Obama won his first election?
"my number one priority is making sure president Obama’s a one-term president."
Now tell me how that sounds like a position of the Republican party to be willing to compromise. Tell me how that should make Obama feel towards a largely bi-partisan government. Believe whatever your media tells you but the quote is very much a fact and shows that the Republicans at no point in time have ever had any inclination to work together with Obama.
On September 30 2013 21:12 Gorsameth wrote: People are complaining that Obama does not compromise enough but have you all forgotten what the very first statement of the Republican Party was after Obama won his first election?
"my number one priority is making sure president Obama’s a one-term president."
Now tell me how that sounds like a position of the Republican party to be willing to compromise. Tell me how that should make Obama feel towards a largely bi-partisan government. Believe whatever your media tells you but the quote is very much a fact and shows that the Republicans at no point in time have ever had any inclination to work together with Obama.
You beat me to it. I was going to put that video in my post.
On September 30 2013 21:12 Gorsameth wrote: People are complaining that Obama does not compromise enough but have you all forgotten what the very first statement of the Republican Party was after Obama won his first election?
"my number one priority is making sure president Obama’s a one-term president."
Now tell me how that sounds like a position of the Republican party to be willing to compromise. Tell me how that should make Obama feel towards a largely bi-partisan government. Believe whatever your media tells you but the quote is very much a fact and shows that the Republicans at no point in time have ever had any inclination to work together with Obama.
Notice the follow up: "If President Obama does a Clintonian backflip, if he’s willing to meet us halfway on some of the biggest issues, it’s not inappropriate for us to do business with him."
On September 30 2013 15:54 Falling wrote: What was he supposed to compromise on? Beyond 'don't do ACA at all.' Maybe my memory is foggy, but I don't recall many strong arguments being made for tinkering with ACA or even making larger changes to it. I mostly remember the battleground being fought over the very existence of the bill. It's hard to compromise on a bill if the compromise is supposed to be 'throw the entire thing out.' More like capitulation. But again my memory might be faulty.
Just speculating but eliminating the employer mandate would alleviate a lot of the fears that Obamacare will kill jobs. The individual mandate could also be reworked so that it's no longer 'a tax for not doing something'.
I don't know if those changes would make the GOP fine with Obamacare, but those two mandates seem to be the things complained about the most.
if the gop is really looking out for the economic well-being of america, lowering healthcost is a key priority. yes, burdening employers further won't do much good, but there are better ways of reducing cost besides dumping universal healthcare. a well run single payer system can lower cost and help lower the cost of a full time worker without gimping healthcare service.
On September 30 2013 15:54 Falling wrote: What was he supposed to compromise on? Beyond 'don't do ACA at all.' Maybe my memory is foggy, but I don't recall many strong arguments being made for tinkering with ACA or even making larger changes to it. I mostly remember the battleground being fought over the very existence of the bill. It's hard to compromise on a bill if the compromise is supposed to be 'throw the entire thing out.' More like capitulation. But again my memory might be faulty.
Just speculating but eliminating the employer mandate would alleviate a lot of the fears that Obamacare will kill jobs. The individual mandate could also be reworked so that it's no longer 'a tax for not doing something'.
I don't know if those changes would make the GOP fine with Obamacare, but those two mandates seem to be the things complained about the most.
How can you have a universal healthcare without an individual mandate? The fact that everyone has to pay into health care to spread costs is the very foundation of universal healthcare.
The Republicans have zero ideas on healthcare, because any ideas they did have like the individual mandate has become Democrat. Because the democrats actually are trying to govern. Ted Cruz's answer to how a person with pre-existing conditions to get reasonably priced healthcare was essentially "get a better job."
EPT
I don't know when some of the objectors in this thread made their TL debut.
