Tax time and the ACA (Obamacare)

[Tonik]

Republicans should get zero credit for any kind of leadership or vision on the healthcare issue.  In the run-up to ACA, they had no coheasive and principled ideas, and their messaging was beyond poor and disjointed.  The stuff you're linking to Tonik amounts to a bunch of one-off patches that pander to various constituencies. 

 

I would have loved to see Republicans advancing a healthcare platform that included just a few simple concepts:

 

- Catastrophic coverage provided persons below a certain (very low) income threshold.

- Removal of the distortionary tax-advantage of employer-provided insurance, or at least give parity to private individual plans.

- Remove the barriers that are currently preventing the creation of a market for private, cradle-to-grave, catistrophic insurance coverage for individuals. 

 

These 3 simple things would have done more to both control costs (by making them more transparent to the consumer) and increase coverage (by covering the poors and eliminating situations where people fall through the cracks between employment) than the ACA, which is a ridiculous super-structure imposed on an already broken system.  The above-stuff seems completely in line with the free-market ideas Repubs give lip-service to, but Repubs simply couldnt make a coherent arguement when it mattered.

 

I never said they should get any credit. I simply disputed the claim that they didn't contribute. The 26 year olds staying on their parents policy is huge, it has been touted all over the place has being great and saving a great many young people butts.  And until I brought it up I doubt a single person in this thread knew it was a Republican amendment to the ACA. I certainly didn't know it until I started digging into the issue. I find it very interesting that one of the things about the ACA that has gotten a ton of great press is never attributed to the R's by the press. I give his O'ness credit for setting the record straight on his website.

 

No, the ACA, fail or succeed, is completely owned by the Dem's. There is no doubt about that.

 

As for your list of items that should have been addressed, can you explain why you are on the Repubs about not adding that stuff in? Because one thing I do remember for sure is that the Dems controled the House and the Senate when the ACA passed. As a matter of fact they passed it without a single Republican vote. Shouldn't you be on the Dem's for not adding that stuff in?

Edited March 24, 2014 by Tonik