Good and Bad of the Health Care Reform Obama Rammed Down Our Throats?
Posted March 22nd, 2010 @ 09:05pm by Erik J. Barzeski
So, seriously, what are the good and bad parts of the Obama "Hellth" Care Thingamajig we were just given?
I saw numbers that indicated that 65% of Americans didn't want the bill and 12% more were ambivalent about it. Are those the 77% of Americans that are employed and don't wish to pay for the health care for loser "children" who are 26 and living in their parents' basements? Or pay for health care for people who choose not to work?
đ
Nah, don't read much into that - I'm being provocative on purpose. I have an open mind on this. Tell me. Seriously.
Donate Life
Posted 26 Mar 2010 at 2:36pm #
It's better than what you had before, for these reasons. With all the compromises and all the extents it didn't go to, it's still far from sane, but it also seems like people don't want that.
Posted 26 Mar 2010 at 3:35pm #
I'll just point out that the 65% of Americans who were against the bill before the vote there is probably a fair contingent of progressives who don't think the bill goes far enough (public option or singer payer advocates). The numbers were also much better before the Democrats in Congress made such a big mess out of actually getting the thing passed. I think that people were partly pissed off about how long everything was taking and you're going to see an uptick in support now that the legislation has already passed.
Gallup did a poll on 2/22 asking people's overall reaction to passing the health care bill. 49% thought it was a good thing, 40% bad thing, 11% no opinion. Some other polls have shown that support for the bill, especially among independents, has jumped since it passed.
Posted 28 Mar 2010 at 8:34am #
Claims that Democrats intend to âram health care reform down our throatsâ even though âthe American people donât want it.â are just wrong. First of all, when there is a landslide triumph for a party as there was in November, 2008, for the victor to actually govern and legislate according to the promises that they made on the campaign trail is not ârammingâ anything down anyoneâs âthroat.â It is doing what the people asked you to do. President Obama campaigned on this issue, and presumably that fact did not escape the electorateâs notice before they cast their votes.
Eighty percent of Americans in a recent ABC/Post poll want to prohibit limits on pre-existing conditions, and 72 % want to impose an employer mandate. Some 63 % favor some form of public health care reform. The same proportion, 63%, want President Obama to keep trying to pass a reform. A majority, 56%, want everyone to be covered. The allegation that the âpublic doesnât want it is an artificial creation of millions of dollars in disinformation money spent by the pharmaceutical companies through the US Chamber of Commerce and their bought-and-paid-for congressmen and senators. If a pollster explains to a member of the public what is actually in the bill, a majority Americans say they like most of the provisions.ăDemocrats are not âjammingâ health care reform through Congress. They are attempting to follow through on a campaign promise. They want to finally take a vote this week. Taking a vote is the way things are decided in a democracy.
Posted 29 Mar 2010 at 8:47am #
To claim, as you do, that Democrats had a mandate to pass health care reform is to misunderstand what happened in 2008. I've said this since election day, and it is just as true today than it was on election day: the election was about people loathing Republicans, not loving what Democrats campaigned on.
Democrats in Congress did jam the health care bill through. This is evidenced through the Chicago-style tactics that were used to get it over the finish line - the quid pro quo, the arm-twisting, the back room deals. This is also evidenced by the fact that multiple polls show that the overwhelming majority of Americans did not support the bill. They support some of the individual provisions in the bill, but not this bill itself.
The reason Americans support some of the provisions in the bill is that they recognize that the current system (designed by Ted Kennedy, I should point out) is broken. There are things that need to change, but the bill that was just signed does not address those things.
I understand that you are not going to agree with this, and this tells me that you side with the Democrats. Personally I don't care about that.... it fine, but siding with the majority does not give you permission to rewrite history.