AOL CEO: 'Obamacare Is an Additional $7.1 Million Expense For Us'

Political favors done for votes are bribes. If Exxon had prommised a million dollars to fund education in Louisiana for a vote it would be illegal. What the Democratic establishment did, while legal is unethical.

Again, those were concessions made to placate moderate Democrats. Not one Republican amendment was included in the legislation. It is a fact. Look it up.

 

The main problem is that this bill went the wrong direction with respect to personal health accountability. People go to ER, Urgent Care, Doctor's office way too much. This is condoned by doctor's and lawmaker's alike. So instead of higher fees to go to the doctor, we mandate co-pays. Not only with private insurance but the problem is worse with entitlements. Medicaid insured patients should have to pay something to go to the doctor. Even if it's one dollar. Something. My wife is in healthcare and she's seen it firsthand. Supa rails on this all the time and he's right. The rest of this crap is just noise. If we don't take responsibility for our own healthcare, it doesn't matter what laws are passed.

 

Think about that a while. I think you are wrong. When Hitler declared war on US of A, he pretty much lost that before he even started. Pearl Harbor, too. Lots of them.

 

Healthcare amounts to around 18% of the economy so, yes, a large portion of the economy. It is your opinion that the broken parts of our health care system have not been fixed by the ACA because you have absolutely no evidence otherwise except for journalistic opinion pieces. That is why it will require allowing the law to operate as it is written. If there are portions of the law that need revising, then so be it. But anything you offer as evidence of the law's impending doom or, for that matter, anything I offer to say the law is the second coming of Jesus Christ are pure conjecture and neither of us can prove our points until we have time to see what the law looks like in practice.

 

I call a spade a spade hoss.

 

False! The Oregon report on Medicare and ER room visits was data driven. The fact that big hospitals, big pharma and big insurance signed on as a result of a deal that was published at the time. The total failure of the website is data driven. The data for the enrollment deficit is data driven. The acts by the president to defer enforcement and implementation is fact.

The opinion that it will be a failure is derived from facts like the above and more.

Another point that is the fact is that the expensive but popular parts of the bill such as no cap on life time benefits, no pre existing condition limits are being implemented without being paid for. Again this is well documented in other than opinion pieces. The lates being yesterday.

It is my opinion that to perpetuate these benefits without paying for them sets up a trap where changes cannot be made. Waiting to see what happens only freezes them as a "right" without the attendant responsibility of paying for them.

You constantly imply that we want to go back to status quo ante. That is false we recognize changes were needed but my solution is not a state managed quasi capitalism but first true and open competition between all phases of the health industry. I would rather put that in place then see what happens that what we have today as it would be easier to modify that today's mess.

Finally your insistence that we wait till it is fully in place ignores the fact that when you see something is going off the road you don't wait to see what happens when you hit a tree but you start correcting it as quickly as you can. That is what I am advocating.

 

Winston, you just listed one example of an 18 month long study, conducted in one state with, admittedly, a limited sampling that took place during the infancy of the ACA and you want to extrapolate that to mean the entire ACA is "trash"? Seriously? Because beyond that all that you really listed was that the website roll out was a disaster, which no one in their right mind has disputed, and that the result of the delayed web site, meaning decreased enrollments, is reason enough to assume that this law is doomed. This is about the most foolish conclusion you could possibly draw from the information you just listed, which I have to assume is the hoolabaloo you and Pride have been preaching to us about for the past three days. Furthermore, the temporary revisions to the law have been, by the administrations admission, to reduce the shock of the law on the economy until there is greater clarity. You call it some kind of dictatorial control measure and I call it good common sense policy.

Regarding your final paragraph, your position assumes that the car is going off the road at all, which it isn't, and you cannot produce evidence to prove otherwise because there simply isn't enough data to support making changes yet. Should we keep an eye on this ER thing for Medicare patients? Sure, it's exactly what I've been talking about all along. That said, taking a small sampling conducted in the infancy of the law is akin to testing a toddler to tell you what career path they will take....it's just too early to tell.