Personally preferred the first response. It was an excellent point and would be willing to discuss if that point were made again.
I just asked if anyone but me has ever wondered whether or not the federal government actually has the power to force an American citizen to purchase a particular product. An example might be if "TeH G'vment" made everyone buy McDonald's three times per week or face a penalty.
Conceding that something MUST be done for the lower to middle classes, I mentioned one of the many overreaches the current law takes such as the fact that a young male must pay for maternity coverage, despite the fact that he will be unlikely to become pregnant.
Continuing my previous example, I likened this to being forced to buy more McDonald's than one can possibly use just to make this McDonald's overage available for others to use.
The current system is broken, but we need something in place. I believe we need some fix available that is driven by the open marketplace, something with an a la carte menu, to continue with my junk food simile.
I also wanted to remind each of us that what is in place currently took about fifteen years to establish, pass and take root and it will NOT be corrected, fixed and made fair for everyone in The First Hundred Days of a brand new administration.
After reading a few previous pages, I realized that the points had already been made and I felt stupid and removed the redundant text, leaving only the obvious, since it can not be mentioned enough.
the mandate is the worst part of the aca. I'm with you on that.
Way back before I joined here, well before O'care, I was a father with no job, a working wife with a shit job, living off our investments for our retirement. I was not quite ready to retire completely yet.
In order to safeguard my family I was "forced" (forced due to life circumstances, that is) to buy a form of health care insurance on the open market which was not at all active, since those who need it could not afford it and those who could afford it did not need it due to having great employer provided coverage or generous family wealth.
Either way there was no "competitive" open market for healthcare insurance and many restrictions to those who tried to provide such products to those who might NEED some.
I was suddenly "downsized" at work, lost my job (get rid of the old full time guy with the high pay and commissions, all those expensive benefits he has worked for years to earn and hire three or four young part-timers who could not give two shit about their future benefits, just want quick money today, and save half of what we are paying that old guy) and ended up with losing our healthcare plan. We could have continued to pay for it on our own but due to the sixteen hundred dollar per month price tag to continue on my own with no support from a large company I had worked for for fourteen years, loyal and faithful to that company we had to give iy up.
I went to the marketplace and there was only one option available to me, forget day to day care of a family (too expensive - over two thousand per month- way more than almost anyone spends at the doctor's office per month.) and buy healthcare insurance that would only cover ME in case of massive injury or devastating disease and pay for a death benefit as well in case of my demise and we were spending over eight hundred per month. Still way more than we spend getting the kids shots and so forth.
We are fine now. My wife has a great job and I do work some as well, but her company (UPS) provides all allowable coverage for her entire family. Most do not have anything as decent to fall back upon in case of injury or disease.
I have lived through "NEEDING" and having to provide my own healthcare insurance through the "closed marketplace." I was lucky to have many resources at our disposal to get through this time, but most can not do as well as we managed during that lean time for us.
This country needs to have something in this area, but fixing the broken parts of the existing system is going to be better than a repeal and replace plan, IMHO