President Obama has done more to help the poor and middle class than any President since LBJ

[Rilgin]

162. You must be a King Crimson fan (Confusion will be your epitaph).

I did not assert an opinion as fact, only you did. An assertion that a bill is "real reform" is an opinion not a fact. That was your assertion not mine. I do not confuse my opinion about this bill with fact. Your opinion is that this bill will help people in the future. That is an opinion, a prediction, a projection or a belief. It is not a fact.

A "fact" is that Obama signed the ACA. notice the difference?

It is also not a "fact" although subject to lot of confusion in people like you that insurance equals health care. In my 20s I contacted a disease that was very hard to diagnosis. I had insurance. However, I could not get the care through insurance procedures despite following procedures. Ultimately, I was admitted to a teaching hospital and my problem was diagnosed by a biopsy that was not paid for by insurance (rejected by my insurance carrier). In my case and many others life saving care did not equal insurance. Insurance was irrelevant to care.

See the difference between insurance and health care yet? I do not want to assert there is no connection. There is a relation between the health care and insurance in our system. Insurancein most cases is the payment mechanism for getting health care in our economic system. However, paying for insurance leaves less money for things like good food or moving to better environmental climates that might provide other factors for better health outcomes than going to the doctor or that cause more problems than the insurance payments fix.

Now all your charts are good and I assume "factual" and purport to show that if the ACA is implemented according to the written bill, some people will have lower cost insurance and more people will be eligible for medicaid in some states. These are actually facts. Congratulations. However, if you look at my post, you will see I acknowledge that the law does benefit some people because facts is facts.

However, the ACA also has aspect negative effects on some people (more costly insurance) and many negative system problems such as institutionalizing insurance companies. And as noted by most critics, only assertions that systematic health care costs will increase less if the ACA was passed. Please note that it is a fact that some people will pay more but my use of the word "negative" is a conclusion and opinion. See the difference.

Further, for people in the middle the subsidies for exchange insurance policies cut out at a fairly low income level if you are in a high cost area such as any major city in the US, the mandate may end up a real hardship to middle class individuals forced to buy individual plans through the exchanges and provide both good and bad benefits. The insurance in the exchanges are allowed to have annual limits and can increase premiums. Buying a minimum policy may satisfy the ACA mandate, be the only policy a middle class person can afford and still give him insurance he still can not afford to use because of deductibles and co-pays.

You are welcome to an "opinion" that on the whole the ACA is good. I tend to think of the ACA as painting over rotten timber. I believe that it is an unsustainable and destructive solution. Again these are both "opinions". You are trying to identify your conclusions and judgements as facts.

Last, the best argument I have seen for the ACA is based on some theory that progress in our society is made by increments. The health care systems problems in this country have lasted for years. It may be and is argued that an incremental bill that reforms some aspects of our insurance business is better than nothing. This assumes that if the ACA failed, nothing would ever be done. I tend to believe that the existing systems problems are so obvious, that it would be impossible for nothing to get done since the system's costs were exploding to an unsustainable level. I am not sure of this but not dogmatically so.

The ACA puts a bandaid on the system. Whether the system is aided by the bandaid and heals itself or the bandaid lets the infection get worse is a matter of opinion not fact.

See the difference?


BTW, at one point in my life, I was a banking lawer. I know a lot on the history of banks regulation and the process by which they were deregulated. I did not even address this area but history has shown that the initial regulation through Glass Steagall and the Bank Holding Company Act had it right leading to decades of stability in our financial system. The fact that we did not return to such regulations as opposed to the travesty that is Dodd-Frank directly mirrors our discussion of health care policy. There are things that work and things that the congress and administration passed.