"Affordable" Care Act led to an across the board 60% increase in premiums...

You want to screw me out of my benefits. Why shouldn't I want to screw you out of yours?

It would be better if a way could be found to actually make health care affordable. Requiring people to get insurance that is $300 a month doesn't help, it hurts.

Maybe you should use some of that white privilege.

Nah, I'll just make myself feel better by taking away your government benefits.

There is a way. It is called universal single payer done through the tax code.

Thinking on this, the goal (and thus the most important metric) should be bending the curve of total healthcare spending while improving health outcomes.

That just hides the cost and creates yet another industrial complex.

Yeah and bread doesn't cost a nickel anymore!!!

But of course you refuse that preferential treatment, because according to your opinion in the thread next door, accepting it is racist.

I have no problems using the weapon of the enemy against them.

No, it actually does make it more affordable because you get economies of scale. That is true at Walmart, US Steel, and any other industry including healthcare.

There is a way. It's called single-payer. It works in every developed nation except the one that's owned by the lobbyists.

A principle behind all affirmative action.

Who's "them" in your case, btw?

But other universal healthcare systems work better.

Of course if you have something rare and/or unusual, like say Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, you're kind of screwed.

Says who?

Says at least two Canadians I know of who had it. I say had because one of them died due to his doctors' inability to recognize what was wrong with him and insisted that the complications he was having recovering from abdominal surgery was all in his head, and his parents were just enabling him. Meanwhile his guts had ruptured, spilling fecal matter into his abdominal cavity. The other one I know of went for years suffering from various medial problems and always ended up getting diagnosed with something different each time she went in for help. She ended up moving to the US because of the job she had, and finally got diagnosed with EDS. She was (and still is) particularly vocal about how much Canada's system sucks because it discourages doctors from running tests for anything that is out of the ordinary in order to keep their costs down. Much the same criticism of HMOs, IIRC.

You're describing medical malpractice (or just lousy doctors). None of which has anything to do with the ACA, which specifically stated that patients with preexisting conditions could not be excluded.

Of course, if the Republicans have their way, they'll erode it back to "Fuck the patient. The shareholders are more important!"

A fact is something that supports his opinion. Anything that doesn't support his opinion is opinion. See how easy it is?

When it's cherry-picked and manipulated in an incredibly dishonest way, as @Ancalagon has already pointed out?

Technically, he's correct: that isn't an opinion, that's a lie.

But the general point still stands. If you are going to make healthcare affordable for people who couldn't afford it before, premiums are very likely going to increase.

Putting a whole bunch of people who had not been able to get proper health care into the system and covering all their problems was absolutely going to raise costs. That was something the Obama haters loved. What scared them was that if Obamacare kept those people in the system eventually costs would level out as the benefits of better health care started to trickle down and gain traction. Of course, the fear that people would LIKE having health insurance was so obvious it was hardly worth mentioning. The perfect illustration was Kentucky, which under a Democratic governor aggressively pursued the Medicaid expansion and set up a vigorous exchange under the name Keycare. The new Republican governor gained much face by vowing to do away with Obamacare, only to run into resistance when they realized that Keycare and Obamacare were the same thing. The voters loved Keycare and hated Obamacare. Go figure.

And misses the point yet again, probably on purpose.

the rest of the debate here aside - all of which I haven't read because so much bias confirmation that can't be really challenged - has anyone mentioned the reality that a lot of why the ACA did not accomplish all it's goals had to do with Congressional Republicans deliberately undermining it in order to more effectively campaign against it come election time?

Somehow the Republicans evolved (devolved?) from saying that "private enterprise can do it better than government" to "private enterprise can do it better than government and we're going to do everything we can to prove it!"

Yes, you do miss the point that misdiagnosis of a rare disease is common and has nothing to do with health insurance coverage...except for the fact that people with rare diseases and no health insurance die before they can even get a diagnosis.

Keep up the good work!

So what were you doing about insurance before ACA?

That’s most doctors. If House was anything to go by, doctors aren’t taught to go chasing zebras. Most of the time, the simplest solution is the correct one.

If X thinks private American insurance would’ve done any differently for example #1, he’s smoking crack.

Agree with the OP. Obamacare was a failure. Partially because of GOP interference, but a failure none the less.

So when do we get Medicare for All?

That was the plan all along.