The strategic brilliance of the Affordable Care Act

[arcane_chaos]

nuckles87 said:

spurgeonryan said:

 

So...if you got sick from smoking too much or you are sick from being obese they cannot ..not insure you? If that is the case, then that is a huge problem. There should be no way this can be enforced. Or am I missunderstanding?

Yes. And they also cannot not insure you if you have a genetic disease, cancer, or some other disease that you were born with or inherited through no fault of your own.

There is no "perfect" solution to this, but pre-existing conditions has always been a load of BS, and it has been something that insurance companies had been abusing to the best of the ability for decades in order to drop or refuse to insure "big losers".

So yes, people who damaged their own health through irresponsibility can get health care coverage. But so can people who just became sick through no fault of their own. Frankly, I don't see how anyone can have an issue with that. As far as I'm concerned, it's the fault of the healthcare companies for abusing it in the first place. If they just refused to insure smokers, or people who are obese through their own diet and lifestyle, then it probably wouldn't have been needed in the first place. But unfortunately capitalism doesn't work like that.

In any case, yeah. Obamacare is here to stay. I'd like to think that we'll move beyond that to something better one day, like single payer. But for now it will just have to do, I suppose. I never thought of it as something strategically brilliant, and personally I've always considered what you cite is more of a byproduct of Obama's tenacity to compromise, Kahn. But you make some interesting points: things can only improve from here.

very well said