gergroy said:
richardhutnik said:
gergroy said:
I am aware that he had only about 5 months in the senate, yes. two years in the house though. During those 5 months, what did Obama do? Affordable care act, one of the worst bills that could have possibly been signed in the middle of a recession. Followed up the next year with Dodd-Frank (which while good intentioned, was poorly written and ended up hurting way more than helping).
Like I said, I really did not like the way Obama handled the time when he had the supermajority.
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Well, Obamacare isn't what he campaigned on or initially proposed. The idea was to offer a government insurance plan, or a series of non-profit organization insurance plans (under government charter) to compete in the market against the private sector and offer people affordable alternatives. Shot down by the GOP, and the insurance industry as takeover of the healthcare industry, Obama switched to Romneycare, which was proposed by the Heritage Foundation as an alternative to Hillarycare. So, it is not optimal, but it is what it is, and about the only reform to healthcare that could actually get passed. And the big beef over it is mainly the mandate. About everything else, is liked by the GOP side.
And issues with healthcare needed to get addressed. Healthcare costs have risen more than inflation, and millions have gone without any healthcare coverage. If not when Obama did it, do you think anything would be done now? No, nothing wouldn't of been done, particularly now. And a president can multitask on a lot of things.
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Honestly, what they should have focused on with healthcare, if they absolutely had to adress it during an economic recession, would be focus on driving down costs instead of making sure everybody had to be on insurance. Obviously not the ideal democratic position, but one that made the most sense at the time. They could of done something like tort reform, opening up healthcare services across state lines, stuff like that. Common sense stuff that wouldn't cost the government or the taxpayers anymore money. They could still do it.
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Care to show how much tort reform would help contain healthcare costs, since you named that as one of the major initiatives? It certainly didn't help contain healthcare costs in Texas:
http://www.statesman.com/news/news/local/new-study-tort-reform-has-not-reduced-health-care-/nRpcp/
Your saying allowing buying of healthcare services across statelines ends up making it fully a federal matter, and no longer something in the realm of states. It ends up becoming managed at a federal level. If that is your wish, then feel free to call for it. Obamacare does have it on the state level, and a market under state regulated exchanges, to provide people healthcare, and suppliment purchase where they fall short financially:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_exchange
