Things I learned from this thread so far....
People who work in the government medical field are happy that the government medical field is totally going to get bigger. (Sort of how the AMA was totally agaisnt this proposal until they got a big kickback in the form of Medicare rates being frozen for a while.)
Things I question.
Whether the affordable care act will force many people into the system. As far as I can tell, the penalties seem to be small, and seem to be waived completely for the middle class and poor that aren't likely to have health insurance anyway.
The thing about the Massachusetts Healthcare plan was that it increased people who had access... but this was done almost exclusively through the medicare expansion.
Whether or not it succeeds at getting people to get their own health insurance will depend largely on how much people are scared by fines that probably don't even effect them.
As such, i wouldn't be shocked if prices end up skyrocketing anyway... as people soon realize they won't be penalized for not having insurance and wait until they have insurance.
This still probably will lead towards universal coverage, but your going to hurt a lot of people and ruin a lot of lives in the name of saving people. If it turns out that way. Espiecally when the deeper statistics are generally unsupportive.
