I whooped with unrestrained joy when the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare passed in the Congress and was declared OK by the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t the national health care I wanted and most Western countries provide, but it was a step in that direction.<\/p>\n
I had no clue that it would not work because its details were unworkable.<\/p>\n
Not many members of Congress read all 381,517 words of the law they voted for or against. There was complication enough in those.<\/p>\n
But then came the 11,588,500 words of the special regulations. Twenty thousand pages of those.<\/p>\n
That’s right, 20,000. Do you think our two members of Congress and two senators read them all?<\/p>\n
OK, cumbersome and impossible that somebody wouldn’t run afoul of some of those pages of regulation. But, overall, we were on the road to something akin to national health care, right?<\/p>\n
Oh, then came the exemptions. This business and that union didn’t have to comply with this or that regulation right now.<\/p>\n
But the general citizenry would have to. Oh, the signup system didn’t work, so you get a year’s exemption while it’s fixed.<\/p>\n
Oh, wait, sorry, you can’t keep the health insurance plan you had, when President Obama repeatedly said you could. People we all knew had very minimal-coverage plans that could no longer be sold by participating insurers.<\/p>\n
Oh, and you signed up and got a subsidy because of low income. Last year you got a better-paying job. Now you owe Uncle Sam a refund and you don’t have that in the bank and have to borrow money. So maybe an exemption this time? We’re up to 4 million people exempted, 3 percent of the population — half who signed up last year.<\/p>\n
Then there are the Medicare cuts and the quality-instead-of-quantity care directive.<\/p>\n
Individual doctors are dumping Medicare patients. They and hospitals are graded on results with sick patients.<\/p>\n
Great.<\/p>\n
But you and I know many patients aren’t health-minded. They won’t change diets. They ignore critical medicines. The issue is worse in poor and immigrant neighborhoods.<\/p>\n
Why should my doctor get penalized if I’ll do nothing to keep my blood pressure and weight under control?<\/p>\n
If Medicare Advantage is forced to eliminate gym memberships, how does that help me to keep healthy?<\/p>\n
Obamacare became a mess.<\/p>\n
We health care progressives have to start acknowledging that in public.<\/p>\n
We wanted national, single-payer health care.<\/p>\n
Many of us have it. It’s already out there. It’s called Kaiser Permanente. We could have taxed citizens and made that a shining star system.<\/p>\n
Not 20,000 pages. Just a slim document of your benefits. All your medical records on one computer server. Your choice of doctors.<\/p>\n
President Obama had the right idea.<\/p>\n
But unlike Franklin D. Roosevelt with the Social Security Act and Lyndon Johnson with the Civil Rights Act, he wimped out with Congress.<\/p>\n
BanyanTreeHouse@gmail.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I whooped with unrestrained joy when the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare passed in the Congress and was declared OK..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":214,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-thoughts"],"yoast_head":"\n