Krystal Ball tells it like it is:
Why can’t the rest of the media explain it as simply and straightforwardly as this?
UPDATE: Apparently the American people agree. In a new poll, 54% think it is a bad thing that the GOP controls the House (compared to 38% who think it is a good thing). And 63% want John Boehner replaced as Speaker of the House (compared to 30% who think he should continue). Polls across the board show that Americans blame the Republicans for the shutdown.
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I was too young and not in US when Heritage foundation proposed the individual mandate. My question is to those who know about it, what were libertarians (Ron Paul etc) stance on it at that time? Whether one wants to agree or disagree on them, they have been critical of both republicans and democrats when it goes against the ideology. They were against wars and spying whether done by Republicans (George Bush) or Democrats.
Ok never mind, found answer myself:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/294585/history-individual-mandate-ramesh-ponnuru
So basically Heritage (or other conservatives today) may be more towards libertarians leaning now, when they originally proposed it. I think the argument that left makes against conservatives of hypocrisy may be partially true. By that I mean, saying why Romney is against it, may be a legitimate target. But saying why conservatives are against it when it is their idea, may be too much generalizing, as 22 years is long time for new people to emerge and new tendencies to develop.
Ehh, National Review isn’t a good source.
There’s 2 unfortunate things about this.
#1 by election time most people will have forgotten about this.
#2 Most of the 30% of the population that supported the shutdown are overwhelmingly in Gerrymandered Republican Districts so these people aren’t going to lose their seats.
Hassan I think an overarching point is that the GOP has become more conservative and their often extreme views and actions are hurting the country. As Bard points out, a pretty small portion of the country can do a lot of damage when they are misled to think that the ACA is a socialist plot when, in fact, it was a conservative idea. You can call 1990s Republicans many things, but “socialist” is not one of them.
Well it was definitely not libertarian idea.
I believe that Hassan has a point — just because of the undeniable fact that the ideas in the ACA were developed and promoted by conservatives doesn’t mean that those ideas were approved or supported by all conservatives.
But his point is missing the larger point, which is that today all conservatives are somehow magically against the ACA. As Krystal puts it, they oppose it in order to score cheap political points against Obama and the Dems, and they don’t care what damage they do to the country or even who dies. The current GOP *is* a national disgrace.
Wasn’t Ron Paul’s stance on health care that communities should have bake sales when someone gets sick?
THATGUY, self organizing communities and religious institutions that care for humanity. Not gamblers like insurance companies.
For years, I’ve told my tax clients that bake sales are the answer. For young people, you get major medical insurance with low premiums and high deductible. On the slim chance these people have a major medical emergency, bake sales fill in the $5000 deductible. We have them all the time in our community. A young woman was just stabbed by another woman at a party. Everyone was so drunk, it took four hours for anyone to realize the stabbed woman was in trouble. Anyone want to take bets on whether this woman had health insurance or are we with health insurance footing her bill? I don’t know the answer.
I don’t know that unofficial safety nets can cover cases where medical bills run into the tens of thousands of dollars. EBDoug’s system works for isolated incidents (meaning you hope multiple people don’t get hurt/sick at the same time, keeping $5000 deductible somewhat manageable), but for the uninsured holding a bake sale or something centered around community effort sounds like a bad plan. Not to mention, not everyone lives in a community that has the cohesion or means to pay for cancer treatment or major operations. I think a well-regulated insurance system is a better bet, and while the ACA isn’t perfect, it’s certainly a step in the right direction. The fact that no (or very few) prominant conservatives want to take credit for the idea solely to avoid connection with President Obama is, I think, quite damning to the GOP.
When the Affordable Care Act kicks in fully and even the people being told they don’t like it find they actually do, Conservatives will be flocking to microphones saying, “Of course I supported that idea from day one, back when it was originally proposed by the Conservative Heritage Foundation. It was our idea, for cripe’s sake. Now, vote for me.”
But that is what major medical insurance is. When I was on it, it had the high deductible, a free physical a year and free mammogram. I paid all else. That’s what young people go for. They now can’t have a cap on it, I believe so lets says young man is up on his roof and falls and is in a coma forever. It would cost $5000 a year medical cost until he was on Medicaid. His family or neighborhood or friends raises the deductible.