You do realize that it was under democratic leadership that healthcare costs shot up so much. Obamacare increased my monthly payment almost 2X.
Source: I've been in the Medical Field for 20+years.
We used to get 3-4 bankruptcy notices a month for our small single practice office, the bankruptcies were not usually from us, but because if you're in my office you're usually deep in the medical system. Now we get one or two a year because those people still choose not to have medical insurance.
The problem is we have higher than average healthcare costs, but it's not the doctors fault, it's the 15 million employees in the US that are nothing but middlemen, look into the Buffet, Bezos, Dimond project and their stance on Healthcare, it's the future.
If I'd kept the same program that I had under the Obama administration, my costs would have doubled under the current administration (800->$1600mo).
[1] https://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/slower-premium-growth-unde...
"..the average premium for single coverage through employers has gone up 28 percent “under Obama” That’s right again, but much lower than the growth of individual premiums during Bush’s first six years. That increase was 72 percent."
Yes, that's a huge part of the problem right there. If I'm healthy and work hard to be healthy, I have zero interest in paying for someone else's health problems. I have my own family to feed and we're talking about massive amounts of money that I get no direct benefit from.
If your value system is "let the lepers die in the street," our value systems are so far removed from each other that the best thing we can do is respectfully not engage.
But because we're both already here, and you seem to care a lot about money, maybe we should talk about money?
Do you like living in a city, country, state with high GDP? This can improve the price of goods locally as your country has a stronger bargaining position in international trade agreements. This means higher paying jobs are available because bigger companies are willing to play ball to set up shop locally.
The health of the general population is tied directly to GDP. Healthier population, better GDP. If you like $$$, support universal healthcare. It's a good long term investment.
2. "Obamacare" seems to an outsider to have been a hellish compromise - the only thing that could get passed considering the political balance of power at the time. It was far from the legislation that was originally intended - and that even legislation (what was deemed politically possible in advance) is probably far from what would be needed to fix the US healthcare system.
So it's entirely possible you ended up with a terrible outcome instead of the merely inadequate outcome that might have transpired in a different climate.
You are making the big (and very american) mistake to attribute all problems to the party or president you don't like while overlooking the systemic problems that are there long term no matter who is in power.
You opened the can of worms, now eat it.
Healthcare costs were always increasing. That trend slowed under Obama.
https://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/slower-premium-growth-unde...
Democrats wanted a much better of the ACA, but let's not forget that Republicans were walking around talking about how they'd "oppose anything Obama did," without even reading the texts of the bills
http://swampland.time.com/2012/08/23/the-party-of-no-new-det...
So back to my original point - Republicans, why they be like they do?
"premium increases averaged about 60 percent from 2013, the last year before ACA reforms took effect, to 2017"
https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2017/03/22/yes-it...
https://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/slower-premium-growth-unde...
The rest of the developed world shows that anything short of national healthcare system is an expensive mistake.
But their choice of doing so was guided by right-wing ideology. The Democratic Party is a center-right party. You might not be able to single out any one party for this problem, but you can certainly indict those who further this kind of thinking in the face of its demonstrable moral and economic failure.
Yes, removing this reduces costs - by creating a category of people who can't get insurance at anything resembling a price they can afford, and therefore either have to suffer, go bankrupt, die, or all three.
And then, when coverage was revoked, why would any other person insure this new cancer patient?
[1]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03...
> The House voted 219 to 212 to approve the measure, with every Republican voting no.
[2]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12...
> Vice President Biden presided over the 60 to 39 party-line vote, ...
This is in line with my original point - since when did facts become so malleable?
Of "the rest of the developed world", only one country (the UK) has a "national healthcare system", and even that's a bit of a stretch, because England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland all have different systems.
Canada runs healthcare at the provincial level. France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, etc. - all of those countries use private systems that cannot reasonably be called a "national healthcare system", unless you're going to stretch the definition so far as to say that countries like India (and the US) also have national healthcare systems.
England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland makes 4 countries, just FYI.
This handy graphic explains in case of confusion: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Br...
...yes, that's the point. When people talk about "the NHS", as they usually do on HN, they're conflating four different systems (or, more commonly, thinking only of NHS England).
The point, in case you missed it is that nobody outside the UK has what can reasonably be called a "national healthcare system" in this context.