[CaptainHaplo]

Originally Posted by August

I'm not saying the ACA is any better, and i'll grant you that it may even be worse but a simple repeal with no replacement for it is not going to help the situation one little bit.

Originally Posted by August

I didn't grant it was "worse",

Yea, you pretty much did.

Repeal gets rid of the popular things about the ACA along with the unpopular.

Which is what, exactly? The no more pre-existing condition clause? What else?

1) The same private sector that has caused costs to rise by leaps and bounds every year?

So instituting a system where the prices go up faster is the right course of action? No. If your complaining about the rise in costs - how can you justify making costs rise faster - which is what the ACA has done? A repeal won't "fix" rising costs - but is sure won't mean cost increases accelerate faster. What your doing is saying that we were headed for a cliff at 50 miles an hour - now we are headed there at 100 miles and hour and we shouldn't slow back down to 50.... Makes no sense to me.

The same market where it's more profitable to treat the symptoms instead of curing the disease? The ACA is a response to a problem, a real problem, a problem that the American people want addressed. It's flawed for sure but so far I am not convinced that it is any worse than what we had before.

OK - lets look at that. Your saying that the free market benefits from treating the symptom instead of curing the disease. I agree. However - show me one way - other than the so called "death panels" (Independent Payment Advisory board) that will determine what treatment is available - leading to symptom treatment - or death - how exactly does the ACA actually change our health care system into one having an interest in curing the patient?

Sure - death is technically a "cure" - but not one most patients want to undergo. So the ACA does nothing to "fix" the problem you say it should be kept for. I can (and have) listed a number of reasons to repeal it - I have yet to hear a single one that holds water to keep it.

2) Might be a good idea though I can see how it would end up with patients unable to get adequately compensated for bad medical care.

I don't propose making a malpractice suit impossible - just reform the system to where every doctor can spend time helping the patient instead of covering his/her ass.

3) So instead of underfunding them you prefer the poor and elderly go completely without medical care? Maybe we should just set them out on ice floes and be done with it.

Personal responsibility is somehow a bad thing? When you say the poor do you mean the teatsuckers that live in housing paid for by the working man's taxes, watching a big screen tv purchased with taxpayer funded welfare and eating steaks bought with food stamps? Let me turn your question around - why should I have to pay for my medical care when others don't? And why should I have to pay for theirs - when they don't pay for their own or mine? The question you asked is worded to pull heart strings - its emotion based - yet strangely skips the "fairness" question.

4) A good idea that should be implemented whether or not the ACA is repealed.

5) 6) Sounds like you're asking drug companies to spend gobs of money on research and development but then let anyone who can mix chemicals in some foreign sweatshop steal all their profits. What would be the motivation to come up with these wonder drugs in the first place? What is the likely market response to taking the profit out of something but none of the liability or risk?

It doesn't remove profit. Still - kind of ironic that you ask this after complaining about how the profit motive is to treat the symptom and not cure the disease. A company that develops a "wonder drug" for whatever ill makes its money back a lot sooner than 7 years. Simply shorten it to 3 or 4 years. How long is too long?

7) Problem here is you don't differentiate between can't and won't. While I might sympathize (to a point) with your feelings about the latter, I think a nation that would not do it's duty to care for the former should be ashamed of itself.

Again - why "can't" they - or why "won't" they? Yes - can I see us providing health care for a quadriplegic? Sure. They truly can't. Can I see us doing it for a person suffering from dementia? Yes.

Can I see us doing it for a 75 yr old who chose not to plan ahead? Yes - but only because that man or woman was promised it decades ago.

But the guy who is 60 and has been looking at a system that has been falling apart and expects to still ride the gravy train because he gives nay damn and screw everyone else as long as he gets his? Nope.

Personal responsibility.

I am 40. I have been promised social security and medicare when I am older too. I sure as heck am not banking on that - because the ills have been foreseeable and I have not put all my eggs in a basket I could see was falling apart. And yes - I have little sympathy for those who chose to abrogate their own personal responsibility to the government and the future generations just so they could "get theirs".