What would ObamaCare be like?

Anna V. Nelson
Aug 25, 2017 · 2 min read

I’ve been spending far too much time on conservative subreddits. These folks’ political ideologies lie pretty much on the opposite end of the spectrum from my own. Sometimes, I’ve felt like I’ve been speaking with aliens or sentient jellyfish — it’s like our realities don’t always jive.

But here’s the fact: conservative voters aren’t monsters. They don’t hate civilization and they are not trying to forever stop all progress. They don’t value stagnation or a return to the Middle Ages.

Instead, most of them place a lot of value in “slow and steady”, in small incremental changes. In comparison, more progressive voters prefer more sweeping adjustments that, in theory, make the world a better place. The cynic in me sees an irony in that conservatives are also largely religious and some of them don’t believe in the slow, steady changes of natural selection, but I digress.

I think that, if conservatives took on the goal of insuring more individuals, they could do it. It would just take a while and happen in bits and pieces and be far less sweeping.

  • There’s be some tiny bill to slowly raise the max yearly income needed to qualify for Medicare (and it would change over a decade or more and be offset by budget cuts somewhere else).
  • Somewhere, a totally different rider would raise the maximum age for children to remain on their insurance. No way we’d hit 26, but it might creep up there.
  • Some centrist politician would fight for pre-existing conditions and it would pass by the skin of its teeth and with a lot of gnashing.
  • Republicans (who are conservatives with their own set of values that don’t all line up) would surlye give massive tax cuts to insurance companies and drug manufacturers.

Change would arrive but it would come slowly. ConservaCare policies could never encompass as many people, I thin, because conservatives place a greater value on human effort. Work hard, they say, and you will succeed. And sometimes that seems to look a lot like go get your own damn job and insurance policy.

This bears hearing: when it comes to policy, right or wrong is written by the sheer passage of time. The success or failure of ObamaCare will be a story told in history book; it’s not a chess move or a pizza party. And time is on the side of conservatives.

Time heals many, many wounds. The problem, as I see it, is that most of us don’t have time.

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Anna V. Nelson

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When you take apart a Lego house and put the pieces back in the bin, where does the house go?

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