J. Clarence
Jul 20, 2017 · 3 min read

It’s an attack line in so far that stressing that it was deemed unconstitutional is meant to provoke a feeling that the Obama administration had some of flagrant disregard for the Constitution, when in fact, on this issue, it’s merely a very arcane technical constitutional question, one which simply could have been entirely avoided if they just wrote the law better. The judge is doing their job, but let us not pretend that what they did was stand up for some oppressed people against a tyrannical regime. A reasonable reading of the law you can see that it is appropriating funds from the Treasury when Congress authorized the Treasury to do so. The whole episode is like when the Senate takes up budget bills first or starts their own, even though the Constitution says it must originate in the House. Oh, it’s unconstitutional, technically as unconstitutional as the government violating your First Amendment rights, but, eh, the House puts a blue slip on it and we move on.

And, no, it wouldn’t be a winning argument, because the voters gave Republicans the power to fix, of which they have been unable to do so. Republicans cannot on one hand spend more than half a decade saying that voters should give them majorities in Congress and the White House, because they will fix it, and then say they will not fix it, instead Democrats should. I am sure if you were to give Schumer and Pelosi their respective gavels, they would indeed do something; however, the lost the functional ability to do in 2010.

An corporations receive funding only because the money they get from the government is directed to expand access and coverage to more Americans. It is not a bailout to sure up their balances, but rather a simple recognition that healthcare is expensive and many sick people do not have the individual means to pay for it through their premiums alone.

Assessing the quality of the nation’s healthcare purely based on the surveys of those who could have afforded healthcare is a pretty shortsighted way of measuring quality, don’t you think? What of the people that were not able to get coverage at all? What of the people who were dropped from their coverage the moment their insurer decided they had a pre-existing condition. If you marginalize and disregard a large swath of the population and then just focus on the much narrower group, you are going to get some skewed results. Surely, if you are a country and you are trying to measure the genuine quality of care you are going to look at not just consumer surveys, but also the number of people insured, the outcomes of the care they receives, for example trips to the emergency room as opposed to scheduled visits, the amount of people getting preventative care, and so forth.

In terms of other pieces of legislation that were tweaked by the opposing side to be saved, Social Security in the 80s by Reagan, and welfare reform in the 90s by the Republicans. Anyway, it’s a silly argument. At issue is who is steering the ship.

If the United States healthcare system was far superior you would see it being copied elsewhere. It’s like if everyone was jumping off the bridge, there’s probably actually a very good reason to do so. Yes, there are some disadvantages to the more socialized system, for example with as you mentioned with advanced treatment options; however, the vast majority of people do not use said options, and when compared to how healthcare is actually utilized in general by the population other systems fare much better than our own.

So, yes, if I needed complicated advanced surgery, I would much rather than in the US than somewhere else, but chances are (1) I probably wouldn’t be able to afford it and (2) with good health decisions and access to much cheaper preventative medicine I will much less likely ever acquire said expensive treatment in the first place.

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    J. Clarence

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    Amateur Wonk. Free-Market Progressive. DC resident. Policy and politics lover. Doughnut aficionado.