I am proud today to say I voted for this president.

[zipplewrath]

59. Horse Hockey II

You keep moving goal posts:

For 100 years progressives have wanted to establish legislation establish federal jurisdiction in controlling the health insurance industry and the health system. For 100 years we have failed.

The goal was universal health CARE. We have still "failed". All we did was federalize the health insurance industry. This act no more made the "public option" a possibility than did Medicare. Without the ACA, we could still have arranged for a "public option" by allowing people and companies to "buy in" to the Medicare system. Of course, we STILL wouldn't have universal CARE.

Your cynacism is hard earned and you wear it proudly so I don't expect things like establishing the principle of federal involvement in health care, the reduction of the MLR, the comparing of the context of countries like ours (Canada) or a restatement of the non Parliment radical division of political power to have any impact on your practiced bashing of President Obama. However I will leave you with this: Continuing to diminish the historic achievements of this President is exactly what the reactionary right wing wants you to do.

Actually, overstating the accomplishment is exactly what the reactionary right wing wants YOU to do. It makes the ACA seem all that more of a "government takeover" than it really was. I realize you have a deep need to declare it an "historic" achievment, but Biden's declaration not withstanding, it was merely a federalization of the health insurance industry. It was the stated goal of the legislation NOT to change most of our insurance very much, if at all. It increased coverage for somewhere between 7 and 12% of the poplation, and did little to nothing to ensure that the newly covered could actually afford the underlying care. Costs of health CARE are still projected to increase annually (by the White House) to increase at around 7% per year for the foreseeable future. This will be unsustainable and THAT, more than anything in this piece of legislation, will bring around something vastly closer to single payer/universal care than anything in the ACA.

I've said long before the ACA that single payer is coming, and the GOP will most likely bring it to us. The multinationals will tire of paying for health care as a direct cost, when so many other economic competitors handle it as a shared cost. And when the GOP brings it to us, wait until you see what THEY mandate. They brought us Medicare Part D, and it came with a donut hole, and a restriction on federal negotiation that Obama kept.