Why Republicans Refuse to Reconcile Themselves to Obamacare

[fmw]

Single payer would be better. However, Obamacare isn't a Top Secret Step to establishing single payer.

I agree. There is nothing top secret about it. It couldn't be more obvious.

 

[Montecresto]

Back in 2009, when Obamacare first began coagulating in the halls of government, Bill Moyers described Fowler as follows: “She used to work for WellPoint, the largest health insurer in the country. She was Vice President of Public Policy. And now she’s working for the very committee with the most power to give her old company and the entire industry exactly what they want: higher profits, and no competition from alternative non-profit coverage that could lower costs and premiums.”
“Competition is a sin,” quipped John D. Rockefeller, a maxim as relevant to corporate mammoths like Wellpoint – the largest managed health care, for-profit company in the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association – as it was in Rockefeller’s day.

http://www.salon.com/2012/12/13/obamacare_brought_to_you_by_johnson_johnson/

 

[Greenbeard]

The exchanges and the mandates are the heart of the scheme, and they are not popular. The goodies are icing.

The new marketplaces do seem to be a popular idea. KFF found that 80 percent viewed them favorably last spring, and at the beginning of this year a majority wanted their state governments to get cracking on them:

A majority of Americans put the creation of state-based health insurance exchanges at the top of the priority list for health policy in their state this year, according to a survey released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health.

Fifty-five percent of the public, including majorities of Republicans and Democrats, say that establishing the exchanges – a key element of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and one whose implementation has divided states along partisan political lines – is a “top priority” for their governor and legislature. So far 18 states and the District of Columbia have declared that they will create their own state-based exchanges, seven other states have opted to establish exchanges in partnership with the federal government and 25 others – some driven by resistance to the ACA – appear set to default to a federally-run exchange.

“Governors are largely splitting along partisan lines on the exchanges, but the public is not. People like the idea,” said Drew Altman, President and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

So I'm not sure where the idea that people don't want competitive new marketplaces comes from.