Jubeebee: Serious Black: Is anybody other than Jack's face really surprised that the Republicans don't give a rat's ass about fixing our health care system?

Part of the problem is that while Obamacare is an evil socialist death panel plot, the individual reforms in the Affordable Care Act are actually quite popular when people are polled about them a la carte.

The Republicans can't repeal Obamacare without getting rid of all of the things people like about the ACA, because reality sucks sometimes.

If you ignore the people who don't think the act went far enough, it is actually quite popular.

AverageJoe77: Diogenes: cman: Considering the attitudes of the SCOTUS members when this came for debate, the GOP does not have to worry about repealing it. SCOTUS is gonna do that for them

Thereby paving the way for the version we wanted in the first place - with a single-payer structure.

Am I crazy in thinking this was Obama's plan all along? He's been pretty good at playing the Republicans in the long game.

I wonder myself. But I hesitate to mention it often because it opens me up to accusations of (my admitted favorite fallacy), post hoc ergo propter hoc.

relcec: they just won't do it because they are the greatest corporate sell outs that ever existed in American politics.

Well, a close second anyways. So vote Republican.

AcneVulgaris: relcec: you just need to jump off your high horse for a moment and admit the democrat reform doesn't fix our healthcare problem at all, and more importantly the Democrats intentionally left it broken so costs can continue to spiral out of control because keeping the healthcare providers happy was more important than not f*cking over the Americana people.

Democrat plan GOOOD! Republican plan BAAAAD!

Smackledorfer: Lunchlady: EighthDay: MisterRonbo: Plans are hard and just risk alienating some of your voters.

In all fairness, Paul Ryan has plans.

It's just that nobody - D, R, or I - like them.

While the plan sucked donkey balls I'll at least give him credit that he put his money where his mouth is. Better than Republicans for years saying they were the fiscally conservative party but when push came to shove doing nothing to show it. At least the Ryan plan dealt with the reality of not raising taxes in any circumstances and what it would take to match government spending with revenue.

Doesn't it still rely on unrealistic growth and unemployment levels to achieve any progress though?

Are you saying 8% growth is not our standard yearly GDP growth? Are you suggesting that such an estimate may be so ludicrous as to be unable to be taken seriously? Are you besmirching the good name of the Ryan Plan for Fiscal Solvency?

// the RPFS that no one voted for - it has a perfect record!

relcec: you appear to assign actual malice to republicans and ignore democrat failings driven by corporatism purely for the sake of political support. it bothers me because I know you are as close to an expert on these things as it gets. I don't jump into threads and say *problem: democrats, the root of all evil* and I guess it bothers me when I see someone I respect doing what I think is the equivalent.

I'm going to go ahead and assign malice to Republicans on this one, in the form of good old fashioned greed. The problem is quite literally that the large donors to the Republican party do not want to pony up to pay for healthcare, which they would have to do under any health plan. Because there is no plan on the f*cking Earth that would not involve having to raise taxes to support it. It's really about taxes and money.

What the Democrats compromised with, because even their base wasn't progressive enough to sanction single payer (most likely due to more money - well of course they are paid off) was a system that fixed many but not all problems with the healthcare system. And there was independent research support on it, saying that it was better than the alternative, which is nothing. And bills can be more easily amended over time.

The Republicans really don't care about fixing health care. They either don't care or they don't have enough actual knowledge or brains on the subject to actually provide solutions. Either option is lazy or incompetant at best, and frankly if that is their stance I don't want them in office. If I could I would also choose to vote out a good number of Democrats on the basis that they don't support single payer, but since I can't I will take what I can get for now.

And this is coming from someone who has VERY good corporate-provided health care.

relcec: Herp derp democrat party hurr durr burr

Calling them the Democrat Party says everything about how the Democratic Party is a bunch of socialists who want to gay marry you and convert you into atheist pagan Muslim Nazi hippies who Hate America, and nothing at all about your command of the English language.