Woman gets 47 pound tumor removed thanks to.... Obamacare.

[AggregateDemand]

Prior to Obamacare, she would have been left to die so doctors could continue experimenting on septuagenarians. Today, thanks to the power of Obamacare, doctors are still using Medicare funds to experiment on septuagenarians, AND we are paying higher taxes and borrowing money to pay for this woman.

The Democratic Party has serious intellectual firepower on their side of the aisle. It's a wonder the Republican Party still exists.

[AggregateDemand]

Funny, my taxes didn't go up as a result of Obamacare -- they actually went down thanks to the subsidy. Unless you personally make over $200K a year or like to go tanning, your taxes didn't change either.

You've obviously not looked at the full Obamacare tax list, and you've also forgotten that the individual mandate is a new tax, as argued successfully during the Supreme Court procedings. You're being given a subsidy to trick you into paying a new healthcare tax to private insurance companies in your state.

ACA doesn't fix the cost problem, either. We're spending time and money to push the problem under the bed. We hope the next time we look under the bed, the mess will be gone, picked up by responsible politicians at the state level and conscientious executives and consumers in the private sector.

[AggregateDemand]

I don't mind paying taxes to prevent Americans from needlessly dying.

Please tell me you are kidding. Democrats are supposed to be the only people dumb enough to believe that 16% of GDP isn't enough to get the healthcare bills paid.

[AggregateDemand]

The reason the US doesn't have universal healthcare is because you spend all your money on the military. And most Republicans still think you don't spend enough money on the military.

You haven't ever looked at a US budget, have you? Military spending has been cut by more than 50% since 1970. Furthermore, our per capita public healthcare spending is 3rd or 4th highest in the world depending on PPP or %GDP basis. Only Norway, Netherlands, and Luxembourg spend more money per capita.

This is the US. We do not lack money. We lack competent liberals and educated voters.

[AggregateDemand]

Making it easier for you guys.

Don't be too eager to reinforce the stereotype of the ignorant lib

[AggregateDemand]

Actually its precisely because our healthcare system is largely privatized that we pay so much in terms of percentage of GDP. All major countries that have UHC pay far less in terms of percentage of GDP.

Actually, private care isn't the reason. About 45%-50% of US healthcare spending is public. If anything, private insurance rates are inflated by government inefficiency, namely below-market reimbursement for Medicare and the double dipping of Medicaid by senior citizens, which creates more lower-middle class uninsured. The unpaid portion of the bills generated by the uninsured and the elderly are dumped onto patients with private insurance or taxpayers. Rising private insurance rates create more uninsured. This is the death spiral we are trying to reverse.

The obvious way to beat the death spiral is to spend more on lower-middle class insurance. Medicaid expansion is the Democrat proposal, HSAs and refundable tax credits are the Republican pitch. How do you pay for it? You cut pork. Democrats wanted to cut $500B (10 yrs) from Medicare with oversight panels to curtail expensive surgical procedures and treatments that have extraordinary hospice discharge rates. Republicans are not keen to use rationing for senior care, since seniors rarely have private sector alternatives, so Pubs did their usual populist pandering by proposing a few Medicare half-measures, while trying to cut pork out of social security with the Ryan Plan.

Unsurprisingly, the final ACA bill covered new people without paying for it. Republicans were enraged, and they managed to convince the public that ACA was a bad bill. After 2010, Democrats responded by slamming Republicans for proposing to fix public healthcare without a direct plan for dealing with Medicare/Medicaid.

There are two basic truths to the ACA debate: 1. ACA is a terrible bill that continues the trend of spending too much and accomplishing too little 2. Neoliberals in both parties are limp-wristed ladyboys who can't administrate morally-compromised socialist medicine (Medicaid/Medicare), and some are in such denial that the describe Medicare as a sort of poor-man's NASA for healthcare. Just think of the medical technologies we're developing from the Medicare death experiments O_O Must spend more!!

To celebrate Obamacare is to "embrace the suck"

[AggregateDemand]

Not everyone can afford to be forced to pay for increasingly exotic weapons platforms for the military while they are dying, either, but, somehow, we make do.

If you're opposed to military spending, you have nothing to complain about. Even our post-9/11 spending is barely above the post-WWII nadir. Military spending as a dollar-value is enormous, but as a percentage of GDP, it isn't particularly outrageous, especially when you realize that Mexico and Canada basically expect pro bono protection from the US military. North America is a huge land mass with an abundance of natural resources. At least 4% of GDP is appropriate.

Americans cannot afford to pay 300% more for public care (per beneficiary basis) than other developed nations.

[AggregateDemand]

It's nice to know AggregateDemand thinks people should needlessly die so his taxes can stay low.

If spending were a silver bullet, God would have put heaven up for sale so he could move to a mansion in Georgetown.

It's stunning how little people know about health care spending in the US. The killers are not the people who want to spend money wisely, it's the people who waste. This women would have been enrolled in some type of public/private care prior to ACA, if not for the ludicrous spendthrift of DC bureaucrats.

[AggregateDemand]

Even assuming your 45-50% figure of public US healthcare spending is correct, arguing that our huge share of GDP spent on medical care is due to that "high" % compared to most other industrialized countries that have a far higher % of healthcare costs paid publically is......."intriguing".

Please stop embarrassing other blue avatars by association.

Does anyone on this board look at data? The US Federal Government and several global organizations provide info free of charge. Our public healthcare spending as %GDP or PPP-adjusted-dollars is 3rd or 4th highest in the world, behind Luxembourg, Norway, and Netherlands (depending on the adjustment method).

US bureaucrats use a substantial portion of the $1T public healthcare budget to experiment on senior citizens (Medicare), and then pay for hospice care when the surgery goes awry (Medicaid). Why do you think the original ACA proposal tried to install a government oversight board to cut $500B from Medicare (10 years) by eliminating frivolous surgeries and medical procedures?

At least once a month, a major publication like NYT, WSJ, HuffPo or Washington Post will write an article about how public healthcare works. I suggest you start reading.

[AggregateDemand]

The issue is than all the countries than you praising, with lower healthcare costs, have a public healthcare system?

So, you want public healthcare in America?

Conversion to public care or single payer is not the pertinent question. Do you think the federal government has the competence to administer single-payer or national healthcare? The obvious answer is "no".

The federal government can't administer the current public health insurance system, which only covers about 1/3 of the population. They spend 1/3 of the Medicare budget on ineffective surgical procedures on feeble seniors during the last year of life, and then they spend about 40% of the Medicaid budget to put them in hospice until they finally expire.

You can't understand the degree of incompetence within the public healthcare system unless you've lived through it or you've watched your family members deal with it. HHS can barely set up a healthcare exchange website.

[AggregateDemand]

Which doesn't answer the question: If you claim public spending is the reason the US GDP% of healthcare costs are so high, why are other countries with a far higher public share of healthcare spending able to spend a notably smaller % of their GDP on healthcare.

I'm not advocating single payer or an American NHS; but you're the one who brought this claim up while ignoring the many obvious comparisons that contradict your argument.

Their systems cost less money because they ration care, and they don't insure heavily against an inevitable outcome, like long-term care. They also don't give hospitals incentives to stabilize terminally ill people so they can be exported to hospice facilities.