US uninsurance rate drops to 13.4%, record low

[angus]

US uninsurance rate drops to 13.4%, record low

The threat of a fine of several hundred dollars has an effect on consumer habits.  Who knew?

[angus]

What? The law mandating people get insurance was put into place and the percentage of people without insurance dropped?! Truly this is an incredible achievement and goes to show how successful the ACA is!

Coming up next, hear the amazing tale of how decreasing the speed limit on the highway causes the average speed to decline!

So you're saying......both laws work?

Yea, I really don't understand the argument...

Strange, and quite frankly, desperate reasoning.

There's really not much to understand.  And it's hardly strange or desperate.  Somebody writes a news article claiming that lack of ownership of a product has decreased since the government threatened a penalty if you don't buy the product, and you're bound to find lots of people who immediately point out that it really isn't newsworth:  Uninsured rates down?  Well, no shit. 

It's rather like reporting that Robert Mugabe was re-elected president of Zimbabwe in 1990.  Well, given that the choice was either to vote for him or be beaten silly with the butt of a gun, there's no wonder that he won.  No reason to act surprised about it.  Same story here.

[angus]

It is newsworthy because a high controversial, much maligned piece of legislation is working despite a large opposition who insisted (to put it very nicely) that it would not.

To put it nicely, a large number of people believed it when legislators had claimed previously that they understood that the fact that Americans spend at least one-sixth of their money on medical care was a problem, and that they would attempt to deal with this bureaucracy and inefficiency.  To put it nicely, a large number of people were quite surprised when a number of legislators claimed never to have read it even as they voted on it.  To put it nicely, no one is surprised at the fact that when someone puts a gun to your head and asks you to buy something, you buy it.  To put it nicely, if that's what you call "working" then yes, I'd have to agree that the PPACA is working very nicely.  Here, buy this or pay a fine.  That all works out very nicely, doesn't it?

[angus]

What exactly is the issue here?

That's pretty much what we're asking as well.  

[angus]

1% this year.  2% in 2015.  2.5% in 2016.  And that's just what we know so far.

Headline:  "Government says if you don't buy something you get punished for not buying it.  One year later, a bunch of people have bought that thing."

This is news?

[angus]

I do understand that at the moment the legal opinion is that it is largely unenforceable.  I'm not arguing that point.  (I also agree that it shouldn't be unenforceable.  If we have a law, then it should be enforced, whether I agree with the law or not.  That is not the weirdest of all this Obamacare business, but at least we're in agreement here.)

As to the explanation behind the polling data, I'm not sure either of us has a clear enough crystal ball to say why precisely.  My own feeling is that if you scare people into buying something, then they'll buy it.
 
I'm surprised a wholesome, progressive idealist like yourself can even stomach pretending to support the PPACA.  What a horrible compromise.  How Dick Cheney is it to have the congress write a law that funnels even more money from individuals toward corporations?  It'd be one thing if we were arguing over socialized medicine.  One can argue the merits of a decent nationalized medical policy.  I have argued its merits on this forum (not that I'm totally convinced of its net benefit, but I can at least see its appeal.)  Still, I cannot possibly see any merit in the clusterfuçk that is the PPACA being defended by anyone who is being serious.  It obviously leaves many people without automatic medical bill payments.  It obviously does not decrease our "health care" burden economically.  It obviously will add at least another 300 trillion dollars to the costs of medical services per year over the next five years.  It obviously amounts to younger people subsidizing through their labors (during an economic recession) the extreme costs involved in keeping older people alive during the last ten years of their lives.  All it does really is give the Dems a "victory."  Really, can't you rise above all the politics and be neutral and see it for the projection of an already inefficient system that it already is?

Still, all that is really beyond the scope of this thread.  My goal here isn't to attack the PPACA.  I have done that at great length in other threads and so have other reasonably well-informed posters.  Here I only wanted to point out that that the obvious is obvious, and should not be surprising.