Obamacare is here to stay!

[anvi]

The constitutional argument has been decided.  The mandate is a tax.

Obamacare isn't "socialized medicine."  Hospitals are private, practitioners are private, pharma is private, insurance companies are private, and "Obamacare" not only leaves all these institutions in place, but depends on them to be implemented.  Even Medicare and Medicaid pay to private providers.  The only recipients of "socialized" care-plus-coverage in the U.S. are military members and some elderly, very poor or infirm citizens.

Don't know how long "Obamacare" will survive.  But unchecked healthcare cost inflation in the U.S. will bankrupt the country for sure.

[anvi]

I had good insurance with my job before obama came into office. Because of his policies, the cost of the insurance has increased out of my personal affordability. In addition I handle my eye doctor costs out of pocket because its within reason. Who's to say if it will stay that way.

No it hasn't.  Health insurance rates rise every year regardless of Obamacare, but thanks to Obamacare, the rises will slow down in a few years.

That's the thing.  Long before Obamacare was ever being debated, private health insurance rates were rising at an average of 10% a year for a decade and more, and this largely due to almost unchecked health care cost inflation and combined with shrinking pools under fragmented coverage.  Employers were also either dumping their employee plans or shifting a lot more of their rising cost-burdens onto employees long before Obamacare was ever on the table; the legislation did not invent that problem.  As for bureaucracy, any form of insurance is going to be a bureaucratic convolution--private insurers are more bureaucracy-laden than social insurance in the U.S.  Even if Obamacare is repealed or collapses, all these problems will still have to be solved.

[anvi]

That's why people from all over the world come here for major medical procedures.

Actually not.  There are lots of people who are traveling to other countries nowadays to have major procedures done because it costs less.  A lot of the people who do this are even company excs, and many companies subsidize such trips. There is now a submarket called "medical tourism," and it's some years old already.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/health/21patient.html?_r=0

http://www.imtj.com/articles/2009/how-many-americans-go-abroad-for-treatment-30016/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2048020/Medical-tourism-Why-Americans-going-abroad-surgery-save-money.html

Hell, if you had to pay completely out-of-pocket for a cat scan, you could actually get a better deal by buying an air ticket to Japan and getting one there than simply staying in the U.S.

[anvi]

Ben, you cannot reason with today's liberals. They have been brainwashed into believing the world only consists of benefits, not costs and benefits...Hell, most of the people who voted for Obama would fail a financial literacy test. Many of them can barely read "Obama," let alone comprehend the concept of cost-benefit analysis.

Well, if you're going to bring up costs, benefits and financial literacy again, I'll respond with a variation of what I've said before.  If the populous as a whole is a bit too ignorant about financing and costs weighed against benefits, I'd lay the blame for that more at the feet of all-too-easy credit, from credit cards to mortgage loans, than I would on social insurance programs.  Furthermore, your posts on this forum indicate to me that you want the costs of debt reduction to fall exclusively on the shoulders of those who receive government transfer payments, both individuals and states, as well as on the shoulders of government employees.  You don't want any of those costs to knock at the door of business owners, corporate managers or the financial industry. 

In the aftermath of the election, Republicans are continually ringing their hands about the possibility that it was the packaging and delivery of their message that failed to win voters over, rather than the content of that message, and how it proposed to met out the costs of our current national course.  But I don't think the packaging was the problem.  I think the voters heard you, and heard the way you wanted to proportion costs and benefits, and understood it just fine.  Your guy didn't lose because your side failed to communicate, nor because the voters have no conception of what a cost is, nor because the voters were uniformly brainwashed.  You lost because a majority of them don't agree with you about your cost-benefit priorities.  Maybe your priorities about how to met out costs and benefits need to be reexamined.  I'd suggest to you that it's a least worth thinking about.   

[anvi]

I thought the SCOTUS decision only allowed the states to refuse to sign on to Medicaid expansion.  There was nothing, to my knowledge, in the case brought against Obamacare about the state exchanges.