“When you enlist Hollywood to help you try and convince America that something’s good, there’s some fundamental flaws,” said senior Colin Smith.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, informally known as Obamacare, currently treads water. With the House’s vote to defund it, plus lack of support from young adults, it may sink instead of swim.
Keeping their heads up, the Obama administration has focused on promoting the act among our generation, hoping we will become the driving force for pushing the act through.
“(Targeting young people) makes sense for both fiscal and political reasons,” said first-year Riva Fairhall. “We’re the activists. If you want anything done, it’s going to come from our generation.”
A number of these young “activists” are already sold on the pros of the bill.
“I have a lot of friends who get really, really cheap or free healthcare and birth control that didn’t have it before,” said sophomore English major Fiona Lloyd.
Some accept the pros, but also see a few cons.
“For a lot of young, (disenfranchised) women … some components that apply to contraceptives are really important,” said senior community and justice studies major Jodie-Ann Geddes. “But I think often times we have policies that are meant to represent people while not providing what people really need.”
Pros and cons aside, there is hope for the bill. For some, its goal to provide affordable, quality health insurance is a bright light just out of reach at the end of a long tunnel of political turmoil.
“I’ve seen so many family and friends without insurance over the years,” said Kathryn Walker, Learning Commons tutor. “It’s going to be a good thing once everything works out; we just have to get through all of the logistics.”
While Congress fights through the political chaos the act has instigated, the ACA’s policies have already taken a toll on hospitals.
“A lot of hospitals and a lot of private practices are firing nurses, cutting their hours or shutting down due to (Obamacare),” said Office of Student Leadership and Engagement intern Megan Stern ‘13. “There needs to be more focus on how to have universal healthcare reform and not cause people to lose their jobs for this ‘universal good,’ when the whole idea is that everybody should be able to have a job in the country and be able to go home and support their families.”
Still, it would be unwitting not to ask: is the Affordable Care Act really to blame?
“There is probably pressure on Obamacare because they are putting pressure on insurance companies to control the cost, but hospitals are large and sometimes inefficient institutions,” said Assistant Professor of Economics Natalya Shelkova.
To my profound distress, as it so often is with politics, the answer is neither yes nor no. Frankly, I have no black-or-white opinion on this topic. The exact effectiveness of the ACA is gray, gray, gray, which makes overall evaluation of it absolutely maddening.
However, one thing is certainly in need of reform: politicians’ approach to the act.
If politicians spent more time working through the flaws in the Affordable Care Act instead of playing the blame game, more young adults would be convinced to get on board with the act.
For now, we’re not convinced the act is the ideal universal healthcare system. The concept is there, but far from perfect and could use tweaking before widely implemented as the ultimate solution.
“(Medicine) is an inelastic good from a microeconomic perspective — you have to have it,” said Adam Pearman ‘09. “Since it’s such an inelastic good, we have to be able to collectively bargain for it, which I think the (Obama) administration failed in.”
If you invest in the Affordable Care Act, a horde of factors like your income, age and lifestyle will come into play. But at this point, it seems up to Lady Luck whether you sink or swim.
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Chris • Sep 28, 2013 at 3:18 pm
I agree with Colin, however, I would also take it a step further. If you enlist those with the least experience in the health insurance market to promote a wildly unpopular health care scheme then you have even more of a problem than Colin was alluding to. Targeting young people doesn’t make sense for fiscal reasons as Riva suggested, but because young people are both altruistic and gullible; especially when it comes to an area of which the college aged youth has the least experience in. For example, Fiona thinks there is such a thing as “free” healthcare. Jodie, on the other hand, is worried about contraception? What!? The major problem in the ACA stems from the one act we as humans have absolute control over? Katherine thinks it’s going to be a “good thing” once all of the unspecified “everything” is unspecified “logistically” worked out. See what I mean?
Later in the above opinion piece we are told that politicians (obviously directed at Republicans who didn’t vote for it) need to spend more time “working through the flaws” than playing the “blame game.” Of course, I remember when the ACA passed Congress. There was no “working through the flaws.” The only bipartisan support for the ACA was against it with exclusively Democrats voting for it and 100% of the Republicans along with a few Democrats voting against it. In fact, Republicans were locked out. Indeed, it is funny how we start the story in the middle; that is to say, now that it’s passed with no bipartisanship we must use bipartisanship to fix it or else the only side with bipartisan support is “playing the blame game.” I see where you’re coming from. Perhaps we should look at how this bill was passed to solidify my point?
On October 8th 2009, H.R. 3590 (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) passed the House with not one, Democrat or Republican, voting against. How did this happen you might ask? Because at this time it was actually called H.R. 3590 (same number), or, the “Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009.” The Senate then stripped everything out of the bill except the “H.R. 3590,” inserted the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” and then “deemed” it passed by the House of Representatives; and all this despite the fact that the U.S. Constitution explicitly demands in the origination clause that “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.” The vote tally you ask? (58 Democrats + 2 Independents in favor and 39 Republicans opposed). Not much “working through the flaws” there huh? Oh, and what date did the Senate Democrats decide to play this parliamentary trick? December 24th (Christmas Eve) 2009.
The bill then went back to the House of Representatives where it passed on the 21st of March 2010 with 219 Democrats voting “aye” and 178 Republicans together with 34 Democrats voting “no.” In other words, the ACA passed with a simple majority vote with 219 for and 212 against whereas the only bipartisanship was against and now all of a sudden we want Republican help “in working through the flaws” of a bill that was passed without their consideration or input. Indeed most, if not all of the Democrats who made this bill possible, did not read the bill to begin with allowing for this predicament we find ourselves in now.
So where do we stand now? We were promised that healthcare prices would go down. We were promised that if we liked our insurance we would get to keep it. We were promised that the ACA was deficit neutral. We were promised that the ACA would lower health insurance costs (In fact we were promised that the ACA would cut premiums by $2,500). We were promised that the ACA would raise zero taxes on those who make less than a quarter of a million dollars a year. We were promised that it would not negatively affect Medicare. Now, every objective source from prominent economic think tanks to liberal newspapers and Union leaders has admitted that none of the above will pan out, or in fact, it will do/did the exact opposite as promised.
Even liberal partisans are admitting to the flaws. The Teamsters Union, for example, is the latest to raise their voice in protest. Democrat Max Baucus, who shares a great deal of responsibility for the ACA, has used the word “Train Wreck” to describe his fear of it’s implementation. Adding to the irony SEIU workers, who were originally a major factor in lobbying for the bill, are now on strike due to the fact that the companies they work for are laying-off janitors citing the ACA.
Now we have workers getting their hours cut so as to avoid the 30 hour cutoff of which the ACA commands that workers receive health insurance. My wife is among them; she will not get a paid vacation this year for failure to meet the required amount of hours and her hours have dropped from 35 to 26-28 per week. She is now working two jobs to make up the difference so I can continue getting an education. In other words, although she works full time hours, due to the ACA she finds herself working two part time jobs with zero full time benefits.
I have yet another friend I work with who shall go unnamed for privacy reasons. He recently had a kidney transplant and has been in recovery for some time now. His employer is currently considering just paying the fee and dumping their workers onto the health care exchanges. In any case, if he were to ever switch his insurer, his only home would be among the exchanges. My friend you ask? Scared out of his mind!
Nevertheless, if you are politically well connected you got to temporarily avoid the sting of the ACA. SEIU got a waiver along with over 1000 other employers, insurers, and unions. Federal employee unions, particularly that of the IRS (The NTEU) (who ironically will be implementing the ACA), are begging for a waiver. Now, companies with 50 or more workers are getting a one year delay whereas small businesses and individuals are getting the shaft. Where did the constitutional authority to waive federal law come from? Beats me!
So why is Obama and ACA fans looking for the college aged youth to promote their monstrosity? Because everyone who has been working the past 10-40 years are already feeling the effects and watching the “train wreck.” A college student who is either covered by some sort of college insurance or still under his/her parents plan, who has never held a career, who has zero experience in the healthcare market, and who is still caught up in that youthful ideological sense of altruism amplified by what he/she is being taught in college is the perfect prey for political opportunists hoping to avoid the political thrashing the future holds in store for them. Indeed, the youth vote went to President Obama near the tune of 65%! Without the youth vote he would have lost. As older working Americans are feeling the pinch of the ACA Democrats must be ever so carful to continue to foster the youthful/emotional/ignorant over those who have firsthand knowledge of the turmoil in store for them. In other words, they must appeal to those who think immediately of “contraception” when looking at the flaws of the Affordable Care Act. In the interim, don’t expect those who were steamrolled in opposition to this law to participate in its continued existence and don’t assume that those politicians attempting to rid us of “Obamacare” after having our hours cut, our premiums increase, our paychecks smaller, our benefits slashed, and our taxes/deficit rise, are “playing the blame game.” They are doing exactly what the voters elected them to do.