Obamacare very successful, but still a long way to go

[Sam]

Yeah, one of the key battleground states -- understandably totally insignificant.

We Michiganders don't cotton to them Ohioans being all cosmopolitan with those interstates. Gettin' awful east coast over there by Youngstown, too.

[Cow Poke]

We Michiganders don't cotton to them Ohioans being all cosmopolitan with those interstates. Gettin' awful east coast over there by Youngstown, too.

Ah, yes.... my short time in Ohio... them Ohio folk hated the "black license plates" that would come from the West and clog up the roadways trying to take advantage of the rides at Cedar Point. And, I remember some of my Ohio friends talking about those "Youngstown Tuneups*" in the old days, involving sticks of dynamite in gas tanks.



*IIRC, that had to do with Union / non-union battles

[Sam]

Ah, yes.... my short time in Ohio... them Ohio folk hated the "black license plates" that would come from the West and clog up the roadways trying to take advantage of the rides at Cedar Point. And, I remember some of my Ohio friends talking about those "Youngstown Tuneups*" in the old days, involving sticks of dynamite in gas tanks.

*IIRC, that had to do with Union / non-union battles

But what has Ohio offered us, except for Cedar Point?! It should be proud of that, at least. Our amusement park in SW Michigan has not had a storied career.

[Cow Poke]

But what has Ohio offered us, except for Cedar Point?! It should be proud of that, at least. Our amusement park in SW Michigan has not had a storied career.

I wish to terminate this part of the discussion, as I'm still mad at all of you guys for The War of Northern Aggression.

[Sam]

I wish to terminate this part of the discussion, as I'm still mad at all of you guys for The War of Northern Aggression.

At least we let y'all have Disney World.

[Bill the Cat]

I don't know how to convey to you just how deeply deeply shocked and horrified I am that some people here who call themselves Christians actually appear to truly believe that letting the poor die is preferable to the government helping the poor.

This is the biggest pile of straw I've seen in a while. The malnutrition death rate chart here shows that despite the US not being as "progressive" in our socialized enforced charity as the European nations, we still have a lower rate than Denmark, France, or Brazil, and comparable to Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, and Portugal. No Christian is ok with poor people dying of starvation. But Medicaid expansion is not malnutrition, so I'm not sure why you brought starvation up.

The idea that whether or not charity is 'forced' is being more important than the charity itself, I find to be so utterly bizarre that I just don't have the words.

From a Christian perspective, it certainly is more important to WANT to give than to give out of forced obligation.

I've considered starting a thread on the topic of Christianity and Poverty and the ~2000 biblical verses about the need to care for the poor and oppressed.

As long as you understand that giving is 1) voluntary, and 2) not supposed to make you unable to meet your own obligations.

Except I haven't quite figured out how to write it in a way that doesn't basically come down to "have you guys, like, never read the bible? Do you not have the slightest first clue about what Jesus talked about?"

It would definitely be interesting to see just how you will equate the command for Christians to help the poor with a government that is supposed to be agnostic to religion forcing everyone to give regardless of their religion or lack thereof.

[Starlight]

This is the biggest pile of straw I've seen in a while.

This is never a helpful comment to make, because it doesn't enlighten me at all as to what you think is the problem with what I said.

The malnutrition death rate chart here shows that despite the US not being as "progressive" in our socialized enforced charity as the European nations, we still have a lower rate than Denmark, France, or Brazil, and comparable to Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, and Portugal. No Christian is ok with poor people dying of starvation. But Medicaid expansion is not malnutrition, so I'm not sure why you brought starvation up.

Um, yeah, I'm not entirely sure why you brought up starvation or malnutrition up given I was talking about medical care. Obviously people don't generally starve to death in Western countries, as there currently exist sufficient government social policies and private charities to deal with the basic need to eat.

But a lot of Christians in the US seem to disapprove of even those programs. There are constant cutbacks to food-stamp programs being proposed. It really seems like quite a lot of Christians in the US would be okay with a few people starving to death if that turned out to be the social cost of getting rid of those government programs. They really hate the government helping the poor, and they would prefer the government stopped doing it. To me that just doesn't compute. The Christianity I grew up with was all about helping the poor and oppressed, and if the secular government is doing it then the opinion would be "that's great, the government's doing the Lord's work!"

From a Christian perspective, it certainly is more important to WANT to give than to give out of forced obligation.

Okay, sure. But the question is over whether the government helping the poor is better or worse than the government not helping the poor. The attitude of some US Christians appears to be that it's worse for the government to be helping, because that's "forcing" people (via taxes) to give their money to the poor, and it's more important in the minds of these Christians that people aren't "forced" to help the poor than it is important that the poor will be helped.

So for a given government social program that is helping the poor: I will look at it and say "That's wonderful! The poor are being helped! This is great! Let's celebrate!", whereas a lot of US Christians will look at the same program and say something along the lines of "This is terrible! The government is forcing us to help the poor! This program needs to be abolished!". Their reaction simply blows my mind.

So I'm thinking... "um, do these people hate the poor that badly?" And the answer seems to be that no, they don't hate the poor, per se. They're just completely and utterly obsessed with the idea that it not be the government which helps the poor. They like the idea of the poor getting help through private charities. But they hate the idea of the government "forcing" the poor to be helped, and they hate it so badly that they are apparently often prepared to shutdown all such government programs even if it means that some poor people die as a result. Again, that simply blows my mind.

I also don't see any kind of mandate for that in the bible. There's no 11th commandment of "thou shalt not let the government help the poor". There's no huge corpus of biblical teaching about how taxes are terrible and should not exist and should absolutely not be spent by the government to help the poor. But there's a lot of biblical teaching telling people to help the poor and doing everything up to and including threatening them with hell if they don't help the poor (eg Matt 25).

As long as you understand that giving is 1) voluntary,

There's just not a great deal of discussion in the bible that analyses extensively how to help the poor. The entire distinction between voluntary and involuntary giving projected onto modern governments, just strikes me as entirely made-up.

and 2) not supposed to make you unable to meet your own obligations.

Not quite sure what you're getting at here. If you mean "you should still be able to feed your own family", then any modern government welfare system will ensure that people aren't taxed so much that they can't afford to feed their families.

Taxes that were so harsh that people couldn't afford to feed their families were however a problem in Jesus' day. Yet he doesn't seem to have advocated a policy of tax avoidance (as some other revolutionary groups did in his day). What little he is recorded as mentioning it is along the lines of "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" which would seem to imply people should pay taxes.

It would definitely be interesting to see just how you will equate the command for Christians to help the poor with a government that is supposed to be agnostic to religion forcing everyone to give regardless of their religion or lack thereof.

It's understandable that the government wants policies that make society the best for everyone as much as possible. Insofar as those policies involve things like helping the poor, Christians should be jumping for joy because that's what the bible commands, so with every tax dollar paid they are doing God's will.

It's those few Christians who are opposed to the government's helping of the poor that I find so difficult to explain. This seems to be predominantly an American phenomena, and I presume its historical origins must lie in the Moral Majority movement, in which various less-than-scrupulous political operators successfully fused anti-abortion and pro-segregationist sentiment with economic policies that favored the rich, giving the modern religious-right Republican party that supports the rich on economic policy and supports conservative religious stances on social issues. That hypothesis would suggest the connection between conservative Christianity and being anti-poor originated in the US around the period 1940-1970. (Sam, do you have any comment on what you think the historical origins of this kind of sentiment within conservative Christianity in the US were?)

[Mountain Man]

Do the 16.5 million people insured under Obamacare include the millions of people who lost their plans because of Obamacare and had no other choice?

Secondly, health insurance does not equal healthcare, so what kind of care have those 16.5 million people been able to get?

[Sam]

Do the 16.5 million people insured under Obamacare include the millions of people who lost their plans because of Obamacare and had no other choice?

Secondly, health insurance does not equal healthcare, so what kind of care have those 16.5 million people been able to get?

The OP's graph:

lzi_gpd6puu6buc0blijhq.jpg

Shows the net effect of insurance coverage: someone losing insurance because of the ACA and then picking it up again under the ACA would not show up on this graph. Contrary to the claims of many (including yourself at the time), the ACA did not result in more people losing their coverage than gaining coverage. Far, far from it, by the graph.

Surveys of health care satisfaction of people using the exchanges have shown a high level of satisfaction, even among Republicans:

Slide14-624x468.jpg Slide2-624x468.jpg

[Bill the Cat]

The OP's graph:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]5841[/ATTACH]

Shows the net effect of insurance coverage: someone losing insurance because of the ACA and then picking it up again under the ACA would not show up on this graph. Contrary to the claims of many (including yourself at the time), the ACA did not result in more people losing their coverage than gaining coverage. Far, far from it, by the graph.

Surveys of health care satisfaction of people using the exchanges have shown a high level of satisfaction, even among Republicans:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]5842[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]5843[/ATTACH]

I wonder how much the "satisfied" with cost are receiving subsidies versus how many are paying for the full premium themselves...

[Sam]

I wonder how much the "satisfied" with cost are receiving subsidies versus how many are paying for the full premium themselves...

Given that the whole point of the ACA is to make health insurance more affordable and given that a very small percentage of the population is buying insurance at full cost in the non-group market, I'm not sure why that would be relevant.

[Bill the Cat]

This is never a helpful comment to make, because it doesn't enlighten me at all as to what you think is the problem with what I said.

It is a straw man to claim that Christians "truly believe that letting the poor die is preferable to the government helping the poor". No Christian I know thinks in such black and white terms.

Um, yeah, I'm not entirely sure why you brought up starvation or malnutrition up given I was talking about medical care.

Because typically when one mentions the poor dying, it is generally due to things like malnutrition, not lack of a healthcare plan. Sorry if I misunderstood your intent.

Obviously people don't generally starve to death in Western countries, as there currently exist sufficient government social policies and private charities to deal with the basic need to eat.

And there exists plenty of free clinics and emergency rooms to deal with basic medical care in order to survive. So, again, no one is interested in watching the poor die just to save a penny in taxes. Any suggestion to the contrary is straw.

But a lot of Christians in the US seem to disapprove of even those programs. There are constant cutbacks to food-stamp programs being proposed.

Why do you think that is? Because of the fraud that costs the US $750 Million per year.

It really seems like quite a lot of Christians in the US would be okay with a few people starving to death if that turned out to be the social cost of getting rid of those government programs.

Well, it seems like it wouldn't be ok at all to any Christian group in the US that I know of. Perhaps you can link to Christian organizations who say that they are ok with starvation of a few in order to save a few tax dollars.

They really hate the government helping the poor, and they would prefer the government stopped doing it.

I disagree. It's far more complex than that broad brush statement. We hate the government creating generations of dependents who choose not to excel because it will cause them to lose their "allowance". We hate that the government is rewarding lazy single mothers who keep churning out babies just to increase their amount of welfare. We hate that there is no work requirement in many places to receive government assistance. Each side sees this debate differently. For instance, in Maine:

Source: http://www.usherald.com/maine-welfare-recipients-must-work-for-their-benefits/

At the close of 2014 approximately 12,000 individuals were enrolled in the state assistance program. Keep in mind that these individuals are adults who aren’t disabled and who don’t have children at home and who are claiming the food-stamp benefits because of a lack of financial resources.

After forcing these individuals to either work part-time for twenty hours each week, enroll in a vocational program, or volunteer for a minimum of twenty-four hours per month, the numbers showed a significant drop from 12,000 enrollees to just over 2,500.

Republicans in the state are calling it a major victory, while Democrats are infuriated and are calling for special measures to roll back some of the strict requirements.

© Copyright Original Source

To me that just doesn't compute. The Christianity I grew up with was all about helping the poor and oppressed, and if the secular government is doing it then the opinion would be "that's great, the government's doing the Lord's work!"

But the government has no biblical mandate to enforce charity on individuals. Especially a "religiously neutral" government. Would you like if NZ passed a law that required you to serve 5 hours a month at a homeless shelter? Or would you rather CHOOSE to work there out of compassion for the poor and with no legal prompting from the government? Which is more noble? The enforced or the voluntary?

Okay, sure. But the question is over whether the government helping the poor is better or worse than the government not helping the poor.

No it actually isn't. The question is whether the government should force people to pay for other peoples' medical costs.

The attitude of some US Christians appears to be that it's worse for the government to be helping, because that's "forcing" people (via taxes) to give their money to the poor, and it's more important in the minds of these Christians that people aren't "forced" to help the poor than it is important that the poor will be helped.

It's worse for the government to facilitate laziness, financial irresponsibility, poor family planning, and flat out fraud. Not everyone is poor by happenstance.

So for a given government social program that is helping the poor: I will look at it and say "That's wonderful! The poor are being helped! This is great! Let's celebrate!", whereas a lot of US Christians will look at the same program and say something along the lines of "This is terrible! The government is forcing us to help the poor! This program needs to be abolished!". Their reaction simply blows my mind.

Do you care if someone is keeping their girlfriend on welfare just to grab her food stamps and sell down the street for drugs? Do you care why someone is poor, or do you, like the elitist left, just care that you get to be their hero and give them stuff for the unstated expectation of votes?

So I'm thinking... "um, do these people hate the poor that badly?" And the answer seems to be that no, they don't hate the poor, per se. They're just completely and utterly obsessed with the idea that it not be the government which helps the poor.

No. The help should be responsible, but the left doesn't agree with that. And that covers much more than just the healthcare debate. The left doesn't expect personal responsibility in any way from their voting bloc.

They like the idea of the poor getting help through private charities.

Which is the way the Bible says it should be. Imagine that!

But they hate the idea of the government "forcing" the poor to be helped, and they hate it so badly that they are apparently often prepared to shutdown all such government programs even if it means that some poor people die as a result. Again, that simply blows my mind.

No. We expect some measure of responsibility in the program, not just a free-for-all to anyone who applies for it.

I also don't see any kind of mandate for that in the bible. There's no 11th commandment of "thou shalt not let the government help the poor". There's no huge corpus of biblical teaching about how taxes are terrible and should not exist and should absolutely not be spent by the government to help the poor. But there's a lot of biblical teaching telling people to help the poor and doing everything up to and including threatening them with hell if they don't help the poor (eg Matt 25).

But none of that involves the government. it is individuals who should be charitable out of their own conscience, not an enforced mandate on believer and unbeliever alike.

There's just not a great deal of discussion in the bible that analyses extensively how to help the poor. The entire distinction between voluntary and involuntary giving projected onto modern governments, just strikes me as entirely made-up.

So why does your side continue to make stupid statements about it not being "Christian" to have the government helping the poor, since you admit here that the Bible does not address government tax usage.

Not quite sure what you're getting at here.

You should not give to someone else if it makes your own children starve.

If you mean "you should still be able to feed your own family", then any modern government welfare system will ensure that people aren't taxed so much that they can't afford to feed their families.

We are talking here about "Christianity and Poverty and the ~2000 biblical verses about the need to care for the poor and oppressed." Nowhere did this mention modern welfare systems. Only Christian charity requirements.

Taxes that were so harsh that people couldn't afford to feed their families were however a problem in Jesus' day. Yet he doesn't seem to have advocated a policy of tax avoidance (as some other revolutionary groups did in his day). What little he is recorded as mentioning it is along the lines of "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" which would seem to imply people should pay taxes.

To which I agree. We have public services that need to be paid for. Infrastructure, defense, public safety, governance, tourism, etc. All funded by taxes. It is when taxes go to funding research on “Sexual Conflict, Social Behavior, and the Evolution of Waterfowl Genitalia.”, that's when we who, unlike in Jesus' time where they were ruled by Rome, are represented in the legislature stand up and say ENOUGH!

It's understandable that the government wants policies that make society the best for everyone as much as possible. Insofar as those policies involve things like helping the poor, Christians should be jumping for joy because that's what the bible commands, so with every tax dollar paid they are doing God's will.

The problem, again, is who is defining "what is best"? Is it better to put people on food stamps without a work requirement, or is it better to push them in a more productive and self-sustaining direction in order to receive any benefits?

It's those few Christians who are opposed to the government's helping of the poor that I find so difficult to explain. This seems to be predominantly an American phenomena, and I presume its historical origins must lie in the Moral Majority movement, in which various less-than-scrupulous political operators successfully fused anti-abortion and pro-segregationist sentiment with economic policies that favored the rich, giving the modern religious-right Republican party that supports the rich on economic policy and supports conservative religious stances on social issues. That hypothesis would suggest the connection between conservative Christianity and being anti-poor originated in the US around the period 1940-1970. (Sam, do you have any comment on what you think the historical origins of this kind of sentiment within conservative Christianity in the US were?)

You really need to see how the early English settlers treated the freeloaders among their settlements once they realized the English government was not going to be resupplying them at will. If someone refused to work, they were executed. And the colony leadership forced church attendance too.

No one on the right AFAICT was ever anti-poor. It wasn't until the priorities of the left's welfare plans became screwed up that Christians began having a problem with their distribution.

[Bill the Cat]

Given that the whole point of the ACA is to make health insurance more affordable and given that a very small percentage of the population is buying insurance at full cost in the non-group market, I'm not sure why that would be relevant.

Because if I am only paying 20-25% of what everyone else is paying, I can assure you I'd be a happy camper. Imagine you and Joe to your right go into a car dealership. You both buy the identical car, having similar driving needs. Because you make more money than Joe, you pay $15K for the car. Joe, who is less fortunate than you financially, only pays 4K for his car and the taxpayers of the country pay the rest. How is that at all making you happy? I can guarantee Joe is happy. Someone else paid for most of the cost, but only HE owns it.

[Sam]

Because if I am only paying 20-25% of what everyone else is paying, I can assure you I'd be a happy camper. Imagine you and Joe to your right go into a car dealership. You both buy the identical car, having similar driving needs. Because you make more money than Joe, you pay $15K for the car. Joe, who is less fortunate than you financially, only pays 4K for his car and the taxpayers of the country pay the rest. How is that at all making you happy? I can guarantee Joe is happy. Someone else paid for most of the cost, but only HE owns it.

So what's the criticism here? That the Affordable Care Act makes health insurance more affordable?

[Bill the Cat]

So what's the criticism here? That the Affordable Care Act makes health insurance more affordable?

No. That it only makes it "affordable" by forcing someone else to cover part of a person's tab. SOMEONE is paying for that subsidy. That's the inconvenient man behind the curtain that never gets mentioned on the left.