Why don't the Democrats come up with a healthcare bill that fixes the

[doc03]

problems with the ACA?

[tazkcmo]

1. Here ya go

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/how-democrats-would-fix-obamacare/530376/

[ramapo]

2. I've always wondered that too

Especially now. Seems to me it would be better to propose positive alternatives to the Republicans' awfulness. Even though any Democratic proposal would get nowhere near the floor, it would at least be something to contrast what Republicans want to do.

[doc03]

8. The Republican bill is going to be passed friday from what I see. McTurtle

will buy off a couple Senators and that will be the end of the ACA. We know anything the Democrats would
propose would never be passed but I think it would be better to at least have a plan to fix the ACA.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

11. The bill is so bad that it's hurting itself (12% approval?)

Even if the Republicans manage to somehow pass it and get it signed into law, it will be a Pyrrhic victory at best. Democrats really don't have to do much other than remain unified and be prepared to hang it around the Republicans voting for it like an albatross next year- or wait until Republicans come around (ha!) to the position that they should fix ACA and stop trying to kill it.

[stopbush]

3. The reason so many insurers are leaving the program

is due to Marco Rubio sticking a clause in a bill that cut payments to insurers by 87% from 2014-16. That clause did its damage and has sailed. Unless Congress is willing to retroactively pay the effected risk corridor insurers for taking on risky patients, said insurers have no reason to trust anything the government says about any healthcare legislation they pass.

It is the Republican-created uncertainty in the market that is causing all the volatility in the market. How does one address this basic truism of our current politics? That Republicans are lying scum whose word means nothing unless they're stumpin for Jeebus?

"Fixing" the ACA involves an honest assesment of how one pays for healthcare. When Ds on one side say tax the rich who are undertaxed and can afford to pay a little on their investment income to help everyone else, while Rs say fuck everyone else, it's hard to know where to start.

[doc03]

9. How did Marco Rubio stick anything in the ACA he sure as hell

never voted for the bill neither did any Republican?

[stopbush]

13. See here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/us/politics/marco-rubio-obamacare-affordable-care-act.html

[Ccarmona]

4. It's An Easy Fix

Re-establish the Risk Corridor payments to the Insurance companies. Little Marco stuck the knife into the ACA by attaching legislation to curtail payments in 2015

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/3/23/1646512/-Risk-Corridors-or-How-Marco-Rubio-Broke-Obamacare|

[stopbush]

5. Yep.

[exboyfil]

7. Why did Obama sign it?

I think the answer was to sign it or risk a government shut down.

It would have been better to live with the pain at that time than what we are seeing now.

Hindsight is 20/20 though.

[geek tragedy]

6. because they're the miniority party and there's a 0.0000000% chance that

(a) anything resembling anything they suggest would pass and (b) that there would be any political benefit on giving Republicans a target to shoot at.

[onecaliberal]

10. Because they would have to take profit out of healthcare and NO ONE is going to do that because big

pharma and insurance companies will not allow it.

[BigmanPigman]

12. That's right! Talk about saving money...

If they wanted to give more money to the rich, why don't they get it directly out of the robber barron's, insur and big pharma. They could transfer their ill gotten companies' $ billions to the GOP's personal bank accounts but that would put too many of the major lobbyists out of work I guess.

Isn't that little prick Shkreli on trial this week and they can't find a jury who doesn't feel he is already guilty before the trial even starts.

[onecaliberal]

14. Yes, even more hated than trump