- Moderator
- #21
Part of the problem with the ACA is the Republican majority has steadfastedly refused to consider any proposed legislation to fix it with the express desire that they want it to fail. Any piece of large comprehensive legislation requires tweaks and fixes as it moves along. ACA is no different in that regard.
What most people want is affordable health care. The new proposal is not going to provide it, and in fact will have the opposite effect. It's also disturbing to see subsidies and medicaire expansions traded in exchange for huge tax cuts for the wealthy.
You talk people referring to"evil" rich people...but it seems as if the other side is demonizing poor people.
There would be fewer poor people if well intentioned but wrong headed people didn't keep doing the wrong things for them.
Looking at the history of mankind....I don't think so. Poverty has always been a very complex issue. And no one has really "solved" it.
Many of the people who need help with affordable health care are the "working poor". They aren't folks on welfare.
I have been blessed to be in occupations and avocations dealing with, working with, and assisting the 'poor' much of my adult life. And that has reinforced my opinion that Benjamin Franklin was absolutely right when he wrote:
"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer."
It's interesting because that's actually an age old argument - helping the poor vs enabling them. I just finished a good book in fact (A Square Meal - Jane Ziegelman, Andrew Coe - Hardcover) that touched on that and the arguments on both sides. Because poverty has diverse causes I'm reluctant to apply one size fits all "solutions".
But access to healthcare, imo, is - if not a right - then pretty darn close to it in this day and age. Too many jobs no longer include benefits such as healthcare - or they are part time with people working multiple part time (no benefit) jobs to make ends meet. Preventative healthcare is relatively inexpensive compared to emergency room costs - and studies have shown if they can't afford it, they won't see a doctor until it becomes an emergency room visit or the emergency rooms get used instead of a doctors office. The public pays one way or another. I support subsidizing healthcare for those that can't afford it - particularly working people.