When did Republicans begin to believe that insurance companies should be put on the dole? That they should be bailed out when any of their customers become sick?
When did Republicans begin to believe that the federal government should force you to pay a penalty to a private insurance company if you can’t afford insurance?
When did Republicans begin to believe that we should levy a special tax penalty on those who choose to buy really good health insurance?
The current Ryan Plan — “Obamacare Lite” — is not about patients. It isn’t about better health care. It isn’t about lowering costs.
It is, plain and simple, about getting more money to the insurance companies and running more of your life from Washington.
I am a career physician. I spent years training and learning to be a doctor. I did it for patients. I don’t give a flip about guaranteeing the profits of insurance companies. And as a Senator, I shouldn’t, either.
The in-house Republican battle over the repeal of Obamacare is about to boil over as Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) are engaged in an increasingly sharp war over words over their disagreements on how to proceed forward with the promised repeal and replace of former President Obama’s signature legislation.
Paul has been waging a war against the House GOP Obamacare repeal and replace plan since even before it was given to the public. Calling it “Obamacare Lite,” Paul has lambasted not only the bill, but his fellow Republicans for their less-than-diligent attempts at getting rid of the unpopular healthcare law. This time, he turned his attention toward Ryan, who has been the bill’s primary spokesman.
“I think that Paul Ryan’s selling [Donald Trump] a bill of goods that he didn’t explain to the President, and the grassroots doesn’t want what Paul Ryan is selling,” Paul told CNN. …
As the battle continues between the conservatives and GOP leadership, the faith of the voters hangs in the balance, according to the conservatives. Paul believes that should the GOP pass “Obamacare Lite,” Republicans will pay for it come election time. Duncan wrote in the Daily Signal that should the bill pass, voters “will feel betrayed.”
If that is true, then winner of the struggle between Paul and Ryan may determine the GOP’s future momentum.
“Though I want to believe the glass is half full, I am tempted, very tempted, to smash a glass half full of Obamacare Lite — smash that glass to smithereens!”
Washington politicians are so far gone that the Constitution is not even an afterthought, and their master seems to be whatever industry funds them.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We just had an election about change, about draining the swamp. President Trump promised to be different, and I believe he sincerely wants to be. But he is being taken for a ride through the swamp right now on “Obamacare Lite.”
For four STRAIGHT elections, REPUBLICANS ran on repealing Obamacare, and now “Republican orthodoxy” — I’m told — is keeping insurance subsidies, mandates, taxes, and insurance company bailouts.
That’s not acceptable to me. And it isn’t keeping our promise.
Though I want to believe the glass is half full, I am tempted, very tempted, to smash a glass half full of Obamacare Lite — smash that glass to smithereens! …
The current Ryan Plan — “Obamacare Lite” — is not about patients. It isn’t about better health care. It isn’t about lowering costs.
It is, plain and simple, about getting more money to the insurance companies and running more of your life from Washington.
The bipartisan chorus continues to grow against the Republican Obamacare replacement bill. Conservatives in both chambers of Congress have voiced concerns about the bill, derisively referring to it as “Obamacare-lite.” The political news got worse for the bill when the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill would result in millions of additional uninsured Americans.
On Dana Loesch’s program Tuesday evening, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has said he would prefer a clean repeal to Obamacare first.
“What I do know is bill that’s in front of us, that leadership has brought forward, isn’t a full repeal, it isn’t going to bring down premiums and doesn’t unite the Republican party. It is not consistent with what we told the voters. … There’s a reason every single conservative group in the country is opposed to it. There’s a reason that conservative people like you are opposed to it. Even conservatives who are for it, … call it Obamacare-lite,” Rep. Jordan says.
President Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan have tried to present a unified front on the GOP’s health care bill, but a top Republican critic of that legislation on Sunday tried to stoke divisions between the two.
Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, said flatly that he doesn’t believe the president is fully committed to the legislation as currently written. The House Republican leadership, he added, is presenting a false choice between the status quo or the current alternative proposal backed by Mr. Ryan.
“I think there’s a separation between the two,” Mr. Paul told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “I’ve talked to the president I think three times on Obamacare and I hear from him that he’s willing to negotiate. You know what I hear from Paul Ryan? It’s a binary choice, young man. But what does a binary choice mean? His way or the highway?”
Mr. Paul said he doesn’t think the bill, as it stands now, will get the needed 51 votes in the Senate.
The American Action Forum was set up to run ads against conservatives who oppose the “Obamacare Lite” bill. Guess who’s funding that PAC?
Yep, the pharmaceutical companies.
House Republicans like Speaker Paul Ryan tell us that the new health care bill will repeal Obamacare and lower costs. We’ve already shown why that’s untrue. Now, evidence that the pharmaceutical companies are supporting the bill with millions of dollars proves that costs will remain high and benefit them, not you.
Our health should not be part of a free market exchange. Saving money is not equivalent to saving lives.
While you can decide to keep your house a bit cooler to lower your electric bill, you can’t have a little less chemo to save a few thousand dollars. There’s no “hey, maybe just forget the insulin so you can save for a few months of retirement money, skimp on the blood thinners or dialysis and get some pocket change for the movies.”
Healthcare is a non-negotiable part of life. So why do we rely on a system which ebbs and flows based on the number of healthy people who choose to sign up and create a market based on humans as commodities; the federal laws (looking at you, abortion ban HR-7) that cause insurance companies to choose their own financial safety over the people who need medical safety?
Don’t let this government turn us and those less fortunate than those I know reading my inordinately long post into market objects for financial gain. Call, dissent.
As always, continue to support the ACA by calling your reps or Sen. Paul Ryan–(202) 225-3031
Oppose HR7 (which bans all federal funding for abortion services, targeting the underprivileged on Medicaid as well as effectively eliminating ability to get coverage for abortion even if paying your own funds through any ACA/gov program) by calling your reps.
Time to push more of my liberal agenda: protect the ACA. Call your lawmakers! Think of how much diabetes costs without insurance–tens of thousands of dollars. Without preexisting condition protection, we don’t get insurance. Without bans against lifetime insurance caps, we don’t get to keep insurance.
We may be sick, but we are not dead; don’t let your house representatives categorize you otherwise. We deserve to live full lives, regardless of a disease we did nothing to earn and cannot will away.
So fight. Be sick–there’s nothing we can do about that–but nevertire.
Michigan Democrats saved the worst for last. This Saturday, President Obama will be making a campaign stop in Detroit to rally support for Gary Peters and Mark Schauer.
While most Democrats around the country are trying to distance themselves from the sitting president, Peters and Schauer are embracing his visit and failed policies with open arms.
Peters and Schauer have been lock step with President’s Obama’s agenda since 2008 – voting with the president at least 90% of the time.
In Peters’ first three years in Congress, he supported $5.6 trillion in tax-and-spend legislation while Schauer rubberstamped a stunning $4.9 trillion in just 24 months.
However, their most notable stamp of approval for Obama’s failed policies came when it was time to support the president’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. Awarded the “Lie of the Year” in 2013 for the “if you like your doctor, you can keep him” falsehood, the law has since been a headache for Obama and his supporters.
As 225,000 Michigan families lost their healthcare and premiums increased for hundreds of thousands, Gary Peters and Mark Schauer’s support for President Obama’s health care law remains unrelenting.
The “hope and change” that was promised by Peters, Schauer and Obama failed to materialize and was instead replaced with pessimism and doubt.
The love affair is not exclusive to Peters and Schauer, as President Obama is also a fan of both Michigan candidates. In 2008, President Obama appeared in an ad endorsing Peters and attended a fundraiser for Schauer’s reelection campaign in 2010.
In a recent interview, President Obama tried to cover for Democrats avoiding him by saying it was a political gimmick and that they do in fact like him because they “have supported my agenda in Congress.” One can only picture a little kid trying to convince himself he still has friends.
Underneath the spin and rhetoric, President Obama reveals an admission of responsibility that people are truly upset and discouraged with his leadership. And for good reason.
Gary Peters and Mark Schauer have always been interested in supporting President Obama’s policies, but how many times have they stood up for the interest of Michigan families?
Throughout their political careers, they have been out to further their own interests and those of Washington Democrats when given the opportunity. They remain unapologetic for their failed voting record and unwavering support for President Obama.
Saturday’s visit will be a testament to Gary Peters and Mark Schauer’s allegiance to President Obama and will cement their support for big government policies.
If you remember one thing when you go to the ballot box, remember this: A vote for Gary Peters and Mark Schauer is a vote for President Obama’s failed policies.
Even for a Republican, this is on the more evil edge of evil. In the Arkansas Senate debate Tuesday, Republican candidate Tom Cotton said the high-risk insurance pools people with pre-existing conditions were in were actually better than ACA policies.
Tom Cotton, the Republican candidate for Arkansas’ U.S. Senate seat, has repeatedly denounced the Affordable Care Act as a failure and vowed to help repeal it if elected. But in his second and final debate Tuesday night against Democratic incumbent Mark Pryor, he went further, claiming the high-risk insurance pools that many states ran before Obamacare’s passage were better for people with pre-existing conditions than the current exchanges.
“Many people were happy with their coverage under the high-risk pool, before it was eliminated,” Cotton said. “They should have been allowed to keep that choice.”
Pryor shot back, saying his personal experience proved otherwise. “I am a cancer survivor,” he said. “I have been in the high-risk pool. I have lived there. It is no place for any Arkansan to be. If we go back to the high-risk pool, it’s like throwing sick people to the wolves.”
Yesterday was National Rheumatoid Arthritis Awareness Day. It’s a bit of a pointless holiday, and I didn’t even know it existed until about 3 hours ago - I’m guessing due to the fact that the Arthritis Foundation is shit, has a 1 star rating on Charity Navigator, and has been accused of misusing funds in the past. So….they probably haven’t had time to roll out an advertising campaign.
In any case, if you didn’t know, RA is an autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune system is a worthless idiot and attacks your body’s own soft and joint tissues, and can potentially render them useless through damage and deterioration.
I have RA. But I am lucky. My RA was diagnosed very early and I had it treated very aggressively.
I am also lucky because I have insurance that helps offset the cost of my revoltingly, ridiculously, disgustingly expensive medication. One month of Enbrel costs anywhere between $3,400 and $3,800. See?
It’s such an expensive medication that I actually have to use two insurance plans to afford it. Which means, if I did not have insurance, I’d be paying approximately $45,000 per year simply to stay alive.
And that is for justone of my medications, as you can tell from the above photo, where I’ve blocked out all the other medications I am also required to take to stay alive. Paying for Enbrel out of pocket would leave me unable to afford rent, food, or clothing - other things which are also required to stay alive.
Though I am currently fortunate enough to have a job that provides me with healthcare, I’ve been without insurance in the past. Back before the Affordable Care Act, I was unable to stay on my parents’ plan when I graduated and then was constantly denied coverage due to my pre-existing conditions. I basically roamed around LA, terrified of getting into a catastrophic accident while simultaneously attempting to treat pneumonia in the back of a CVS.
Obamacare is not without its flaws, I acknowledge that. But if your garbage disposal is broken, you don’t burn down your house and start over - you fix the fucking garbage disposal. So in honor of National RA Awareness Day, which is, as we’ve established, a real thing - please consider writing or calling your representatives (especially Paul Ryan) and telling them that repealing ACA without a replacement would be disastrous. It is important, and saving lives, and making it so people don’t have to choose between bankruptcy or having their immune systems kill their own bodies.
(CNN - New York) The New York City Kingdom Hall (NYCKH) of Jehovah’s Witnesses has filed suit in 2nd district federal court today challenging Obamacare’s blood transfusion coverage requirements.
“Christians shall not ingest blood,” said Jacob Edelman, spokesperson for the NYCKH, “and it is a mortal sin for a Christian to accept a blood transfusion and, by extension, to pay for one. The Jehova’s Witnesses are not asking for anything that Hobby Lobby isn’t asking for.”
Hobby Lobby objected to the comparison.
“Hobby Lobby isn’t asking for crazy requirements,” said a representative, “it’s ridiculous to demand people not get blood transfusions. If you don’t want a blood transfusion, don’t get one, but ultimately the choice is left to the conscience of the patient,” they said, oblivious to their own reality.
A preliminary injunction may be granted next week when the Court hears oral arguments for the two sides.
Alright, it’s been too long since I had a huge post (maybe 20 hours) so I thought I’d lay one out again. I’d like to talk about Health Care, and why I’m voting for Obama because of it.
Let me start by surprising everyone who hasn’t talked to me with the following:
I hate Obamacare - I think it violates our rights by forcing us to buy a product from private companies, and probably should be repealed.
“But why are you voting for Obama then Rob? Surely Romney’s repeated calls to end Obamacare appeal to you!” - GOP Supporter
Lets start by looking at our health care system before the Affordable Care Act went into effect.
First - Every person could go to an ER, and that ER would be forced to give them basic life saving care, even if they didn’t have insurance. People still died of cancer and all sorts of nastiness, but hospitals were generally not allowed to turn people away.
Second - Not everyone had health insurance. Some people had preexisting conditions and were denied coverage. Some were unemployed and couldn’t afford it. Some were students older than 24. Some had jobs that didn’t provide it. However, those people still sometimes went to the hospital.
Third - Sometimes health insurance wouldn’t cover a procedure that a doctor recommended. Health insurance companies dictate medicine, not medical doctors.
Anyone with a job most likely has seen their health care costs rising slowly since they’ve ever worked ever. A little raise in their premiums there, an increased deductible there. A new service not covered.
Why you ask? Was this profiteering by insurance companies? Sure, maybe. Profiteering by doctors and hospitals? Maybe. Largely though, the problem was that you received treatment first and were billed second. If your insurance wouldn’t pay and you were stuck with the bill? You could simply declare bankruptcy or just not pay. Of course the hospital still incurred the cost of your surgery. You used medical supplies, Doctor’s time. Anesthesia and band aids. Electricity. All that stuff still had to get paid for.
Lets say you make minimum wage working at Walmart, 30 hours a week. You may have a child. You make too much to be on medicaid, but still can’t afford insurance. Then, you get a large kidney stone, require surgery, and get stuck with a $40,000 bill for surgery. Or you get shot in the face watching batman and incur a 2 million dollar hospital bill. What if you are unable to pay?
The hospitals - some public and some private - do the only thing they can do, which is passing those costs onto the paying customers. And the only ‘paying’ customers were people with insurance. Thus, the bill for any given procedure is largely automatically inflated, because it’s costs if paid must go towards costs of procedures that aren’t paid. That’s one of the reasons Americans spend almost 3x more on healthcare than countries that don’t have our 'system’.
The poorest Americans, the oldest Americans, were covered under Medicare and Medicaid. But there’s a group of people - lower middle class, upper lower class - that may slip through the cracks.
**Ok, so what did Obama care do for us?**
First, it made more people pay into the health care industry. The more people who are paying into the system, the more the health insurance industry can spread those costs across everyone. That means less people who are going to the hospital without health insurance.
Second, it capped the profits of the health insurance industry. It is forcing the insurance industry to pay for medical procedures with your insurance premiums, not advertising.
Third, it forces insurance companies to allow people with preexisting conditions onto health care plans.
This alleviates a lot of problems that our health care industry was facing. However, socialism is a government owned industry. Since the government isn’t owning anything, this definitely isn’t socialist.
So why is this not a point in the cards for Romney? Because Obamacare is demonstrably better than pre-Obamacare. And Romney’s only plan is to repeal Obamacare. He needs to have SOME plan to replace Obamacare - because going back to the way it was is untenable.
“So what are our options besides Obamacare? ” - GOP Supporter
Great question friend! There’s three things we can do (At least, that I can think of. Feel free to update me with your own).
Alleviate the problem by forcing people to pay for health care before they receive it. That way, costs will come down because everyone who gets health care will be insured. Hospitals will know that they can charge the actual costs of the procedures because they’ve already been paid. Everyone will be forced to buy insurance, because without it they’ll simply die. (This is assuming we could convince hospitals not to treat people for free anyways) This is the system of health care that places like Somolia, Uganda, Ethiopia, and other heavily impoverished nations with terrible quality of life have. If you have money, you live long, if you don’t, you die young. In my opinion, this is completely fucking unacceptable for the United States.
Socialized Medicine. *gasp*. This makes sure every single person pays into the system what they can, through taxes. And since every person is paying, every person can get health care. *THIS* is what we need, since every other country that is using it has a vastly better health care system. But that’s a different story. Read about the different types of socialized health care here.
Continue with the pre-Obamacare status quo. I’m not an economist and I don’t have any formal training in health care administration, so this is entirely conjecture: Prices will continue to rise which will force more people out of the insurance pool. This will cause health care prices to go up faster. Employer prices will continue to rise, either forcing an increase in the costs of goods, or forcing down salaries to compensate. It’s an all around fuck fest.
Quick Aside: I’ve been told that if we completely deregulate the health care industry and let the free market fairy sprinkle its magic all these problems will go away. Frankly this argument is full of shit. First, the problem of everyone being covered but not everyone paying still exists without another insurance mandate. Second - the free market decided that people with pre-existing conditions wouldn't be covered because it’s not profitable to cover them. That’s a whole group of people who don’t get health care - which in my opinion is equally untenable.
Of course, this is a simplistic view of the situation, and ignores a lot of important facts: Regular checkups and a relationship with the same physician is extremely beneficial for the health of the population, treating patients in a doctors office is cheaper than in the ER, access to vaccinations and health care earlier will result in healthier children, etc. Honestly I’m very lazy and want to go to bed, so I made this as simple as possible.
But it remains you *shouldn’t* vote for Romney while he advocates path 3 for our country. Obama really screwed the GOP hard by enacting Obamacare. By *compromising* and implementing the only possible solution that the right could come up with (a federal insurance mandate), he stole their only solution for health care. Once repealed, the only option the right has is to Re-implement Obamacare,
If you are a GOP supporter? Demand from your party a plan of action. Because without Obamacare, the health care industry is largely up shits creek. Moral arguments aside, it isn’t fiscally responsible to vote for Romney because of his lack of medical plan. As always I’m open to questions.
This morning, we delivered upwards of half a million signatures to Senator Patty Murray in opposition to Rep. Price’s confirmation for Secretary of HHS! We #WontBePunished by Trump nominees who want to take away our health!
His past record of punishing women and families includes voting to:
Repeal the Affordable Care Act
Defund Planned Parenthood
Ban abortion coverage
Now, raise your hand if you already feel victimized by the nomination of Rep. Tom Price for HHS Secretary.
That’s what we thought.
The good news is that you can take action RIGHT NOW by letting your elected officials know where you stand! We need you to tell the Senate to oppose the confirmation of Rep. Tom Price for HHS Secretary: www.bit.ly/RejectPrice. Then, encourage your family and friends to do the same!
Are you with us?
Urgent! There’s still time to tell the Senate to reject Rep. Tom Price!
Rep. Tom Price’s first confirmation hearing is scheduled for next Wednesday, January 18th. We need you to take action now and join the thousands of All* Above All supporters who’ve spoken out against this Trump nominee intent on interfering in our health decisions. Add your name: tell the Senate to reject Rep. Price’s nomination: bit.ly/RejectPrice.
His past record of punishing women and families includes voting to:
Repeal the Affordable Care Act
Defund Planned Parenthood
Ban abortion coverage
Now, raise your hand if you already feel victimized by the nomination of Rep. Tom Price for HHS Secretary.
That’s what we thought.
The good news is that you can take action RIGHT NOW by letting your elected officials know where you stand! We need you to tell the Senate to oppose the confirmation of Rep. Tom Price for HHS Secretary: www.bit.ly/RejectPrice. Then, encourage your family and friends to do the same!
Destiny Lopez, Co-Director of All* Above All, issued the following statement in response to President-Elect Donald Trump’s announcement that his nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services will be Representative Tom Price (R-GA).
“Price has voted for extreme bans on abortion care and coverage and vowed to end Obamacare. This nomination is yet another signal that Trump plans to make good on his promise to repeal Obamacare, defund Planned Parenthood, and punish women who have abortions by making the Hyde Amendment permanent. Trump has no mandate to take away women’s basic rights and we plan to fight these heinous proposals every step of the way.”
Want to speak out in support of the Affordable Care Act? Speaker Paul Ryan is conducting a phone survey on the health care law — call today to make your voice heard!
If you are redirected to voicemail or told the mailbox is full, there is another number to call: 202-225-3031. Show support for the ACA!
Want to speak out in support of the Affordable Care Act? Speaker Paul Ryan is conducting a phone survey on the health care law — call today to make your voice heard!
Suppose you have an unhinged neighbor who wants to burn down your house. You’d probably spend much of your time making sure that that doesn’t happen. Drafting plans for a megamansion you hope to build where your house once stood probably wouldn’t be a priority. But that seems to be the approach of some Democratic aspirants for the presidency, who spent big chunks of their recent debates arguing about details of costly “Medicare for All” plans that have no chance of becoming law. Our view.
For the last few years, a lot of people have expressed how much they miss President Obama, and I do miss some aspects of his personality and his presidency: an intelligent, affable, charismatic person who helped make marriage equality an acceptable idea for many, he signed the executive order for DACA. He invested significant political capital to enact the Iran nuclear deal, which staved off the threat of war with Iran. It was historically important to have a black person as president, too. Bin Laden was killed under his watch, so there’s that, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has some good aspects like providing protections for pre-existing conditions. He repealed Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell, too, and the stock market was far more stable in 2016 than it was in 2009.
However, there were plenty downsides to his presidency that we should consider. While he technically ended torture as an American policy, he increased drone bombing and bombed seven nations at a time in 2016 alone. He regime changed Libya illegally, leading to the country’s collapse, and attempted to regime change Syria in a fairly drawn-out, agonizing process. The Democratic Party lost Congress and countless state legislatures and governorships to Republicans under his watch, and he failed to leverage his movement for change after his election in 2008. I don’t miss his drive to enact the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a gift to corporations and a slap in the face to workers and democratic processes, either.
Moreover, I don’t miss him going easy on the Bush administration for committing war crimes or his expansion of the surveillance state or setting the precedent for killing American citizens without due process. He waited until the very last minute to intervene at Standing Rock, and he was behind almost 2 million deportations. He used the Espionage Act to crack down on journalists and leakers at an unprecedented level. He also failed to demand at the very least a public option in the ACA after endorsing a single payer system during the 2008 election. He made numerous corporatist executive appointments like Arne Duncan and Larry Summers. He let the big banks off the hook after the financial crisis. He proposed cuts to Social Security, and–relatedly–he had the tendency to negotiate from the center with Republicans who had no desire to negotiate in the first place. And while the stock market might have grown during his presidency, so did wealth inequality. Even though corporate profits soared, poverty barely decreased.
Obama began his presidency with the promise of transformational change. Eight years later, though, one could argue that any number of centrist Democrats could have replicated his legacy. Ultimately, I can understand why people miss him; I prefer Obama to Trump. I know people find his presidency inspiring, and I did, too, for a time. However, I also have no desire to romanticize the Obama administration. We need to look at his legacy soberly. If we do not, we will think that what he achieved is as good as we can get and that a return to Obama-era “normalcy” in 2020 and beyond will set the country on an acceptable track. It will not. America deserves better than the results of the Obama presidency.
Researcher, policy wonk, and New Yorker writer Atul Gawande had heard them all: Medicaid doesn’t work, driving down coverage rates will result in more deaths, insurance coverage doesn’t actually improve health or mortality, and on and on.
So he wanted to comb through the research himself to see what studies on the health effects of health insurance show. Together with resarchers Benjamin SommersandKatherine Baicker — who are two of the leading experts on this subject — Gawande just put out a review of that literature. Their analysis was published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, on the eve of the long-awaited release of the Senate health reform bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act.
The trio’s conclusions are pretty unequivocal.
“The bottom line,” Gawande told Vox, “is that if you’re passing a bill that cuts $1.2 trillion in taxes that have paid for health care coverage, there’s almost no way that does not end up terminating insurance for large numbers of people.”
He continued: “If you are doing that, then there’s clear evidence that you will be harming people. You will be hurting their access to care. You will be harming their health — their physical health and mental health. There will be deaths.
“As a doctor, I find this unconscionable.”
For every 300 to 800 people who get insurance, about one life is saved per year, they found. The cost to society is somewhere between $300,000 and $800,000 per life saved. “Other policies that save lives — for example, health worker safety protections and environmental regulations — cost closer to $7.6 million per life saved,” he said. That means health insurance is a pretty good deal.
It also means the debate about the repeal and replacement of Obamacare, and whatever health law, if any, comes next, is really a debate about what we value as a society and whether we consider these costs worthwhile.
