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ACA health insurance will cost the average person 75% more next year

(www.npr.org)
129 points geox | 1 comments | 18 Jul 25 13:21 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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brandonb ◴[18 Jul 25 14:06 UTC] No.44604783[source]▶
The ACA was originally designed as a "three-legged stool" of nondiscrimination (insurance companies can't charge higher rates to sick people), the individual mandate, and subsidies.

If you remove one of legs of the stool, the market becomes unstable and you see price spirals like this.

Jonathan Gruber (MIT econ professor, and one of the designers of the Affordable Care Act) gave a fairly detailed talk about how and why they designed the ACA the way they did, learning from a similar law in Massachusetts: https://youtu.be/2fTHqARiV_Q?si=SRC6Np-rjgUgAe4Z&t=679

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mystraline ◴[18 Jul 25 14:15 UTC] No.44604881[source]▶
Yep, the ACA was originally RomneyCare.

Mitt Romney took the plan from the Heritage foundation (yes, the conservative neocon think tank). Hard low-controls capitalist plan.

Heritage foundation made this plan after Hillary Clinton pushed universal healthcare in 1994, as first lady. Howls of 'death panels' were heard all over republican talking points and radio shows.

(The 'death panels' aka rationing was seen as bad for government to do. However, we see a new type of rationing, based upon how much patients cost, and then denying care. That lead to the UHC execution, then approving more procedures, then getting sued by shareholders for that. Personally, government death panels are preferred to capitalist death panels.)

Put simply: Obama passed republican legislation put forth by a republican governor and a republican thinktank, and was deemed a socialist. And now, the program is basically destroyed.

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Aunche ◴[18 Jul 25 14:33 UTC] No.44605069[source]▶
Romneycare wasn't really Republican , which was why it was it only passed in the overwhelmingly blue state of Massachusetts. Nixon signed OSHA, but nobody calls that Republican. The healthcare marketplace was proposed by the Heritage Foundation, but the state legislature added a lot of regulations and government assistance.
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1. schmidtleonard ◴[18 Jul 25 14:53 UTC] No.44605318[source]▶
Yes, we know. It's not truly Republican unless it leaves the poor to die in a corner of bootstraps-itis. However, at the time the Heritage Foundation was still wearing the mask of caring because they hadn't pushed Single Payer out of the Overton window yet. It's bad optics to admit that you want the poor to die in a corner, so they had to pretend to have a solution and assistance was a cornerstone of the solution they pretended to have. The mask is off now, but history is history: it was part of their proposal.