The greatest nation on earth can decide we don't want people dying in the streets, but we can't do anything about it but set out a jar at the hardware store and hope some Christians pick up the tab out of the kindness of their hearts.
Wow.
Actually, yes. This nation where people will give to an absolute stranger from whom they expect nothing back in hopes that by their giving they may reduce the suffering of another person. It is that very thing which has made us a leader in the world, the one who shows up to help when disaster strikes, that helps the lights go back on, provides medical care and drinking water and lifts people from despair to their feet.
That is what makes America truly great.
The ACA does not, because it is not only a bad program, it is a fraud.
It has been from day one. Those who were not covered by medicaid, medicare, or insurance who needed treatment to save their lives only had to pick up a phone and call the ambulance (or have someone else do it), or show up at the ER. They were treated. Insurance plans were cheaper and easier for employers to provide, simply because they did not have to cover as much. When the price went up because the Government decided what coverage people would have, those got dropped and employees hours cut to part time. Small businesses couldn't afford the tab, especially in the Obama, close it down, tax it to death, $5 gasoline economy. Many failed to grow, some just closed their doors. More people out of work, more who lost the health insurance they had, BECAUSE of a stupid law shoved down America's throat by Democrats operating behind closed doors.
How often are we told here, as Conservatives, that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and that we should butcher our principles on the altar of compromise? Yet there was no compromise in this law, post menopausal nuns had to pay for 'reproductive care' as part of their insurance, not just in the law, but upheld in COURT!--not just a violation of their religious belief, but an unnecessary coverage. No one in a free marketplace would demand they buy such coverage. They, obviously would not need it under anything short of truly miraculous circumstances, and then I think they would be able to trust in divine intervention to get down the home stretch.
Who got coverage who didn't have it?
The one number I have not seen for all the rubbish I have seen about obamacare is even an estimate of how many people who had had health insurance no longer do, directly as a result of this socialist program.
I am one who falls through the cracks.
Even so, I look at what was offered on the "exchanges" and for nearly five times what I had paid a year, I can get insurance which will cover me for contraceptives and prenatal care, which will make certain I can get a pap smear, see to it I can get addiction counseling, pay for pediatric care...et cetera---all things I DON"T NEED AS A GREAT GRANDFATHER--with a deductible nearly three times what I had before, and that deductible twice the average health care (total, by all payors) spending of my family in any given year. OR I CAN BE FINED for not having it, and That still doesn't get me so much as a tube of triple antibiotic ointment and a box of band aids.
In other words, what was rammed into the American people's collective orifice wasn't health care at all, just a bloated and unnecessary insurance program that 'covered' ailments which were unlikely at most, not happening with certainty at worst, and left more people without insurance which covered the problems they had assessed their likelihood of needing coverage for.
Surely the greatest nation on Earth can do better than that?
Oh wait, the free market was doing what it could already, within the strictures imposed by government, and doing fairly well. And for the first time in history, aside from the Churches, the Rotary Club, the Boy Scouts or a local charity auction the wonders of the world wide web had put that little jar on the counter at the hardware store out in view of the whole world, for all to see, to help out those who had fallen through the cracks.
Because with any government program, there are always cracks to fall through.
