Letter: This is why Republicans can't find a replacement for Obamacare

[Benton]

(01-16-2017, 01:12 PM)michaelsean Wrote: Some people may have trotted it out, but obviously most didn't want it.   And where were the Dems that whole time?  Surely they would have supported it since it's so awesome.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich/2013/1028/The-irony-of-Republican-disapproval-of-Obamacare

That's a pretty good article on things. It's from a few years ago, but nothing's really changed on the roots of ACA or support.

Quote:[/url]
For as many years Democrats tried to graft healthcare onto Social Security and Medicare, and pay for it through the payroll tax. But Republicans countered that any system must be based on private insurance and paid for with a combination of subsidies for low-income purchasers and a requirement that the younger and healthier sign up.

...

In February 1974, Republican President Richard Nixon proposed, in essence, today’s Affordable Care Act. Under Nixon’s plan all but the smallest employers would provide insurance to their workers or pay a penalty, an expanded Medicaid-type program would insure the poor, and subsidies would be provided to low-income individuals and small employers. Sound familiar?



....

Thirty years later a Republican governor, Mitt Romney, made Nixon’s plan the law in Massachusetts. Private insurers couldn’t have been happier although many Democrats in the state had hoped for a public system.

In 1989, Stuart M. Butler of the conservative Heritage Foundation came up with a [url=http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/06/28/individual-health-care-insurance-mandate-has-long-checkered-past/]plan that would “mandate all households to obtain adequate insurance.”

Basically, Dems (mostly) wanted workers to get taxed like Social Security of FICA. You pay a couple dollars, you can take part in the government's insurance plan. Don't want to? Then just like SS, you can use the free market to get supplemental insurance.

Republicans (mostly) wanted workers to have to pay on the free market to get insurance. Don't want to? Pay a penalty they can use in the GF.

Obamacare tried to hybrid the two. Workers pay for insurance on the free market and offset it with tax rebates.