Flawed though it may turn out to be, Obamacare, as the Affordable Care Act is popularly known, could fundamentally change the relationship between working Americans and their government. This could pose an existential threat to the small-government credo that has defined the G.O.P. for four decades.

jerseyhoya wrote:The average American is pretty dumb, and 50% of Americans are dumber than the average American. The more complicated the poll question, the more confusing and less instructive the response data will be.

The law is imperfect. It has dozens of complicated, interlocking parts. Half of Americans say they don’t understand how it will affect them and their family. Still, the law has many provisions that are likely to improve life for millions of Americans, including a big portion of what we know as the working middle class.

Almost two-thirds of uninsured Americans have a full-time job, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. A further 16 percent are employed part time.

The Department of Health and Human Services recently estimated that nearly six in 10 uninsured Americans could qualify for health coverage in the insurance market for less than $100 per person per month.

According to an analysis by the Urban Institute, 28 million Americans would gain health insurance under Obamacare. Of these, eight million earn more than twice the poverty level of $47,100 for a family of four. A majority of those would get a subsidy to buy a plan.

As it turns out, the core Tea Party demographic — working white men between the ages of 45 and 64 — would do fairly well under the law.
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This could justify conservative Republicans’ greatest fears.

In 1994, when President Bill Clinton took an earlier stab at a health care overhaul, the conservative thinker Irving Kristol published a manifesto about why Republicans had to stop it.

“Passage of the Clinton health plan in any form would be disastrous,” Mr. Kristol wrote, italicizing for emphasis. “It would guarantee an unprecedented federal intrusion into the American economy. Its success would signal the rebirth of centralized welfare-state policy at the moment that such policy is being perceived as a failure in other areas.”

Two decades after Mr. Clinton’s ultimately failed attempt, Obamacare poses the same sort of threat.

Even Americans who say they dislike the law actually like many of its components. Nearly three-quarters approve of giving financial help to poor and moderate-income Americans to buy health insurance. Two-thirds approve of barring insurance companies from denying coverage because of somebody’s medical history. Three-quarters favor letting children stay on their parents’ insurance until they are 26.

Until now, social welfare programs in the United States have exhibited a “big hole,” Professor Skocpol said, consisting of nonpoor working-age Americans and their children. Obamacare closes a big chunk of it.

jerseyhoya wrote:11 Pieces of Obamacare Conventional Wisdom That Shouldn’t Be So Conventional

jerseyhoya wrote:What?

Anyway, Shutdown Could Last Weeks - good to see House and Senate leadership staff getting along so well. Bah, they're like petty high schoolers.

jerseyhoya wrote:11 Pieces of Obamacare Conventional Wisdom That Shouldn’t Be So Conventional

Roger Dorn wrote:What's most alarming to me is the response, or I should say "lack of response", by the majority of people in this country. I've seen countless numbers of posts on social media over the last 1.5 days saying things along the lines of "hearing about government stuff is boring I don't care!" I think this point is solidified when you look at where web traffic was going yesterday and at the top of the list was Amanda Bynes and Miley Cyrus.

People in this country aren't going to wake up until they dont have these distractions to turn to. It's really disturbing to me that large amounts of people aren't on the streets demanding better government that actually does their job.