AMERICAN ECONOMY - HEALTHCARE

Another area of discontent by many with the current economy seems to be the health insurance ACA or Obamacare.  A problem has been that people want medical care, but they don't want to pay for it, and Republicans have gone along with this.

For example, President Reagan introduced a law that hospital emergency rooms must take all comers, whether they can pay or not.  I'm all for that, but he left it up to the hospitals to find a way to pay for it.  Thus paying for it was put on the shoulders of those who have health insurance.  A part of the ACA is called the Individual Mandate where everyone is required to have health insurance or pay a small fine.  This was a conservative approach (proposed by the conservative Heritage Foundation) to pay for the "free" emergency room costs.  And people have rebelled against it.  Their ire is such that it might decide an election, but I consider it unfair.

George W. Bush (Bush-43) worked hard to get through a drug benefit for Medicare (Medicare D), but he too didn't pay for it.

An attempt was made in Obamacare to pay for the benefits and nearly everybody rebels against paying for it.  There are objections to most of the plans to pay for it, including the tax on artificial limbs, the individual mandate, the company mandate and perhaps others.  Conservatives should applaud these attempts to pay for a medical plan that includes provisions for children up to 26 being on their parents medical plan and no exclusion for pre-existing conditions.

There was the plan in the ACA to have insurance companies bid against each other to provide health services, but this doesn't seem to work very well.  Most states did not go along with this and, in North Carolina where I live, there is only one company in the Obamacare plan.  Where is the competition?  North Carolina is one of the states that refused to set up their own plan.

The reason Republicans have so much trouble coming up with an alternative plan is that the ACA IS the conservative health plan.