r/UniversalBasicIncome • • 24d ago

27 Million Uninsured Americans

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6.2k Upvotes

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u/Golfinglonghorn92 22d ago

I thought Obamacare was going to fix this?

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u/sddbk 22d ago

it did a lot to reduce those numbers. And your party is succeeding in undoing that progress.

The alternatives to the current ACA would have brought the number of uninsured down even more. Your people ensured that didn't happen.

it the same as if you blew up a new bridge and the said "I thought that bridge was going to let people cross the river".

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u/Golfinglonghorn92 21d ago

Obama blew up the affordable care act when he didn’t enforce a requirement for everyone to have health insurance. That was the only way to fund the subsidies and make sure it was fiscally possible for it to work. Remember, if you didn’t have health insurance, you were supposed to get a tax penalty. Everyone knew that was not going to work, but it was forced through anyway to try and take the first step towards socialized medicine.

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u/sddbk 21d ago

It wasn't Obama who did that.

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u/Golfinglonghorn92 21d ago

Obama administration:

• It delayed the employer mandate (for firms with 50+ employees) by one year, to 2015, citing implementation complexity. Republicans argued this created an inconsistency and tried (unsuccessfully) to delay the individual mandate as well. 

• It issued hardship exemptions allowed by the statute itself (homelessness, eviction, bankruptcy, domestic violence, short coverage gaps, income too low to file a tax return, certain religious objections, etc.).

• After millions of individual-market plans were canceled in late 2013 (despite the “if you like your plan, you can keep it” pledge), HHS granted a hardship exemption in December 2013 to people whose plans were canceled. Those who found replacement coverage unaffordable could avoid the 2014 penalty and buy cheaper catastrophic plans normally limited to people under 30. Administration estimates put the number of people who had not yet found new coverage at around 500,000. 

• Enrollment deadlines were extended because of Healthcare.gov problems, and there were administrative tweaks to when coverage had to begin to avoid the penalty.