The Affordable Care Act is the centerpiece for Republicans willing to keep government funding in limbo.
The ACA has been maligned as the worst thing since the bubonic plague.
And yet, a majority of Americans look forward to its benefits. Poll after poll shows most Americans favor the health care act because it:
• Allows all Americans to have health insurance no matter their past or present health situation;
• Allows parents to keep their children on their health insurance up to age 26;
• Eliminates caps on health care expenditures;
• Provides tax credits for small businesses that carry coverage;
• Expands (ideally) Medicaid rolls so more low-income people can receive coverage;
• Closes the “doughnut hole” on prescription drugs for seniors enrolled in Medicare;
• Insists large employers provide health insurance to their employees, and
• Levels the fee schedule between men and women.
So who’s left not to like the new health coverage law?
Glaringly, big businesses that hire poorly paid employees, and those who consider the universal mandate an overreach of big government. As to the latter, the only way the country can afford coverage for all is that everyone participates. As for big business, there is no defense for companies who refuse to adequately provide for their employees.
Ask any health provider and they will know firsthand of patients who have died because they could not afford the necessary medicine or treatment to keep them alive. In 2013. In the United States.
Funding the Affordable Care Act consumes 1.3 percent of the U.S. budget. When it is fully implemented in 2014, it will consume 3.3 percent of the U.S. budget.
This is an ideological, not a budgetary, battle between Republican extremists and moderate Republicans. But if left to continue, the government shutdown will become both.
— Susan Lynn
Beliefs, not budget, behind impasse
