219
votes
Why are so many Americans against Obamacare?
These are a few reasons why each group is against Obamacare.
With individuals
— It requires nearly all Americans to get health insurance.
Some do not think that the government should force citizens ...
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151
votes
Why hasn't competition between health insurance providers led to lower prices for consumers?
What the other answers fail to address is a fundamental flaw in capitalism for certain types of business:
Your average human places their continued survival above all other priorities.
This concept ...
- 17.2k
135
votes
Accepted
Why is COVID-19 prompting such wide scale action versus other infectious diseases?
The short answer to this question is that 2019-nCoV is new. All the other diseases you mentioned are known quantities: epidemiologists have a good idea how they behave, how they spread, what is likely ...
- 67.7k
109
votes
Accepted
Why hasn't competition between health insurance providers led to lower prices for consumers?
How free is the US health care market really?
The reason that free competition has not made health care in the US cheaper is that free competition has in fact been severely restricted for decades. As ...
- 1,022
104
votes
During the COVID-19 pandemic, why is it claimed that the US President is making a trade-off of human lives for the economy?
I can't speak for Rebecca's judgement in interpreting those words of Trump, but for instance a NYT article says:
“Our people want to return to work,” Mr. Trump declared Tuesday on Twitter, adding, “...
- 144k
69
votes
Why is the United States voluntarily funding the World Health Organization 60 times more than China?
Partial frame challenge if you like. Fox News has chosen an interesting year to highlight. As you can see, US voluntary contributions have varied a lot; only $112 million in 2011 (and similar in 2014) ...
- 144k
68
votes
Why is COVID-19 prompting such wide scale action versus other infectious diseases?
Respectfully, I think complacency is misplaced.
Malaria is locale-specific, and doesn't really affect rich first world countries. While it certainly could receive better funding, it is also easy to ...
67
votes
Accepted
What is the rationale behind delaying the imposition of more radical Covid-19 countermeasures?
Specifically with reference to the UK, an article in the Guardian reports that
Experts have warned about the risk that if tough measures are taken too soon, “fatigue” may set in, prompting the ...
- 21.1k
65
votes
Accepted
Why does having a soda tax seem so hard to achieve in the US?
The short answer is because complaining is louder than passive agreement. It often doesn't matter if a bill is popular if there's a vocal objection to it by a sufficient minority. The objection can ...
- 3,666
64
votes
Why are so many Americans against Obamacare?
Tax cuts
I could understand a candidate promising tax cuts and then after being elected scrapping Obamacare to pay for them.
Obamacare repeal includes tax cuts:
.9% Medicare tax surcharge on high ...
- 89.3k
59
votes
Accepted
How does Obamacare save lives?
In a nutshell, the income threshold necessary to qualify for Medicaid (the poverty line prior to Medicaid expansion) is lower than the amount of income needed to pay for the medical care that Medicaid ...
- 72.9k
55
votes
Accepted
What medical costs burden the military enough to warrant banning all transgender people?
Medical
If your question is:
Would the military be obliged to pay for the transition?
Then the answer is yes. Prior to Donald Trump's tweets, the US Military had promulgated guidance on how ...
- 10.2k
51
votes
Accepted
Why are Democrats mostly focused on increasing healthcare spending, rarely mentioning any proposals for decreasing the costs of healthcare services?
This is a bit of a phony question on several levels.
To answer, they absolutely HAVE emphasized the healthcare cost savings.
First of all, you claim that they focus on "increased healthcare spending,...
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50
votes
Accepted
Why doesn’t the Republican majority in the United States Senate reintroduce their heathcare legislation?
To pass, a bill needs to pass in the House and Senate and be signed by the President. Since the last election, Democrats took control of the House, so while the Obamacare repeal bills that failed in ...
- 25.9k
50
votes
How is the 'right to healthcare' reconciled with the freedom of medical staff to choose where and when they work?
There are two different aspects to this apparent contradiction. When a government signs up to a human rights convention which guarantees a right to healthcare, it needs to pass domestic legislation to ...
- 106k
50
votes
Accepted
What do Libertarians mean when they say that ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), in the long run, leads to fewer people with disabilities employed?
I'll try to give a more concrete example. As with @bharring's answer, I am giving the argument, not endorsing it.
Alice is looking to hire a computer programmer. Bob is a fully qualified Deaf computer ...
- 3,049
48
votes
Why are Democrats mostly focused on increasing healthcare spending, rarely mentioning any proposals for decreasing the costs of healthcare services?
Your question seems to be equivalent to: why don't Democrats start acting like (small-government) Republicans when it comes to healthcare? Because that's not their idea of healthcare, or rather it's ...
- 144k
48
votes
Why hasn't competition between health insurance providers led to lower prices for consumers?
I place the blame on the fees charged by drug makers, doctors, nurses, and hospitals. The market for healthcare does not have the "supply and demand" dynamic. Patients just have to "pay-up".
After a ...
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47
votes
Why are so many Americans against Obamacare?
There's a couple of other factors in play here as well
Obama intentionally lied about the effects of the bill
A politician lying is nothing new, but your typical political lie is of the statistical ...
- 45.6k
47
votes
Why is COVID-19 prompting such wide scale action versus other infectious diseases?
Future potential
For a new disease, it doesn't matter how many infected or dead people there have been as of now, it matters how much infected or dead people can we expect in the future if we don't ...
- 5,619
47
votes
During the COVID-19 pandemic, why is it claimed that the US President is making a trade-off of human lives for the economy?
Trump is weighing the economy vs lives saved. That is his job
No leader wants to be in the position Trump is in. For instance, it has been stated that Winston Churchill knew in advance of a bombing ...
- 45.6k
44
votes
Why restrict private health insurance?
Universal health insurance which is affordable for everyone can only work when the healthy people subsidize the people with chronic health problems.
If you have a completely unregulated private ...
- 74.7k
44
votes
Why are Democratic presidential candidates promising free health care for Illegal Immigrants?
Skeptical answer
One could give a skeptic's answer for any form of this question in the context of a political campaign: presumably the candidates feel this answer will be more likely to get them ...
- 3,928
41
votes
How and why would (Bernie Sanders’) Medicare for All abolish private health insurance in the US?
Jeff Lambert has found the Sanders proposal.
SEC. 107. PROHIBITION AGAINST DUPLICATING COVERAGE.
(a) IN GENERAL.—Beginning on the effective date
described in section 106(a), it shall be unlawful for—
...
- 144k
40
votes
Why does having a soda tax seem so hard to achieve in the US?
Government fiat, by design, infringes on the liberties of it's citizens. Frequently such infringement is desirable or at least acceptable: enforcement of property rights, maintenance of public ...
- 8,657
36
votes
What is the rationale behind delaying the imposition of more radical Covid-19 countermeasures?
Shutting down schools, banning large gatherings and pushing people to do home office has a massive economic cost. Of course you never get the exact numbers on either death or cost but essentially you ...
- 6,727
35
votes
What is a "major country" as named in Bernie Sanders' Healthcare debate answers?
Bernie Sanders tweeted the graphic below in April of 2019, it was accompanied by the following text (emphasis mine):
Every other major country has made health care a right for all. Anyone who says ...
JJJ♦
- 38.9k
34
votes
Accepted
Why did UK NHS pay for homeopathic treatments?
Evidence based medicine really only dates from the 1980's. In the UK that era was dominated by the Thatcher government, which valued freedom of choice and decentralization. Having the NHS act more ...
- 3,674
33
votes
Why are so many Americans against Obamacare?
One reason might be that many Americans apparently did not know that the vilified Obamacare is what is paying for their health insurance.
- 411
33
votes
Why are so many Americans against Obamacare?
This answer is meant to supplement others here with some further reasons why conservatives are against the Obamacare system.
Obama falsely promised the public some critical things about the system ...
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