sanantone Wrote:As a black person, if I had to choose pre-1964 America vs. post-1964 America, post-1964 America would win hands down. It makes me raise an eyebrow when people say that we were kinder to our neighbors when we had God more in our lives and schools when Americans were absolutely brutal to each other. It disturbs me to read how people so easily forget the oppression of minorities and women as if it didn't matter.

sklineho Wrote:As to the thread itself:

The biggest problem I have though is this: The ACA WAS passed, legitimately (even if you don't agree with it, no rules were broken). It was upheld by the Supreme Court. Now a minority in Congress decided that the democratic process shouldn't matter.

dposborne Wrote:Not that I am taking sides here (I don't really get into much politics anymore since my doctor said its actually bad for my blood pressure), but no matter how much we dislike what the "GOP" or even what the "Dems" did recently they didn't break any rules doing it... They actually used the democratic process to aid in their agendas... If you step back and look at the whole picture, the GOP "legitimately" turned down a budget bill, wrote their own and the DEMS "legitimately" turned down that bill and decided to rewrite another. And as we all know this happened several times... The reasons for why this happened are superfluous...

Eric Stern, at Salon.com Wrote:I happened to turn on the Hannity show on Fox News last Friday evening. “Average Americans are feeling the pain of Obamacare and the healthcare overhaul train wreck,” Hannity announced, “and six of them are here tonight to tell us their stories.” Three married couples were neatly arranged in his studio, the wives seated and the men standing behind them, like game show contestants. […]

But none of it smelled right to me. Nothing these folks were saying jibed with the basic facts of the Affordable Care Act as I understand them. I understand them fairly well; I have worked as a senior adviser to a governor and helped him deal with the new federal rules.

I decided to hit the pavement. I tracked down Hannity’s guests, one by one, and did my own telephone interviews with them.

First I spoke with Paul Cox of Leicester, N.C. He and his wife Michelle had lamented to Hannity that because of Obamacare, they can’t grow their construction business and they have kept their employees below a certain number of hours, so that they are part-timers.

Obamacare has no effect on businesses with 49 employees or less. But in our brief conversation on the phone, Paul revealed that he has only four employees. Why the cutback on his workforce? “Well,” he said, “I haven’t been forced to do so, it’s just that I’ve chosen to do so. I have to deal with increased costs.” What costs? And how, I asked him, is any of it due to Obamacare? There was a long pause, after which he said he’d call me back. He never did.

There is only one Obamacare requirement that applies to a company of this size: workers must be notified of the existence of the “healthcare.gov” website, the insurance exchange. That’s all.

Eric Stern Wrote:It’s true that we don’t know for sure whether certain ills conservatives have warned about will occur once Obamacare is fully enacted. For example, will we truly have the same freedom to choose a physician that we have now? Will a surplus of insured patients require a scaling back (or “rationing,” as some call it) of provided healthcare services? Will doctors be able to spend as much time with patients? These are all valid, unanswered questions. The problem is that people like Sean Hannity have decided to answer them now, without evidence. Or worse, with fake evidence.

sanantone Wrote:Most of the people I've encountered who oppose ACA either lie about the requirements or don't understand them. There have been many polls done on the individual components of ACA and most people like them except for the mandate.