Zohran Mamdani Wins the New York Mayoral Race

Just not having that legislation, letting employment & insurance decouple and a sane market for healthcare develop might easily be better than the ACA.

Yes it didn't get debated, but the formal debate stage of a bill is pretty late in the process these days. It's been theater at best for at least a century. The actual debating happens at the stage the HEART Act got to.

It got dropped because the Republicans won congress in the midterms and didn't actually want to change anything about health care; the HEART act was just what they came up with as a proposal if they were to be forced.

It was the republican plan for healthcare reform. They didn't want to reform healthcare, but when forced to, this was their plan. And it had been for years; the Heritage Foundation had been kicking the plan around since about 1989.

> It is also somewhat of a mischaracterization to call it a mandate for health insurance, it was much more narrowly focused covering catastrophic events.

That's not my read. Can you point to where in the draft text of the act that makes you say that?

> Some side notes. It was introduced by Lincoln Chafee, who then switched to the democratic party.

It was introduced by John Chafee, lifelong Republican.

And it was co-sponsored by Bob Dole (Senate Minority leader before becoming Majority leader the next year, and who would become the Presidential nominee in 1996), and had the support of Newt Gingrich, the Republican Leader of the House, and frankly the leader of the Republican party at the time.

It had broad Republican support including by Republican leadership.

> Heritage itself disowned it. The author later wrote, "I headed Heritage's health work for 30 years, and make no mistake: Heritage and I actively oppose the individual mandate, including in an amicus brief filed in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court."

Yeah, over night any Republican caught supporting the ACA would be metaphorically tarred and feathered by the party. That didn't mean that they didn't previously literally write the basis for the ACA, only that they were trying not to get blamed for it.

> There was also never any intent to have a punitive mandate, just a tax credit would be lost if for people who didn't buy insurance - more carrot than stick.

It literally called for a tax to enforce the individual mandate. Honestly more of a tax than the ACA which simply withheld tax refunds and at the time was still grey area as to whether or not that actually counted as a true tax.

> SEC. 1501. REQUIREMENT OF COVERAGE.

>

> (a) In General.--Effective January 1, 2005, each individual who is

> a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States shall be

> covered under--

> (1) a qualified health plan, or

> (2) an equivalent health care program (as defined in

> section 1601(7)).

> (b) Exception.--Subsection (a) shall not apply in the case of an

> individual who is opposed for religious reasons to health plan

> coverage, including an individual who declines health plan coverage due

> to a reliance on healing using spiritual means through prayer alone.

...

> ``SEC. 5000A. FAILURE OF INDIVIDUALS WITH RESPECT TO HEALTH INSURANCE.

> ``(a) General Rule.--There is hereby imposed a tax on the failure

> of any individual to comply with the requirements of section 1501 of

> the Health Equity and Access Reform Today Act of 1993.

I remember the parent of an ex of mine who was from NY tell me how lucky they were to have such incredible insurance and medical coverage when his wife got cancer because he only had to pay the first $100k/yr out of pocket and then the rest was “free”. It was repeatedly stressed to me what a rare thing this was and most people would be in such a worse position.

Anyways, long story short… They hit that limit by February and then spent the rest of the year getting denied by their insurance company until the day she died. But at least she was treated at “the best cancer hospital in the world”.

Just talk like a normal adult with your normal account and accept that maybe some people think your opinion is bad and you lose an internet point.

No we don't.

Sure, most of us used to like the USA a decade ago, but even back then it would have to be a right weirdo (everywhere has them) to think that highly of the USA.

If anything, I'm thinking of a healthcare cost comparison a while back, which said that for the cost of a single hip replacement in the USA, someone could fly from the USA to Spain, get it done privately, spend a year just living normally in Spain while recovering, break the other hip and get that replaced too, and still come out ahead.

(I never fact-checked that meme, what with me living in the UK at the time where the NHS supplies everything free at point of use unless you opt for private care that very few bother with; I'm now in Germany whose system is basically what the UK left fears is dangerously American and the US right fears is dangerously like the UK's NHS).

Or some of the stuff we hear about Americans considering the 2nd amendment to be a "god given right". No thanks: safety isn't where I can get armed up, it's where I don't need to.

But now? Trump's reelection has coincided with a lot of people changing from thinking of the place as "ally sharing our values" to just "a necessary partner", a downgrade to significantly less than you describe.

Sensible voices are a rare thing in this climate and it’s incredibly easy to stand out as one if you stop playing by a set of rules that were intentionally designed to make you fail in the first place.

Honestly I think the American exceptionalism shit is a cancer on the society and I find it incredibly hard to distinguish from the "Deutschland über alles" nonsense that the Germans went through. It’s just a fundamentally flawed way of looking at the world. It’s like a story a small child might believe but it really doesn’t stand up to even the most gentle of scrutiny.

Her primary theory is that it is built out of a combination of formidable and approachable traits/behaviors. Naturally, there is a fair amount of personal variability in what we perceive as "formidable" and "approachable", so what seems charismatic will vary from person to person; it's not fully objective.

But her theory is that this is why you can have people who are, objectively, more repugnant still read as charismatic, and people who are very pleasant read as less charismatic: the latter may be very approachable, but they don't have enough formidability to synthesize that into charisma, while the former add just enough approachability that they can.

I mean, even his supporters are constantly trying to "decipher" his messaging. He is constantly failing to recite basic facts correctly, and I don't mean the general lies, but you know stuff like basic geography/history knowledge and stuff. He doesn't come off as primary education pilled.

But sure, it's all fake news. He'll make the US great again and all. Any day now.

I wonder if you would challenge yourself the same with Mamdani or Obama, or somewhat unrelated: Hunter Biden.....