alt Hacker NewsI would argue that the Affordable Care Act was nothing more then a common sense consumer protection legislation for a consumer market that should not exist in the first place.
The fact that it was this big and this hard to get and with this many compromises against consumer interest, speaks more of the disfunction of the USA government at the time then it does about the value of that legislation.
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computerdork • today at 5:11 PM
Maybe a bit of both sides in my opinion. It shows the dysfunction of the government and our healthcare system, but it was also practical and helpful to the those left out of the healthcare system.
This is a deep misunderstanding. Socialized healthcare has been a fight for almost 100 years. What you find "common sense" has been an intense, almost existential fight, up there with slavery, universal suffrage, civil rights, prohibition, and abortion.
This fight not about the dysfunction of the USA government at the time, it's about a fight over the structure of the USA as it was founded. There have always been strong political forces trying to dismantle all "common sense" features of the welfare state, who have convinced the masses to vote against their own interests out of the American Dream of rugged individualism.
This is in contrast to the unique decentralized communitarian history of America with community activism, charities, NGOs and nonprofits filling the social holes between the government and private enterprise. The current healthcare system evolved out of this, and gradually received more patchwork of private and government involvement (Medicare/medicaid, and the ACA) which why it's an expensive mess. Most European countries post WW2 had a chance to design something more efficient and didn't centralized insurance as a threat to liberty.