Elizabeth Warren as a guest columnist for the MetroWest Daily News; (follow link to read more)
The fight is on — again. Mitt Romney, Scott Brown, and Republicans across this country are doubling down against President Obama’s health care reform law. Now that the Supreme Court has said that most of the new law passes constitutional muster, the Republicans are running for office pledging to repeal every aspect of the health care reforms.
For millions of people this isn’t a political issue, it’s a personal one. Their health depends on it.
Massachusetts has led the country in health care reform. Most of us — 98 percent — have health care coverage, and our state leads the country in tackling head-on the ever-growing costs of health care. That is why President Obama used our law as a model for health care reform. But the national Affordable Care Act adds some important elements that improve care even here in Massachusetts.
For seniors, health care reform means expanding Medicare coverage to pick up the costs of prescription drugs. As the donut hole closes, the average Massachusetts senior has so far saved about $650. But Mitt Romney, Scott Brown, and their fellow Republicans want to take that away.
For young people, health care reform means staying on their parents’ insurance plans until they are 26. So far, more than 20,000 young people here in Massachusetts have taken advantage of this. But Romney, Brown, and their fellow Republicans want to take that away.
For everyone, health care reform means access to preventive care like colonoscopies or mammograms without co-pays. Early detection can save both lives and money. In Massachusetts, 780,000 individuals have received such services. But Republicans want to take that away.
For anyone who develops cancer, a chronic illness, or any medical condition that can cost a staggering amount of money, health care reform means that their insurance company can’t set some arbitrary limit on lifetime coverage. Because of that, countless families will have more secure and stable health care. But Republicans want to take that away.
For small business owners who are struggling with rising health care costs, the federal reforms give tax breaks on insurance coverage. But Republicans want to take away that tax break for small businesses.
The Affordable Care Act is already helping families in the Commonwealth. Together, these reforms make families safer. Better health care coverage means more people will get preventive care — and that means catching serious problems earlier when outcomes are better and treatments are cheaper. Better health care coverage also means that when someone receives a bad diagnosis, the family won’t be crushed financially. And helping small businesses pay for health care premiums also means that they can compete against bigger businesses on a more level playing field.
Wouldn’t it be better if 26 year olds had jobs which paid enough so they could afford health insurance?
…it would be better if 26 year olds (or anyone else) didn’t have to rely on being employed to have health insurance. Of course, these things aren’t mutually exclusive anyway and job proposals have gone nowhere thanks to GOP obstruction in the Congress.
The fact that we insure our 26 year olds this way is a problem, not some great social step forward. 26 year olds should become adults producing enough to pay for their own insurance.
Even if there was single payer, these 26 year olds would have to pay for it one way or another.
they could afford it since every country that uses some form of it has half the cost we do. Their individual and technical care is also on a par with ours and in some cases exceeding it.
It’s not as easy as you think. 25 year olds who aren’t working or who don’t have a job that will cover insurance aren’t sitting home on their asses. They’re sending out hundreds of resumes and getting no calls back. This isn’t called the Great Recession for nothing.
My best friend — who was actually 26 at the time — was a Harvard research scientist when her department’s grant ran out and the shop was closed, so to speak.
Even as a highly skilled biochemist with an impeccable resume, living in one of the biotech hubs of the world, it took her almost a year to get a new job — and when she got a new job, it was a “temp” job at that, in which one of the biotech firms got her services for a 6 month trial in which they could fire her whenever they wanted.
Thankfully, she got a permanent job out of it and loves her work, but she’s one of the lucky ones.
Meanwhile, though, she went almost a year without health insurance, because she couldn’t afford COBRA and couldn’t get a job any sooner than she did — despite sending out countless resumes.
You need to walk your idiotic ‘aren’t they just lazy’ comments back. You clearly have little to no understanding of what the Great Recession has been like for young adults. It’s not a recession for twentysomethings, it’s a full-scale depression.
by suggesting 26 year olds shouldn’t get insurance through their parents, because ‘they should just get a job,’ you’re basically saying that if they get sick without insurance… because they didn’t have a job… their lives are worthless and they should get sick and die.
That is exactly what you’re advocating.
I didn’t say anything like that.
… is that people should be employed and buy. That plan inevitably leaves others out and makes unemployment suck way more than it already does. Your ‘people should just have jobs’ plan doesn’t cover those who absolutely will get sick. The logical consequence for no safety net for unemployed 26 year olds is to just let them get sick.
You guys are really desperate to get me to say something I didn’t.
It’s a logical consequence of what you’re advocating. What’s interesting here is your silence on the logical consequence other than “I didn’t say that”. You either agree and offer no reasoning why the consequence is ok, or you disagree and don’t offer up any reasoning.
It would be better if, in 2010, the newly-elected GOP congress had said to Barack Obama and the nation “how can we help?”.
Instead, they’ve spent the last two years doing EVERYTHING IN THEIR POWER to sabotage anything Barack Obama attempts. Yes, it would be better if 26 year olds had jobs that paid enough so that they could afford health insurance. That’s why today’s GOP should be summarily dismissed.
Democrats today are a shell of the alternative presented and blown out in 1984. Have the Democrats even passed a budget? What are they for? They can’t even agree because Obama’s ideas carry so little weight even in his own party. Hiring a bunch more teachers and firemen? That’s really going to turn the economy around?
It will get the unemployment rate below 8% and prepare students, you know the ones you will have to rely on in the future for your needs, to achieve personal success that hopefully will benefit us all.
What you’re proposing to do is take a bunch of money employers use to train their 26 year old workers for a project six months away and put it into students who are 12 years away from applying it to “personal success”, by which I assume you mean making money.
I would think, if your purpose was to improve the economy for the 26 year olds, you would keep the money in the private system. Perhaps you are more interested in improving the personal success of teachers, and the 26 year olds can be damned.
That Mondale/Ferraro comparison is the single stupidest comment I’ve heard all day, which is saying something because I was around very young children for a good portion of the day.
Pluck historical comparisons out of your bum much, seascraper?
you really sound like you just hate other people. Social Darwinism FTW!
Great mods
but just because I’m a liberal who comments on a liberal website, I do not have the power of a mod.
Under your other screen name, yesterday?
I’m battling it out with his other reader
but it can’t cover for the fact that you’re arguing that unemployed twenty somethings who get sick and (if their body can’t cure it on their own) die.
Mondale and Ferraro lost. Obama and Warren are odds-on to win.
It’s Romney that looks like a younger version of John McCain, while Scott Brown has Dan Quayle down pat. Too bad Mitt can’t pick him.
didn’t have to depend on their employer to have insurance, like neo-serfs.
But if they have those jobs, no matter how miserably their employee gets to treat them because there are no other jobs available, you better believe they’re clinging to them.
…shows how broken the system is. It’s a kludge.
…especially the one about his friend in the biochem field because it makes me feel ever so slightly better about my own situation. One nitpick about Romney not being able to pick Brown. He technically could as the Constitution does not forbid candidates from being from the same state, just that electors from that state can’t vote for both. MA’s electors are likely to be Dems anyway and if a Romney/Brown ticket did win MA all Romney would have to do is switch his voter registration to one of his non-MA residences before the electors actually meet in December and problem solved.
Actually I didn’t realize it was that low, but I do know it includes voters who registered R ages ago and never bothered to change despite their views being more in line with Ed Brooke than any of the current crowd. Then again, I know a few Dems who certainly would be more comfortable at a Tea Party rally than a DSC meeting so maybe it’s a wash.
Are evidence of the extreme pressure Republicans in Massachusetts are under in this cycle. They are a very valuable barometer. As to the substance of the arguments, they are as devoid of reality as most Republican arguments. For which, of course, the Party is not to be blamed: dissembling and surreality-based arguments are the only way they can keep their coalition of the very wealthy and the deluded together.
Incidentally, several comments were deleted on this thread for rules violations. Civility is indeed considered extremely important on BMG. 🙂
I think that would get her a lot of votes.
I really need to indicate that more often. Too many thick people here.
Warren could get a lot more traction if she were to talk about Medicare and what may happen to Medicare if republicans take control of the Senate – instead of debating the affordable care act. With a slim majority in the Senate the republicans could enact proposals like those already passed by the House – making Medicare into a voucher program. Cuts to the Medicare program will come up for debate immediately after the election, regardless of who wins. A lot of voters who have mixed feelings about the affordable care act are very strongly opposed to cuts in Medicare.