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FrenchieCat

(68,867 posts)
Sun Mar 13, 2016, 09:51 PM Mar 2016

Only One President was truly successful at it; and it was the Black One!

Some Americans currently believe that instituting Single Payer Health Reform is absolutely doable, and won't be that difficult if only we would elect Bernie Sanders President. However, it should be noted that many presidents before Barack Obama sought Health care reform and they either gave it an half ass try, got something but not what was original envisioned, or simply barely tried! In fact, President Barack Obama’s health care law has been one of the most polarizing aspects of his presidency, with Republicans criticizing it at every turn.

As we speak, the GOP plan is to repeal it in the first 100 days of a New Republican Presidency.

WHO WOULD BE MOST AFFECTED BY A REPEAL?
Millenniums currently covered under their parents policies up to the age of 27, those with pre-existing conditions including children, people living under the poverty line in states that have enacted Federal Medicaid funding provision or their own federally funded State plan, those who currently receive subsidies even though they may not be under the poverty line.

Without subsidies to purchase insurance, many people would immediately lose coverage because they could no longer afford it. Others could be kicked off their plans without Obamacare's protections for people with preexisting conditions. "You would just have an awful lot of people be uninsured, and then that ripples back through the health care system," Jost says. "Basically, you would have a lot of people die because they couldn't get health care."

This is just the tip of the iceberg. A roll back of the Medicaid expansion would cause millions more Americans to lose their coverage and create mayhem for state governments. Without the ACA to plug the so-called "doughnut hole" for prescription drugs, seniors would see their drug bills go up.

It would cost millions of Americans their coverage, but full repeal by Congress would be even more devastating. Health care experts describe a state of complete chaos were the ACA to simply disappear from the books.

By now, the ACA has so fundamentally changed the health care system that repeal would not simply return the country to its pre-Obamacare state. The Urban Institute estimates that just rolling back subsidies for people in states with federally run exchanges—the Supreme Court scenario—would create such turmoil in the private insurance market that the number of people in 2016 buying private plans on their own would be substantially lower (just over 1 million) than if the ACA had never been implemented (about 7.3 million). In other words, destroying the exchanges would be much worse than if they were never implemented at all. Returning to the way things were is no longer possible.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/01/what-would-happen-if-gop-actually-repealed-obamacare



WHY DID PREVIOUS ATTEMPTS FAIL? Political naivete in failing to deal with the interest group opposition, ideology, historical experience, and the overall political context played key roles in shaping how these groups identified and expressed their interests is the most common answer.

• Theodore Roosevelt- Endorsed the idea of expanding health insurance to all, but only as as a presidential candidate for the Bull Moose Party in 1912, not during his earlier term in the White House.

• Franklin D. Roosevelt- Called for a social insurance system in his radio address of 1943, that would extend "from the cradle to the grave," and he was preparing a program and a speech on national health insurance at the time of his death. In the midst of World War II, Roosevelt never pursued it in earnest, as he had proposed only a speech, at the very end of his last term in office.

• Harry Truman- Wrote a message to Congress saying that "the health of American children, like their education, should be recognized as a definite public responsibility." According to the Truman Library, "the most controversial aspect of the plan was the proposed national health insurance plan." It called for "the creation of a national health insurance fund to be run by the federal government. This fund would be open to all Americans, but would remain optional. Participants would pay monthly fees into the plan, which would cover the cost of any and all medical expenses that arose in a time of need. The government would pay for the cost of services rendered by any doctor who chose to join the program."

The American Medical Association attacked the plan, characterizing the bill as "socialized medicine." Truman ultimately abandoned the effort after the outbreak of the Korean War

• Dwight Eisenhower- Reacting to Democratic proposals for single-payer health care, he proposed an expansion of care within the model of private-sector medicine. Eisenhower’s approach was to make permanent the tax break for employer-sponsored health coverage (which remains today) in order to encourage as many Americans as possible to get covered through their workplace. For those who were not employed, Eisenhower proposed that the government "reinsure" private insurance companies to encourage them to add less profitable populations to their coverage rolls.

The Eisenhower plan was relatively "timid," it nonetheless sparked the AMA’s opposition, which helped kill it in Congress.

• John F. Kennedy- Voiced strong support for legislation that would ultimately become Medicare. On May 20, 1962, he held a televised rally to push the proposal at a packed Madison Square Garden in New York City. (The American Journal of Public Health later noted that hours later, the AMA rented the empty hall to film a rebuttal by its president, without showing the empty seats.) But he died before the legislation could come to fruition.)

the “Health Security Act”—was a universal single-payer plan, with a national health budget, no consumer cost-sharing, and was to be financed through payroll taxes.

• Lyndon Johnson- Technically, Johnson never sought full universal health care, but this is the President who signed Medicare and Medicaid into law. That was a BFD! This wasn't universal care for everybody, but universal care for large subsets of the population.

• Richard Nixon- Offered separate proposals to expand health insurance to all, or nearly all, Americans. Generally speaking, they involved employer mandates to provide health insurance, supplemented by subsidies for poorer Americans. His Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan (CHIP) called for universal coverage, voluntary employer participation, and a separate program for the working poor and the unemployed, replacing Medicaid.
Requiring employers to contribute 65% of the premium cost was controversial, but fundamental to the plan’s
financing.

"I shall propose a sweeping new program that will assure comprehensive health-insurance protection to millions of Americans who cannot now obtain it or afford it, with vastly improved protection against catastrophic illnesses," he said in 1974.

The 1974 effort gained some traction in Congress but faltered as Nixon became consumed by scandal.

"Had it not been for his destruction as a result of the Watergate affair, legislation might well have passed during his presidency," said Princeton University health care historian Paul Starr, the author of Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle over Health Care Reform.

• Gerald Ford: Endorsed Nixon’s second proposal, but it didn’t get far on his brief watch.

• Jimmy Carter. Proposed "a step-by-step plan to achieve universal coverage," Starr said. "It came relatively late in his first term, and it was too weak to satisfy (Democratic Sen.) Ted Kennedy and many other Democrats." Carter’s efforts were "halfhearted," said Brown University political scientist James Morone, co-author of The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office from Roosevelt to Bush.

• Ronald Reagan - Signed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which requires hospitals to serve patients in urgent need, and the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, or COBRA, which allows individuals to keep paying for coverage if they lose their insurance. In addition, with almost no support from his own cabinet, Reagan added catastrophic care to Medicare toward the end of his presidency, though the provision was later repealed.

• George H.W. Bush-
Worried about the Democrats getting traction with health care in a 1991 Senate special election, sent a plan to congress. "Bush didn't like the issue, but he had a really good health team that put together a pretty good republican proposal," Morone said.

• Bill Clinton - In a process spearheaded by First Lady Hillary Clinton -- sought to pass a major overhaul of the health care system that would have aimed for universal coverage. Even though the Democrats controlled Congress at the time, the plan did not win enactment.

Clinton’s plan, the Health Security Act, called for universal coverage, employer and individual mandates,
competition between private insurers, and was to be regulated by government to keep costs down. Under managed
competition private insurers and providers would compete for the business of groups of businesses and individuals
in what were called “health-purchasing alliances”. Every American would have a “health security card".

The "Health Security Express" was a bus tour that started the end of July 1994. It involved supporters of President Clinton's national health care reform. Several buses leaving from different points in the United States, such as Portland, Oregon, and Boston, Mass crossed the country and stopped in many cities along their way to their final destination at the White House in Washington, DC on August 3, 1994. During these stops, each of the bus riders would talk about their personal experiences, health care disasters and why they felt it was important for all Americans to have health insurance.[41] When the Health Security Express bus tour ended, all of the riders were greeted by President Clinton and the First Lady on the White House South lawn for a rally on Wednesday, August 3, 1994, which was broadcast all over the world by many international networks including C-SPAN.

The opposition was effectively organized and the divided Democratic majority in Congress could
not muster enough votes to pass a bill. However, incremental reform was not dead. In 1997, with a Republican
Congress and bipartisan support, the Children’s Health Insurance Program was enacted, building on the Medicaid
program to provide health coverage to more low-income children.

• George W. Bush- Pushed for and signed the expansion of Medicare to include prescription drug coverage, which ended up being a poison pill to Medicare spending.


If you ask me, based on what we can see from our history...we need to build on Pres. Barack's achievement, while praying that we stay in the White House.



Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_health_care_reform_in_the_United_States
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/sep/05/julian-castro/julian-castro-says-seven-presidents-barack-obama-s/
http://www.pnhp.org/facts/a-brief-history-universal-health-care-efforts-in-the-us
https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/7871.pdf



8 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Only One President was truly successful at it; and it was the Black One! (Original Post) FrenchieCat Mar 2016 OP
What you can see from the history is that Democrats rejected several times plans similar to the ACA. PoliticAverse Mar 2016 #1
Congressional Democrats certainly did.... FrenchieCat Mar 2016 #4
Lyndon B Johnson --> Medicare nt msongs Mar 2016 #2
He's listed.... FrenchieCat Mar 2016 #3
President Obama risked his political life, career, legacy, to do the right thing. Jackie Wilson Said Mar 2016 #7
Yeah...he didn't have the votes. FrenchieCat Mar 2016 #8
Thanks for the great history lesson, Frenchie Cat! BlueMTexpat Mar 2016 #5
You are welcome! FrenchieCat Mar 2016 #6

FrenchieCat

(68,867 posts)
4. Congressional Democrats certainly did....
Sun Mar 13, 2016, 10:08 PM
Mar 2016

I'm sure some of the reasons being that they were conservative Democrats. That's what happened to the Public Option via Sen. Max Baucus.

FrenchieCat

(68,867 posts)
3. He's listed....
Sun Mar 13, 2016, 10:07 PM
Mar 2016

• Lyndon Johnson- Technically, Johnson never sought full universal health care, but this is the President who signed Medicare and Medicaid into law. That was a BFD! This wasn't universal care for everybody, but universal care for large subsets of the population.

Jackie Wilson Said

(4,176 posts)
7. President Obama risked his political life, career, legacy, to do the right thing.
Mon Mar 14, 2016, 11:55 AM
Mar 2016

He didn't go far enough, it should have been universal or public option (can argue whether he had the votes, probably didn't), but he went far enough to outrage millions of Americans who were angry that he was the one helping them.

If you ask the average person who thinks they dislike ACA do they want to go back to preexisting conditions policies or limits on payouts, etc., they will say no, and often they may not realize ACA is why those things have changed.

But then if you ask them what is their main goal, it wont be jobs or cleaner air or water, it will be to harm the legacy of the president. Wont come out in those exact words, but it is all they think about, seems to me.



We simply have racism in this country that is so strong, so deep, that it cant be resolved at this time, too soon.




BlueMTexpat

(15,348 posts)
5. Thanks for the great history lesson, Frenchie Cat!
Sun Mar 13, 2016, 10:55 PM
Mar 2016

And kudos to President Obama for enacting the Affordable Care Act. That was indeed a BFD!

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