Having employee provided plans tax deductible and having plans purchased by individuals not tax deductible is bad. Not allowing foreign competition in health care, i.e. final radiology reads can not be done on foreign soil, is bad. Passing legislation by bait and switch is bad. Mass implementation of an untested program is bad. Piece meal enforcement of laws is bad and dangerous. Not letting the States cook their own meals is bad. Not learning from others is bad. The Australian system has done a lot right. A base minimum service is provided to all, rich, poor, whatever.
Here’s the alternative to the ACA you claim doesn’t exist:
http://rsc.scalise.house.gov/uploadedfiles/bill_american_health_care_reform_act.pdf
Please provide a link to a recent poll that indicates that a majority of American people support the ACA. This poll, sponsored by those GOP hacks at NPR, refers to it as both ACA and Obamacare and it still get’s 51% against.
http://media.npr.org/documents/2014/april/DCor_RR_graphs.pdf
That’s basically what we had before the ACA except the cost was tacked on to the health care system as a whole rather than directly to the tax payers. If formalized this is basically a single-payer system – a non-starter with Republicans.
The republican response is breaks down in three parts: (1) tort reform – good idea although the expense incurred by litigation in the system is drastically exaggerated, (2) allowing the purchase of health care across state lines – basically another non-starter due to the size of the bureaucracy in the US around health care (equivalent to implementing a flat tax) and (3) health saving plans – not a bad idea, may bend the cost curve but does nothing to provide coverage for all (in any event it can be implemented with ACA alongside a move to decouple health insurance with employment).
Good points about the popularity but also how the answers are framed point 2 not going far enough is not an endorement to repeal. Plus polls show that the major issues addressed are very popular when asked individually but when framed to Obamacare, they are unpopular. Its good to see some posters offering solutions but disheartening to see opinions without examples or proposed solutions. As they say in AA you have to admit you have a problem before you can fix it.
Most rational, moderate republicans (yes, there are some of us) have no problem admitting that the law has good parts. As noted in the article you linked, most people, myself included, like letting “kids” stay on their parents’ policies a bit longer and providing coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. Having a couple of good provisions doesn’t mean that people have to like the whole thing though. I don’t recall the numbers anymore, but republicans offered dozens of tweaks to the ACA before it was passed and democrats refused to consider any of them, pushing through their law because they had the numbers to do so at the time. While I though the government shutdown was stupid last year, republicans again sought some tweaks to the ACA and the response was basically “It’s the law, so go fuc yourself.” Of course it was just fine for the president to tweak the law whenever he saw fit, even if his constitutional right to do so is questionable.
Democrats got the law they wanted though, and we’ll see how that works for them come November when the only poll that really matters takes place.
Getting back to the original post though, the most viable alternative to the general tone of the requested “reforms” is: Close Facebook, shut down your iPad, get off your ass, and develop skills that the marketplace values.
Do the people in California really believe the Feds should be more involved in the healthcare of their citizens? Ohio? Texas? New york? Florida? Illionois? Is there greater confidence in the feds to manage the healthcare needs of Maine? Are the states incompetent? Is the only know how in D.C.? Why is it a republican/democrat issue? No voice for the states in washington. The political parties appear to be two sides of the same coin.
But this is the opposite of what the author wants:
“A universal basic income, combined with a job guarantee and other social programs, could make participation in the labor force truly voluntary, thereby enabling people to get a life.”
The article argues that it should be acceptable for people to not work at all, and be guaranteed a minimum standard of living regardless. People should have the right to surf Facebook all day and not have to worry about a means of subsistence.
^ To summarize, “You do the hard work and share your rewards with me.”
Are you Ecuador’s President? He said the same on the Charlie Rose show last night what you typed here.
This idea that the US has poor health care is nonsense. It may not be universally accessible or equal, but it’s the highest quality and you can get instant care anytime you want, as long as you pay for sufficient coverage. There is a reason why people from European states and Canada fly to the US when they need real medical solutions. Americans don’t come here for health care (Canada).
So rank all you want, the demand shows where the best health care is.
The “winner take all” mentality is precisely why the US can offer the best, most innovative, and most advanced health services to those with access. The US rewards people who make it to the top of their fields; there was a BB article the other day about some doctor who took home $21 million. Given these assymetric rewards, it is not surprising that the outlying best doctors, software entrepreneurs, athletes, and scientists are over represented in the US.
This is not to say that the US does not have real problems in healthcare and in other fields. The healthcare system is inefficient, opaque, and rife with conflicts of interest. Given the political challenges associated with true cost reform, US politicians have instead focused on allocating resources to pay for the inefficient and expensive system.
Universal access and general income inequality are other issues in the US. Of course, in this assymetric reward system, someone must lose for the rest to win. So maybe inequality is just a necessary, albeit undesirable by product. The rest of the world benefits from US innovation anyway, so perhaps they should appreciate that another country is running this system, rather than just criticize its shortcomings.
^ That’s the way I view the US. Thanks for the iPads/innovative drugs/other fancy technology… but I’d never want to be an average citizen in your system. 
^
It’s such an inherently American argument. We must reward the best or else there is no incentive. For someone to win, someone has to loose.
It’s also bullshit, when Britain was truly ‘Great’ it was quite a equal country and the definition of socialsim.
Anyway top software entrepreneurs no longer have USA as their only destination, athletes was a worthless point to pick up on, and scientists are not driven by reward in monetory terms. They head there because of the infrastructure already present which is a byproduct of Americas university system and so on.
But hey ho, wait for the cull to come.
Swaption asked for alternatives to the ideas offered. That’s my alternative idea. Because I’ve now offered an alternative, apparently I’m now permitted to say the original ideas suck.
Britain has NEVER been an equal society. It has one of the most ridgid defacto class systems in the West. When Britain was innovative (a century ago or more now), it was not a socialist country by any means. Americans have accomplished more than any society in terms of innovation in all history. Incentives play a big role in that.
But guys, seriously, wouldn’t it be better if everything was owned by everybody? Then everybody could eat anything and there would be no famine. And everybody could live everywhere, so there would be no homelessness. And everybody could drive everything, so you’d never miss a flight. And if everybody had guns then there would be no violence…oh, wait, wrong agenda.
We should also recognize that different countries face different demographic challenges that shape social policy. I’m sure Sweden would rethink their social welfare policies if suddenly, they were placed next to a vastly poorer country from which millions of people started to immigrate.
Uh, Danes are practically flooding across their borders. Then, they poach all the artic raccoons.