The irony is, this all could have been avoided with a government option. I hope Obama is exploring the possibility of doing this through budget reconciliation. Single payer is the optimum. Profit on illness is a disgrace.

gomw

I agree with what you wrote .It is really ironical because the ACA is A REPUBLICAN Plan.!

While i am here ,i would like to tell a story i read in CROOKS and LIARS about what Grover NORQUIST said in 2003 in a reunion with his classmates.

He gave a speech saying that THERE is going to be a PERMANENT REPUBLICAN MAJORITY in America.

One person asked him HOW come? Since we have elections every 2 years.? Do you mean No Democrat shall ever win?

NORQUIST immediately replied : WE will make it so NO DEMOCRAT can GOVERN as a DEMOCRAT !!!

After reading this,I no longer wonder why Prez Bill CLINTON said the Era of BIG GOV is over and is called the best Republican President!

And why now, Democrat Obama and Dems passed a REPUBLICAN Health reform .not aSINGLE payer NOT even a PUBLIC OPTION

In the summer of 2009 in a townhall i suggested B L U Medicare for all

And the SLOGAN i told DEMS to use for 2010 election was TO PROTECT and IMPROVE ACA ( with a Public Option)

ALAS , no DEM used my slogan and LOST the Majority in Nov 2010 !

The Republicans demanded that the start of the Affordable Care Act be delayed for a year after they failed to repeal or otherwise destroy it. Why didn't ANYONE in opposition to that remind them, much less repeatedly and relentlessly throw it in their faces, that every year 47,000 people die for lack of medical care due to lack of money to pay for it or the medical insurance which would, so their delay would literally cost another 47,000 precious human lives, many of which would end in terible suffering? I listen to/watch all the liberal programs as well as C-Span and never heard anyone challenge any Republican to accept responsibility for the 47,000 lives their demand would cost. Nor was this brought-up when today Speaker Boehner demanded that "Obamacare" be repealed so that we could go back to "the greatest healthcare system in the world" so that we can go on indefinately losing 47,000 people every year in perpetuity because, according to him and his minions, our economy does not have the money to save them (while we have trillions to wage endless and useless wars and then repair and rebuild what we've blown-up in one thankless backwater after another). These suffering people are others' husbands, wives, children, parents, grandmas and grandpas, brothers and sisters who don't see them as faceless casualties of Republian politics. Neither are they all the old, the poor, or otherwise considered worthless by Republicans.

Our entire, extended family, (God forgive us) once Republican and conservative, has one such person to be concerned about, so we were very troubled about the demands for a delay as a year's delay would cost us the rest of what we all have and then some. After being decimated by job losses, investment and savings losses, and home-value losses inflicted by the economic crash enabled by the deregulating Republicans, we were faced with a medical crisis nightmare. At 33 years old one family member, an educated professional who had lost her job as her husband had before her, directly as a result of the crash, and along with that her health care insurance, had a cardiac event while pregnant which left her UNINSURABLE. Medicaid which covers children and uninsured pregnant women, paid the medical costs incurred at that time, and COBRA (extended insurance from a prior employer, paid for entrely by the x-employee) has been paying her medical bills since. But COBRA, which is extremly expensive, and in this case has a huge deductable plus co-pays anyway, expires soon. Then what if the ACA isn't available? She and her husband, unable to aquire jobs which offer even half what they were earning, have become self-employed with the prospect of building a service which will provide a family-sustaining income. But, without the ACA one of them at least will have to find a job which offers a good healthcare benefit regardless of salary or we will all face the prospect of near poverty maintainig her medical care or the prospect of actually not having the money to pay for treatments which may become necessary in the future.

We can not express the contempt in which we hold the entirety of elected Republicans, the crazed leaders and the cowards who know better but cower in coners afraid to speak the obvious truth: The Republican health care plan is non-existent except to return to what existed prior to the ACA. As Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) described it, "Die soon, and die quickly," but most importantly, try not to cost us anything while doing so.