To think Hillary Clinton is on a hiding to nothing

[sourdrawers]

Even if she does get elected U.S President. What do we reckon?

Nope sourdrawers. I can't vote here as I'm not an American citizen, just a transplanted Brit. We'll be back in the UK by the time the actual election rolls around, but for now I just have a front row seat for the whole bonkers circus.

The ACA leaves tens of millions without coverage. At its best, the ACA will leave 31 million people without health insurance when it is completely rolled out. They still pick and choose those they're willing to sell health insurance to.

Can you explain this please? Who are they refusing to sell to and on what grounds?

I went through the process of buying ACA insurance this year and was asked very few questions - none that would be useful for a health insurance company that was looking to deny coverage.

To put Obama's struggles into perspective, it's like being Labour Prime Minister of the UK but with the House of Commons and the House of Lords both controlled by Tories.

He only had a Democratic controlled Congress for what, 2 years? And in that time they passed the ACA.

I would LOVE Hilary to be President.

I suspect that Jeb is an acronym for John Ellis Bush.

I don't think Obama has been all that bad. I think healthcare is great. He's between two hostile houses of government and seems to be doing, OK. Hilary should win (although we said that last time, but one) what will she achieve, apart from being the first woman and third Democrat? Maybe, not much. But, I'd rather a not much Hilary than another Bush, and one not even as smart as the last one and that's saying something.

You're right, Dora, Jeb is taken from his initials.

Purely anecdotal, I concede, but I know several people who have insurance under Obamacare (and decent coverage as well), who otherwise would not have insurance. One of them is my son, who lost his health coverage when he was divorced (he was on his wife's work policy).

As I said it's still a market based health-care system. Proven not to work. As all that happens is insurance compete to sell to the healthiest people and deny paying for the care people really need. Billions of your tax dollars are being spent to create new health insurance markets, advertise them, subsidise their products and find buyers for them, right now! Apparently plans sold through this new health insurance scheme will pay for as little as 60 to 70% of covered services and carry high out-of-pocket costs. Because your government subsidies towards the purchase of insurance are so inadequate, most people who are currently uninsured will be forced into the low coverage plans. So how's that going to help them?

There are now 48 million uninsured people in the US. The Congressional Budget Office reckons the ACA will leave 31 million people without health insurance when it is completely rolled out. And that's a conservative estimate.

The ACA has not changed the fact that private insurance companies view their people as products and have no more allegiance to human health than a Big Energy company does to an area of natural beauty that they're digging up for oil.

The insurers will always find ways to avoid paying for care. And overall the system will become more privatised. This is the opposite way you need to be going it seems to me. You need to cut out the multitude of insurers and create a single publicly-financed universal health care system.

So I'm asking myself why bother doing this? What, it seems to me your country needs is Medicare for all.

I agree with all you're saying betsey about the downsides of the system.

But my question was about how the ACA enables insurance companies to pick and choose who they sell insurance to, which you stated above.

And you think a universal healthcare system for Americans is in anyway possible after the near death struggle Obama had to extend this one? The UK did have a universal one, but the condems seem to be intent on selling it to anyone who will buy some. Good intentions aren't an insurance against having ill citizens.

Agree that the ACA was well intentioned but poorly executed.

Universal, publicly funded healthcare seems like such a no-brainer to us, but the majority of Americans would never accept it (like the idea that invading and bombing the shit out of the middle east will not bring peace and prosperity).

No I don't think Universal health care in the USA is possible, it's what you need though. Also it simply isn't true that the NHS is going private. In fact around 6% of NHS work all in all goes to private companies.

lertgush Insurers can and do pick and choose who they sell to as Obamacare is resting a lot of faith on the regulating those insurers. Although rules in the ACA give the appearance of changing insurance company behaviour, insurers are already working around them. They will always find ways of not paying - that's their business. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that.

The ACA continues the problem of financial barriers to care. Considering that 76 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck without significant savings, the money simply isn’t there to pay the out-of-pocket costs for visits to the doctor, tests or prescriptions, stuff like that. A health survey by the Commonwealth Fund last year found that 80 million people reported not getting care due to cost, 75 million were having difficulty paying medical bills and 4 million over 2 years went into bankruptcy as a result. You may have not had a bad experience qualifying but many will. One way that insurance companies will cheat people is by restricting their networks to avoid places where sick people go, such as large medical centres and public hospitals and by limiting the number of providers. This will push people to use out-of-network providers and bear the cost. Another method will be to raise premiums or stop selling insurance plans in areas where they do not make a profit. Insurers can’t charge more for policies because of pre-existing conditions, but they can charge more based on age and location.

She's the Bollocks Presumably because she's a woman? What about her track record Pepperpot? The type of President she'd be. What she stands for? I'd welcome a woman president myself - obviously. But I'd sooner vote for a man if he stood for the opposite of what Hillary Clinton has stood for in the past and present for that matter.