Re:Iowa insurance market collapse could ground young entrepr...
by humanrebar on Friday June 23, 2017 @01:38PM
(#14621065)
I think you're letting Congress as a whole off to easy by scapegoating one senator. A more bipartisan bill that included a few Republicans could have been passed instead.
Re:Iowa insurance market collapse could ground young entrepr...
by mikeash on Friday June 23, 2017 @01:41PM
(#14621089)
No such bill existed. You might as well say that things would have been different if there were leprechaun senators.
Re:Iowa insurance market collapse could ground young entrepr...
by dragonwriter on Friday June 23, 2017 @01:41PM
(#14621086)
> A more bipartisan bill that included a few Republicans could have been passed instead.
Assumes facts not in evidence, notably that there is any bill oriented to the policy objectives the ACA sought to acheive that Republican Senators would have supported at that time, and (for relevance regarding the responsibility for the absence of a public option in the ACA) that such a bill would include a public option of the type Lieberman opposed.
You can't do this in popular elections but you can absolutely do it in the legislature where everyone has a different constituency, policy portfolio, campaign contribution history, etc. Lieberman wouldn't vote for a bill with a public option, full stop. The math worked out such that Lieberman was necessary. Ergo, Lieberman killed the public option if there was no other Senator for whom the existence of a public option would have changed their Nay to a Yea. There was not, so you can absolutely lay the lack of a present day public option for health care in the US at his feet.