Because the Republicans slashed the premium tax credits to pay for tax cuts for rich people.
Politics in the USA has basically gridlocked to it being much cheaper to shit on the other guy than to fix things. In two party system you can actually win by only making the other guy look worse, which only requires breaking things in a way that can be pointed at the other guy, somehow we are stuck in this local minima.
The ACA was passed in 2014. Congress (both Republicans and Democrats) have had since then to get off their butts and do something to fix the serious flaws it came with. Flaws that made insurance too unaffordable for millions of people so they had to risk it and go uninsured.
Years Pres Senate House SC
2013-2015 D D(+8) R(+33) R(+1)
2015-2017 D R(+10) R(+59) -(+0)
2017-2019 R R(+4) R(+47) R(+1)
2019-2021 R R(+8) D(+35) R(+1)
2021-2023 D D(+0.5) D(+9) R(+3)
2023-2025 D D(+2) R(+9) R(+3)
2025-2027 R R(+8) R(+4) R(+3)
Dems haven't had solid control of all three legislative bodies since it passed, and Republicans have vocally made it their priority to oppose the ACA in any way possible, and are unwilling to give an inch. Even the hair thin margin post-2020 was unusable for this due to the handful of DINOs that all needed to vote in lockstep.
Meanwhile, R's had unilateral control of the government for four straight years, and they voted to make everyone's lives worse, as you're complaining about. They said over and over they were going to repeal it, like you suggest, and then turned around and made it obvious that was a blatant lie. Because despite its flaws, even the gutted ACA is still wildly popular and a vast improvement over the previous status quo. (It turns out keeping workers healthy is critical for the economy)
This is not a symmetric problem. It really is one party making it worse.
The Democrats did have full control when they first passed the ACA and they ended up getting in their own way.
But I never said that the Democrats were supposed to fix it on their own. I said both parties are to blame.
It shouldn't require one team have full control for something to happen. That's the real issue. They refuse to work together, and somehow this gets them more support (votes). Both sides. Total shit show.
They didn’t. They had to heavily compromise with an Independent.
> After the Finance Committee vote on October 15, negotiations turned to moderate Democrats. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid focused on satisfying centrists. The holdouts came down to Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, an independent who caucused with Democrats, and conservative Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson. Lieberman's demand that the bill not include a public option[161][175] was met,[176]
> But I never said that the Democrats were supposed to fix it on their own. I said both parties are to blame.
This doesn’t make any sense, because 99% of Dems have tried to increase access to healthcare, and 99.9% of Repubs have tried to reduce access to healthcare. The sole exception being when McCain provided his vote to not repeal ACA.
This is the problem. All debates about policy lead to "it's the Republicans fault" or "it's the Democrats fault", never about the actual substance of the issue or any attempts to fix the underlying problems.
The fact that both parties think they're "winning the game" right now by shutting down the government is a joke.
The Dems (by and large) bring up bills to provide paid parental leave, increase minimum salaries for overtime exempt workers, fund education, increase access to healthcare, and here you are saying they don’t focus on the substance of the actual issues, whatever that means. Meanwhile, the only thing Repubs have done is cut taxes, and block all those efforts.
> The fact that both parties think they're "winning the game" right now by shutting down the government is a joke.
The fact that you would even bring up both parties when one has control of all 3 branches of government is a joke.
@grok are more or pess people uninsured since the ACA was passed in the USA?
(The answer is obvious btw)
It really doesn't. All it shows is that team R is following it's usual playbook of "The government is broken - elect me, and I'll make sure of it."
> Democrats could shove through enough votes to repeal ACA to make health insurance cheaper for lower-risk groups without tax credits
The only true part of that statement is that they could get enough votes to repeal it without replacement. But it wouldn't make anything cheaper.
The only way insurance would get cheaper is if it went back to not covering pre-existing conditions, which is contrary to the whole point of insurance.
It's wild that you're blaming the dems for... Not repealing without replacement, and pushing us straight into a completely broken shitshow?
> lower-risk groups
Oh, I understand now. You're are explicitly unhappy that the dems aren't agreeing to your plan to massively hike rates for anyone with a pre-exisiting condition, or literally any complication that would get them discriminated against prior to the ACA.
Sorry, that's a shitty thing for you to be fighting for, and they are in the right to not do it.
It's just the people that have tricked you, have used statistical correlation and cover of pre-existing condition to hide the fact what they're actually doing is robbing from the poorer to subsidize the richer.
Older people are sicker and older people are wealthier, but older sicker people on ACA plans are not wealthier than the median.
It's a sleight of hand to collate the two (old-rich and old-sick), but sure, if this is such a large concern, the solution is adding means testing, not just leaving sick people with care they can't afford.
They then all lost their seats to tea-party and proto-maga types who were screeching about FEMA internment camps and death panels killing grandma.
Because to those who are now getting hit with huge insurance bills as a direct effect of that compromise, and may have to go without insurance at all, it is a loss.
And nothing has been done to address the underlying reasons and bad incentives that have led to this outcome. Which is also a failure.