The lies are even deeper than most people know. One of the worst is that the GOP Members (on the whole) oppose Obamacare and want it repealed. They don’t, and the reason why discloses the biggest lie of all.
The Medicare Act of 1965 issued a guarantee of Federal payment for all “usual, customary, and reasonable” medical services, WITHOUT LIMIT. Using a standard static, socialist analysis they looked at what seniors had paid out of pocket, voluntarily, from 1956-1965 and figured the government would not be on the hook for a whole lot.
But that promise to pay without limit created a huge industry, bigger than the defense industry, that in an explosion of dynamic capitalist creativity discovered, invented, and marketed an immense array of useful, life-improving or even lifesaving products.
There are too many to list, so take one - the $60,000 pacemaker/defibrillator. In 1964, had they existed and had they been sold under a free market, very, very few seniors would have paid the $60,000 to get one. The necessary inventive and developmental work would never, never, have come about without the certainty of “free money” to purchase as many of them as could possibly be needed.
Now, whether or not these devices are good or bad, or are overused or underused, is not my point. On that issue, YMMV.
Without the socialist guarantee of money without limit, the capitalists would never have created them, just like Glastron would never offer aircraft carriers on the open market.
The socialists in Congress in 1965 knew, I believe, that Medicare would (somehow) smash capitalism. But, being socialists, they did not anticipate all the creations of the medical-industrial complex that would start to incur deficits as early as 1984.
Since the Great Compromise of 1986, Congress has paid for all this by borrowing or printing money. All of them, Republicans and Democrats alike, understand that they’ve created a monster and that their foundational promises of 1965 were lies, but none of them have a clue how to end it.
Obamacare is the answer for this generation of Congressthings. Everything that everyone knows is wrong with it is true, including that it cannot possibly work. But they don’t care about that. They needed to “do something”, and they did.
We cannot “go back” to 2008, because in 2008 the “system”, because of the promise to pay for anything capitalism could create, without limit and with OPM, was on a collision course with reality.
If you favor going back, which I do on most days, you have to go back to 1964 and redo Medicare with some kind of budget limit. And to do that, the “government hands off my Medicare” people are going to have to wise up.
Because the Oprahite mentality is so strong in this country we are opting to ACCEPT that the vast majority will not receive any of these measures because it is "more fair".
Many will die to ensure the "rich" don't live.