j.r. leonard

If you want to tell people what they should or shouldn’t value or how they ought to view policy tradeoffs, you are well within your rights But other people will have different opinions and will vote differently. That’s the answer to the conundrum posed in that original Tweet

Then let me ask you which is better: 20 million more people with insurance and some folks pay higher premiums so sick people can be insured too. Or not doing that.

This conversation is not about what I think is better. And that’s what I’m trying to communicate

Even for folks who pay slightly higher premiums, now they get to inhabit a country where fewer of their neighbors die from lack of healthcare access. That’s a benefit.

I get it. You like the ACA. Others don’t. But that’s what it means to live in a democracy. You get to pass laws if you have the votes, but you don’t get to dictate everyone else’s opinion about those laws. Don’t even know how I’m saying anything remotely controversial

I’m not dictating how to feel. I’m saying I wish we didn’t get punished door passing the law. Im saying I wish they had thought differently about it. We should have been rewarded instead. It was the best we could do at the time.

Really? That was the best the Dems could do with full control of Congress and the WH. If you want I get into my own opinions, a good start would have been a public option. But Dems chose an option that kept the private insurance industry central to our health care system

With the senators we had at the time yes. It was pulling teeth with Landrieu and Nelson, we had to bribe them with pork. And Lieberman killed the public option. Do you remember 2009?