Winfield/Poirot for Atlasia, because, what have ya got to lose?

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

NeverAgain will get my first preference, but I appreciate your support for healthcare reform (and your use of Theodore Roosevelt, one of my personal favorite presidents).

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Well, you clearly didn't read his post at all (which is hard to believe, seeing as it is written in giant orange font), because nowhere does he mention the number $450 or imply support for the existing insurance system. I also love how you talk about the "un-insurable" as if we are somehow less important than you.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Technically you previously would have paid for the uninsured anyway, through taxpayer funded reimbursements for Hospital Emergency rooms and also generalized inflation spread across the entirety of the system. Making this much worse is that care given is the most expensive and the last effective. It would be far cheaper to give them the needed medications and preventative care up front then waiting until it is an Emergency room situation and spending far more to achieve far less.

Exactly. There are fundamentally two ways to approach this issue: you can provide universal access to preventative medical care so that we no longer have legions of uninsured persons seeking expensive emergency care they can't pay for, or you can bar everyone without an insurance card from entering a hospital and allow them to die in the streets. Obviously, only one of those options is morally acceptable, and we're fortunate that the leadership of both parties agree on that fundamental fact.

Of course, there are many ways you can go about providing universal coverage. The Affordable Care Act is an imperfect solution that comes with its own problems and needs to be overhauled, but it's a hell of a lot better than the old system in that it at least acknowledges we can't go on relying on emergency rooms and high-risk pools to care for the working poor and those with pre-existing conditions.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Nobody was "dying in the streets" before the ACA.

Right; as Yankee explained, they were receiving emergency care that they were then unable to pay for, which raised costs for everyone.

If you think the solution is to continue to fund this social experiment on the backs of the lower-middle class

(a) I am lower middle class, my friend.
(b) Read my post again. If you had bothered to examine my record before jumping to conclusions about my political beliefs, you would know that I don't think the Affordable Care Act is the best long-term solution to this problem. I do think current plan is preferable to doing nothing, but it carries serious flaws that need to be addressed. The president and I are in agreement on this.

prepare to be voted out of office.

According to recent polls, my approval rating is currently 100%. I'll take my chances.