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strictnein 2 days ago

> ACA has saved tons of lives

It was the Medicaid expansion that has been cited as saving lives [0]. An expansion that has almost nothing to do with the rest of the ACA.

> "There's a very clear type of fallacy you are engaging ... There's no intellectual rigor or honesty in that sort of thinking"

So you're claiming that the person who posted that is not only falling into a fallacy, but they are neither intellectually rigorous or honest? I think you're reading a lot into their comment which seemed pretty benign, but possibly contrary to your viewpoint?

[0] https://news.uchicago.edu/story/new-research-shows-medicaid-...

czgov 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Your linked to article does not demonstrate what you claim it does. Your reasoning is wrong.

Medicaid expansion was a big part of the ACA.

mcphage 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Medicaid expansion was a big part of the ACA.

Well see, first you narrowly define the ACA to be "everything that didn't help"...

strictnein 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> "Findings suggest Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act saved about 27,400 lives between 2010-22, including among younger adults."

> "Their findings show that Medicaid expansions led to a 12% increase in enrollment and significantly reduced mortality—not just among older adults, but also younger ones, who accounted for nearly half of the life-years saved."

Huh? Did you read it? My point was that we could have just expanded Medicaid to achieve this.

blitzar 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> we could have just expanded Medicaid

Laws need votes.

If we are going to be unbound by reality then we could "just" put a medbed to cure all diseases, reverse ageing, and regrow limbs using quantum space-age tech in everyone's home.

strictnein 2 days ago | parent [-]

Too many people think snark is a substitute for insight.

The major GOP complaint about the entire thing was that it was the federal government forcing people to buy a product from companies. The Supreme Court ruled that it had that power.

czgov 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

The ACA was the Republican plan until championed by Obama. The Republican goal was to say anything to denigrate their own plan. Romney later became the nominee for President and it was his plan that the ACA was largely based off of.

Republicans fought hard to discredit their own plan. They just wanted to move to the right of whatever it was that the black man championed.

blitzar 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I missed the part of your insight where the GOP would have voted to expanded Medicaid to all.

If they are down for it, I can make a call and it would be a near unanimous vote.

czgov 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It was the Medicaid expansion that has been cited as saving lives [0].

Medicaid expansion saved lives. That is true and not in dispute. Other lives were saved too. It wasn’t just poor people who obtained life saving care from ACA. In an alternate world where only Medicaid expansion occurred fewer lives would have been saved than were saved with ACA as it exists now.

dylan604 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Paid for how? The expansion of people not on medicaid to be paying in was supposed to be how expanding medicaid could be achieved.

strictnein 2 days ago | parent [-]

The Feds pay ~$150 billion a year and the states pay ~$20 billion a year for that Medicaid expansion. Those are increases on top of previous spending.

How are we paying for that? Debt.

On top of that, the ACA provides $100 billion a year to subsidize the healthcare markets.

2 days ago | parent [-]
[deleted]
epistasis 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> An expansion that has almost nothing to do with the rest of the ACA.

That's a very strange assertion, it's literally "the ACA medicaid expansion" and was a key part of the whole thing.

I'm saying most political argumentation is dishonest and not intellectually rigorous, and that's what the comment was doing. It wasn't arguing based on facts or data or actual specifics, but rather according to vague political ideologies.

That's one reason that I believe politics are discouraged on HN. It turns off our brains and we start using less interesting or useful ways of thinking.

ButlerianJihad 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

"Saved lives" or "Could Save Lives" is a ridiculous, un-falsifiable, and unprovable claim.

First, it involves twisting correlation and causation into an Escher knot. Secondly, it's not even what cited source says.

Yes, "reduced mortality along a timeline for a certain demographic" is a good and desirable statistic, but there is no way that it translates into the self-aggrandizing and sensationalistic "ACA/Medicaid saved tons of lives" (whatever "tons" is supposed to mean, in terms of lives. Perhaps grossly obese people died less.)

solid_fuel 2 days ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

dang 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Yikes, can you please stop crossing into personal attack? You've been doing this repeatedly and even egregiously:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49335212

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334249

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49324512

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49323758

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49323061

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49322063

We ban accounts that won't stop doing this. I don't want to ban you since you also make good contributions. If you would please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

solid_fuel 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Alright, heard, I will be less snarky and aggressive.

However, in this case - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49323758 - if HackerNews guidelines allow for someone to defend torture and call it “life affirming medical care” but don’t allow someone to wish for turnabout, then this site isn’t compatible with my worldview and you should just ban me. Because I do not intend to ignore such heinous things when I see them.