Key Points
- President Joe Biden said the federal Medicare program should negotiate prices for at least 50 prescription drugs each year, up from the current target of 20 medicines.
- That proposal is one of several new health-care policy plans Biden will outline during his State of the Union address Thursday.
- But the fate of his new proposals will be in the hands of a divided Congress, making it highly uncertain whether they will pass into law.
The ACA benefits me directly.
But life isn’t necessarily “sweet” for people who have to take care of others. Plenty of people are struggling yet have to take care of their children and their parents. All of the legislation in that list helps to ease their burden.
So your life sucks then? You seem to be having a difficult time explaining why you’re grateful to Democrats for what they’ve done without accidentally admitting it’s because you’re not suffering.
I never said I was personally suffering. But my loved ones are struggling in retirement and I’m deeply grateful for what Democrats have done for them.
You seem to think all that matters in life is whether you are personally suffering. You truly think like a Republican, every “I got mine Jack” accusation is a confession.
How many decades of suffering am I supposed to put up with before I start insisting the things I care about need to improve too?
If you’re genuinely telling me this is my life in perpetuity and my attempts for something better are a moral failing then what’s left for me?
The ACA provides a benefit to a family of four with an income under $120K or a single person with an income under $58K.
If you don’t qualify, then congratulations your income is above the US median. You got yours, Jack. And Democrats will focus their attention on those who are less fortunate.
Why are you framing this like an either/or situation?
When talking about things that cost money, it’s always either/or. If you spend $X someone in the top 50%, you have $X less to spend on those in the bottom 50%. And personally I prefer that Democrats generally prioritize spending for the bottom 50%.
Democrats also support things that help everyone and don’t cost the government anything. For example, the ACA banned insurance companies from rejecting people with pre-existing conditions, banned them from raising premiums on sick people, banned them from dropping people in the middle of treatment. Those were all major problems before the ACA, and the ACA helped everyone by fixing them.
If you always prioritize the less fortunate and ignore any issue affecting anybody who is anywhere above less fortunate it means more people will slip into being less fortunate. If you want the less fortunate to be able to get out of their situation and stay there then you need to also prioritize making sure there’s a viable path to success. That path to success is being eroded and neither Republicans nor Democrats are addressing it. What do you think that leads to?
By definition, half of Americans will always be below median. Even if you could make everyone in the US into a success story, half would be below median.
So the point is not make everyone above median, that’s impossible. The point is to use the median to determine who needs help the most. And someone who is below median right now needs more help than someone who is not right now, even if they might be in the future.