Well, since I missed the beginning of this thread, I'm bring it back on topic. Just to explain my background on things of this nature, I'm a social liberal and conservative in terms of business/economics. Thus, I can't really label myself as a pure Democrat or Republican.
Our current (prior?) healthcare system was a complete mess and needed an overhaul and I was glad when I heard a new healthcare bill was going to be seriously discussed, and even forced through. I'm pretty conservative in this area -- I believe government should stay out of it for the most part. But this is good government intervention in an area that obviously needed some help. Normally, I would be disgusted at the Democrats for pushing anything through the way they did, but in this situation they could have come up with a very Republican bill and the GOP would have said no. It needed to be done. That said, I don't think this bill is going to fix anything, nor do I have faith that it will be fixed in the ensuing amendments process. The Republicans have too much to gain from this bill flopping and failing. These next couple months and years are going to be bipartisan politics at its worst.
First of all, I'm not falling for the Republican message that we've taken our first step towards socialism. I understand that taxing the rich to fund this system is "redistribution of wealth," but didn't these very people go through 8 years of tax cuts? I know it doesn't really work this way, but I just can't help but think that they're just paying the taxes that they used to pay before Bush took office. Anyways, America was never a true capitalist nation in the place, there's no reason to scream bloody murder now.
Now for what I don't like about the bill.
The incentives to businesses to insure your employees are nonexistent at best. Small businesses get some tax credit... and that's pretty much it. My dad owns his own business and was looking at it and came to the conclusion that it didn't affect him. My dad's business has maybe 5 employees and is a prime example of a small startup business. Even with the tax credits, it costs him too much to provide his employees with full insurance. Big businesses (50 employees or more) are charged $3,000 per head (correct me if I'm wrong here) after the first 30 employees if they don't provide insurance. So for a company with 50 people, they only have to pay fees for the last 20 people. What business would provide health insurance in this case? And the major companies already provide insurance, so that's not an issue. Basically, the companies that matter -- the small and mid-major businesses -- still have no reason to economically justify providing their employees with insurance.
There's the obvious issue where everyone is forced to pay for insurance. Starting from 2016, you have to pay a fee for not being covered. Wait, so if you can't afford health insurance, you have to pay a fee? Some people have higher priorities: paying for rent, food, gas, utilities, having a little money left over to have fun every now and then. Insurance is just that... insurance. Not everyone needs it or wants it. I'm sure a lot of people my age are thinking "maybe later." But now, we're paying either way, so we might as well just insure ourselves instead of throwing money at the government's feet.
I could go on, but don't want to make an excessively boring/long post and those were two issues that struck me the hardest since the very people that this bill was supposedly created for are essentially passed over.
What matters, though, is in the end I'd still rather live here than anywhere else in the world
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