Thread by @charles_gaba

Again: The ACA succeeded where "HillaryCare" failed in large part because the Obama Administration learned not to try and take on EVERY PART of the health insurance industry SIMULTANEOUSLY. This led to a law which is far from perfect but which still made major improvements. 1/

https://twitter.com/sangerkatz/status/1217573541102718976

The ACA took on and won SOME battles, but not so many as to guarantee that it would go down in flames...and even then it BARELY squeaked by, and only in a watered-down way. If they had insisted on going after EVERY player at once, it would never have happened at all.

The insurance lobby had mixed feelings about the ACA. It stopped most (not all) of their ugliest practices, forced them to stop discriminating against "undesirable" enrollees, and put a cap on their profits. On the other hand, it also provided a flood of enrollees & subsidies.

So, they champion the bill but they also didn't bring their full forces to bear against it. For a few years it looked pretty ugly, but they finally figured out how to price their policies, to the point that last year they had to PAY BACK nearly $1.4 BILLION in excessive profits.

The next phases IMO should be:
1) ACA 2.0: fix the problems & strengthen the law (subsidy cliff, family glitch, skinny plan glitch, etc)
2) THEN add a robust PO *or* All-Payer rating (hopefully 1 & 2 can be merged)
3) THEN 100% guaranteed Universal Coverage.

The Big Philosophical Difference between the wings of the party boils down to whether or not it's time to skip past steps #1 & 2 and go straight to #3. There's other disagreements of course, but that seems to be the single biggest one.

YIKES!! That should be, they DIDN'T champion the bill but also didn't bring their forces to bear against it! Sorry!

Yikes! That should be "they DIDN'T champion the bill but also didn't bring full forces against it"

And AGAIN: If you want #ACA2.0 *or* a Public Option *or* #Med4America *or* #M4All, WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO #FlipTheSenate FIRST, SO DONATE *TODAY*!
secure.actblue.com/donate/retakes…