“We Are All Fragile Beings”: Obamacare Saved My Family From Financial Ruin
House Speaker John Boehner and his tea party friends shut down the U.S. government because of people like me. I am the mother of an insurance hog, someone who could have blown through his lifetime limit of health coverage by the time he was 14. My son has managed to survive despite seemingly insurmountable challenges, and he wears his preexisting condition like a Super Bowl ring.
Mason, now 16, was probably born with his brain tumor. We discovered it six years ago. Biopsies showed a slow-growing mass, which was the good news. The bad news was that the tumor could not be removed because it had grown around essential structures in his brain. Under the care of some of the country’s finest specialists, Mason had frequent scans. There was little we could do between tests but hope for the best. Like other children his age, Mason played basketball, argued with his siblings and avoided cleaning his bedroom. He managed to undergo chemotherapy for eight months without getting too sick. He insisted on finding ways to laugh, saying things like: “I have brain cancer. What’s your problem?” It was an uneasy peace — until the tumor ruptured in December 2010, three years after his initial diagnosis, and Mason suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage.
Mason spent most of eighth grade in the hospital. In the six months he was hospitalized, he spent 65 days in the pediatric intensive care unit. He underwent four brain surgeries. Halfway through his hospitalization, the Affordable Care Act was passed, alleviating lifetime limits on coverage and saving us from the financial abyss. Mason moved to a rehabilitation hospital where he was retaught the most basic skills — sitting up, eating and standing. We faithfully paid the premiums on the employer-sponsored plan through which our family is covered, along with the rest of our bills, thanking God and whoever else would listen for our good fortune to have coverage.
The biggest fear for families such as mine is that we will lose our health insurance and be rendered uninsurable because one of us has been sick. The Affordable Care Act does away with dreaded clauses barring preexisting conditions. It also enables us to keep Mason on our insurance until he is 26; then, he will be able to purchase his own coverage on an insurance exchange. At least, that was the plan until last Tuesday, when the government was shut down in protest of such excesses.
As far as the brain tumor goes, our family might have drawn the short straw. Maybe our story lacks a certain universal appeal. People might be thinking to themselves, “I’m so sorry that happened to you, but odds are it won’t happen to me.” I hope it doesn’t, really.
But having lived in hospitals with Mason for months, I have seen that bad things — accidents, freak illnesses — happen to smart, cautious and otherwise undeserving people. It’s one thing we all have in common. We are fragile beings. So what is wrong with allowing us to purchase a financial safety net? What’s so un-American about that?
If I could get John Boehner and Ted Cruz on a conference call, I would explain this to them. I would tell them that, while they were busy trying to derail the Affordable Care Act over the past two years, Mason has again learned to walk, talk, eat and shoot a three-point basket.
By: Janine Urbaniak Reid, a writer in the San Francisco Bay Area, is working on a memoir about her son’s diagnosis; October 9, 2013; Published in The Washington Post Opinions Section, December 4, 2013
“Things Are Neither Perfect Nor Disastrous”: Obamacare Panic To Enter Even Stupider New Phase
No, Democrats are not abandoning it en masse, and no, it isn’t going to be repealed.
I want to follow up on what I wrote Friday about those who are deciding that because of a) web site problems and b) the largely manufactured controversy over people who have one private insurance plan but now face the unfathomable horror of moving to a different private insurance plan, the Affordable Care Act is an unrecoverable disaster that has destroyed Barack Obama’s second term. I’m sensing that this is about to move into a new phase of inane speculation that we should think about before it starts.
I’ll just use one article as an example. This morning, under the headline “Why Obamacare Is On Life Support,” Josh Kraushaar of the National Journal all but declares that the law is about to be repealed. “Unless the HealthCare.gov website miraculously gets fixed by next month,” he writes, “there’s a growing likelihood that over time, enough Democrats may join Republicans to decide to start over and scrap the whole complex health care enterprise.” That’s so blindingly stupid I’m almost not sure where to start, but let’s give it is a shot. First, would it really be “miraculous” if Healthcare.gov got fixed by next month? It’s a website. Yes, a complicated one, and yes, one that had many problems. But it isn’t as though those problems are somehow beyond the ken of human ingenuity to solve, requiring heavenly intervention. The administration isn’t trying to achieve faster-than-light transport or make us all immortal. It’s a website. It may not be perfect, but it’ll work.
Kraushaar then goes through some counting of vulnerable Democratic seats in both houses to argue that it’s a real possibility that a repeal of the entire ACA could not only pass, but pass with a wide enough margin to override a veto from the President. His main evidence is the 39 House Democrats who voted last week for a symbolic Republican proposal to undo some of the individual-market reforms; he thinks the number for full repeal of the ACA will be even greater. But that’s completely backwards. It would take some kind of as-yet-unforeseen utter catastrophe to transform even those votes into a vote for full repeal. As Jonathan Bernstein says, “There’s an enormous difference between playing along on a symbolic vote and abandoning a policy Democrats are stuck with, like it or not.” Not even House Democrats from swing districts are dumb enough to think that voting to repeal the law would serve their political interests, despite Kraushaar’s bizarre and demonstrably false assertion that already, “Even [the ACA’s] most ardent supporters are running for the hills.”
If you’re going to start speculating about repeal, you have to confront what’s going to happen six weeks from now, on January 1. Let’s have a little reminder:
- Millions of people will begin getting coverage through Medicaid. Repeal would mean kicking these people off their insurance.
- Millions of people will begin getting subsidies to pay for private insurance. Repeal would mean taking away their subsidies, making it unaffordable for them to get insurance.
- Denials for pre-existing conditions will be officially over. Repeal would mean that once again, insurers could deny people coverage if they’ve ever been sick.
- Annual limits on coverage will be outlawed. Repeal would mean that people will once again start being forced to pay huge medical bills, in many cases forcing them into bankruptcy, if they have a serious illness or accident.
And that’s not to mention the parts of the bill that have already gone into effect, like “rescission” becoming illegal, children not being allowed to be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions, or young people being allowed to stay on their parents’ insurance until they’re 26. You think some news stories about people in the individual market having to pay more for a new insurance plan tug at lawmakers’ heartstrings? Wait until you see the stories about the 5-year-old girl with leukemia who’ll get kicked off her coverage if Republicans in Congress have their way. Right now we’re talking about a few people who are supposedly the “losers” in the ACA, but the most they’ve lost is some money they’ll have to pay for a more comprehensive plan. If you repeal the law, the country would be overflowing with people whose losses are genuinely catastrophic.
January 1 is the end of any talk of repeal, and Republicans know it—as many of them have been saying all along, once you start giving people benefits, it’s all but impossible to take them away. That doesn’t mean there isn’t still work to do, and it doesn’t mean there aren’t things that could go wrong. Nor does it mean there might not be piecemeal fixes to one or another provision debated in the future; there almost certainly will be. But unless you think that in the next six weeks Republicans are going to manage to put together a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress to repeal the ACA—something you’d have to be nuts to believe—it’s never going to happen.
I realize that there’s an impulse as a reporter or a pundit to cast everything in the most dramatic terms possible. “Things are neither perfect nor disastrous” is a much less interesting assertion to make than “Everything has changed! Earth-shattering developments are afoot!” But that happens to be the truth.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, November 18, 2013
“The Grand Case Against Obamacare”: The Republican Old, Stale, Non-Compeling, Non-Argument
You’d think with the resources he commands as de facto leader of the conservative movement at the Heritage Foundation, rightwing warhorse Jim DeMint would be able to come up with a fresh and compelling argument for why he wants to shut down the federal government and maybe risk a global economic meltdown in order to stop the implementation of a health reform law based largely on a blueprint first devised by his own think tank. But DeMint’s latest ukase on the subject for the Fox News site is as tired as an uninsured diabetic in South Carolina working two shifts at minimum wage.
I won’t quote DeMint directly, but his five big reasons for killing Obamacare are the usual woofers: it may force people in the individual market to change insurance policies (for better ones, with premium subsidies available for those of modest means); it may cause some consumers to choose between the policies and providers they want (just like private insurance policies today); the Medicaid expansion is a fraud because Medicaid’s worse than no insurance at all (tell that to the many millions receiving Medicaid now); Obamacare will slash and maybe kill Medicare (the usual confusion of cost reductions and provider cuts with benefit cuts); and of course, the whole thing will blow up budget deficits (not what the nonpartisan CBO says at all).
But what’s most remarkable is that DeMint doesn’t even mention the tens of millions of people with preexisting conditions who will obtain health insurance they just cannot get right now, and also cannot get under any GOP alternative (though DeMint doesn’t bother to mention any) known to mankind, at least since the GOP abandoned Stuart Butler’s plan hatched at Heritage.
I don’t know why DeMint and his wordsmiths even bother with such “persuasion” efforts, particularly for Fox News readers. Anyone buying his premises has already bought the conclusion.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington MOnthly Politica Animal, September 10, 2013
“Stop Lying!”: GOP Congressman Daniel Webster Called Out By Constituents Over His Multiple Votes To Repeal Obamacare
Things got heated for Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL) during a town hall question-and-answer session in Winter Haven, Florida on Thursday. His constituents called him out over his multiple votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act and his misleading claims that the law’s consumer protections are being dismantled by the Obama administration.
Webster was responding to several constituents’ questions about the consequences that repealing Obamacare — which House Republicans, including Webster, have voted to do on 40 separate occasions — would have for the people in his district. Attendees asked Webster if he had any plans to replace consumer protections included in Obamacare, such as guaranteed insurance coverage for Americans with pre-existing medical conditions and free preventative health screenings for seniors:
QUESTIONER: What happens to us when Obamacare is repealed? What happens to people with pre-existing conditions that can’t get health care? What happens to those of us who finally have access to health insurance for the first time in nine or ten years? What happens to us? And you want to make this local, I’ll make this local. I’m a constituent, right now I can’t get health care. I’m waiting for this [insurance marketplace] to open and I’d like to know why we keep repealing [Obamacare]?
The congressman defended his repeal votes by saying the law would drive up Americans’ health care costs by requiring insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions. He then claimed that President Barack Obama himself thinks his signature law is unworkable. As evidence, Webster implied that the law’s protections — such as its cap on consumers’ annual out-of-pocket medical costs — were being dismantled by the Obama administration. That prompted an outcry from the audience, as people booed and countered Webster’s claims.
An event official interrupted at that point, asking the audience to be respectful and give Webster a chance to speak. One audience member replied by saying, “Well, tell him to stop lying!”
Watch it, courtesy of advocacy group Health Care for America Now (HCAN) and its local Florida partner Organize Now.
The Obama administration did, in fact, delay the health law’s cap on Americans’ out-of-pocket costs through their co-payments and deductibles. But as the audience correctly pointed out, it is a temporary one-year delay that only applies to certain employer-based insurance plans. The cap still applies for health policies sold through Obamacare’s statewide marketplaces beginning in October.
Webster isn’t the first GOP congressman to get flak from his constituents over his opposition to the health law. Last week, constituents confronted Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) over his many votes to repeal Obamacare and asked why he wanted to take away protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions. One grieving mother in the audience had told reporters before the town hall that her own son had died of colon cancer after being denied coverage for having a pre-existing condition.
Obamacare critics who have incessantly demonized the reform law and pushed for its repeal have been brushing up against a growing number of people that support its consumer protections. A recent poll from the Heritage Foundation’s advocacy arm that was ostensibly meant to show Obamacare’s unpopularity by over-surveying Republicans inadvertently showed that it is actually popular. Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) admitted that a “handful of things” in the law are “probably OK” in an interview on Wednesday.
By: Sy Mukherjee, Think Progress, August 16, 2013
“Koch Brothers Thriving On Confusion”: If Obamacare Is So Horrible, Shouldn’t It Be Easy To Attack Without Making Stuff Up?
Earlier this week, Reince Priebus, commenting on the Affordable Care Act, said, “People know what Obamacare is. It’s European, socialist-style type health care.” The quote struck me as fairly hilarious because the second sentence helps debunk the first — anyone who thinks the federal U.S. system is in anyway similar to European, socialist-style type health care clearly has no idea what “Obamacare” is.
The truth is, most Americans remain confused about the basics, and the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity apparently hope to make matters much worse on purpose. Watch on YouTube
Last month, AFP invested $1 million in support of a remarkably dishonest ad campaign, hoping to mislead Americans about the health care system, and this week, the right-wing group is at it again, making a six-figure ad buy in support of a radio ad.
The problem, of course, is that the message of the ad is pure garbage. Salon called it the “stupidest anti-Obamacare campaign ever,” and given some of the advertising in recent years, that’s no small claim.
The spot features a woman’s voice that tells listeners, “Two years ago, my son Caleb began having seizures … if we can’t pick our own doctor, how do I know my family is going to get the care they need?”
In reality, there’s simply nothing in the Affordable Care Act that stops consumers from choosing their own doctor. Literally, not one provision. Under a variety of HMOs, there are limits on out-of-network physicians, but that was an American norm long before “Obamacare” came around.
For that matter, if you’re a parent of a kid with seizures, the Affordable Care Act is perhaps the best friend you’ve ever had — not only does the law protect you and your family’s coverage, but it extends protections to those with pre-existing conditions, and ends annual and lifetime caps. And since treating children with seizures can get a little pricey, that’s important.
So why are the Koch brothers saying largely the opposite? Because they hope to use deceptions to scare people. It’s as simple as that.
Greg Sargent highlighted the other most obvious misleading claim.
[P]erhaps the most revealing thing of all is the ad’s warning of public confusion about the law. To buttress the impression that the ad is a catastrophe, the ad claims: “ABC News says confusion and doubt are prognosis for Obamcare.”
And it’s true: The ABC News article in question does bear that headline. But the article actually presents this not as a sign that the law itself is flawed, but as a sign that the public remains ignorant about what’s actually in it. The article is about how many Americans, even those who stand to gain from the law, are not yet aware of its benefits.
This neatly underscores the game plan behind ads like these: spread confusion about the law — in a deliberate effort to prevent folks from learning what’s actually in it — while simultaneously citing confusion about the law as evidence that it’s a disaster in hopes that folks will give up on it.
If Obamacare were really as horrible as right-wing activists and lawmakers claim, shouldn’t it be easier to attack the law without making stuff up? Wouldn’t conservatives be eager to simply give people the truth, rather than resort to ugly demagoguery?
Careful, Kochs, your desperation is showing.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 16, 2013
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