The Huge Obamacare Story You Aren't Reading

[Tx4obama]

The Huge Obamacare Story You Aren't Reading

Today it’s a few hundred thousand people. By next year, it will be at least a few million. Their health insurance status is changing dramatically: What they have in 2014 and beyond will look nothing like what they had in 2013 and before. For many of these people, the difference will be hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year. In a few cases, it may be the difference between life and death.

You probably think I’m talking about the people getting cancellation notices about their private insurance policies. I’m not. I’m talking about the people getting Medicaid. Both stories are consequences of the Affordable Care Act. But one is getting way, way more attention than the other.

It’s no mystery why. Stories of people losing something are more compelling than stories of people gaining something. The policy cancellation story is also newsier, because fewer people expected it to happen. Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid was something the advocates of reform advertised. Reform’s effect on people with skimpy or medically underwritten insurance policies they liked was something that few advocates, including the president, even acknowledged. Had Obama pointed out, all along, that some people might lose existing plans or pay more for coverage in 2014, it would seem a lot less shocking.

But there is also a class element to the way this debate has evolved. By and large, the people receiving those cancellation notices and facing large premium increases are at least reasonably affluent. They’re not necessarily rich, particularly if they live in higher cost areas of the country. Many of them sweat monthly bills just like most of the country does. But, by definition, they don’t qualify for huge subsidies that would offset premium increases mostly or completely. By contrast, the people getting Medicaid are poor. They have to be, because it’s the only way to sign up for the program. And as political scientists have shown, the poor don't command the same kind of attention from politicians that the middle class—and particularly the upper middle class—does.

-snip-

Full article here: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115542/obamacare-plan-cancellations-medicaid-expansion-and-media

[NYC_SKP]

1. ObamaCare will far exceed the promise made by BushCo that "People will greet us in the streets..."

Except that they won't be Iraqis, and they won't have flowers, and it will actually come to be.

I think it's already happening (not to be complacent).

I'm pretty confident that the RW nuts are saying "fuck, dude, we are FUCKED if this goes through".

And we laugh!

[rgbecker]

2. You won't be reading about this because America hates poor people.

Instead you'll be reading all about "self made small businessmen" and how they suddenly have to ante up and pay their share.

[babylonsister]

3. Rec'd. nt

[Cha]

4. Thanks Tx~

[sheshe2]

5. K&R! nt

[quadrature]

6. I know lots of people making 8 bucks an hour

for them, paying even $100 a month
is going to be a burden.

for every dollar in the future going to
1 percenters as premium,
is one less dollar going into
the local subsistence economy.
The real untold story.

[rhett o rick]

7. If your point is that we need single payer, we all know that. nm

[vinny9698]

8. If you are making $8 per hour, you get Medicaid

Which is free. That's why the GOP is going nuts.
Rural Kentuckians are get health care for their first time in their life.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/in-rural-kentucky-health-care-debate-takes-back-seat-as-people-sign-up-for-insurance/2013/11/23/449dc6e0-5465-11e3-9e2c-e1d01116fd98_story.html

[hue]

9. This is the very important "trickle-down effect" of the ACA. K&R!!!

At last someone, our POTUS, has started a domino effect that will actually positively touch our poor and middle class. Insurance companies have been vultures on the sick, poor and dying for too long. President Obama experienced this first hand sitting by His Mother's bedside when She lay dying of cancer. He vowed then to change the system that parasitized the sick.
The effects of the ACA were feared & fought bitterly--& still being fought--by the 1 %. It will take many years to see the whole picture.