#obamascare

[smbizamerica]

Small Business News – Healthcare Fraud Alert

[emory]

GOSneaky

The Florida GOP railroaded 750,000 Floridians and left them without health coverage, and all it took was one lie they were foolish enough to believe.

Tampa Bay Times

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[emory]

Shut up, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MxLBy-gwwX8

Joe Barton made a hilariously awkward attempt at a GOTCHAthe other day by referring to commented out lines in a javascript that runs on Healthcare.gov regarding privacy. He was trying to…

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[thatrosemaryg]

My recommendation? Do Not Watch This When You Are Alone!!!!!  

Not that I speak from experience or anything……..but really, whoever made this video did an amazing job with it!

[katnorwood]

Does Obamacare cover Republican butt hurt?

On October 1, 2013, for better or worse, something happened in this country that I have not seen in my short history as a voter. A U.S. president kept his promise.

After his first landslide victory in 2008, President Barack Obama was re-elected in 2012, on a platform of healthcare. Understanding his opposition would staunchly oppose and reject any plan he put forth, he chose a healthcare model with the same benefits of the plan, his opponent, Republican candidate Mitt Romney, had passed in Massachusetts when he was governor.

It was a good plan for the people of Massachusetts, Romney said and Obama believed it would be a good plan for America. In predictable fashion, the right-wingers quickly dubbed his proposed Affordable Care Act, “Obamacare” and set out on a tireless campaign to “Obamascare.” For those of you who may not know me, I’m not the kind of person to sit around wringing my hands while wealthy white guys terrify the rest of us with saber-rattling scare tactics about complex issues the lay person does not fully understand. As a hyper-skeptic, the first way to convince me your argument is invalid is to appeal to my emotions rather than rationality, and when fear is the first thing reached for, the grabber will often draw back a nub.

After speaking with people in my community over the past four years and reading various comments in social media outlets, it became fairly obvious why the Affordable Care Act was so misunderstood. One of the prevailing factors in this observation is that most of the people in this community and state believe they are “middle class.” When Obama says the folks with a household income of $250,000 should pay more taxes, they believe he is speaking directly to them—even though their household income is nowhere near $250,000. Doesn’t matter. They refuse to believe, and especially in the south, that they have more in common with a Welfare recipient than they do with the Koch brothers. Because they value the same thing: Money. Poor Republicans vote against their economic interests because the true owners of this country have successfully managed to convince them that they share the same moral values: Money. Now we have the poor Republicans voting for the reality the want to live in or ought to live in, rather than the one we do live in. The one where the vulgarian trillionaires spend our money and our futures away in real time while convincing half of us it’s because a black guy bought drugs with our tax dollars. It’s conartistry at its best dressed. 

Enter the “working class.” Now here we are in small-town reality, and, coincidentally, where most of my readers live whether they openly admit it or not. In this reality, people live paycheck to paycheck and sometimes they don’t even make it to the next paycheck before the funds are gone and many of those are one tragedy away from financial ruin. The Affordable Care Act was made for us, in case you were wondering.

So what does the ACA mean and how does it affect the real world, away from the rhetoric of the Republican Party? Women covered under their employers’ insurance can look forward to having contraception as part of the plan, the same way Viagara has always been covered for men. Women and men who are not covered at all under their employer’s policy or any other policy, can qualify for Medicaid or are eligible for a reasonably-priced policy.

Under the new law, people with pre-existing conditions cannot be denied healthcare coverage and there are no caps or limits for costly treatments. It is a social program—exactly the same way Social Security is a social program—the  ACA works on the same concept. The Affordable Care Act mandate is not unconstitutional the same way automobile liability insurance is not unconstitutional. Yet, the very Republican congress that has stood so tall against the Obama Administration’s spending habits, just snatched 60 million taxpayer dollars to repeal in 41 attempts what the Supreme Court has ruled as the law of the land. (I swear, I can never figure out exactly what these Conservatives are “conserving”).

Young people can remain on their parents’ insurance policy until they are 26-years-old. This is important for college students and graduates who may also have to contend with the burden of school loans.

Because I spent two years of my life wrangling with insurance companies in my position at a physician’s office, I understand that life, above all else, is unexpected. I also understand that there are no depths of deceit that a profiteering insurance companies won’t stoop to in their nonstop efforts to deny a claim. Any claim. Every claim. Private insurance companies do not make money when claims are paid and private insurance companies are worried about profits, not health. Denial comes first and then we are expected to fight our way back from there. Except, I did most of the fighting for our patients.

Yet, because I am buried knee-deep in the old ways of the south, what I mostly hear are condemnations from those who have never had a sick child or have never been sick and unable to pay for their healthcare. People are so fit and fine down here in cancer alley, they couldn’t imagine for one moment that cancer discriminates against no one. If they themselves are not in need of an organ transplant, then why should they worry about anyone else? That is the dominating state of mind in the Republican south.

Because of this complete lack of empathy, it is also difficult for them to imagine that not everyone is covered by an employer’s healthcare plan, and if a business has fewer than 50 employees, it is totally exempt from the requirements mandated for larger corporations under the Affordable Care Act. If you understand your current place on the food chain, it’s really not that complicated.

Perhaps the most important part of the ACA is that it opens up the free market and forces insurance companies to compete with each other on price. Call me a capitalist, but I think that’s what is supposed to happen.

As for what the government will pay toward Medicaid claims, I have seen this unfold in recent months in my own life and through the comments I see posted on social media. One of my favorite tales of horror came in the form of a Medicaid recipient encouraging the sheeple on Facebook to pass on her story about how Obamacare was destroying her life because the government will no longer pay for her B12 shots. (B12 is a vitamin supplement and not necessary to sustain health). She whined because they made her “feel” good and now they were no longer covered. Yeah? I bet a massage would feel pretty good too, but we ain’t paying for that either. You need insulin? We can help you.

Louisiana Governor Piyush “Bobby” Jindal has opted not to participate in the Medicare expansion because he is more loyal to his party’s ideology than he is to the growing number of elderly residents who need Medicare. When this realization makes it down the pike and into the doctor’s offices, the Conservative Republicans will predictably square off to blame Obamacare. This is the same group of people who will look at an empty creek bed and blame the river, instead of the beaver dam just up the stream. 

Upon a deeper conversation with the Conservative Right, it’s blatantly clear that it’s more important to deny a person something they possibly didn’t earn than it is to help the greater commonwealth of the whole. If there is even a remote possibility that some able-bodied person somewhere is free-riding and taking advantage of the system, they would rather throw the baby out with the bathwater if for nothing more than spite. Especially since they only see black people as free-loaders. They don’t understand affordable healthcare and they don’t need to, because so far, it hasn’t affected their lives. Their children aren’t sick, their families are taken care of, and as a group who also calls themselves “Christian,” I wonder why it is so difficult to imagine that not everybody is so fortunate. Heal the sick? Ha. You better get outta Jerusalem! Better yet, you shoulda been sick there because that’s the only place you were going to get healed for free.

When our democracy is plagued by lobbyists who are bought and paid for with the money that insurance companies have received in those 150 percent premium hikes over the past few years (while also denying and cancelling policies along the way), we can rationally conclude that these people will say anything to keep their record-profits rolling in. To those of us not willing to be led around by our snotty noses, the ‘Obamascare’ is not taking its place among the spooky things that go bump in the night. Reality, will always poke holes in the rhetorical darkness. Just wait for it.

[emory]

the Grand ol' teahadi tantrum

Why did the government shut down? The blame lies entirely with a radical Republican minority, and the Speaker of the House who flinches from every threatened strike of the tiny balled-up fists of America’s lil’ Taliban.

the Atlantic:

If the House of…

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