COVID-19 & Healthcare

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Hey, hysterical media villagers! "ObamaCare" is working where the GOP is not sabotaging it. Since our GOP-friendly media here in Arizona will not report the "ObamaCare" success stories, I will start posting them here.

Paul Krugman wrote about the success of the state-run California Marketplace health insurance exchange, known as Covered California, in his recent column. California, Here We Come?:

We know what each side of the partisan divide wants you to believe. The Obama administration is telling the public that everything will eventually be fixed, and urging Congressional Democrats to keep their nerve. Republicans, on the other hand, are declaring the program an irredeemable failure, which must be scrapped and replaced with … well, they don’t really want to replace it with anything.

At a time like this, you really want a controlled experiment. What would happen if we unveiled a program that looked like Obamacare, in a place that looked like America, but with competent project management that produced a working website?

Well, your wish is granted. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you California.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Hey, hysterical media villagers! "ObamaCare" is working where the GOP is not sabotaging it. Since our GOP-friendly media here in Arizona will not report the "ObamaCare" success stories, I will start posting them here.

The Washington Post reported on the success of the state-run Marketplace health insurance exchange in deep-red Kentucky (but a Democratic governor), known as "Kynect." In rural Kentucky, debate over health law takes a back seat as people sign up:

[In Kentucky] where the rollout has gone smoothly, and in a county that is one of the poorest and unhealthiest in the country, Courtney Lively has been busy signing people up: cashiers from the IGA grocery, clerks from the dollar store, workers from the lock factory, call-center agents, laid-off coal miners, KFC cooks, Chinese green-card holders in town to teach Appalachian students.

* * *

Now it was the beginning of another day, and a man Lively would list as Client 375 sat across from her in her office at a health clinic next to a Hardee’s.

“So, is that Breathitt County?” she asked Woodrow Wilson Noble as she tapped his information into a laptop Thursday morning.

“Yeah, we live on this side of the hill,” said Noble, whose family farm had gone under, who lived on food stamps and what his mother could spare, and who was about to hear whether he would have health insurance for the first time in his 60-year-old life.

This is how things are going in Kentucky: As conservatives argued that the new health-care law will wreck the economy, as liberals argued it will save billions, as many Americans raged at losing old health plans and some analysts warned that a disproportionate influx of the sick and the poor could wreck the new health-care model, Lively was telling Noble something he did not expect to hear.

“All right,” she said. “We’ve got you eligible for Medicaid.”

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

It's almost Thanksgiving and you know what that means — sitting down to dinner with your crazy uncle or brother-in-law who listens to FAUX News all day and wants to spout wild conspiracy theories and GOPropaganda just to ruin everyone's dinner. FAUX Nation seems to take a perverse pleasure in being assholes. Just sayin'.

(h/t Norman Rockwell, Fredom From Want, 1943)

Since the Tea-Publican party has become a single issue party, the anti-ObamaCare party, you already know what the topic will be so you can prepare yourself in advance. Sarah Kliff has this helpful post, A guide to surviving Obamacare debates at Thanksgiving:

Ah, Thanksgiving: That treasured, American holiday where you can eat an incredibly uncomfortable amount of food and have incredibly uncomfortable political conversations, all at the same time!

This Thanksgiving, it's a pretty safe bet that debates over Obamacare will be just about as central as turkey. As Wonkblog readers hit the road and head home, we didn't want to leave you totally unprepared. Here's a guide to the questions you might get — and their answers.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Insurers and advocacy groups are pursuing a new strategy in the quest to get millions of young people to sign up for "ObamaCare": They are appealing to their mothers. The New York Times reports, New Pitch for Health Law: Listen to Mom:

In one cheeky campaign, AARP is urging mothers to send e-cards to their children reminding them to sign up. One e-card reads, “As a reward for signing up for health insurance, I’ll defriend you on Facebook.” Another group, Organizing for Action, is seeking to steer holiday conversations toward health care by encouraging parents to have “the talk” with their adult children. (video below the fold. Check out barackobama.com/talk to learn more.).

Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Announcement from Rep. Andrea Dalessandro (D-LD 2):