COVID-19 & Healthcare

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Brian Beutler at Salon explains how Conservatives — with no concern for making healthcare better — have made arguing about Obamacare a waste of time:

As always, though, the point of the complaints isn’t to address and
rectify problems, but rather to deploy them as subterfuge to wreck the
entire reform edifice.

* * *

Conservatives only care about these problems insofar as they can be
used to trash or undermine the law in its entirety. That’s why they
never, ever mention any of the millions of people who will or are
already benefiting from the law. If they did, they’d have to entertain
solutions to these problems that don’t essentially kick a tent pole out
from underneath the system.

The disruption we’re seeing in the
individual insurance market is mostly by design. And it’s mostly a good
thing. Until October, the individual market existed to sell insurance to
people who needed it least. Rates were low for healthy people precisely
because their old, sick neighbors were priced or locked out of the
system. They were also low because many of the policies on the market
didn’t actually fulfill the function of insurance, which is to hedge
against financial catastrophe.

Obamacare eliminates each of these
enormous flaws by 1) regulating insurance so that it covers lots of
stuff and genuinely protects people from medical bankruptcy, 2) making
plans available and affordable to the ill and elderly by banning price
discrimination against sick people, and only allowing insurers to charge
the elderly three times as much as the young for equivalent coverage,
3) providing subsidies to the poor and middle class to make coverage
affordable.

* * *

[Conservatives'] tremendous outpouring of grief for young, middle-class people now comes couched in the false premise that the only available solution is
complete repeal. You could counter that by any moral standard the system
the Affordable Care Act creates is preferable to the one we had before[.]

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Affordable Care Act aka "ObamaCare" is based upon and was designed by the same people who built "RomneyCare" in Massachusetts, and "RomneyCare" originated from a plan from the Heritage Foundation back in the days when it still had some modicum of crediblity as a conservative think tank. During the 2012 election, i mocked Willard "Mittens" Romney for his hypocritical attacks on "ObamneyCare" — it was his plan!

The media villagers, as they are wont to do, are irresponsibly behaving hysterically about the rollout of the federal health care Marketplace — which had to be set up only because of Tea-Publican sabotage of "ObamaCare" in red states, a critical point the media villagers always fail to mention — while the Marketplaces set up by individual states as the law intended are working just fine, something else the media villagers always fail to mention.

The media villager concern trolls have adopted the GOPropaganda line that the slow sign-ups will doom "ObamaCare" (the GOP does not care how many Americans sign up, they are committed to sabotaging and killing "ObamaCare," and are rooting for it to fail).

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Because nothing says sober, serious, responsible government like someone rooting for it to fail . . .

There is something deeply disturbing about Tea-Publicans. GOP
hopes Obama heath care woes have staying power. What kind of patriotic American roots for their country to fail? Whatever happened to "American exceptionalism" and our can-do spirit? Who are these people?

Remember back when the GOP pushed through its Medicare Part D government subsidy to Big Pharma and tried to set up its program? The Tea-Publicans are all pretending to have amnesia about this disaster now. Jon Perr remembers How Democrats Saved Bush's Medicare Drug Program:

President [Obama] declared, "It's time for folks to stop rooting for its
failure because hard working middle class families are rooting for its
success."

["I’m willing to work with anyone, on any idea, who’s actually willing to
make this law perform better.  But it’s well past the time for folks to
stop rooting for its failure.  Because hardworking, middle-class
families are rooting for its success." Transcript of Weekly Address: Enrolling in the Affordable Care Act Marketplace (10/26/2013).]

Which is exactly right. After all, when President Bush's Medicare
prescription drug program nearly crashed and burned in late 2005 and
early 2006, Democrats in Washington and in the states stepped in to save
it.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Proverb: “Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones”

Yes, the healthcare.gov web site has had serious problems with its roll out, and criticism is both fair and warranted if it is meant to identify problems and to offer solutions on how to fix them.

But there are those who live in glass houses who are in no position to criticize. Case in point, the Arizona Daily Star which has the least user-friendly absolute worst piece-o'-crap web site I have to use, hands down. Who ever designed and manages the Star's piece-o'-crap web site should have been fired years ago. Can I get an Amen!

So the Star today, like so many other news organizations this week, assigned a reporter to open an account on healthcare.gov to see if they could complete the application. (Here's a thought: maybe if it wasn't for all these reporters signing on to healthcare.gov to do the same damn story, the system would not be so overloaded. Just sayin'.) Reporter among Tucsonans who find insurance sign-up problematic.