COVID-19 & Healthcare

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):

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The TanMan, Weeper of The House John Boehner, decided to engage in a PR stunt on Thursday attacking problems with the federal "ObamaCare" Marketplace web site, because media messaging PR is all he can do — he can't pass any substantive legislation or even routine budgets. The TanMan's PR stunt didn't quite go as planned.

Steve Benen reports, Boehner proves the wrong point:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) wrote a blog post Thursday, highlighting his own personal experience when he “sat down to try and enroll in the DC exchange.”

Like many Americans, my experience was pretty frustrating. After putting in my personal information, I received an error message. I was able to work past that, but when I went to actually sign up for coverage, I got this “internal server error” screen. […]

Despite multiple attempts, I was unable to get past that point and sign up for a health plan. We’ve got a call into the help desk. Guess I’ll just have to keep trying…

As it turns out, his willingness to “keep trying” was a good idea. Boehner, who is not yet eligible for Medicare, “called the DC Health Link help line,” and a “few hours later,” the process was complete. He’d signed up for health insurance.

Doh!

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Arizona's Tea-Publican controlled legislature is unique: it is the only legislature heartless enough to deny health care coverage to poor children eligible for the S-CHIP ("Kidscare") program. This is a notch group of children whose parent(s) do not qualify for Medicaid (AHCCCS) health insurance, but otherwise would qualify for Kidscare. Enrollment in the KidsCare program has been frozen since January 1, 2010 due to lack of funding for the program. Our Tea-Publican controlled legislature has shown no interst in restoring funding to the Kidscare program.

Arizona is one of the poorest states in the country, and among the worst states for uninsured children:

Nationally the number of children without health insurance dropped between 2009 and 2011, but not in Arizona, a new study says.

Arizona has one of the worst rates of uninsured children in the country, says the report, released Tuesday by Georgetown University's Center for Children and Families.

Nearly 210,000 children in Arizona do not have health insurance, which amounts to 13 percent of the state's children – only Texas and Nevada had worse rates, the researchers found.  And unlike most of the country, the rate here got worse between 2009 and 2011, the study shows.