Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
This gives a whole new meaning to the "red states" map. Sarah Kliff writes at Ezra Klein's Wonkblog, These two maps are incredibly important to Obamacare:
If you want to understand where Obamacare stands to have the most significant impact, check out these new maps from the Census. They show uninsured levels for every county in the United States, broken down by income level:
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Now this is news you can use on "ObamaCare" from David Sayen, Medicare’s regional administrator for Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, and the Pacific Territories. New health insurance options for Arizonans on their way:
The Health Insurance Marketplace is coming to Arizona this fall. Through the Marketplace, uninsured individuals and small businesses in Arizona will be able to purchase coverage that may have been unaffordable or even unobtainable in the past.
People sometimes ask why they need health coverage in the first place.
No one plans to get sick or hurt, but most people need medical care at some point. Health insurance covers these costs and protects you from very high expenses.
Health insurance is a contract between you and your insurance company. You buy a plan, and the company agrees to pay part of your medical costs when you get sick or hurt.
There are other important benefits of health insurance. Plans available in the Marketplace (and most other plans) will provide free preventive care like vaccines, screenings, and check-ups. They’ll also cover some costs for prescription drugs.
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
I saw some media villager on one of the cable shows the other night blaming the White House for its messaging on the Affordable Care Act aka "ObamaCare" as the reason for why the public is so ignorant about the law. Bullshit!
The corporate "lamesteam" media has been an abject failure from day one on informing the public and purveying misinformation and disinformation about the law. (Think of their focus on Tea Party antics inst4ead of the law). The media villagers do not get to absolve themselves of their sins and blame someone else — it's on you.
Two articles in the Washington Post today illustrate the corporate "lamestream" media's failure to inform the public on "ObamaCare." At the most basic level, media villager Chris Cillizza writes, The dirty little secret of Obamacare? Tons of people don't even know it's a law.
For all of the political rhetoric spent on President Obama’s health
care law — defund it! implement it! — there’s one fact that consistently
gets lost: Almost half of all Americans don’t know it’s the law of the land.
Yes, you read that last sentence right. In the Kaiser Family Foundation’s August tracking poll,
44 percent(!) said they were “unaware” of the current status of the
law. The bulk of those people — 31 percent — said they simply didn’t
know if the Affordable Care Act was law or not. Another eight percent
said the law had been overturned by Congress while five percent said it
had been overturned by the Supreme Court.
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Another reason to give Frank Antenori and his band of "I hate poor people" wingnuts the middle-finger salute on their petitions to refer Governor Brewer's Medicaid (AHCCCS) resotoration/expansion plan to the ballot. It improves the financial ability of hospitals to provide medical care, as opposed to Antenori's plan — poor people can just go to the emergency room for "charity care" — which is causing hospitals financial distress, and bankrupting patients who cannot pay for their medical care. Arizona hospitals to gain revenue under Medicaid expansion, state says:
Arizona hospitals should net $108 million in the first six months of
2014 under a Medicaid expansion plan, even after paying their new
assessments, according to a state study.
The report details how
much each of the state’s hospitals would be expected to pay to
underwrite the legislatively approved plan to increase the number of
people with government-funded health coverage by about 300,000.
In
virtually all of those cases, the hospitals will get more in payments
for taking care of Medicaid patients than they will pay out.
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The new August tracking poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which is the resource for public opinion on the Affordable Care Act aka "ObamaCare," makes the case that the public is opposed to the Tea-Publican fantasy to "defund ObamaCare."
The public is decisive about its opposition to defunding
ObamaCare, with 57 percent saying they would disapprove of such a move —
including roughly one in three Republicans — while just 36 percent
would approve.
The Kaiser poll proves what many establishment Republicans have been saying for weeks: The only way for their side to lose, politically speaking, is to focus the debate on removing the funding for it. And yet, this is what the pied pipers of the conservative media entertainment complex and Tea Party organizations like FreedomWorks and Americans For Prosperity are demanding. They are leading the GOP over the cliff.