COVID-19 & Healthcare

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Remember back when FreedomWorks and Americans For Prosperity had old white people carrying signs saying "Keep your government hands off my Medicare"? These teabaggers were so hopelessly ignorant that many genuinely believed that Medicare is not a government-mandated health care program.

Apparently none of them were ever intellectually curious enough to look at their paychecks for all of those years and wonder "Who is this FICA guy, and why is he taking my money?" [The Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) tax is for Social Security tax withholding (6.2% up to the annual maximum), and Medicare tax withholding (1.45%)].

As Timothy Noah pointed out at the time, "Medicare, you may have heard, is a government program, and the only way
to take the government's hands off it would be to abolish it—but the
joke is starting to wear thin." "Medicare isn't government" meme. – Slate Magazine:

The big lie that Medicare isn't, nor ever should be, financed and regulated by the government, is a nice illustration of Slate founder Michael Kinsley's hypothesis, articulated in his 1995 book Big Babies,
that infantile denial lies at the heart of much contemporary political
disaffection.

The American people, Kinsley wrote, "make flagrantly
incompatible demands—cut my taxes, preserve my benefits, balance the
budget—then explode in self-righteous outrage when the politicians fail
to deliver." Although Kinsley conceded that big babyism had been enabled
by both conservative and liberal politics, he wrote: "It is
conservatives, more than liberals, who stoke the fires of resentment and
encourage vast swaths of the electorate to indulge in fantasies of
victimization by others." This is perhaps 1,000 times more true today than it was 14 years ago.

This infantile denial on Medicare is being repeated with the Affordable Care Act aka "ObamaCare."

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Some informative reporting today from Michelle Singletary at the Washington Post. I would encourage Arizona's print media to pick up this series of columns by Singletary to, you know, actually inform your readers about "ObamaCare" and the health insurance exchanges coming online October 1. Getting
ready for Obamacare:

A marketplace like no other is opening soon.

Beginning Oct. 1, people without health insurance will be able to shop for what is promised to be affordable coverage.

It’s all part of the rollout of the Patient Protection and Affordable
Care Act, which was passed by Congress and signed by President Obama in
2010. For the past three years, various parts of the law have been
implemented: Young adults can stay on their parents’ health insurance
until they turn 26; insurance companies are prohibited from imposing
lifetime dollar limits on essential services such as hospital stays;
people with Medicare get free preventive services.

Next up is a
part of the law that requires most Americans to maintain “minimum
essential” health insurance coverage. It’s one of the more controversial
provisions of the law commonly referred to as Obamacare.

* * *

This is the first in a series of columns explaining the provisions of
the law that are due to take effect next year. But ultimately, you’re
going to have to do some research yourself. Don’t be informed by rumors
or the political discourse surrounding this law. There’s enough
complication in the application of the provisions that you don’t need to
add to your fears or frustrations by getting advice that is politically
motivated.

by David Safier Soon-to-be-ex State Senator Rich Crandall is lucky he can double dip, or he and his family could be without healthcare for a few weeks. If I were an anti-Obamacare Republican, I might say, "Why should Arizona keep covering your health care when you're not doing your job? It's your problem, not ours. … Read more

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Estimates from 19 states operating health insurance exchanges to help
the uninsured find coverage show that at least 8.5 million will use the
exchanges to buy insurance, a USA TODAY survey shows. States Predict More Insurance Customers:

That number would far outstrip the federal government's estimate of 7 million
new customers for all 50 states under the 2010 health care law.

USA TODAY contacted the 50 states, and 19 had estimates for how many
of their uninsured residents they expect will buy through the exchanges.
About 48 million Americans were uninsured in 2011, according to the
Kaiser Family Foundation.

"For the most part, that's a very good
thing," said Paul Ginsburg, president of the Center for Studying Health
System Change. "First, these are people who need health insurance. And
second, the scenario that only sick people will enroll is less likely."

* * *

To stay financially viable, insurers need healthy people to help
round out the costs of those with chronic conditions. The non-partisan
Congressional Budget Office did its own research to determine 7 million
people would enroll for the 2014 exchanges.

California alone said it expected to sign up 5.3 million people.