COVID-19 & Healthcare

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Former president Bill Clinton made the economic case for implementing and improving the Affordable Care Act on Wednesday morning at the Clinton Presidential
Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. Clinton’s Simple Case For Obamacare: ‘It’s Better Than The Current System’:

The White House asked the man who was dubbed “The Secretary of
Explaining Stuff” after last year’s Democratic convention to explain the
law, in an attempt to combat the massive campaign by Republicans to
misinform voters and sabotage President Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment.

“I have agreed to give this talk today because I am still amazed at
how much misunderstanding there is about the current system of health
care, how it works, how it compares with what other people in other
countries pay for health care and what kind of results they get and what
changes are actually occurring now and are going to occur in the
future,” he said.

Clinton was speaking in front of a small audience of doctors and
health care professionals, but his audience was clearly the media and
thousands watching the livestream of the speech online.

[C-Span video replay Pres. Clinton Defends Health Care Law.] h/t photo

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.