This is the biggest fear of every Republican that should not have been if they had simply been party to the solution. Instead they lied, misinformed, and ultimately made what would be a great law, a law that will need improvement.
Kentucky is geared up with their health exchanges. They are now informing residents of how to get access to health insurance. They market their Obamacare state exchange under the Kynect name. The following reported encounter with a Kentuckian shows the dangers of being misinformed.
A middle-aged man in a red golf shirt shuffles up to a small folding table with gold trim, in a booth adorned with a flotilla of helium balloons, where government workers at the Kentucky State Fair are hawking the virtues of Kynect, the state’s health benefit exchange established by Obamacare.
The man is impressed. “This beats Obamacare I hope,” he mutters to one of the workers.
“Do I burst his bubble?” wonders Reina Diaz-Dempsey, overseeing the operation. She doesn’t. If he signs up, it’s a win-win, whether he knows he’s been ensnared by Obamacare or not. [Source]
Right Wing Republicans have so maligned the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) that they actually began to believe their own lying and misinforming rhetoric. Fortunately all the data suggest that Obamacare is actually working. Americans will now have brochures with actual plans and options to choose from. They can now compare reality with the lies they heard.
Anyone wondering why Right Wing Republicans are in overdrive to shut the government down lest Obamacare is defunded realizes the eyes of many Americans are about to be opened. The millions that will see not a giveaway but help in getting access to affordable health insurance, screenings, and healthcare for the first time in years are also voters. They are voters that will wonder how a politician could be so convincingly evil to have wanted them denied something many needed for their healthcare or financial survival.
Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell is adamant that Obamacare be defunded. But Kentucky citizens are yearning for health insurance.
The crush of people don’t greet Diaz-Dempsey with tea party dogma or amateur constitutional scholarship. No one is there to complain about the individual mandate or heckle about death panels. They have questions.
They wonder if they could get coverage despite having a pre-existing medical condition, how much it will cost them. They ask if Indiana has a similar program, or if this was only for Kentucky. Could they just enroll their child? They talk about their sons and daughters, neighbors going without health care, and ask about the subsidies.
The vast majority are relieved to learn about the health exchange. Linda Parrish, 47, showed up at the table and gushed to Diaz-Dempsey: “This is what I’ve been waiting on.” Parrish has health insurance, but her best friend doesn’t. [Source]
It is not all roses in Kentucky. The Tea Party has been calling people telling them not to sign up because they falsely claim there are no real health insurance exchanges. Many low income workers are against it because they were lied to about what the costs would be.
Christopher McClure hobbles through the doors, his inner thigh hurting from what he suspects are a pair of spider bites. He is not employed and does not have health insurance. His wife Michelle, 29, works as an assistant manager at a pizza chain making $12,000 a year. She also has no insurance and would qualify for the Medicaid expansion. But she’s against Obamacare, convinced that it will wipe out her meager earnings. “Next enrollment season,” she says, “they’re going to sock it to me.”[Source]
The McClures under Obamacare would be fully subsidized. They are so misinformed that they have no clue that Obamacare is that one leg on the stool that removes a financial burden that is materially affecting their access to real financial independence. It makes sense to remove the healthcare anchor from people’s neck giving them the wherewithal to go seek a job or make their own job.
The reelection of President Obama which makes it impossible to kill Obamacare before implementation is the best thing that has happened to the uninsured, the poor, and the working middle class. The pilfering of the last disposable dollar by insurance companies will eventually end. Medical bankruptcy will cease and families’ economic stabilization will begin.
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I really wish she had burst his bubble. Not out of any sort of nastiness, but we have to let people know. I know people will say “he wouldn’t believe it,” but the way most people work, they hear something enough and it sinks in. We need to keep telling the truth, regardless.
I agree with Rebecca. The reason the health care program (law and process) received such a poor reception is that the Republicans were allowed to lie, with no rebuttal and clarification by the Democrats and knowledgeable people. I know why the insurance industry, which still stands to gain much, did not speak out, but medical people, educators, lawyers were all mum.
From the beginning, as soon as I had an idea of what the bill allowed, I could not understand the lack of support, explanation, clarification, TRUTH of what it would actually do, at least begin to do for more people.
What is this too little, too late passivity that supporters of what is in the best interest of the people never shown until it has been maligned to death? I don’t get it. We allow the negative to run rampant–first. I am proud to be a progressive liberal and never let my enemies off the hook.
I understand why she didn’t “burst the man’s bubble.” That’s not what she’s there for. She’s there to sign people up. Period. I understand the impulse to want to tell such a person as this fellow who was referenced in this article, but I think Diaz-Dempsey took the more responsible approach. She put her priority first and her emotional impulses second. That’s the difference between progressives and conservatives. Today’s conservative is led around by his emotions.
That said, I get sooooooo frustrated, sick, and tired of the Republicans’ war against Americans. They do more damage to this country than al Qaeda, and I say that in all seriousness. Al Qaeda would love to be able to wreak the kind of havoc on the American people as the Republicans do. Rest assured that far more Americans have died from inadequate healthcare than from the attacks we suffered on 9/11. It’s just a shame that the Republicans are able to get away with it, that so many Americans believe in their propaganda. It boggles the mind to think that there are millions of rightwing Americans who have allowed themselves to be convinced that they don’t have a right to affordable healthcare. I wonder if they realize that they’re the only ones on earth who believe that.