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It seems everybody is in a hurry now to sign up. The deadline for 2014 Obamacare coverage is tonight, March 31st, 2014. If there was not a vicious misinformation campaign, the panic that is setting in now likely would not be occurring.
Lines are long in Texas with people who simply disregarded the misinformation and at the end decided they better at least try Obamacare. Though they had been told Obamacare is bad, those giving them that misinformation had no alternatives.
Margaret Reeve Panahi, a nurse who worked under RomneyCare, wrote the excellent piece below. Had more Margarets been out there willing to tell truly heartfelt real stories, the lies being told by the Right would not have caused so much angst.
Those who disregarded the lies and signed up for Obamacare will be fine. The question is will the Right take responsibility for those who could have had coverage and instead will die from their unnecessary lack of coverage?
Reflections for the Obamacare Deadline by a RomneyCare Nurse
POSTED BY MARGARET REEVE PANAHI 213.20CPC ON MARCH 31, 2014
I am Margaret Reeve Panahi, am a nurse, and live in Massachusetts. I was working as a nurse practitioner as a primary care practitioner (PCP) in a public health center when Romneycare was established. I can say that it helped tremendously, both for access to care for the patients, and fewer tragically overwhelming cases for the practitioners that could have been prevented, or lessened, if the patients had been able to come in earlier. It was heartwarming to see the changes.
I am no longer practicing because my husband has a serious genetic illness that has led to many surgeries, unpredictable and serious hospitalizations, including a kidney transplant about five years ago. He now has Medicare, but still needs to buy supplemental insurance for both hospitalizations and prescriptions. We applied for ACA insurance and have been given subsidies for both of his non-Medicare insurances, and my individual insurance, as well. At this point, we are saving about $1,000.00 per month in medical bills, with insurance and co-pays together. We are very grateful. More grateful than we can say. The process is not done yet though because Massachusetts had bad problems with the technological aspects of the system, so we are on temporary care, until a final enrollment can be done. We will need some of the resources and information listed below when we make our enrollment decision.
Our state is working on further reforms to the original Romneycare law. We are looking to improve it and learn from what has happened with cost and patient health care outcomes. As we continue to refine our system we have realized that access to care is necessary and thus we continue to study and make choices moving forward. Some groups are working for a single-payer system to be enacted here, like what went into law in Vermont recently. We also have a large health care for profit lobby from the high-tech medical devices companies, private insurance and pharmaceutical groups who work to protect their interests. This is the same debate that we went in with while into forming the ACA.
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