I’m not overly concerned about horrible polling numbers for ObamaCare right now, regardless of what demographic you might choose to focus on. The rollout of the website was a disaster and, up until this week, the press coverage of it has been unrelentingly negative. I think the resulting poll numbers represent a bottom.
This is especially true if we consider the case of so-called “waitress moms,” or white working-class women. A typical waitress has no health insurance from her employer, and she’ll struggle to afford a private plan that can cover her and her children. However, she is probably eligible for ObamaCare’s subsidies, which will often make health insurance affordable for the first time. In some states (it should be all), she may be eligible for Medicaid, which the federal government will pay for. So, there really isn’t any reason for your typical waitress mom to be hostile to ObamaCare, and the amazingly bad polling numbers for the law among working class white women is probably a reflection of their cultural alienation from the president. In a lot of the country, these women are probably exposed to a lot of negativity about the law, the Democrats, and the president, which is coloring how they view ObamaCare. But, once they have insurance, they’ll want to keep it. Our job will be to make sure they understand why they have it and who is trying to take it away.
If people have already forgotten about the government shutdown, then I’m not worried about how they’ll remember a stupid friggin’ website rollout in a year. Conservatives and the media are just high on gas fumes right now.
some unexpected good news from CA
http://www.mercurynews.com/health/ci_24657428/california-poll-shows-young-and-healthy-more-likely
As someone who is on the line between Millenials and X, this seems obvious to me. We have shitty prospects. We have a mountain of college debt. We’re not likely to get that sick but if we do we are 100% BONED. Older generations had some resources to fall back on. Many of those my age and younger, don’t.
Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!
Just ask your dad if you can borrow a few million, and start your own business!
Start being a producer!
The report doesn’t mention one critical dimension that many other polls about PPACA/Obamacare ask. They find that many people don’t like the law because it doesn’t go far enough. That this writeup misses that point, the poll design apparently doesn’t cover it and there is no link to the questions or results, causes me to regard it with low credibility anyway.
In any case there is still a winning narrative for Dems. It would have been simpler if insurance companies and Repubs had not pushed single payer or even public option out of the picture. That was the GOP in “action”. And the Dems will continue to improve the law by proposing a “Medicare buy in option” (i.e. public option) at exchanges as a lower cost alternative to an insurance company option.
At some point the Democrats are going to have to break out of the “supporting the private sector” rhetoric they have been peddling when it comes to health care reform. The facts are that the parts of Obamacare that are universally popular are those that depend directly on government regulation–eliminating exclusions, rescissions, denials of service, aging out of coverage, and excessive featherbedding and profiteering on costs. Medicare is very popular and Medicaid is very popular for long term care–universally.
What is unpopular is the individual mandate and the possibility that for some people this will impose an additional cost on tight budgets. What is unpopular are the nickel-and-diming co-pays and deductions and the growing out-of-pocket expenses that providers can impose with separate contracts with patients for service. What is unpopular with people is how quick providers are to start dunning them even with negotiated payment agreements.
All of those issues could be dealt with through amending the ACA to turn in into a system of Medicare/Medicaid for All plus Long Term Care. That is the direction to deal with all of the problems with Obamacare. Both Democrats and Republicans are now stuck with that political reality; the party that realizes and pushes it through to completion first will gain an immense long-term advantage, one similar to that Democrats enjoyed from FDR but squandered.
Trying to sell Obamacare to people who are directly experiencing its benefits is redundant. Trying to sell repeal of Obamacare to people who are experiencing its benefits is stupid. Trying to sell Obamacare to people frustrated because it has put them in a financial bind is politically dangerous. Trying to sell repeal of Obamacare to people who are looking for health care to become part of the infrastructure is a lost cause.
The only people not interested in moving forward are the executives of insurance companies and the employers who will lose the golden handcuffs of health care insurance and have to start bargaining with wages and salaries.
We need to have a health care reform debate again because people are still hurting and even by next summer they will still be hurting.
It was clear in the discussions of health care reform in 2009-2010 that the US could accommodate the health care needs of every citizen at a cost per person half of the then current cost per person in the US and have outcomes as good or better than those of Canada–for everyone. And that would lower the aggregate cost of health care in the US by a full $1 trillion. How much longer is the Democratic Party going to cost lives and productivity in order to continue wasting money on an inefficient health care system that all those million dollar integrated health care system CEOs haven’t seemed to fix in 20 years? We know that today’s Republican Party is quite willing to allow that waste forever.
If Democrats treat Obamacare as the endgame, they will sacrifice more than a single election.
That waitress will learn about ACA the next time she shows up at the ER and runs up a $2000 bill. Some hospital social worker or some one from the financial office will have an detailed conversation about ACA. Hospitals want to get paid…they do no want to $10 a month for the next 2 years.
I confess to ignorance about ACA. Being on Medicare puts me in a different situation, but I think the Dems have f—ed up this time. Friends of mine will have their monthly premium increase about $600. Their deductible will go from 2,000 to 7,500. They were not able to keep their own policy. They feel lied to and are in a word livid. I don’t think they are the only ones feeling this way. 2014 could be a disaster for progressives in the election. Hope I am very wrong, but just passing along what I’m hearing out there. Perhaps modeling it after Romney’s plan wasn’t very farsighted.
“Friends of mine will have their monthly premium increase about $600. Their deductible will go from 2,000 to 7,500. They were not able to keep their own policy.”
keepinon, there is no circumstance I have heard of where people are experiencing the sort of premium and deductible hikes you mention here IF they have priced out their options through their health care insurance exchange. That’s the extremely crucial thing: if people gullibly take the letter from their insurer as fact, they may accept a bad deal. What these insurers are desperately trying to do to their policyholders is PREVENT THEM FROM SEEING THEIR OPTIONS ON THE EXCHANGE. For the many Americans blinded by propaganda or ideology or racism, it is possible for insurers to get these policyholders to surrender their rights, maintain their pure policy ignorance, and let insurers steal a pile of money from them. Perhaps your friends are among these people.
There are people who have appeared on Fox News and other media outlets. They have reported massive cost increases to Hannity and others, only to have journalists contact these consumers after their appearances and help them discover that they are eligible for a better deal on health insurance than they believed.
Here’s a story which provides some examples:
“Then there’s Allison Denijs who told Hannity that she pays over $13,000 a year in premiums and just got a letter from Blue Cross saying that her current policy wasn’t in compliance with the law, so it was being discontinued and replaced. She also has a daughter with a pre-existing condition who hasn’t been covered. She’s angry because Obama promised that we could keep our existing policies. Stern asked if she’d actually checked out the exchange. She hadn’t. Stern found “that they would be able to get a plan for around $7,600, which would include coverage for their uninsured daughter. This would be about a 60 percent reduction from what they would have to pay on the pre-Obamacare market.”
Not a bad deal. Likewise, Stern found a pretty good deal on the exchange for the final couple, Robbie and Tina Robison from Franklin, Tennessee. They’re mad because their kids are grown, but they have to have a policy that covers things they don’t want like maternity care, pediatric care, prenatal care and so forth. Welcome to health insurance, Robbie and Tina. They’re also mad because their insurance agent told them they would have to pay 50-75 percent more for a plan compliant with the law.
Had they shopped on the exchange yet, I asked? No, Tina said, nor would they. They oppose Obamacare and want nothing to do with it. Fair enough, but they should know that I found a plan for them for, at most, $3,700 a year, a 63 percent less than their current bill.”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/18/1248676/-How-one-smart-reporter-debunked-the-Hannity-Fox-Ne
ws-lie-machine
Thanks for taking the time to give feedback to me on this. These folks are quite intelligent, but I do not know steps they have already taken, except they say they have spent hours and hours checking it out. If not on the exchanges I know not where. I will try to pass along your insight, but if they remain as emotional as they were in my last talk, I don’t imagine this will lead anywhere. Could it be that the insurance companies have a vested interest in maintaining…..well of course they do!
Again, I appreciate your response, thanks.
Glad to help. Americans have been and are being thwacked by one of the most massive propaganda campaigns the world has ever seen. It’s been executed like a campaign meant to take us to war, which is an accurate metaphor for how the right-wing is reacting to our first black President and his most major policy achievement. Unfortunately, many intelligent people have been taken in and are allowing themselves to be woefully misinformed. Lots of smart people supported the Iraq war as well.
You were admiring the chick out of the corner of your eye as you ran up to the bar. The lady and the guy appeared to be truly close. What is more he seemed to be the guy who was the lucky guy to stay with her… What is the reason that it is always like that?
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