Oh the irony. Words fail me. Just watch the video.
I especially love when he admits the Republicans have done nothing for him compared to the “Democrat Party.”
“But you know, the Republican Party, they haven’t done nothing for me, man. Nothing,” he remarked. “So, I’m leaning toward voting for Hillary unless something major comes up. I don’t trust the Republicans anymore because they’re wanting to repeal the Obamacare. And I don’t want them to do that, man, because then I’ll have to go to work again. My life’s already planned out.”
I don’t know if this is a gratifying anecdotal not-to-be-repeated instance, but maybe it will be a harbinger of things to come?
I’m not sure that there really were a whole lot of the so-called Reagan Democrats who left the Democratic party in the late 1970s and early 1980s, or if that was a convenient explanation for lazy journalists. But there was indeed a shift in party registrations, and a lot of people began voting for Republicans 30-35 years ago who were traditionally part of the Democratic coalition. Maybe the pendulum is about to swing back?
In any case, now would be a jim-dandy time for Democratic campaign operatives to begin having their candidates point out at every opportunity the truth that Mr. Webb spills here: What have the Republicans actually done for you, Mr. and Mrs. Conservative? Are you wealthy? If not, perhaps you don’t owe your vote to the party that’s picking your pocket to enrich its wealthy benefactors and bankrollers.
It’s an easy enough concept to grasp, there are plenty of examples of Republican governance for the sole benefit of the wealthy, and it’s actually true. This should be a tool in the campaign toolbox for every Democrat running in 2016.
As I noted elsewhere, Obamacare’s approval will inch up, one teabagger at a time, as they find themselves needing it and realizing they weren’t sent to FEMA camps upon signup.
They worked super duper hard and patriotically and love freedumb, so it’s not welfare when they sign up for Obamacare. So it’s OK for them to like it. Unlike those people, of course.
There are some teabaggers who would rather die of untreated strep throat than avail themselves of anything that soshilist Mooslim in the White House passed, but they’re a minority. And you know, Darwin’s law and all.
Ironic, isn’t it? It is theoretically possible that there will be enough Baggerz vote for Hillary to make up for the “progressives” that will never again vote for a Clinton.
Mmm, mixed messages. I can see the TParty folk looking at this and saying wait a minute, this guy is retiring at 50 because of Obamacare? Isn’t he a false TParty patriot and really just a nanny state leech?
He claims to have retired from a state job and his state employer doesn’t cover any part of the cost of his health insurance for retirees. When he worked, his contributions towards his health insurance premium for himself and his wife was $200/month. Had he retired at fifty before implementation of ACA, his monthly premiums would have been $1,100/month. With the ACA his monthly premiums to $300/month.
This is really encouraging. Don’t know how many knuckleheads are on board yet, but if the incredibly obvious can dawn on one, it can dawn on two . . .
Perhaps it’s a matter of time until they figure out this isn’t just for “them collerds.”
This may be a hoax.
It does contain certain clues that suggest it is. 1) retirement at 50. 2) Vet not accessing health insurance or medical care through the VA (note: the ACA changed nothing for Vets).
If it’s not a hoax it’s a setup. One of wingnuttia’s favorite memes is “I used to be a Democrat until ….” It fits in with the “even the liberal (someone like Lanny Davis or Joe Lieberman) says ….” meme.
Do not trust anything like this. Wingnut identity is not about issues, it’s about the perceived power of being part of the party of the rich versus the party of the minorities. They will – and do – vote against their personal benefit for the “good of the country” – meaning, so that they can be part of the white party.
Doesn’t seem as if RawStory or any of the other blogs that are referencing the video have confirmed any of the guy’s claims. Too much of it doesn’t pass the smell test for me.
Wingnut identity is not about issues, it’s about the perceived power of being part of the party of the rich versus the party of the minorities. They will – and do – vote against their personal benefit for the “good of the country” – meaning, so that they can be part of the white party.
Yes.
I also don’t buy this video. I think there are certain aspects that could be true on an anecdotal basis, as in, people will come to identify the health care law for something they want because it benefits them personally. But they would never, and I mean, never, take that as grounds to vote for the party that established it. AA’s vote is up for grabs, as are many other minorities (especially Asians); history has proven that plenty of times. The white supremacists? They know who butters their bread.
Before the midterms and iirc, the NYTimes did a story on KyNect. A woman with a low wage retail job was extremely happy that she and her adult daughter now had health insurance at no cost to them through KyNect. She still opposed what she called Obamacare and would continue to vote Republican.
Salon is giving it some credence.
http://www.salon.com/2015/04/15/tea_party_patriot_has_no_choice_but_to_vote_for_hillary_in_2016_beca
use_he_needs_his_obamacare/
The Salon writer accepted the guy as valid without verifying anything he said in the video. Seems not to have even checked out that this isn’t the guy’s first video on how Obamacare changed his life. From a fifty year old state employee with employer subsidized health care to a fifty year old retiree that has the same or better level of health insurance for himself and his wife at a monthly cost of $300.
Do Democrats want this guy to be the poster child for the ACA? Hell, even the temporary fund that assisted those that needed to retire early was limited to those from ages 55 to 64.
Many people are unable to work in their chosen field until 65 because of health issues. Hell, many professions are not appropriate for people in their 50’s or 60’s, but they’re important professions.
It reads as if you and others are saying in this comments thread that the man in the video is an unsympathetic figure who is either lying or should be made to take a job into his 60’s even if his health is poor and his income allows him to remain retired as long as he can maintain his ACA benefits. You appear to be saying these things despite the fact that you know nothing meaningful about the professional, economic or health history of this man.
If that’s what you’re saying, well, how Republican of you.
How Democratic of you to take totally unverified claims by an unknown person as valid. That worked out so well for ACORN didn’t it?
I merely pointed out reasons to be skeptical. As for your bleeding heart (compassionate is different from being a bleeding heart), even the person appearing in these videos didn’t claim that he was incapable of performing his job. Only that he could retire from it at age fifty if his family health insurance premium was $300/mo instead of $1,100.
What’s wrong with waiting until it’s known where he lives, what his state government job was (assuming it’s true), and confirmation that he was actually an active TP member? As government employee salaries and benefits are under attack throughout the country, the claim by this man that he was able to retire at age fifty because of the ACA feeds right into conservative voters and politicians’ charges that government workers cost too much. Then there’s the envy factor — how many middle and low income private sector workers can retire at age fifty regardless of low cost health insurance premiums? Other than those that are permanently disabled and have to go on SSD with low income and chronic, lifetime health challenges?
There’s a whole class of people of the type represented by this YouTube post who have been helped in exactly the ways he describes. Before the ACA, there were millions of people who wanted to retire and were in a decent financial position to do so, and there were millions more who wanted to leave the job they had, but their collective inability to gain health insurance outside of their current jobs had prevented them from doing so.
The ACA has improved the prospects of the aspiring retiree’s ability to leave the paycheck workforce, opening up a job spot for another worker while allowing the retiree to have a decent standard of living AND support our consumer economy. It also has improved the odds that a worker can afford to take the time, money and risk of leaving their dead-end jobs to train and enter a profession they want to do.
Getting lost in seeking out the details of this one man’s story, and holding as the default position that he is probably lying until it is proven he is not, kind of misses the point. It’s also awfully cynical.
It’s possible to acknowledge these attributes of the ACA while recognizing the ACA’s flaws. In fact, it’s important for single-payer advocates to trumpet the ACA’s attributes. If the ACA doesn’t maintain enough support from the public, we’ll NEVER get to single payer.
There aren’t millions of fifty year old workers in “decent enough financial shape” and eligible for livable retirement income benefits if not for the cost of health insurance. The median net worth of a 50 year old is approximately $100,000. That includes housing equity. No where near enough for a person to survive for another twenty-five years.
Millions are/were locked into jobs due to pre-existing medical conditions (a significant number of which were negligible) that made them unemployable by other employers or able to become self employed because they were uninsurable for health care or only insurable at an unaffordable premium rate.
But don’t let me interfere with using this guy as the poster child for the miracle of the ACA.
There may not be millions of people who are exactly 50 who meet those circumstances. The median person of that age does not.
Yet there are many millions between 50 and 65 who do meet those circumstances. Many do not want to work to 65; why should they be made to do so simply because they need affordable access to health care? Many others have health problems which make it difficult to impossible to work to 65. Many are in both of these circumstances at once. Many ARE in the exact same circumstance as this man in the video. They are among the many who, as you point out, have been assisted by the ACA’s outlawing of insurance denials or cancellations due to pre-existing conditions.
It’s not helpful to Americans’ understanding of the ACA to enter into a blanket denial that a person in this man’s situation could gain the assistance from the ACA, and have the feelings and perceptions about it, that he expresses.
“…the claim by this man that he was able to retire at age fifty because of the ACA feeds right into conservative voters and politicians’ charges that government workers cost too much.”
Yes, you are right about this. This is pure poison poured into the minds of Americans, year after year after year. We swim in this poison of resentment every day. It’s an increasingly prevalent part of mainstream culture which has become somewhat effective in poisoning the minds of progressives; this comments thread is among the evidences of that.
Among the questions to ask in return is, “How does it benefit us to cut the pay of other workers?” It actually HURTS taxpayers to do so, because it increases the number of government workers, and workers overall, who qualify for SNAP/Medicaid/other social programs.
The conservative alternative is that we cut workers’ pay/jobs/hours AND deny them government social program benefits, which hurts the economy because those people then have sub-zero disposable income, less ability to maintain their property ownership or even rental situations, and poorer health which we have to subsidize with our tax dollars. Unless we’ve decided that people are responsible for themselves even after we’ve taken active steps to cut their pay and benefits, and it is THEIR FAULT if they die in the streets while being denied health care even in hospital Emergency Rooms.
Having access to health insurance really does deliver access to health care for Americans. It makes it more likely that more Americans CAN stay healthy enough to stay in the jobs they love. About 40 percent of the American workforce get no health care benefit in their compensation, so they need the ACA as badly, perhaps more so, as the rest of us.
Having access to health care really does deliver medical care.
Why are per capita health care costs in the US so much higher than in other OECD countries? Keep in mind the US costs exclude tens of millions that consume little to no medical care and the US has a smaller percentage population of seniors than many of those other countries as well. And on most health care effectiveness measures, the US ranks low.
If health insurance were the major key to health and well-being, why are the annual per capita costs for Medicare beneficiaries so much higher than what is consumed by seniors in other countries? That’s a better apples to apples comparison of the US to other countries because all US seniors have health insurance.
As important to a health care system as the annual per capita costs is the portion covered by public expenditures vs. private dollars. I’m not impressed with Canada’s single payer ratio. Better than the US, but all of them are. Single payer is probably fine in countries with low income inequality; not good when it’s high. The UK (high income inequality) is lucky it went the socialized medicine route (even with all the damage that Thatcher did to it) after WWII than an insurance based system.
To be fair to the US health care system, the rates of gun violence, violence in general, automobile accidents, and combat injuries are higher and that inflates US health care costs. Not that we have any interest in reducing of of that.
By providing no information to the contrary, it is implied that you concede the fact that Americans who lack access to health insurance, as a group, lack access to health care in comparison to people who are insured.
If you said that is not the way it must or should be, I would agree. But this is the way it IS in the United States currently.
“If health insurance were the major key to health and well-being, why are the annual per capita costs for Medicare beneficiaries so much higher than what is consumed by seniors in other countries?”
Residents of all Western/First World countries have health insurance, invariably some balance of public and private insurance. For the countries whose health systems are best in access/quality/cost efficiency, health insurance IS a reason for that.
The specific question you ask here is a good one, however. The relative cost inefficiencies of Medicare are not due to administrative burdens. The overhead of Medicare is around 3%; this means that 97% of Medicare-specific money is used to deliver actual health care. That compares favorably to private health insurance, which in the pre-ACA era was sending over 20% of clients’ money away from direct health care. The ACA forces each private health care insurer to spend at least 85% of premium payer money on actual health care services, getting that private marketplace closer to Medicare’s administrative efficiency.
A primary reason for Medicare’s problems with cost containment in comparison to other countries has been due to its pre-ACA acceptance of the fee-for-service reimbursement model. The ACA is transitioning both Medicare and the private healthcare system out of that model, to a system that provides payments to providers when they achieve successful health outcomes for those they treat. This is an important cost control measure.
Two examples:
A high quality, financially efficient health care system seeks to avoid conducting unnecessary tests and procedures. It also seeks ways to keep people out of acute care hospitals. Chief ways of doing these things is avoiding paying for care which is not responsible for improving patient health, and making sure the patient’s discharge plan is solid and clearly understood by the patient and/or their family/friends. Therefore, the post-ACA system does not pay hospitals as they did before when the hospital’s patients are readmitted too quickly. When hospitals lose money for these reasons, extraordinarily powerful incentives are provided to hospitals, by far the most expensive health providers, to get their quality control together.
In these ways, public and private health insurance programs are being used by ACA policies to increase health care quality and cost efficiencies.
Saw this just now and thought of your point re. gun violence’s contribution to higher health care costs in the U.S.:
http://crooksandliars.com/2015/04/cost-gun-violence-will-shock-you
I don’t buy this for a second. Obamacare is medical insurance, not a free ride for would-be layabouts who have no obvious source of income. Sure we can speculate how he’s going to support himself in his early exit from the work force. Heck, maybe he’s a trust fund baby. But IMO, the obvious message — not to the left but to the right — is that Obamacare is for lazy libs looking for the next handout. This year’s Obamaphone.
Digby at Salon: Out-of-control judges’ new craze: Using electroshock and tasers on defendants!
Unbelievable and shocking!
Believable and a good pun.
as always, it’s all about THEM.
because it helps HIM, then he has to vote for Hillary.
My guess, in the event Republicans ever gain the power needed to repeal ACA: “We’re stuck with it! The sonofabitch booby-trapped it!”