Koch Brother Obamacare Ad is False and Profound Article from Bloomberg.com

[try2bfrugal]

Here is an interesting article on Bloomberg on how the ads for the Affordable care act can be misleading -

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-09/kochs-obamacare-ad-is-both-false-and-profound.html

"Americans for Prosperity, the small-government group financed by Charles and David Koch, is running an ad campaign (http://bit.ly/11uZa2b) about Obamacare. You're not going to believe this, but they stretched the truth a bit."

[bUU]

I'm not surprised. Lost in the executive branch. Lost in the legislature. Lost in the courts. So all that's left is to just spread misinformation to try to obstruct and otherwise disrupt.

[try2bfrugal]

From the article -

"Before Obamacare, if Julie's family got health care through an employer (which the ad strongly implies), then her son's medical condition might have made it prohibitively expensive to buy insurance on the individual market. So what she's getting with Obamacare is the freedom for her or her spouse to leave their job -- to start a business, perhaps -- without being locked out of insurance. A 2011 government study (http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/2012/pre-existing/index.shtml) found that 1 in 2 Americans could be affected by pre-existing condition exclusions if the law were repealed."

"The ad might have a more compelling case if the woman didn't have a son with a pre-existing condition. Her question -- "What am I getting?" -- would then take on a much more direct tone: What am I, a person who has insurance, getting from a law that provides insurance to people who don't? How does it hurt me if they can't get care? If anything, this is where Americans for Prosperity stumbles: It's hard to think of a better advertisement for Obamacare than the blind selfishness of some of its opponents."

Or the freedom to retire or get laid off and be able to afford your health insurance, just like you don't lose your car insurance or your homeowners insurance when you lose a job now. Our COBRA rates were 27K a year - just for the premiums.

[try2bfrugal]

I'm not surprised. Lost in the executive branch. Lost in the legislature. Lost in the courts. So all that's left is to just spread misinformation to try to obstruct and otherwise disrupt.

I think it is important for supporters of the ACA to post links like these in forums. Otherwise the mis-information campaigns win out.

Unless you have a tenured job, anyone with any kind of pre-exsting condition now and employer health care is one job loss away from being uninsurable. COBRA and HIPAA rates simply aren't realistically affordable for many families.

[peggy]

Great link! My daughter is one of those 'pre-existing condition' people. She is still a student, and doesn't have a full time job with benefits. She is on our family policy, but come December she turns 26 and she's off.
Her condition? Thyroid, which is totally controlled by one tiny inexpensive pill a day. Tests already done, thyroid killed, all the expensive stuff behind her, but still it's a 'condition'. She is also celiac. Again, all the tests and biopsy behind her and it's completely controlled by simply not eating gluten. But, a 'condition', and an autoimmune one at that (both are actually) She will be in school for 2 more years and even then you know how tough the job market is. It might be several years before she gets a good position with benefits. So, we are definitely counting on Obamacare so she can find affordable insurance. The kicker is, she wants to find insurance and actually pay for it herself, but with these conditions, without Obamacare, she will be screwed.

[catherine]

From the article -

"Before Obamacare, if Julie's family got health care through an employer (which the ad strongly implies), then her son's medical condition might have made it prohibitively expensive to buy insurance on the individual market. So what she's getting with Obamacare is the freedom for her or her spouse to leave their job -- to start a business, perhaps -- without being locked out of insurance. A 2011 government study (http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/2012/pre-existing/index.shtml) found that 1 in 2 Americans could be affected by pre-existing condition exclusions if the law were repealed."

"The ad might have a more compelling case if the woman didn't have a son with a pre-existing condition. Her question -- "What am I getting?" -- would then take on a much more direct tone: What am I, a person who has insurance, getting from a law that provides insurance to people who don't? How does it hurt me if they can't get care? If anything, this is where Americans for Prosperity stumbles: It's hard to think of a better advertisement for Obamacare than the blind selfishness of some of its opponents."

Or the freedom to retire or get laid off and be able to afford your health insurance, just like you don't lose your car insurance or your homeowners insurance when you lose a job now. Our COBRA rates were 27K a year - just for the premiums.

Very interesting, and I've often thought it was funny that small-business-supporting Republicans are more on the side of a system that handcuffs people to their jobs--people who might otherwise go out and start new businesses and employ more people.

I agree with the COBRA--ridiculous.. it's supposed to HELP people? When I lost my job, I couldn't afford that kind of help.

But I love this:

What am I, a person who has insurance, getting from a law that provides insurance to people who don't? How does it hurt me if they can't get care?

Why does it have to be a zero-sum game--so, providing the Have-nots with what the Haves take for granted is somehow taking away the haves' piece of the pie? That scarcity mentality is not going to help anyone.

Thanks for posting!

[bUU]

One of the more interesting exercises is to try to get opponents to ACA to provide their specific objections to the most critical tenets of ACA, without falling back on self-centered whining about how much comfort and luxury it will "cost" rich people.

- Exchanges and Essential Benefits, so health insurance price competition can take place with same-to-same comparisons.

- Guaranteed Issue so no one has to "die in the streets" due to a preexisting condition, or suffer coverage being cut off due to a lifetime cap.

- Community Rating so insurers cannot effectively force people to "die in the streets" by jacking up their premiums to an unaffordable level.

As a matter of fact, what's interesting is that critics tend to target the other tenets of ACA, the tenets that are there because industry insisted that they needed to be there, so as to pay for the tenets I listed above. It's the fiscal prudence that the right-wingers oppose! So much for any pretension that those opposed to ACA have any standing to call themselves "conservative".

[redfox]

Opinion from a psychiatrist, in the NYT.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/opinion/sunday/the-woman-who-ate-cutlery.html?hp&_r=0

[SteveinMN]

redfox, the article you linked should be People's Exhibit A on why we need universal care.

In one of the ironies in a country with health care discrepancies, a single hospital admission for M — paid for by the taxpayer-financed state medical-assistance program — costs more than a year of private outpatient care would. <snip> This is analogous to refusing to to treat hypertensive patients — or to monitor their blood pressure (http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/test/blood-pressure/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier) — unless they show up in the E.R. after having had a stroke.
I think the author is being optimistic in suggesting the cutlery-swallowing patient will always have the presence of mind to call her therapist/psychologist when crisis occurs. But the point about how little money is saved compared to the cost of an ER visit (or multiple ER visits) -- that all of us pay for -- is completely valid. It flat-out amazes me that people who understand the value of spending time and money maintaining their cars and their power tools and their guns regularly, even during periods of less use, don't seem to want to understand that people's bodies need maintenance, too, or that a little preventative maintenance now will save a much bigger bill later. For as much as the Republican party brays about lowering costs, you'd think they'd get this concept, too. *smh*

[redfox]

Steve, my sis is a MHP -- mental health professional. She is licensed by the state to determine who is legally detainable in a psych bed for treatment. She responds nightly to emergency calls when someone is decompensating, in area hospitals, prisons, and if needed, in private homes (with police escort). Here is her response to my posting this article link:



" "In one of the ironies in a country with health care discrepancies, a single hospital admission for M — paid for by the taxpayer-financed state medical-assistance program — costs more than a year of private outpatient care would."

This just leaves me speechless. I see it every single time I work."


Single payer is THE most effective way to cover everyone. The roadblocks that were & continue to be thrown up to health care reform remind me of the worst of school bullying, taken to the national level. Oh, and the GOP just had their 40th 'repeal Obamacare' vote. Such charlatans.

[try2bfrugal]

I think all you have to do is look at other countries. What are they doing right that we aren't? Universal care isn't some strange experiment.

The U.S. has stood alone in the developed countries in not providing universal care -
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/06/heres-a-map-of-the-countries-that-provide-universal-health-care-americas-still-not-on-it/259153/