Propaganda poster circulated by whitehouse.gov this month.
I voted for Obama in 2008 for a variety of reasons, one of which was I actually believed in his health care proposal because I didn't have health insurance and I was going broke with medical expenses for myself and family members.
I didn't vote for Obama in 2012, and voted for Romney instead, for a number of reasons, among which is that I ceased to believe in the health care program.
Let me explain why.
I thought originally that ObamaCare, whatever its socialist ideological problems, would basically do what state public insurance programs like Child Health Care Plus and Family Health Care Plus are able to do in New York State.
Because I work, I was not eligible for the state health insurance, but because I'm a single mother with low income, my children are eligible for Child Health Care Plus, and I can pay a low premium of around $100 a month, plus co-pays and with high deductibles, and more or less prevent at least horrendous costs from their emergencies -- which involve a notorious punishing $1000 ER fee just to walk in the door in New York City. (The people who feel the pain of this whopping fee are not people with insurance -- their companies pay it without complaint; the homeless or indigent don't feel it because they never have any intention of paying their bills anyway. It's law-abiding people who pay bills, with stable addresses so debt collectors can easily harass them, who wind up paying the cost for the uninsured, including themselves, to use ERs as clinics or even just as ERs.)
So I figured that ObamaCare would be something like this, only for adults, and with a higher threshold of means-testing. I never dreamed it would have fines if you didn't join, or that it would have subsidies to state exchanges, rather than clear-cut means-testing.
Of course, I've always wondered why those who want socialized health care don't have states just do this, and have the federal government assist some poorer states and some poorer populations in increasing coverage and creating more free or low-cost prevention programs like a standard package of testing for everybody -- say, one strep throat test, one Pap smear, one mammogram, one prostate test per year for everybody depending on age or sex -- but not taking on the burden of universal coverage. And to be sure, this is being administered through state exchanges, but the premiums do not at all seem to be the mere $100 that Obama Truth Team propagandists claim but more like $200 or even $300 for the same family sizes and income. I just don't see the reality of the $100 premium anywhere, even in the most sympathetic press.
The notion of just how you're going to get subsidized - what the process will involve, what paperwork you might have to submit, etc. was very hazy -- but I knew that's just exactly where all the troubles are for the average person getting state-subsidized insurance.
And the question of the high deductibles we already see in insurance programs for the poor that almost make them not worth it for some is now being looked at more closely with ObamaCare.
With good reason, these companies providing this state insurance do not make it easy, create many hurdles, and are arbitrary in the direction of trying to shake you off. That's because it's just too great a cost for any company to bear and not go broke, and so they use every trick in the book to keep people undercompensated or off the program entirely -- especially in anticipation of ObamaCare.
Example: even though I provided my children's passports and Social Security cards and they were proven to be citizens when they joined the program years ago, and had been renewed each year when I re-qualified with new applications without any demand to re-show passports and SS cards already copied and on file, suddenly I was hit at the 11th hour before the deadline to supply proof of my daughter's citizenship after she had been on it for 10 years.
Or even when I already supplied my income tax, already supplied a letter from the employer, I was still hit with yet another form for the employer to sign -- and when the employer submitted it without specifying a salary was monthly -- which was already specified in the cover letter initially supplied AND visible in the totals on the 1099 also sent with the income tax -- it was declared invalid after the deadline passed and then made the whole application invalid.
You would think that if ObamaCare managed fines through the IRS, it would also end this burdensom process of forcing people to show income letters, paycheck stubs, returns, forms, etc. if they simply checked off a box that they had an income tax return and a Social Security Number - then they would be issued the subsidy accordingly. But that's never how it's done.
I also assumed that Obama would be serious about tackling the huge cost of medical expenses with more preventive care, more "standard package" options and delivery of them more efficiently -- for example, in NYC, many high schools have nurse's offices that are essentially branch medical clinics tied to hospitals, with doctors available in them and can administer vaccines. Since the school system requires the vaccines, and the government is paying for health care, why not offer it as a feature of the school system everywhere, and pay the $1000 that it costs to vaccinate a young teen? (Yes, that's the bill I got -- $1000 for a routine set of vaccinations -- and that's likely inflated).
Obviously a big medical cost comes from malpractice insurance -- my OBY/GYNs were nearly driven out of business by these huge costs. They are huge -- and those trying to prove they aren't simply won't think in terms of an individual local practice and what it means to less wealthy urban doctors in particular, and insist on looking at this problem only system wide and trying to minimize it.
The Trial Attorneys of America and other lawyers' lobbying groups and individual law firms are Obama's largest campaign contributors. Naturally they don't want to see this cash cow tackled and Obama won't touch it.
I'm quite aware that as the ObamaCare debate dragged on, there were other hard facts that Obama couldn't address -- big employers moving employees to part-time or contract status to avoid the burden; small companies worried about going out of business if they had to pay for the costs -- and of course the completely ideological and politicized insistence that ObamaCare pay for birth control and abortion-inducing medications, which was unnecessary and needlessly alienated the Catholic Church -- which rightfully questioned why the First Amendment had to be violated in order to put in a health care plan -- given that Planned Parenthood, also funded by the government, exists to provide birth control and abortions for free or low cost for the poor.
But most of all what I have hated about ObamaCare is the inability of Obama himself and his acoltyes and fanboys to compromise.
Government is about compromise. Like many people, I assumed Obama would be forced into the reality of having to compromise once he came to office -- instead, he swung harder to the left, fell more under pressure from the hard left, and has rigidly clung to his socialist orthodoxy. Yes, socialist, and don't pretend it's not, when I went to the same socialist meetings as Obama did in the 1980s in New York City and I know exactly what stealth socialism under "community organizing" is all about.
Obama's unwillingness to get rid of some of the most costly and onerous sides of his plan, his unwillingness to reach a deal over this, is what is most worrisome of all.
What the "progressives" have done with this is enter a realm of ideological shrillness and brittle rigidity the likes of which I've never seen. They claim this rigid sectarianism is the feature only of the Tea Party and figures like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz; they are oblivious to their own rigid ideological insistence that the world contort to fit the socialist view Obama had in his youth and has stealthily tried to impose since he came in office, under cover of supposedly single issues like "health" or "education".
James Fallows provides a horribly emblematic example of this writing in the Atlantic (which has gone all technocommunist in recent years, one of my great sorrows). He writes:
We're used to thinking that the most important disagreements are between the major parties, not within one party; and that disagreements over policies, goals, tactics can be addressed by negotiation or compromise.
Right. So why can't Obama compromise, James? Obama. He's the one who was only elected by half the people; he's the one who does not have even less than half of the country's approval now. Why can't HE compromise?!
I don't care how stupid, insane, clownish or discredited the GOP is and figures like Ted Cruz for whom I have no use and will never vote for.
Why can't Obama change? Why?
Fallows pretends that this fight is only within the Republican Party, between Tea Party types and the more "normal" conservatives. He claims the Obama bots are only bystanders:
This time, the fight that matters is within the Republican party, and that fight is over whether compromise itself is legitimate.** Outsiders to this struggle -- the president and his administration, Democratic legislators as a group, voters or "opinion leaders" outside the generally safe districts that elected the new House majority -- have essentially no leverage over the outcome.
Um, outsiders? But ObamaCare was pushed through and still exists as an imposition despite numerous attempts to defund it and make it less of a monster in the House. Er, leverage? Politics is a process of compromise. It's not about one half of the country bludgeoning the other half into doing something they don't want or need and we all can't afford.
And indeed, in the House, we see more clearly the attitude of most of the country to having to take on the burden of a complex and costly health care program that doesn't just reasonably subsidize at least more of the poor, but tries to lure the healthy and wealthy into giving up more of their wealth to sustain an uncurbed monster with no cost control, and then punishes the poor who refuse to go along with this ruse by making them pay fines. The means-testing and application process have always been kept deliberately vague.
Yet instead of accepting that elected representatives of his fellow Americans who don't believe in socialism as he does as a "progressive," and instead of conceding that when you have half the country only voting for a president, and less than half supporting this particular program you have to compromise, James Fallows comes up with this APPALLING formulation that the problem is journalists who won't do as he say, and become scribes and propagandists for his "progressive" cause and take on reality:
As a matter of journalism, any story that presents the disagreements as a "standoff," a "showdown," a "failure of leadership," a sign of "partisan gridlock," or any of the other usual terms for political disagreement,represents a failure of journalism*** and an inability to see or describe what is going on.
No. It represents free press that is reporting that Obama and the Democrats aren't willing to compromise either. It's not true that no compromise is acceptible as Fallows claims -- compromises have never really been tried. Hard-core socialist ideological militancy is the problem here.
It's scary that legitimate coverage of this as a stand-off -- which it is because Obama will not compromise and thinks he can impose sharp socialism by indeed digging in his heels and waiting out Republicans by causing pain with government shut-down -- would somehow be a "failure". James Fallow is a failure -- a failure of intellectual freedom, indeed a failure of intellectual honestly.
Most Americans feel like they won't miss the government much, even if it does shut down for 10 days or 30 days. Fallows scurries to find emotional examples of ill effects -- like failure to deliver flood assistance in Colorado to try to make the case that it will matter. I think most people think that the shut-down won't happen, and that it's brinkmanship.
So the reality of what should happen when the GOP is forced into such brinkmanship is that Obama should compromise. We have a two-party system -- it's really four parties these days with one in power (the Democratic Socialists of America) with significant Congressional forces like Elizabeth Warren or Ron Wydell adding to the presidential stealth socialism; one (the Democrat Party) unable to curb its minority leftist extremists who are really in a separate, unelected party; and two not in power except in the House, with the fourth, or Tea Party, able to deploy some individual GOP members in its favour. I think we'd all benefit from a multi-party system that would force DSA socialists to get elected and not use stealth methods, and ditto the Tea Party.
But compromise is what has to happen, and that means offers have to come from Obama on what he could de-fund out of his over-costly program. It has to be a significant unilateral move now, and an end to grand-standing on his part. The socialist journalists who keep crying that there is no truth, or that there is a lie only discredit themselves and should themselves run for office as the propagandists of the party they support.
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