The smugness and arrogance around here is becoming a parody of itself.

Btw, GOOD FOR YOU! I hope everything works out for you. I hope you overcome your rough patch. Stay optimistic, we're here for you.

they're not expanding it in GOP led states.

voting rights, et al., but I guess living under their insane way of running the Country will make some very happy here.

would be thrilled at the ACA.

See: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4580949

to understand where I'm coming from.

Now that sounds like someone who would be praising the ACA to the skies, doesn't it?

I don't get it -- the ODS is, in this instance, causing one of those "crabs in a bucket" behaviors, where no one is going to be allowed to get out. As a consequence my own BS meter is ticking a bit, and I hate that.

All I get is a fine thanks to the mandate. I am, admittedly, entitled to the full subsidy by I would be spending money I do not actually have for insurance I cannot use -- both because I cannot afford any co-pays and because I am living on the road and none of the plans cover that.

Not sure what your gripe is.

"I am glad that GOPcare is working so well for you."

...working out well for millions.

Obamacare Small Business Goldmine
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024512997

Trash the thread, but I am grateful this person can access care (as well as myself) and hang on to the hopes that this is just the beginning.

God, kicked in the fucking gut by those that are supposed to be "in this" with me. Wow. Good job, dude.

So enjoy it. Seriously. But don't pretend outrage when someone like me, who spent three days this week living (with my family) in my truck in the WalMart / Lowes parking lot, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and stealing Lowes free WiFi, doesn't jump for joy at the GOPcare mandate.

Medicaid.

There is no excuse for your comment to the OP. Save it.

If I may suggest, try using craigslist to ask for paying work. Do not list your phone number, use the craigslist email system- you call any job offers and delete your craigslist ad soon as you get an acceptable work offer.

I have a relative who is "poor as hell" and doesn't pay for his health care.

Have to do with the ACA? Has it hurt you in some way?

for Medicaid, or you are living in a state that didn't expand it (though your children would be eligible, of course) and you are therefore exempt from any fine.

medicaid? Or at the very most have subsidies that would make insurance free. Have you even bothered to look?

However, I still cannot afford any plan, and if I could I couldn't afford any co-pays or deductibles. More, and worse, we are living on road and all the plans I have seen are local. My 'home' is in north Texas, but right now I am in South Texas on the coast trying to make some money. It's complicated.

It's more expensive than living in TX, but at least you'd be able to get full coverage through the Medicaid expansion with no co-pays or deductibles. That works out to at least $10,000 a year in insurance premiums you wouldn't have to pay for a family of four. You wouldn't need to live in LA of SF. You could live in one of the rural areas where housing and groceries are much cheaper.

Why stay in TX and support Rick Perry's refusal to help YOU? Aren't you worth it?

Making our official residence a state with expanded Medicaid. Still not sure it would net us healthcare while we are working though.

This is *exactly* how so many of us feel about this administration's constant corporate betrayals.

The steady stream of new examples continues, with these reported just today:

Feds alter rules to permit Oil Rigs to Dump Billions Of Gallons Of Fracking Waste Off California Coast
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024580510

Obama Nominates SOPA Lobbyist for TPP Trade Post
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024579357

Good God, I hate some of the shit this administration has pulled. But shitting on people who are (in my case) able to finally go to a doctor is just really poor form.

The constant, fervent attempts to put lipstick on a corporate pig do not help *anyone.* The ACA entrenches the corporate profiteering model for health insurance. It disguises and protects the continued obscene profit-mongering by middleman insurance companies by making taxpayers subsidize the exorbitant premiums... and then crows victory that some *individuals* are paying less.

Circling wagons around it and pretending that it is some great victory against corporations is both dishonest and counterproductive to the goal of achieving a system that actually targets the abuse of the middleman parasites and really does provide healthcare in an affordable way.

I haven't been able to go to a doctor for years. I'm finally on "real" BP/heart/RA meds. Do I like the way it came about? No. Does it enable me to stick around to see my son graduate from high school. Hell yes. Politics and partisanship aside. Sorry, but it's super shitty.

Last edited Fri Feb 28, 2014, 05:53 PM - Edit history (1)

Gently, and with acknowledgement that you have been helped, what you just wrote, like what the OP wrote, sounds a lot like, "I've got mine."

You can benefit personally from the ACA while also realizing that it is a corporate-written and lobbied creation that perpetuates and enables the MOST predatory aspects of the health system in this country....and that, as a result, the profiteering is protected and millions will continue struggling to afford care.

We have watched as the corporate talking points have shifted from promising huge decreases in premiums, to arguing that Obama promised only reductions in increases (I know *you* didn't say that, but it's a frequent talking point here and why I keep the below video handy: to correct the constant rewriting of history)...and now to focusing on the subsidies.

But the subsidies mask the real problem. Some individuals are helped by them, certainly, but millions more will still be trapped paying for high-deductible, low-benefit plans they cannot afford to use. But the most important point is that ALL OF US end up paying the subsidies TO THE INSURANCE COMPANIES for these still obscenely expensive plans instead of what SHOULD have happened, which was to eliminate the profitmongering from the system and focus instead on real cost controls.

Leaping on those who point out the impact of this corporate bait-and-switch on real people and families besides the OP gives the impression, at least, of being more interested in protecting the reputation of those responsible for this corporate sop than pushing for something better.

The ACA moves the single-payer battle to the states. We're about to win that battle in VT. We can fairly easily win that battle in the other "blue" states, either with "real" single-payer or with de-facto single-payer via public option. (Public options don't have to profit, so they'll be cheaper. That'll cause people to switch, and for-profit gets driven out of the state).

Once we have the reality of single-payer/public-option in the "blue" states, it will be a much easier sale in the "purple" states. And we'll get those too.

Once we have a large block of blue and purple states, we can return to the national battle with a much, much, much, much, much stronger position. And we'll win.

There wasn't enough votes to go directly to a national single-payer. The way we get there is to exploit the ACA for our benefit.

and projecting virtuous motives onto corporate Democrats that they have shown no sign of wanting to embrace.

There is NO sign...I mean zero, zip, nada...that what you anticipate here is anywhere on the administration's agenda at all. In fact, all history and evidence point in the opposite direction.

This administration had the opportunity to push for a public option on behalf of Americans at the time of the passage of the ACA. Not only did Obama NOT do that, he made a point of not mentioning the option publicly *at all.* This despite the fact that the country was polling heavily in favor of a public option and would have rallied to lend strength to his demand, had he chosen to demand it. Instead, it was as though all his campaigning on that issue vanished into a memory hole, and the public option was quietly dropped in a backroom deal. It would have been inconvenient to mention, because public response could have thrown a wrench into the corporate scam we ultimately got.

And since the ACA's passage, what have we heard? Oh, there have been some changes, but consistently on behalf of the corporations and at the expense of the people:

The employer mandate was delayed...the mandate for Americans? Not so much:

White House delays employer mandate requirement until 2015
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/02/white-house-delays-employer-mandate-requirement-until-2015/

Limit on Consumer Costs Is Delayed in Health Care Law
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/us/a-limit-on-consumer-costs-is-delayed-in-health-care-law.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

I would not take away the aca because it benefits some but the prices are so high that I fear the middle class is the big loser

being self employed it is hard to guess what our income will be next year but when I used a 75 grand figure ,with being over 50 it looks like the gov't thinks 26% -33% of our income is what the insurance companies require to get healthcare......premium and out of pocket combined

I do not have that much disposable income <shrugs>

hard to get excited about this blue state single payor plan when I likely will be dead of something treatable before it happens

Last edited Sat Mar 1, 2014, 03:15 AM - Edit history (4)

Quite a few people have posted at DU with their personal stories of struggling to afford care under the ACA, and they were met with the same contempt and accusations of lying you see here. This thread showcases the level of compassion of the corporate Third Way, the sort of contempt that always seems to go along with advocating corporate/Republican policies.

We're lectured that it's impossible that costs could outweigh ability to pay under the ACA, even though your own example shows that's not the case. Millions of Americans survive on an income that is just above cutoffs for subsidies or that, even with subsidies, cannot possibly meet the deductibles and copays demanded by these companies in order to access care and leave enough to live on. Then figure in the explosion of other siphons in our pockets while corporate politicians are in power, and the figures you cite are beyond obscene.

Rather than address the core problem in our health system - outrageous costs going to corporate middlemen - the ACA "solves" the problem by using taxpayer money/subsidies to ensure first and foremost that the vultures are paid. The predatory system is entrenched and expanded through mandate, but its most malignant effects are camouflaged because politicians can brag about reducing out of pocket costs for some...but with taxpayer money, *not* by demanding any real reduction in the profit-sucking itself.

You are right; the numbers demanded from the middle class drive people *out* of the middle class. And the much-trumpeted benefits to the poor are siphoned from the middle class, as well. Siphoning money from the middle class to the top is by now a familiar result (and, if we are honest, goal) of Third Way corporate policies. Like Third Way policies re: private prisons and war/drones/empire, Third Way policy in health care is morally bankrupt. It abets a parasitic industry that provides no real service, but extracts massive profits from the very existence of human suffering and pain.

The responses in this thread deliberately sidestep this main idea. Instead, they try to divert to arguments about this or that feature of ACA that have been played out here ad nauseum and don't change the central point. Yes, some people pay less, but the corporate profiteering is nevertheless protected and taxpayers make up the difference, not the corporations. There is bragging about limiting administrative costs, but that claim has been repeatedly shown to be hollow. For example, in the thread below; not only is the most relevant comparison to Medicare steadfastly avoided, but the corporate posters use a sleight of hand that focuses on what insurers refund rather than what they get to keep...when what they get to keep is unconscionable:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023939013#post48

Ditto for claims of limiting premiums. The fact is that premium increases under ten percent are not even reviewed under the ACA. Does your income increase by ten percent each year?

And so on...

Third Way talking points for ACA are a little bit like their talking points for the Military Industrial Complex. Just as we are repeatedly wooed by promises of troop "drawdowns" or "withdrawals" during election years, only to find that the money was merely diverted to another bloody mission or to pay for replacement mercenary troops while the military budget and the scope of the MIC overall continue to grow....all these claims of savings here and there in the ACA distract from the fundamental reality of corporate health insurance: Corporate profits continue to grow obscenely as money is siphoned from the people to the corporate bigwigs...as ransom for mere access to a doctor.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/03/22/1761011/health-insurers-threaten-to-increase-premiums-even-as-profits-soar/#

by requiring them to limit their administrative costs and to refund the excess to their customers. And it has opened the way to single payer systems and coops, by funding those programs in Vermont and Oregon and any other state that agrees to have them.

It is not true that millions will be trapped into paying for "high deductible, low benefit plans they cannot afford to use." All plans will cover the Essential Benefits and families with incomes up to 92K will get subsidies and/or credits helping with both deductibles and premiums.

And millions will for the first time become eligible for Medicaid.

And even younger, healthy people with high incomes won't be worse off. My son isn't eligible for a subsidy, but his new gold policy will cost $200 less a month than the COBRA policy he aged out of. And it can't be dropped if he suddenly gets in a car accident or gets an expensive illness.

The people who will be worse off financially are those who make more than $200K in unearned income and will have to pay a 3.8 percent tax.

The biggest corporate giveaway in history. 600 BILLION dollars profit per year, guaranteed, forever.

Try to let some reality break through your blind love for the president

doesn't touch that pre-existing corporate condition. The ACA will - at best - add 25-million customers to the already existing hundreds of millions of customers.

Medicaid has been expanded. I am one of the beneficiaries of that expansion. Were there no expansion, nobody would be getting my $ for health insurance - I would have no health insurance. The Medicaid expansion is the mechanism that will allow states to move to single payer, as VT is doing right now.

You're laughing at your own ignorance, my friend.

If the president had insisted on a public option like he promised, you would have health care that didn't enrich insurance executives.

Like I said your need to worship Obama has rendered you moronic.

You're living in a dream world. Weren't you paying attention when the whole ACA debate went down? The votes were not there for any kind of single payer option, let alone Medicaid for all.

You can imagine any scenario you want. Doesn't make it true.

As far as enriching insurance execs, have you forgotten that the ACA put a cap on the amount of profit these companies can make? It's now 20%, a huge change. The market will eventually cut that even more, because the successful insurers will be those who get in there and compete on price without lowering services. And that will happen because that's what happens to any product that gets sold in a competitive market, which is another thing the ACA delivered on - competitive markets. And where will these companies have room to cut prices? Why in their profit margins. They will go to a model where they make their $ by serving a larger volume of customers, rather than in charging the highest rates possible for coverage.

Simple market dynamics. And if the typical ACA rates in CA are any indicator, it's already happening.

is that everyone who currently has health insurance through their employer also "has theirs."

Employer-based health insurance is just as much a part of the corporate system as is the ACA. They use the same health providers as does the ACA. The only difference is in the individual market, where the ACA has lowered costs to people in that market and has done away with pre-existing conditions that allowed insurers to deny insurance to people in the individual market.

What you seem to be advocating is that everybody lucky enough to have a job with good health benefits provided through their employer should be allowed to hold hostage the health care of those less unfortunate until and unless President Obama/Dems toe the line and kill liberal betes noir like Keystone, etc. The people who already have insurance are allowed to naval gaze on whatever theories they believe pure, while those less fortunate get tossed to the wolves because the solution (the ACA) isn't pure enough.

You act as if getting the ACA passed in its present form was akin to getting a politician's name put on a post office. The ACA was a major accomplishment that has set in motion change in the way this country does health care. To imagine otherwise is to be blinded by one's ideology.

Just feeling a bit bitter about life in general. Sorry.

which is one of the strengths of the ACA, or s/he is EXEMPT from any fine, if s/he lives is otherwise eligible but lives in a state that didn't expand it.

The ACA helped millions. And it has also opened the door to a single payer system, by helping to fund the program in Vermont and any other state that wants it.

ODS is a terrible thing.

Sid

"GOPcare" gets us to single-payer.

The ACA moves the battle for single-payer from the federal level to the state level. Republicans have an advantage at the federal level, thanks to the low-population states. So moving the battle to the states is good for us.

VT is already going single-payer in 2018. It will be fairly easy to get other "blue" states to at least add a public option in 2018. With no need to profit, the public options will turn out to be cheaper. That'll cause people to buy those plans. The lack of dead bodies will cause more people to buy those plans. That will drive private insurance out of those states. Now you have de-facto single-payer.

The insurance companies know this. That's why they killed the federal "public option". But they have far less power in the blue states.

With the blue states happily operating in de-facto single-payer, purple states will notice the cost savings and lack of dead bodies. That will add public options to those states, which will go through the same pattern, and destroy private insurance in those states.

Then we can return to the federal battle. The reality of all those blue and purple states, and the much poorer insurance companies, will destroy the FUD used to fight single-payer. And we'll be able to get national single-payer. Probably via another "public option" of a Medicare buy-in.

I have no idea why so many in our party refuse anything but instant gratification. We didn't get to this right-dominated government on one November day in 1980. It took decades of work before and after that date. We can not undo that work with one November day in 2008.

Or maybe the "Demo" doesn't stand for Democratic, but "demolition."

The road to single-payer runs through the ACA. Even the VT enthusiasts acknowledge that this is the reality on a national level.

you must think you're pretty clever there...right?

What a shitty, rotten, mean, nasty and disruptive comment.

Proud of yourself?

I have soo much to say to you, but nothing I could/should post.....

how, exactly?

How about the advances made in gay rights under Obama? Is that Hall-of-Fame-worthy bullshit artistry?

How about ending bush's wars? More bullshit on the part of Obama?

The glass is always half full for some. Doesn't mean you can work to get the glass full. Just don't whine that the glass is empty.

Because climate change and its effects pose an existential threat to life as we know it. Failing on the environment renders anything else pretty inconsequential; in realistic terms? It's fiddling while Rome burns, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, pick your metaphor. The consequences of climate change and adaptation are the great problem of public leadership in our time; within 30 to 50 years, cities like Miami and New Orleans are projected to be underwater, the temperature rise in the Southwest is projected to bring permanently arid conditions to most of what has been for the past 50 years the USA's most productive farmland, we're looking at large-scale food and water insecurity and population displacement and a host of other effects, and what do we get? "Fracking for natural gas is building a bridge to a low-caron future!" which is kind of like saying "well, I've been diagnosed with lung cancer, so I guess I'll switch to smoking Carltons".

Thanks!

But most of us know this already. The few Sadz here just won't let up on the denial.

President.

...why did it label the President a "Hall-of-Fame worthy bullshit artist" for talking "about economic inequality"?

This is why the statement is overwrought BS.

Yeah nothing about the ACA, but that fact wasn't necessary for this thread. Just the title. Go figure.

He definitely talks about fracking. I have never heard him "championing Keystone XL"

that have to do with the Keystone XL being reviewed? That pipeline has nothing to do with trafficking tars sands oil from Canada.

It did not require the administration's approval.

And I don't really see much qualitative difference between North Dakota shale and Candian tar sands. Expediting the transport of dirty American oil isn't any better than expediting the transport of dirty Canadian oil.

It's not going to get you North Dakota shale.

So, under which law would Obama block that pipe? The fact that Keystone crosses the US border lets the administration review Keystone. Which law would let the administration block this OK->TX pipe?

President Obama is a very good politician and yes he's done a lot of bullshitting.

but whatever. you want to live in denial feel free, but don't tell me that all that bullshit about reforming NAFTA wasn't bullshit.

past Obamacare Except to call it a republicon idea.. that republicons hate as we know. They've joined the Obama Hater Ranks like good little lemmings.

There are millions of people with successful ACA stories now.. thank you for telling us yours. Nothing more important than our chance for good health.

Mr. Pitt sure does piss off people with his words. Looks like some are way too envious of that talent.

outlining something Obama has done that the OP supports and benefits from.

The reference stops at that title.

or a paragraph or two in one.
so your words mean nothing, man. nothing.

and Congress Critters. I am sure that was in no way filler material so the original work could graduate from pamphlet to actual skinny book.

How many business days do you suppose it took to transcribe all that information from the dot.gov web site(s)?

I find a post consisting of smilies to be somewhat freaking stupid.

Could the insurance be better, less restrictive and confusing?

Oh hell yes, we Americans deserve healthcare for all, like every other first world country enjoys.

ACA is a heck of a lot better than nothing or *at the hospitals mercy care* when some disaster health issue strikes.

I imagine we would not even have ACA today if President Obama didn't move fast to get the bills started the first day he took office.

One thing I am wondering about is, Humana my ACA insurance spent $8.00 to send me a 1 inch thick confusing book about what is covered. And today!! I got a USPO 'lightweight' book box with a greeting card and a full size dark chocolate bar in it! ???? Perhaps the insurance company has to much federal profit money if they spend their federal funds like this?

that is if you are somewhat prone to hysterical metaphorical histrionics, and your livelihood depends upon a confluence of all the bad stuff in the country staying bad so people will pay to have it aggregated and pointed out to them in the most emotional of black and white logic.



Still Love ya, WP but seriously dude..........

of ODS it's a perfect projection.

I don't like it when the wingnuts engage in that kind of "hate speech" invective, but when it's coming from a putative member of our own team, it's like a serpent's strike!

It's possible to be critical without being so brutishly nasty. That, to me, is attention-seeking conduct, and something that one can't walk back from.

so well for them. <sarcasm>.. if anyone needs it.

Glad that you finally have coverage, God's speed.

A little peace of mind is nice. There are so many attention-seekers bleating through the replies. I wonder why?

That's the way this thing is supposed to work. May your lives get better from here on out.

You realize your post comes off as one big "screw you, I got mine" right? I mean, I'd bet you don't really mean that. But right now, for everyone who got helped, there's about one other person who got left behind. Of course some of that comes from folks that the GOP are screwing over because they won't enact the Medicaid expansion.

So the guy that doesn't make enough for subsidies, but too much for medicaid, screw him you got yours, ACA is better than nothing. Although nothing is exactly what he got.

For the person that can't afford the insurance, much less co-pays and out of pocket expenses, well screw them, you got yours, they'll just have to pay their penalty to support yours.

For the undocumented immigrant who doesn't qualify, well tough, you got yours.

For the single payer folks that were locked out of the discussion from the start, and locked up by Bacuus, well screw them, you got yours, that's good enough.

It's not that many of us don't understand that some are better off, we also understand all those left behind.

I'm just wondering if you'd think that the ACA was such a good step forward if you didn't get included.

through my employer at the time.

I'm just wondering - did you think Social Security was a good step forward at its initiation? How about Medicare? Neither of those programs was all that inclusive out of the starting gates.

SS was revolutionary for it's time. ACA merely federalized the health insurance industry. Hardly comparable.

What is your position on those?

(from WP's OP,) "I believe President Obama, who talks about the environment while pushing the Keystone pipeline, who talks about economic inequality while demanding fast-track authority for the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal, is a Hall-of-Fame worthy bullshit artist. I believe the sooner people see this truth for what it is, the better. He is not your friend. He is selling you out."

It is diametrically opposed to Medicare for all

Apparently, you'd rather stay pure and have no progress. Life doesn't work that way, especially when it's big things like health care.

Politicians tried it your way for decades and what did they get? Nada.

Obama got something through. Ever heard of breaking the log jam? That's what the ACA did. Anyone who thinks the ACA is the final word on what is going to happen with health care in this country in the next 10 years is naive.

I'm happy with what the ACA has accomplished so far. I can see where it will take us in the next few years.