I know that you've seen here on Daily Kos (and elsewhere on social media, like Twitter) the many and various ObamaCare (PPACA) success stories.
For example, how a 50ish woman with a pre-existing condition made her un-insurable before ObamaCare.
But I think the biggest news about the ACA is still waiting in the wings of 2014 to arrive on lede's from the NYTimes to TalkingPointsMemo.com.
What is that news? Follow me below the Fleur-de-kos for the rest of the story...
So, in the early months of the original enrollment period for the PPACA (ObamaCare) healthcare insurance exchanges the stories which started to filter out via social media (DailyKos & Twitter & Facebook, among others) were about the success of the new healthcare insurance regulation - people who had previously not been able to purchase insurance (perhaps they had a pre-existing condition which legally allowed the insurance company to turn them down for a policy and coverage) or whose fiscal situation was "broke and unemployed" and unable to pay for such a policy (even if one were available to them); in every State in the Union which accepted the Medicaid Expansion of the PPACA (because the SCOTUS said they could accept or reject it, but not the rest of the Act's regulations) and the Federal funding dollars which came with it, in those states something really crazy started happening...
People signed up for insurance policies, either for the newly expanded Medicaid or from a private insurance company which offered plans on the new State Insurance Exchange. People who hadn't been insured for years, or even decades - or even never before.
Millions of people.
And the Liberals and Progressives in America cheered, for what they knew was going to be a better America. One where a sudden, physical illness no longer was a specter of doom hanging over the heads of millions of American families living paycheck-to-paycheck, most of them without any healthcare insurance of any kind. The working poor, who would now find themselves pretty well immune to bankruptcy and financial disaster (like losing the family home), just because someone in their family got sick; seriously, expensively sick.
Millions of Americans.
But what about the next phase of PPACA stories, which are sure to start popping up around March, April, May of 2014? Are you ready for them?
I am. Because I'm pretty sure those tales are going to help turn the US House of Representative a bold new shade of blue, come November 2014.
The beauty of the PPACA is that it is imbued with some pretty terrific side effects. One of which is going to be a shot in the arm to the US economy, a big shift in the unemployment rate and a return to more local businesses (vs the big-box American Retail market of the 21st century).
How, you ask, is the PPACA going to do all of that?
Here's how.
Remember hearing for years now about someone (who may possibly be you) who is chained to a job, because of the healthcare insurance that comes with it, and a medical condition of someone in their family? Who has a hobby which they'd love to turn into a small business to do from home, and whose sales history from this 'hobby' shows that it could be possible - except for the issue of healthcare insurance.
So all of those prospective entrepreneurs remained merely that, prospective.
Until the PPACA opened a new door for them to use to rescue themselves from that dead-end, lower-paying job with no future.
So watch for those stories to start coming in the spring, my friends.
The story about the young woman who wants to be a potter and glass-blower, and live a more organic, agrarian lifestyle, working from home? Now possible, because she can get the insurance her 3 yr old, born with a genetic birth defect in her heart and requiring continuing surgeries for the foreseeable future, needs to stay alive.
Imagine that story, amplified and in the thousands...
Imagine the resurgence of the hometown store model of retail business in America, diverted since the Reagan era into big-box retailers, like Walmart. A resurgence of small towns and cities no longer held hostage to tax-averse monolithic corporations for the retail supplies their citizens require, with new tax revenues to upgrade their infrastructure over the next 10 years coming from these new, small businesses.
All of these things are quite possible, and not some pie-in-the-sky daydream. And they are not only possible, they are coming soon to a hometown near you.
So we all need to be ready for those good news stories, and to start sharing them via Twitter and Facebook and everywhere kossacks congregate online.
Because those stories are the final nail in the coffin of the modern Republican Party, and I for one am looking forward with glee to helping nail in more than a few of them!
You know how the history books will record these days?
2014
The year insurance regulation (ObamaCare) not only changed American society, by ending poverty due to illness; but whose perhaps unintended consequences included the beginning of the end of the modern era Republican Party, which lost over 70% of it's House races in that midterm election cycle, giving the Democratic Party a 'super majority' in the US Federal Government which stretched out for over 26 years; and issuing in the 21st Century Progressive Movement.
Hard to imagine for Americans from 2085, but during it's initiation and early years ObamaCare was a highly-contested piece of legislation, and opposed by nearly every single Republican Party member in the US Congress. After it's attendant effects helped turn around the worst fiscal crisis in US history since the Great Depression of the 20th century, ObamaCare came to be one of the most popular federal programs of all time. It remains today as the landmark legislation of President Barack H. Obama, and a shining example of how by working together instead of against each other, Americans can do anything they set their minds on.
#GetCovered
Look here for Coverage:
https://www.healthcare.gov/
If you are going to be one of the ObamaCare Entrepreneurs, look here for the Individual Market: https://www.healthcare.gov/...