Joan McCarter wrote an excellent diary Poll: People confused about Obamacare, but are willing to live with it. I started to comment, but as so often happens, the comment grew unwieldy, so here it is as a diary, because the problem is a lot more than simply confusion around the Affordable Care Act. It's really another front in the war the 1% is waging against the American middle class and working class.
Directly responding to Joan's diary, I will agree that the Democrats have been woefully inadequate in announcing what was in the ACA and how it would work. Obama's fault?
I think it probably is, but my observation has been that the White House holds everything very close to their vest until just before the battle is to be joined. I think the idea is that you don't give your enemies advance warning of what you are going to present until the last minute. Since this seems to fit with the rather under-the-radar Presidential campaigns the Obama administration as run and won, it may be a very good idea. Particularly since the media seems to belong to the right wing, much as Al Gore found out to his dismay. The pundits don't like Obama at all, so don't give them any ammunition to attack Obama with until necessary.
That said, I have a strong interest in universal health care and in the ACA, so I have been following my local newspapers for news about the Open Enrollment. And what have I found?
Crickets are chirping in the dark. That's it.
At least that was true until last week when all of a sudden there have been half-a-page news articles almost every day. I don't think the newspapers were ready to report on it either. Especially since they shrank so much in the last decade. No news space and a lot fewer reporters. Also the reporters are newbys and poorly paid, so they tend to "report" what the PR departments hand them.
So now we are getting some superficial reporting, and one or two reports that point out that the ACA does not apply to people on Medicare BUT the Medicare Advantage Open Enrollment considers with the ACA open enrollment.
It doesn't help that the Rick Perry administration is trying to kill the ACA and one part of their effort is to screw over the Beneficiary counselors/ACA Navigators and has refused to provide state resources to help. Remember, if you are on a Medicare advantage Plan to get the Part D drug benefit of Medicare, you have to buy the plan from a private insurance company, and you MUST have a benefits counselor with a computer to advise you which company has the best cost for your particular drug formulary. Since most people on Medicare take 12 medications and have chronic conditions like diabetes or high blood pressure, it is essential to get the Advantage plan from a company that provides the proper formulary to match the one you need. But since you are on Medicare, you are not eligible to use the ACA exchanges!
Confused yet? Let's hope you are not one of the seniors with dementia, or even just one with a poor education.
This is not the fault of the ACA. It's the fault of the idiotic free market anti-government crew who are also largely the racist idiots who hate Obama on general principles. Those individuals are being funded by the 1% as part of the attack on the middle class and the working class.
The classic examples of the 1% are the Koch Brothers, who between them were handed at birth as much wealth as Bill Gates has earned. The Koch brothers have done nothing to earn their wealth or income. All they have ever done is defend the wealth the were given at birth.
Their wealth is a clear example of what the economists call receiving unearned economic rent. They are spending it to defend and grow that wealth, but it clearly does nothing to build the American nation. It merely makes them more powerful. Most of the 1% inherited their wealth rather than earned it.
The Koch brothers funded both the CATO Institute and Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation designed the Affordable Care Act. The ACA provisions are built on the private insurance companies and are specifically designed to weaken the federal government. America became a strong middle class nation based on the federal government which came out of WW II in control of the economy. The conservative movement has been clawing the power back from the middle class and working class since Goldwater ran for President.
The conservatives are directly responsible for the fact that the single payer health insurance plan (which most of us could understand and live with) never got any consideration when the ACA was adopted.
The confusion with the Affordable Care Act is clear, but I think it is just one part of the much larger battle going on right now to determine what America will look like in the future. Do we have a middle class industrialized nation with a democracy or do we become a highly unequal plutocracy where the rest of us are here to serve the 1% and augment the unearned wealth that gives them their power? The ACA is a threat to the 1%. That’s why they are working to destroy it.