Sometimes I try to listen to Hannity on the radio on my way home from work. Sometimes, between the whiney quality of his voice and his mindnumbingly repetitive and misleading complaints about President Obama, I just can't listen for more than a few minutes. Sometimes I go for weeks without listening at all because, even though being in the south, I like to know what the other side is saying, sometimes I... just... can't even.
But one thing Hannity has been consistently saying, for at least a year, maybe for four years, is that Obamacare has caused people's premiums to increase by anywhere from 40 to 400% (!). And regular working people just can't afford it(!). So people are letting their policies lapse, or are signing up for worse policies than they had before(!). To hear him tell it, it's just the worse mess ever(!). For the past several months, he's been saying that this is going to be the worst year ever for premium increases, just you wait and see.
Go ahead and peek over the pale orange gauze bandage roll to see what just happened to me.
We had our insurance meeting the other week and wouldn't you know, with the company I work for being a small employer and all... with Obamacare forcing all these huge (yuuge!) premium increases and all... we were bound to get hit with it.
And we did.
Our health premium went up. By $2.
Our dental premium went down. By $2.
(That's per pay period, or $4 per month, both up and down. Or net effect: bupkis.)
Since the ACA took effect, we had one year when we had a 10% increase, but the other years rates have been the same or very minimal increases. I remember in the early 2000s, when I was working for a different small employer, one year our rates went up by 23%. Back then we had large increases every year. We would say things like this to each other, Oh, just a 15% increase this year? That's not so bad...
I know that republicans in general are unshakable in their beliefs and that reality rarely intrudes.
But I really wonder if my experience is that much of an outlier (seeing such minuscule to nonexistent increases) or if republicans are going to eventually understand that the sky has not fallen, premiums have not skyrocketed, and the whole darn scheme was a republican idea from day one.
If they weren't such craven political fools, they'd all be taking credit for how much a republican idea has helped so many people. Which it has, although not as much as the Democratic idea of universal healthcare would help. And not as much as it would help if certain Republican state governments hadn't decided to stick it to the poor people in their own states, trapping them in the dreaded coverage gap.
Oh and Hannity repeats the claim that doctors won't take our health plans any more. Um, Sean, 98% of healthcare providers are in my network. Practically the only way to find an out of network provider is to leave the country! And if I did, I'd probably land in a country that has lower cost nationalized healthcare!
Incidentally, Politifact took the time to debunk some of Hannity's claims about insurance premiums, but I assure you that hasn't stopped him from making more and more ridiculous claims.
A big part of the reason I listen to stupid blowhards like Hannity is because he and his fellow far-right radio jerks are preying on the fears of people who are right to feel insecure in a world that is largely passing them by. Between the impact of trade agreements that let Global Capital move around the world at will to exploit whichever workers will most benefit their bottom line and the technological forces of automation, workers are feeling the squeeze. I think it's important to understand that insecurity and fear and the forces that feed it, and to have compassion for the poor fools who believe these right wing charlatans, bless their hearts.