I've got a Masters. And trust me. I really don't understand the inside of the Tea Party wing of House Republicans heads.
I have a good friend who has hit a string of bad luck. I've diaried about her before.
She provided personal care for me for more than a decade as my disabilities worsened.
She got ill herself, and was forced out of a job because she was a high utilizer of their insurance (they found a legal reason, but that was the 'real' reason.)
She got another, much lower paying job, and the execs are scared of Obamacare, so since they've never provided benefits they didn't want to start, so just before the employer mandate was delayed, they were one of the businesses that did cut all their full time employees hours from full time to thirty hours. She applied for more than 100 full time call center type jobs this summer, but a bad credit score, and the previous employers advising she is ineligible for rehire...dogged her there too.
She lives in a rooming house. Because of the bad credit issues, it's difficult for her to rent an apartment. She has to walk with crutches, and would be characterized by any sane person as partially disabled -- she has severe asthma, bad diabetic neuropathy and no padding on the soles of her feet...
Oh, yeah, and her car died in July. She has access to transit, but winter with the icy sidewalks is coming... (She's applied for van service, paratransit. No answer yet. )
And...she has no health insurance.
She is enrolled in an indigent program that just started for her, that means she has access to medicines and a primary care physician...that will last at least until the end of the year.
I worked in the heath insurance industry for over ten years before I became disabled, so I've been trying to work her through the fog.
The negative media blitz about Obamacare has her confused. I went to WebMD and ran a quote for her. I'm not letting her take the least expensive premium, since the copays there are high, and she has chronic conditions...but it looks like she'll get halfway decent coverage for about 100 a month, with a subsidy. (Ohio has no Medicaid expansion, so that's not an option.)...but she's gone from "I don't want it." to "I'm signing up....
As of January, she'll be covered.
It's tough to pay rent and phone and eat and a healthcare premium at 10.00 an hour for 30 hours a week, but she's going to do it. She understands the positives.
I truly don't understand why making sure my friend isn't one of the 40,000 who die uninsured every year can possibly be a bad thing. Despite everything that's happened to her, she has a job. They like her, she's good at it....so she's no "taker." She needs insurance to be medically safe enough to make it through the winter.
I don't understand why that's wrong.
To "keep on living," is a right.
And starting tomorrow, she'll be able to have a say in that....and in January it will become three dimensional.
Making sure she doesn't have this....is now enough to shut down the government over?
Making sure she doesn't have this...is now how politicians make or lose their political fortunes?
I'll never understand it. But she and I will be sitting at a computer on Saturday.
Signing the heck up.
5:41 PM PT: I'm calling it Obamacare because that's what the media's calling it...Appreciate the tag edit, but it was a conscious decision on my part to call it what I called it.