I’ve been very disappointed by Sarah Kliff’s ACA reporting in the Washington Post, as she seems determined to milk the “Obamacare losers” meme for all it’s worth. In a piece this morning, she describes a Utah man with a "rare degenerative condition" as one of the "biggest losers" in the ACA rollout.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
If you read to the end of the piece, you learn that the man will be getting full insurance coverage for the first time. He was previously in a high-risk state program that cost $700 a month. The plan they have now purchased will give him full insurance coverage for the first time at a premium of $350 a month. Why is he one of the “biggest losers”? Because technical glitches at healthcare.gov have prevented him from getting the tax credit that would have made the premium $250 a month cheaper (lowering it to $100 a month). If this is an Obamacare “loser,” I wonder what a winner looks like.
I suspect these people will eventually get the tax credit anyway, maybe at the end of the year, but even without the tax credit, this man is clearly better off than he was pre-ACA. People with chronic conditions are among Obamacare’s biggest winners, even if they are dealing with the rollout growing pains. They now have the security of knowing that they can never be denied coverage again. In fact, all of us now have that security, and in that sense every American is a winner.