I believe it was Paul Ryan who said that under Obamacare, Medicare is eliminating advantage plans and taking insurance away from seniors. I would bet my measly social security “entitlement” check that I contributed into for 46 years of working that Paul Ryan’s mother who he singles out all the time, is not on a Medicare Advantage plan. Advantage plans are terrible. Premiums are low but you can’t go to any doctor you want to. Isn’t that the main premise of so many republican platforms? They want us to have a choice?
The plan was that each state would set up its own ACA exchange and citizens would get individualized health insurance based on their needs and regional costs. The federal exchange was not designed to help 50,000,000 (50 million) people.
What happened was that 30 or more states, all run by republican right wing Governors and/or Legislatures, refused to set up their own exchanges. The result was that a website designed for under 10 million attendees was overwhelmed by 5 or 10 times the numbers expected and it could not handle it. Think of this. THIS IS WHAT HACKERS DO TO SHUT DOWN WEBSITES! This is what the republican party did.
This was a concerted effort by one political party to destroy what was voted into law. There was no concern for the needs of the people in those states who need health insurance. According to the recent republican presidential candidate, people who need health care call an ambulance and go to the hospital. No concern for preventive care or care of chronic conditions. No understanding that healthcare contributes to manufacturing efficiency and school attendance. Their definition of capitalism is “controlled bankruptcy”, not rebuilding a middle class. On the contrary, their idea of a middle class is to destroy unions. Their idea of health insurance companies is that the CEO can make 30 million dollars and not pay doctors and hospitals the fees they deserve.
I still remember Darrell Issa on TV saying that Amazon and EBay built websites that serve millions of people. He implied that the ACA website was mismanaged and incompetent.
Well, selling the same book titled Alice in Wonderland from California to Maine isn’t the same as individualizing many different features of an insurance policy that varies from region to region and individual to individual. Mr. Issa is indeed living in his own wonderland.
The Republican Party is also guilty of promoting mistruths in their anti-ACA advertisements.
They presented a woman in an ad who claimed she lost her health insurance under Obamacare and now must pay for an expensive medicine for her child that was previously covered in her old plan. The interviewer interjected that the woman is now paying $500 a month under Obamacare and paid $1100 a month previously. What was not said was how much she is now paying for her medication. If she is saving $7200 a year in premiums and paying for medication, she probably is still saving thousands of dollars a year out of pocket. When she was shown that she would be saving money under Obamacare, she replied, “how can that be?” She appeared to not know what she was talking about in the political ad.
I believe it was Paul Ryan who said that under Obamacare, Medicare is eliminating advantage plans and taking insurance away from seniors. I would bet my measly social security “entitlement” check that I contributed into for 46 years of working that Paul Ryan’s mother who he singles out all the time, is not on a Medicare Advantage plan. Advantage plans are terrible. Premiums are low but you can’t go to any doctor you want to. Isn’t that the main premise of so many republican platforms? They want us to have a choice?
I inquired about Medicare Advantage plans and my doctors were never in network. If you want to go to a specialist, and many of us know when we need a Gyn, Urologist or Ophthalmologist, we need a referral from a PCP who may not want to lose the miniscule fee that he or she is getting from the Advantage Plan. My local small hospital wasn’t even in network and I would need to drive over 50 miles to a network hospital. The Cancer hospital that my wife is evaluated at, has on their website that they accept no advantage plans.
So Paul Ryan wants Medicare to continue allowing Advantage plans that the government is subsidizing and paying insurance companies, and they aren’t even giving seniors good care. Republicans act as if they don’t want citizens to have good care. But George W. Bush gets great medical care. He was diagnosed with a blocked cardiac artery during a routine annual physical. How do you diagnose a blocked artery in an office visit? Did he get a CAT scan or MRI, or a radio nuclear stress test? Let me guess. We don’t get that treatment with Medicare Advantage Plans.
Now the right wing wants to have an administrator overseeing the ACA health program. After they caused many of the problems, they now want to roadblock health care reform again.
When Hillary Clinton was given responsibility to try to reform the health care system in the 1990’s, every congressman thought he was being castrated because a competent woman was given responsibility and they opposed her with venom. Now when an African American President has done more to help Americans obtain health care than was ever done before, they accuse him of not being an American and not obeying the law.
What can the Republican Party do to get their message out to minorities? They are doing it. Everyone can see what the Republican Party message is to minorities.