The right wing, led by the moral reprobates at Freedom Works are determined to sabotage enrollment in the Affordable Care Act. They are targeting 18- 34 year olds, the cohort most critical to the success of the ACA.
Fox News, we are being told in an excellent diary by Jon Perr is, as usual, substituting lies and distortion for fact.
As President Obama said yesterday at his news conference, there are 53 days left before the Health Insurance Exchanges open on October 1st. I'm reminding today myself why progressives, that means you and I, must organize to fight any effort to defund, destroy or otherwise tamper with Obamacare. The ACA is light years away from perfection, but it's what we have--today. It will assist many good, hard working Americans who are in desperate need of help
Powerful unions like National Nurses United and other progressive organizations are going to beat the drum--loudly, and remind Americans that those politicians who seek to defund Obamacare are the people who give themselves the best healthcare.
If you listen to these videos which I made during my visits to Free Health Clinics in 2009 during the height of the healthcare fight, it seems to me, you come to only one conclusion, Obamacare is for the 99%.
The people here describe the barbaric depravity of American healthcare that we hope and expect will go away come January 1st. It is sobering to listen to these fine people describe the toxic waste dump of the pre-Obamacare U.S. healthcare system.
Most of all, we hope that more people like Karen Black will not die because they don't have funds for treatment.
Keith needs a leg, with insurance, he will get it.
Keith who needed a prosthesis when I met him in Little Rock in 2009 could not get one because he didn't even qualify for Medicaid. Now, hopefully he will either qualify for Medicaid or receive a subsidy to purchase insurance on the Arkansas exchange.
I'll be praying for Keith on January 1st.
Frank Wood has been uninsured most of his life.
Frank Wood is uninsured and hadn't seen a doctor in over six years. He needed medication for a skin condition which cost $60 a tube. Now, he too will either qualify for Medicaid or a subsidy.
Let's pray for Frank on January 1st
Cindy Howell has probably filed for medical bankruptcy by now.
Cindy Howell describes going deeply into debt to continue paying for her BC/BS insurance in Texas. She says her policy doesn't even pay for preventive services. Well now, thanks to Obamacare, insurers will be required to pay for preventive care like mammograms and colonoscopy, well child care with no cost sharing.
One of the more positive sounding admonitions from health care reform opponents was that the United States had "the best health care in the world," so why would you mess with it? Not if you ask the 50 million uninsured, and the rest of us inadequately insured with high deductibles and co-pays who think long and hard before spending absurd sums for medical care.
I want to leave my uninsured brothers and sisters with something I turned up in the course of doing health care research.
Here's a tip about a company called StatLabs which provides lab testing to people in certain states (Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas or Virginia) without the need to first go for an expensive medical visit. I'm sure that the reason this is only available in a few states is because in the other states, the doctor lobby effectively blocked such a sensible solution to obtaining a medical test.
