This story was on NPR today on the ATC evening news. It is so frustrating.
Rural Northeast CA is in a predicament. Clinics know their patients need ACA coverage or Medicaid but won't tell their reps to support it so county officials are doing it themselves.
Before the election while Obamacare was being implemented officials had to rename MediCal to make it sound like it was a regular insurance plan, not a “government handout” which these people were too proud to take (from a black man). Since they still didn't pay anything for it I don't know how they filled in that logic gap.
The area went for Trump in a landslide. And now they won't contact their reps to vote against repeal. Either they don't believe Republicans will really take their insurance away, or they're dumb enough to think it will be replaced with something better. Which at this point you'd have to be weapons grade stupid to believe. Or, they'd rather be destitute than admit the black guy helped them. There is nothing you can do when people are so willing to vote and act against their interests. I've said it before, I just can't help wanting to see the repeal actually take away their insurance.
One patient at the Mountain Valleys clinic in Bieber, Kay Roope, 64, knew she had Medi-Cal, and she liked it.
"It did me good," she says.
Now she has a subsidized commercial plan through Covered California with modest premiums and copays, and she likes that, too.
"It's OK, 'cause I'm at the doctor's at least once a month," she says.
But when asked what she thinks of Obamacare overall, she says she doesn't like it.
"Because of Obama himself," she says with a laugh. "I rest my case."
The confusion and the contradictions are common among patients, explains Morris, the enrollment counselor.
"People just don't understand the different names," she says. "But of course, it's the same thing."
Morris has seen the difference the Affordable Care Act has made for people in the region. She has seen patients get treatment for diabetes and breast cancer, or get knee surgery that they otherwise wouldn't have gotten.
Those patients won't fight for Obamacare, Morris says, so that's why the clinics have to.
Notice how she “laughs” when she says “because of Obama himself” . Yeah, hawhaw, you sure made that case. The nervous laugh because she knows that makes no sense, and trying to hide her racism.
www.npr.org/...