Ouch!

Ed Stein's commentary:

The Republican party has trumpeted its objective of repealing Obamacare, or at least making it unworkable by refusing to fund the various pieces of it. It would be a mistake to believe that the election gave the GOP a mandate to undo health care reform, although the Republicans seem to think so. The polling shows that the electorate, despite months of  deliberate misinformation and scare tactics, is evenly split on the new reforms. When asked about specific individual aspects of the plan, the voters overwhelmingly favor the core ideas of near universal coverage, preventing insurance companies from denying or canceling coverage, closing the Medicare drug donut hole, and allowing children to stay on their parents’ plans.

One problem is that the plan is too complicated, a result of the backroom maneuverings needed to get the thing passed in the first place. It’s hardly perfect, but these things can be fixed without starting over. The Republicans have offered no plan of their own that even comes close to covering the 50 million uninsured or ending the most venal practices of the insurers. They simply want to undo anything Obama has accomplished.

Let’s take the argument that the personal mandate is an unwarranted government intrusion into our personal lives. Without it, we can’t ask the insurers to cover everyone. If we did that, why would anyone buy coverage until they got sick or had an accident? You can’t have one without the other. Get rid of the personal mandate, and you are back to the unacceptable status quo. I’m always astonished when I hear someone say that he doesn’t need health insurance because he is perfectly healthy, as if anyone knows when he might get sick or be injured.

The argument that the program doesn’t insure enough cost savings to pay for itself is hypocrisy at its finest. The GOP invented the infamous “death panels” to scare people from embracing the single most important cost saving measure in the new law–the government panel studying best practices and making recommendations for effective care based on hard evidence. What we know from studying data on regional variations in health care delivery is that there is enormous waste in the health care system, most of it from doctors performing unnecessary procedures that not only don’t improve patient health, but often produce worse outcomes. Studying those results and applying them across the country has the potential to save hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

I could go on and on about the benefits of moving this country in the direction that Obamacare is taking us. I only hope that the president has gained the political skills to protect his signal achievement. He should slam the Republican party daily for wasting time revisiting the health care debate while Americans want jobs and a return to economic stability. Whether he has learned enough on the job to reach out to the American people instead of  to his enemies remains to be seen. If he hasn’t, he will be a one-term president, and we will all be the poorer for it.

The premiums for my own health insurance, already outrageously expensive, increased 25% this year, and are scheduled to increase almost 65% next year. That's with a $2,000 deductible, so I've never actually used it for anything.

Before this health care reform bill, I wanted to stay in my group plan, because otherwise insurance companies could cancel my health insurance as soon as I got sick. Yeah, get cancer? Sorry, we don't want to insure you. Not anymore. We're were happy to take your premiums when you were healthy, but what will happen to our stock options if we start paying money out?

One of the many benefits of the health care reform bill is that I can shop around without worrying so much about that. Sure, they can still raise rates, but now they can't cancel me just because I get sick. Of course, I don't plan to get sick, but you never know. That's the whole point of insurance. That's why everyone should have health insurance, just like everyone must have auto insurance. The majority of people don't end up with a serious disease (or in a horrific wreck), and that helps keep the cost under control for everyone.

One other thing:  Stein points out that the electorate is evenly split on health care reform, despite months of lies (remember "death panels"?). But the one group in which a majority does oppose the bill is... senior citizens. Yes, the one group of people not affected by this bill at all fiercely opposes it. Oh, they love their own government-run health care - they're fiercely protective of Medicare - but they don't want anyone else to enjoy the same benefits they do.

Every other age group - people who are affected by this bill - support it, if not overwhelmingly. So when did our seniors become so selfish? Well, I suspect that they're just easily misinformed - and easily scared. And they grew up in openly racist times, so they're even more easily scared when all these lies are blamed on a black man.

Sadly, seniors do vote, while young people do not, or not in such numbers. That's one reason why fear and bigotry have worked so very, very well for Republicans, despite what happens when they actually get political power.