Obamacare gets off a deathbed it was never on
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The president admitted as much today at a health care event at the Eisenhower Office Building in Washington. “That’s what’s gotten lost over the last couple of months,” he said. “Our focus rightly had to shift to working 24/7 to fix the web site, HealthCare.gov, for the new marketplaces where people can buy affordable insurance plans. And today, the web site is working well for the vast majority of users.”
But that’s not entirely true. In fact, Obamacare has had its successes from early on, wins that could have been more of the public face of the law’s implementation even as the web site was being repaired. To use an old saying, the Obama White House has always been able to chew gum and walk up a flight of stairs at the same time. Today’s comments from the president underscored what the White House didn’t emphasize enough and what the mainstream media generally ignored: the Affordable Care Act was always about something more than a balky web site.
As more people realize that, it’s clear that Obamacare is back from a deathbed it was never on in the first place.
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On Tuesday, President Obama resisted the temptation to rely on glittering generalities to defend the law; this time he got specific, and personal, in ways that couldn’t have been more effective.
“At the young age of 23, Justine Ula is battling cancer for the second time. And the other day, her mom, Joann, emailed me from Cleveland University Hospital where Justine is undergoing treatment. She told me she stopped by the pharmacy to pick up Justine’s medicine. If Justine were uninsured, it would have cost her $4,500. But she is insured -- because the Affordable Care Act has let her and three million other young people like Monica gain coverage by staying on their parents’ plan until they’re 26. And that means Justine’s mom, all she had to cover was the $25 co-pay.”
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THESE UNSOLICITED testimonials are the best kind of talking points for Obama. They’re not Beltway boilerplate or antagonistic bromides from the right-wing media. They’re from real everyday people, and as such irrefutable by the conservatives who’ve worked to bring down Obamacare since the president signed it into law.
That follows another smear, one made by GOP Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, who claimed that Consumer Reports warned “Americans not to go to the [HealthCare.gov] website because of the fear of having fraud,” when in fact Consumer Reports said no such thing.
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The HealthCare.gov web site, the literal face of the Affordable Care Act, has seen big improvements since it launched in October. White House officials reported Monday that the site received about 1 million visitors. It wasn’t clear how many of those actually signed up for insurance, but the fact that that many people got on the site itself with no bad incidents is an improvement in itself.
But there’s more in the works. “In recent weeks, top administration officials have visited Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Atlanta, Phoenix, northern New Jersey, Tampa, Orlando, Detroit and San Antonio, home collectively to more than 7 million uninsured,” reported The Huffington Post on Tuesday, in a story that made mention of one of the best things about official efforts to alert the public: the fact that millions of uninsured are concentrated in America’s biggest cities, making it a relatively simple matter, logistically speaking, to reach and inform these people about Obamacare and its advantages for them.
“We approached it much like you would a political campaign with mailings, door knockings, repeated attempts. And phone banking,” said Sean Wherley, a spokesman with SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, in California. “You need to hit people multiple times from multiple formats. One to get them, two to help them understand how this works and get them to an event where they can actually enroll,” Wherley told HuffPost.
And the president did his part at Tuesday’s event in Washington. “I’m going to need some help in spreading the word,” he said. “I need you to spread the word about the law, about its benefits, about its protections, about how folks can sign up. Tell your friends. Tell your family. Do not let the initial problems with the web site discourage you because it’s working better now and it’s just going to keep on working better over time.”
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Mdw01 in The New Republic: “There is no way to do an apples-to-apples comparison of pre-ACA and now. You now get to keep your children on your policy 7 years longer. No lifetime limits on insurance. Savings on prescriptions. Free wellness care. Mental health care is the same as physical care...no limits on visits, etc. These and many more things were never available in the past. In the past if you were diagnosed as terminal, your insurance was either more expensive or cancelled. If your newborn was diagnosed with an illness it was nearly impossible to get insurance and if you did it was extremely expensive. As to the prices being a bit more than your previous plan, that has been happening for as long as I can remember. If you get your insurance through your employer, check your old W-2's. Also look at how coverage decreased while co-pays increased. On and on...bottom line is the ACA is the best thing to happen to this country for decades.”
A story in The Huffington Post on Tuesday tried to distill an explanation in its own headline: “Here’s Why Obamacare Is Going to Work.”
The story’s lead made it clear: “With the website now quasi-functional, there are good reasons to believe that the Affordable Care Act will catch on. Quite simply, there are tens of millions of uninsured people who want health insurance, a law in place to help them obtain it, and advocates on the ground making sure they know how to do it.”
But you can put it even more simply than that. Here’s why Obamacare is going to work:
Because it’s working already.
Image credits: Obama: WH.gov. FactCheck.org logo: © 2013 Annenberg Public Policy Center. Tweets by their creators.
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