Wednesday, November 10, 2010

The (Still Un)Affordable Care Act

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act seems, in light of its delayed implementation, to be of approximately no immediate benefit to anyone. David Dayen:

I’m not interested in re-litigating the health care wars, but I think everyone can agree that the delayed implementation for the benefit of a better CBO score was debilitating to the policy, at least in political terms. Because now we’re starting to get the first reports of how Americans are faring in a post-Affordable Care Act world, and because practically nothing that the law has created helps Americans get insurance, they only see that world growing worse:

Nearly 59 million Americans went without health insurance coverage for at least part of 2010, many of them with conditions or diseases that needed treatment, federal health officials said on Tuesday.
They said 4 million more Americans went without insurance in the first part of 2010 than during the same time in 2008.
“Both adults and kids lost private coverage over the past decade,” Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a news briefing.

Among adults age 18-64, and in case you didn’t know that’s the voting age, 22% are uninsured. Half of the uninsured have incomes over the poverty level. 40% of them have one or more chronic diseases. This is not about being young and libertarian and free, this is about not being able to afford health insurance.
Well, folks, that includes me. I am 18-64 (a lot closer to 64). I have a couple of significant chronic conditions. I am uninsured because I am... was... self-employed, now have no work-generated income and simply can't afford insurance.

Republicans want to kill the whole program. Democrats act as if they don't really care if it works or not, as long as they get credit for having passed it. That fourth branch of government... corporations, in this case, insurance corporations... is surely cheering. If anything has changed for the better in light of this law, I'm damned if I can see it. It's just another reason I'm no longer a Democrat.

1 comment:

  1. "It's just another reason I'm no longer a Democrat." Yep!

    ReplyDelete

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