He’s young, has a wife and several children, good, hard-working man. Never did anything to ill his heart.
Here’s a real gem from Chris Hankins:
This guy needed a new job that would provide coverage…not a handout from the rest of us.
And from the recipient’s sister:
He had a job which he couldn’t keep because of his health issues which began over 3 years ago. It took the doctors many months to diagnose his condition. He was young, healthy, working, supporting his family and not looking for any handouts from anyone. He got sick, lost his job, his insurance, etc etc. I am not a fan of Obamacare and do not wish to get into some sort of political debate with anyone. All I know is because of the new law my brother’s life was saved, my niece and nephews have their father back and my parents did not lose a son.
There was a comment (which since has been wiped) from a Debbie that went along the lines of, “Not fair, he’s unemployed and took a heart away from a working person”.
Can you imagine if this individual was black and unemployed how much worse comments would be on the website? It’s that, “I’ve got mine screw you” attitude that is an awful sickness in this country. Also ironic in that his family obviously (up until this event) was of the attitude they didn’t need insurance and his sister “still doesn’t like Obamacare” despite the fact her brother was saved. I’m guessing they were indoctrinated Republican/Tea Party/Libertarians up until this event and “family” is still having trouble coming around that the capitalist free market is not the unfettered good people make it out to be.
Imagine having that country as a neighbour. Always yelling at each other within earshot, imposing its musical tastes at MAX VOLUME, and if you dare to complain, well, you know they’ve got a shotgun and won’t hesitate to use it.
Imagine living in that country, and having Quebecers as your neighbors. Always yelling at you about the same old nonsense, imposing their superiority complex at MAX volume, and if you dare to complain, well, you know they refuse to listen.
Oh do grow up ffs. Don’t you see that you’re just indulging in the same kind of inane stereotyping the people in the comments were doing?
The point about Obamacare is not whether it’s going to save lives or not - of course it’s going to save bloody lives!!! Newsflash: the system that existed before saved lives too. Imagine that!
The question is whether it’s actually going to work as advertised, as a net benefit over the system that existed before, or whether it’s going to be worse (and in what categories “worse” or “better”). Also whether other alternatives might be better. These aren’t easy questions to answer, regardless of what shade of the political spectrum you’re on.
And of course even someone who has been saved by the existing system can still doubt its overall viability in these terms.
The healthcare market in the US has been pretty much socialized in all but name over large areas for a long time, it’s absolutely absurd to lay its failings at the door of the “capitalist free market”. If you think the system that existed before was a free market system, then I have to doubt you even understand what the words “capitalism” “free” or “market”, or any combination thereof, even mean (or at the very least what they mean to “indoctrinated Republican/Tea Party/Libertarians” - not that you probably care, just so long as you’ve got somebody to hate).
Socialised. LMAO. Uh…this is a genuine use of “I’m not sure that word means what you think it does”.
(Oh, and stop confusing the free market and capitalism. Thanks! Alstein’s quite right. For that matter, most American “Libertarians” (MOST) are what Kevin Carson calls Vulgar Libertarians)
And in other cases other people will die. Since resources are limited and medical needs (relatively) unlimited, people will die and people will live under any medical system, and you will always be able to sell boo and hooray stories about any system, and tug at peoples’ heartstrings or get them to curse whoever you want them to curse, so long as there’s a camera and a journalist.
The only question that should be relevant is which system does better overall, which system results in less people dying overall, and at what costs in various senses of “cost”. Obviously the previous system had lots of room for improvement; is the present system going to be better overall?
Probably still too early to say, but so far it seems doubtful.
Anyway, the thing that irritated me about jpinard’s post was his twitting a family’s general views about a system one of their members specifically benefited from. There’s absolutely nothing weird or wrong about that, in fact it shows more discriminating intelligence than jpinard showed in his post.
What’s more likely to save lives: a health care system regulated in a way that disallows denial of service due to pre-existing conditions (and, hey, that yeast infection you failed to report from 7 years ago now that you have cervical cancer? DENIED!!) or a system regulated in a way that prevents denial of service due to pre-existing conditions?
We don’t know if their views are weird or stupid. They could be saying they dislike it because that’s what they hear on Fox, or they could have concrete, cogent reasons for disliking it.
As if that regulation isn’t far-reaching and won’t have a huge impact across the nation. Did we ever bother tracking how many people died because they were denied coverage over the last 40 years? Doubtful. I watched a 60 Minutes special on CA back in the late 80s that interviewed person after person who weren’t denied coverage, but were actually thrown off their plan despite never missing a payment once they were diagnosed with a costly illness. And then denied new coverage, naturally.
Have we tracked the stats on how many die because of lack of access to coverage, period? Or those that hit lifetime caps? ACA is far from perfect, but I just love, love, love your attitude.
I guess maybe we can wait and track for the next 40 years how many people are going to die because Obamacare made lifesaving plans illegal, or because the Obamacare system was so screwed up that they couldn’t get coverage due to “glitches”? And then compare it to the health system we had before for the per-capita death rate due to incompetence.
To sort of echo what gurugeorge said earlier, any system can save lives. But is this system “so good” just because it has the name Obama associated with it? Or have we really tried to examine all of our options and pick a system that could actually be effective for the greatest number of people?
This story is a classic case of confusing the issue, which Obamacare has done admirably. Obamacare saved the man’s life because, before Obamacare, he couldn’t get coverage with his preexisting condition and Obamacare eliminated preexisting condition exclusions. Yes, that’s one thing Obamacare did that was good. But, and to me it’s the very big BUT of Obamacare, you didn’t need a 900-page “we have to pass it so you’ll know what’s in it” law to get rid of preexisting condition exclusions. That could have been done with a 9 or 19-page law. What’s made Obamacare such a disaster is its incredible complexity in trying to make it an all things to all people one stop shop, for which the time limits the law imposed were in no way adequate.
Not adequate? The problem is they haven’t been properly enforced (thanks Obama - he really HAS screwed up here) rather than that! Insurance companies rebuild plans in the space of DAYS.
I was referring to the time given to build the exchanges, not the legal deadlines imposed on industry or individuals. The exchange sites are supposed to be WAY more than a simple plan offering. (And I’d dispute that DAYS thing, but it’s a discussion for another day). The exchanges are supposed to qualify you (or not) for Medicaid, qualify you (or not) for the appropriate subsidy or subsidies and then offer you the appropriate plans. That kind of complexity required a lot more time than was given (those involved knew that from the start, I was there in the planning sessions), and then, of course, they compounded the problem with some very poor design choices.
So one link we can’t read to verify it’s authenticity, and the second link comes from Ann Coulter. How about a link that comes from a neutral source?
Gurugeorge - I didn’t recall Democrats were the ones threatening to shut down the country and drive it into oblivion over Obamacare, screaming about death camps, trying to deny women’s health coverage etc. So yes, you may not like it, but branding the right side of the spectrum is absolutely proper here especially since they get brainwashed by FoxNews and more radio/tv outlets than any other demographic in the country and that incessant garbage can and does turn a rational person who can think for themselves into a sheep.
Of course not, but that’s probably the single most important change, when it comes to saving lives and preventing bankruptcies. It also leads to other necessary regulations. You can’t have guaranteed access, regardless of current health, without some requirement to have insurance at all times. Just as with car insurance, you can’t let people wait until they have an accident to buy some, not if you expect private enterprise to be the insuror.
And once you require people to buy insurance, you have to subsidize the poor (or expand medicaid, which amounts to the same thing). Otherwise, you’re criminalizing poverty. You also have to ensure they have not only the money, but somewhere to spend it. And thus, exchanges.
That core change – access regardless of pre-existing conditions – seems to necessitate most of the core changes in the law. I am sure there are a hundred smaller things that could have been cut. I have no doubt they succumbed to “feature creep,” or perhaps got too ambitious. But if there is a clean way to just allow access to all, regardless of current health, and stop at that… I would like someone to explain it to me. Seriously, I want to understand.
