Distressed/grousing over a glitchy Obamacare website? Think ACA is doomed because of a fix for 5%?

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You've been reeled in - hook, line, and sinker - by a determined pack of republicans and their supporters in the press and elsewhere who are working overtime to discredit the law.

In the long run of this important legislation, this invented tiffle will be long forgotten (probably replaced with another distracting tiffle). That's politics, and, it didn't begin with Obama or Obamacare.

Take the beginnings of Social Security. FDR was bold and progressive, but he left a lot of people out in the cold on Social Security:

from wiki:

____ Most women and minorities were excluded from its benefits of unemployment insurance and old age pensions. Employment definitions reflected typical white male categories and patterns.

Job categories that were not covered by the act included workers in agricultural labor, domestic service, government employees, and many teachers, nurses, hospital employees, librarians, and social workers. The act also denied coverage to individuals who worked intermittently.

These jobs were dominated by women and minorities. For example, women made up 90% of domestic labor in 1940 and two-thirds of all employed black women were in domestic service. Exclusions exempted nearly half the working population.

Nearly two-thirds of all African Americans in the labor force, 70 to 80% in some areas in the South, and just over half of all women employed were not covered by Social Security. At the time, the NAACP protested the Social Security Act, describing it as “a sieve with holes just big enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through.”

. . . just a reminder that most legislative progress has been historically incremental (and progressively evolving), even with passage of sweeping initiatives. FDR also had problems with his 'rollout'.

from Reuters:

Created in 1935, the program took 40 years just to include all working Americans in its basic coverage. When the old-age insurance program launched in 1937, barely more than half the labor force participated.

A series of amendments to the Social Security Act gradually expanded coverage. By 1979 it finally reached 90 percent of American workers. Over the decades, Congress repeatedly retrofitted Social Security: adding dependent and survivor benefits; balancing payments between early participants and later retirees; including farm workers, domestic laborers and the self-employed, and introducing annual cost-of-living adjustments.

Social Security’s first baby steps proved especially uncertain. Of course, opponents denounced the pension plan as the leading wedge of a socialist revolution. One senator warned that the nationalization of wheat fields would soon follow. Former President Herbert Hoover suggested the law would reduce once-hearty Americans to servile passivity. “Our people are not ready to be turned into a national zoo,” Hoover warned, “our citizens classified, labeled and directed by self-approved keepers.”

But it was not just dissident conservatives who issued ideological censure. Even friendly critics disparaged the program for its incompetent personnel, confusing procedures and widespread abuses. One watchdog group particularly disapproved the rapid hiring of thousands of untrained, ill-qualified workers to staff the program.

In response, the fledgling Social Security administration launched a massive PR campaign to educate Americans about the intricacies of the program and broaden support for it . . .

Sound familiar? Perspective.

[bigtree]

1. .

. . . easy to pretend like opposition and problems with Obamacare are exclusive to this legislation and President.

[sharp_stick]

3. Well of course not

it doesn't fit the EMO pain dujour.

[ProSense]

4. Frankly, I don't get

the logic of portraying website glitches as a failure of government.

I mean, the ACA is the exact opposite of that premise. Also lost in all of this is that half the people who would gain coverage under the law gain access via Medicaid, and that has been extremely successful.

Obamacare is having one huge success nobody knows about
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024038246

[bigtree]

6. exactly

. . . and to portray this 4% fix as the dismantling of the ACA is so absurd that the criticisms just look like another excuse to spout off about the President.

Ezra has some backtracking to do. He's done little more over the past few days than to hype the republican reactions as significant or substantial threats to the legislation. Looks like wishful thinking, on his part, to gin up a reportable controversy.

I can agree with him about Medicaid . . .

[Pretzel_Warrior]

2. Just saw it. Let's keep this kicked!

[BumRushDaShow]

5. And people forget that Medicare is

an amendment to the Social Security Act (which itself has been amended many times to tweak it).

I.e., what we see now as the PPACA is not going to be the same 5 years from now or 10 years from now. It's will be a living document.

It's a shame that once again, DUers have turned to embracing RW talking points.

[woo me with science]

7. I don't care about the website. I care about the corporate predation.

Websites can and will be fixed.

The REAL problem, of bloodsucking corporate middlemen and guaranteed obscene, skyrocketing profits for them, has not been addressed. It has been entrenched.

Deductibles are obscene: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024037483

And the subsidies merely hide that the obscene costs are still being demanded and paid to the corporate bloodsuckers. We were promised massive reductions in costs, but increasing costs and obscene, double-digit profit increases have actually been guaranteed, and the middleman has not been removed or even tamed.

We pay for the subsidies with our tax dollars. The INSURANCE companies, not the people, receive these subsidies.

Every single dollar that is funneled into the pockets of health insurance vultures is not going into education, infrastructure, or social services. And people will STILL be denied heath CARE by outrageous out-of-pocket deductibles.

[jeff47]

8. So time's stopped then?

Or did you just not bother to read the OP, or did you not bother to try and understand the OP?

The ACA is step 10 in a very long path.

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9. .

[okieinpain]

10. I agree with you but it shouldn't started out like this. n/t.

[bigtree]

11. in a perfect world

. . . we'd have everyone rowing together on this. It's hard for me to be shocked at a bumpy startup with republicans working every avenue to slow the process down.

We could ask why one half of our legislature won't lift a finger to help.

[JoePhilly]

12. Will you SHUSSSH ... you're ruining perfectly good media manufactured outrage.

In all seriousness, this "greatest disaster ever!!!" will be replace be a new greatest disaster ever, probably right after Thanksgiving.

And then again after Christmas.

And than again. And again.

[bigtree]

13. ha!

. . . latest, greatest disaster

[JoePhilly]

14. ... or ...

disaster DU jour.

[LWolf]

15. No.

I am neither distressed nor grousing over a glitchy ACA website. My state's site seems to be working fine. It doesn't matter, though, because I'm not going to be getting insurance through the exchange. I have employer provided insurance, which I help pay for, but they pay more than I do. That means that, even if I qualified for the exchange, I'd end up paying more because I'd be paying it all myself.

So no, I haven't been distressed, nor have I been grouching. At least, not about that. I HAVE grouched, and been distressed, that MY insurance premiums have gone up. Again. When I couldn't afford to use the insurance already. But whether or not health CARE is authentically affordable has never been the point of the ACA. That law is about insurance.

I got health care yesterday. I went to the local urgent care clinic for help with a persistent throat/ear infection. I didn't have to pay them upfront, because I HAVE that $900 a month insurance policy. It won't cover the cost of the care, though, because I haven't met my deductible. They'll bill me for the full amount.

I'm still paying for the last time I had to see a doctor. It didn't come close to meeting the deductible, but 7 months later, I'm still paying for it. Now I'll add the cost of the clinic visit to that. Thankfully, this should not require 3 return visits, more tests, and more billing like the last time. I used the rest of this month's grocery fund for the prescription, and am considering my somewhat limited options for when the cupboard is bare next weekend.

Meanwhile, I've got some other health issues that aren't being addressed because I can't afford the care I've already gotten this year. I've got a knee that's so painful that I haven't walked without a limp for 2 months now. I've got an ankle that rolls and sends me crashing to the ground on a regular basis. Last year I landed so hard on the OTHER knee that there is a little bone fragment floating around causing pain in that knee, as well. I've got a dental issue that needs attention. That's okay, though. I got enough care to keep me going to work so I can get a paycheck and pay for the roof over my head this year, and that's all that counts.

Do I think the ACA is doomed? I don't know. I haven't given it much thought. If it were single payer, I'd be fighting for it tooth and nail. If there were a public option, I'd be more concerned about its future. As it is, if more people are getting actual CARE than got care before, I'm okay with it, but I'm not losing any sleep over what anybody is saying about it.

That's ALL I care about when it comes to health care. People getting the care they need. THAT'S IT. I don't care about how it affects Barack Obama. He's not the point. I don't much care about how it affects the Democratic Party, that supported leaving single-payer off the table and enacting this "compromise" which is now causing concern.

I want anyone who needs health care to be able to walk in and get health care without spending the rent, utility, fuel, or grocery money. That's what I care about, and that's ALL I care about. Frankly, I think anyone who cares more about the ACA or Obama's "legacy" than they do that have some seriously misplaced priorities.