My wife and I were triply-screwed by health care insurance . . .

[zazen]

51. wait--I'm in a GOP controlled Medicaid-expansion-denying state

So the changes afoot are not helping those of us who fall into this category. Not yet, anyway.

The Republicans in this state have gamed it so the more affordable BCBS healthcare coverage for people who fell into this gap _before_ ACA went into effect is no longer an option. We also don't have a full exchange--I think just two main insurers, who aren't incentivized to keep costs down. So they've set up ACA to appear to be the instigator of harm of 450,000 people who had a lower cost option and now don't.

I'm glad ACA is doing something, but I still think we didn't have to take single payer off the table in 2009, the same way we didn't have to let the banks get away with what they did in 2009 either when Obama had a Dem controlled congress and a lot of fresh momentum, or that we didn't have to let corporatist interests control "education reform." Instead, he retrenched into his neoliberal economic policies.

Single payer and a jobs program aligned with building walkable cities and creating green affordable fast rail would have done wonders for half the cost we're spending on insurers and the failed TBTF banks. We'd be living in a vastly different country now. State legislatures might have stayed in dem controlled hands had citizens experienced the huge difference a populist agenda would have made. Instead, more of my fellow North Carolinians will die this year as a result of greedy, hateful people and the centrist politicians too blind or self-serving to stop enabling them.

Maybe we'll have another chance in 2014 or 2016.