No, President Obama Is Not A Hall-of-Fame-Worthy BS Artist, aka Why I Defend The ACA [View all]

[stopbush]

(I originally posted this in response to another post in the thread "I believe President Obama...is a Hall-of-fame-worthy Bullshit Artist." A couple of DUers encouraged me to repost it as an OP, so here it is.)

Why defend what some have characterized as "GOP-Crafted HeritageCare/Romenycare?"

Because it's better than nothing, and nothing is what my family would have right now were it not for the ACA.

We are covered under the CA Medicaid expansion. I've been out of work for 3 years, approaching 60 and unable to find work anywhere. My wife works part time. Our two kids are in school. My wife has a pre-existing condition: breast cancer.

We are living off her part-time income and drawing down on our retirement funds, funds we put away when I was working full time for the better part of 30 years, before the last place I worked went belly up.

We were on a shitty COBRA for 18 months - it cost us roughly $9000 over that time. It ran out. We were without any insurance for months. Purchasing a pre-ACA plan in the individual market was not an option for us with my wife's cancer history.

We are now on Medi-Cal thru Cal Optima, where we have medical, dental and vision benefits with no co-pays. Prescriptions are a max of $4. That is the only option available to us, and it would not be available had the ACA not been enacted.

So I don't really give a flying fuck what others might think about it. My concern is for my family, and had President Obama not put it all on the line and got the ACA passed, we'd be sitting here in dread every single fucking day worrying about what would happen if my wife's cancer comes back, or someone had an accident, or someone got some kind of illness.

I hope you have a good job with great health insurance. Good for you. Others aren't so fortunate. That's who Ds traditionally look out for - the less fortunate, and President Obama is no exception.

The Medicaid expansion aspect of the ACA has nothing to do with the GOP or Romneycare. It's an expansion of the existing socialized health program in this country.

Added for this OP: I would be remiss if I didn't mention that at the time the ACA was enacted, I was employed full time, had health insurance and was earning a decent salary. But all that went away through no fault of my own. I never expected that I would be one of "those people" on Medicaid, but here we are.

So again, I say "thank you" to President Obama for having the compassion to get the ACA passed. It has benefited my family tremendously in this time, just as our president intended it to help people when the going gets tough.