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The ranks of the uninsured continued to grow last year according to Gallup. Their poll found that 17.1 percent of adults did not have health insurance in 2011, which is a significant increase from the 16.4 percent in 2010. From Gallup:
The drop in the number of insured people is mainly the result of the large increase in the number of unemployed/underemployed adults and long term trends. The rapidly rising cost of health care over the past several decades has contributed to a long term trend of fewer and fewer companies offering health insurance to their employees. The economic downturn has only accelerated this trend.
This strong increase in the number of uninsured since President Obama took office is not the fault of his signature Affordable Care Act, but it does highlight what an historically bad unforced political error the design of the law was. The Act’s major increase in insurance coverage was delayed until 2014, over a year after Obama’s expected re-election, purely to make it appear cheaper in the initial years. As a result Obama will need to defend his signature law to expand health insurance, while dealing with the fact that the uninsured problem has gotten significantly worse since he signed the law over a year ago.
The “I know things have only gotten worse, but trust me, my plan to fix the problem should eventually start helping” is a terrible campaign message.
If the Obama team truly believes that ACA is good idea, then this decision was beyond idiotic. It is truly mindboggling that everyone in the Obama administration convinced themselves that a lower CBO score but no coverage expansion before the re-election was much smarter politics than a higher CBO score but coverage expansion before November 2012.
The Democrats’ terrible handling of the health care reform debate in 2009-2010 should be remembered as one of the greatest acts of political malpractice in modern American history.
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the health care reform debate in 2009-2010 should be remembered as one of the greatest acts of political malpractice in modern American history.
Ahhh! I remember it well. [And certainly agree with your conclusion.]
It wasn’t malpractice. The politicians were just following the orders of the 1%.
“….the uninsured problem has gotten significantly worse since he signed the law over a year ago.”
At the time of passage, ACA was forecasted to add 12 to 15 million to Medicaid If the Republicans do not succeed in altering this element of the law that number may be closer to 18 – 20 million. Medicaid doctors are already hard to find and adding 15 million or more new clients to the pool will drive doctors out of the system.
ACA will likely collapse under the weight of its built in foolishness.
Even if you follow the orders of the 1% it is just stupid to forget to include the bread and the circus.
Almost all 26 year olds will be without adequate health coverage as soon as they turn 27. This fact will continue every year for the million or so young adults who only have coverage because they remained or got back on their parents policy.
The tipping point of cruelty was reached long ago. The 1%’ers are sucking up the economy like an addict pulling coke through a rolled up thousand dollar bill. One would think that they would be savvy enough to give the little people enough to keep them on the passive side of the cusp of want. But, like any addiction, the need is greater than the reality of the situation. After all this time, the stupidity of the people who rule us still shocks me.
This is going to get much worse I think. And the prez doesn’t care and neither does congress. I have 2 adult children who have no health insurance and it worries me a lot.
Seconded. The current political & economic systems contains the seeds of their own destruction.
Bread = cheap, unhealthy, corporate fast-food. Circuses = cable TV. What more could the 99% want?
It’s not “dire” enough yet. When people are dying in the streets as the 1% drive to their charity balls or the Kennedy Center then maybe something will be done. When it looks like you might not get your $22 million bonus that is “DIRE”.
“Political” malpractice?
Fuck that. It’s just straight-up, self-interest driven manipulation from the PTB. Politics are just a shell game designed to make you ask “How did that happen?” instead of “Why should I be forced to play this rip-off game in the first place?”
My SO and I have no health insurance coverage since the SO’s layoff after the Globalists bought out the company. Oh well. We can’t afford a grand a month, bottom line, pure and simple.
Get on government plans you say? Nope. Too many assets, plus we plan on using those assets to start a business, since there are no jobs out there. Once the business is up and running we have no plans for obtaining health insurance – still too expensive. The choice between food, shelter or health insurance? It’ll be food and shelter every time.
Once the mandate starts, I’m not worried about the penalty because we have no income to tax (at least the first few years of the business). So we slip through the cracks. The advantage of being poor, but not quite poor enough in Amerika. The disadvantage is if we get sick we die.
Oh well. Life is trade-offs. To start a business in Amerika you must make sacrifices, but the politicians won’t make sacrifices in spending OUR tax money on a single payer system. Our tax money must be spent on the imperialist wars to appease the global financial overlords. Yup.
But it was the fault of ACA by intentionally not having provisions kick in until 2014 – conversely if ACA’s provisions had kicked in immediately and millions of more were insured, you can be sure that Obama and the Democrats would be all over to claim credit. Whatever happens from the date Obama signed ACA, Obama and the Democrats can and should be praised/blamed for as they did ACA all on their own and along with that, they could have had provisions start immediately, no individual mandate, drug re-importation, drug price negotiation, public option, lowered the Medicare age, etc but they entirely on their own ditched those things.
“The “I know things have only gotten worse, but trust me, my plan to fix the problem should eventually start helping” is a terrible campaign message.”
——–
The really BIG problem with that is the fact that is is difficult to get on a bumper sticker.
Note to congresscritters: If the 1% told you to jump off a bridge, would you DO IT????
Simple solution. Don’t get sick until you’re 65.
This ain’t rocket scient ya’ know.
“When people are dying in the streets as the 1% drive to their charity balls or the Kennedy Center then maybe something will be done. ”
—————
Only IF the bodies are blocking their limo.
Or I could jump off a bridge; which one were you suggesting?
Well put.
Not YOU!!!!!! We NEED you!!!
You wanna help? Throw Eric Cantor off a bridge.
Koch’s limos have plows on the front so they don’t get too inconvenienced.
…and IF the roads are congested……..They can just “chopper” to the event.
No worries…state governors like TomCorporate will make sure once they’re through nobody in their respective states can qualify for Medicaid.
OT…..romney is LOSING to Santorum in latest Michigan polls!!!!! WTF????
Froth rises to the top.
Ain’t see you here before????
Damn………I shoulda SEEN that coming.
Thanks for your keen insight and analysis.
If I may…..ifn Romney LOSES Michigan, his daddy’s state, does Ricky (2) he actually HAVE a chance????
He needs to deal with the pain people are feeling right now. 2014 is not even on most people’s horizon. If he doesn’t get that, then he’ll just be another Jimmy Carter.
Admittedly, none of us can see into the future, and many of us are not ready to make the ultimate sacrifice, yet. But hubby and I have thought if we had a terminal diagnosis, it would be a pity not to take someone with us as we go–someone who seems hell-bent on hurting the average person.
The people of MI have taken it up the you know what so many times it doesn’t surprise me to see Santorum rising.
Or should it be oozing to the top? :)
I.e. “The cake is in the mail.”
I think it had more to do with knowing how unpopular the individual mandate will be and didn’t want it to go into effect before the election.
I actually HAVE a list should I get some really bad news. FYI, going to the dr this pm. Just so we don’t “duplicate” efforts…. McConnell and Cantor.
Cheaper?! But…but…it SAVES money, and bends the cost curve! /s
I like “oozing”. Let’s got with that.
Boy howdy THAT thought has crossed my mind allot. I came to the conclusion that anger eats my energy. And i need that to stay healthy. I own a gun but that is for food and protection. If you want to attack go after ignorance, that will effect more than eliminating a few dickheads. Who multiply faster than you think because they are IGNORANT.
Once again, the failure of Big Zero to consider a Single-Payer model, or to fight for the Public Option, or to do anything other than throw the middle class under the bus during this entire ACA debacle proves that Big Zero forgot the very first rule of government: that good policy is good politics.
Conversely, he has mastered the second rule of government: Bad Policy is Always Bad Politics.
No duplication, though they are just further down. Corporate crooks–particularly if they have ascended to governmental positions of power or influence hold more charm for me.
Yes, they would jump if a well-paying job with a political think-tank was waiting at the bottom of the abyss.
Heh the Virginia governor is about to get very unpopular in my neck of the woods too. They are proposing an over 20 cent increase in property values here because our neck of the woods got screwed in educational funding. So now that stimulus money has expired the choices are fire teaching aides, freeze teachers salaries, and be screwed on building a new high school(roof collapsed in the gym of old one)or figure out a way to fund those things via tax increases(hence the real estate increase.)
The largest increase prior to this? 8 cents.
Governors ARE eligible. See #36.
If I find myself in D.C. I could take care of your governor right next door, so to speak. No charge.
I don’t remember ever being in need of medical care when I was in my teens or twenties. I’ve only needed it later in life. This legislative gift to the Health Insurance Industry is typical of Obama’s subservience to the PTB.
I, like you, have no health insurance. I was diagnosed with a Stage IV cancer and negotiated a payment of $13K for the radiological procedure that the radiologist would have charged the insurance provider $60K and Medicare $30K. Always be willing to negotiate with the doctor providing your care. Not that $13K wasn’t a lot of money for me to pay, but it’s still somewhat better than death.
Yes, it was completely idiotic for the ACA to have delayed implementation. In comparison, when Medicare was created, it was implemented within the year and enrolled over 19 million people – back in the day of pen and paper!
After truly understanding the back story of the public option and its demise, I am beyond cynicism as far as concerns the words of President Obama matched against his actions.
Now I am seriously wondering if he and his administration wanted health reform at all and wondering if the Constitutionally suspect mandate combined with delayed implementation was really just a giant poison pill for reform. Pretend you want reform, pass reform, but don’t implement it, and then let it get chipped away and then finally killed off.
Huge chunks of the ACA have already disappeared – the CLAS Act part which was supposed to provide a long term disability insurance and home health assistance is gone, and the federally defined minimum benefit is gone, given back to the states to define so that once again we will have a checkerboard of health coverages.
Some good did come out of the act – most especially the high risk pools for people with PEC. While some lives may have been saved, the cost of the HRPs remained too high to help many in need. They were supposed to be severely underfunded, but that turned out not to be an issue once the numbers were winnowed through the affordability factor.
If ACA had been implemented in its first year, like Medicare, the millions of Americans with PECs, small business people, the underemployed, the unemployed, the older but can’t get Medicare crowd, the young adults, all those people could have come under the ACA umbrella and they would have fought tooth and nail to preserve their coverage. They and we may never get to experience the reform.
If the ACA is undone, we will be back to square one. At that point, perhaps we can finally throw off the shackles of the worst healthcare system in the developed world and create a Single Payer Universal Healthcare system and this interlude will just seem like a bad dream.
This whole Obama first term is seeming like a bad dream of poorly designed programs and broken dreams.
Aside from healthcare, how many Housing and mortgages fixes have been rolled out in the last three years? That haven’t worked and have done nothing to stem the foreclosure tide? How have they done with upholding the Rule of Law and fighting the pervasive corruption in our financial system?
I’m starting to have a new theory about Obama and his administration – Feigned Incompetence. People that smart can’t be as dumb and ineffective as they appear to be. The slogan for the re-election campaign can be –
We Tried (Just Not Very Hard).
WHAT?! The ACA didn’t help? Who could have seen this coming?
What did you Democrat supporters (who voted for Obama) expect? BTW, the uninsured numbers are going to skyrocket when the Obamacare actually kicks in. It will be cheaper for employers to drop their insurance at that point. Anyone actually working can expect huge tax increases to pay for this disaster. Palin was right, Death Panels are on the way…heck, Death Panels may be added to our public schools soon, and start executing students who bring Non-Gov’t Approved lunches to school.