Tag: affordable care act

current events politics

Relative nightmare

Republican candidate for governor of Minnesota Jeff Johnson, in response to the decision of Preferred One to leave the state’s health insurance marketplace MNsure, said yesterday,

Six out of 10 people who’ve purchased insurance through MNsure will now have to go through the nightmare process of purchasing another plan all over again.

This is, to be clear, the same “nightmare process” all consumers of heath insurance have to go through at some point (like, when they change jobs or their employer changes plans). It’s the same “nightmare” my company asked our employees to endure several times over the years we’ve owned it as we faced double-digit date increases on top of double-digit rate increases, all in search of a lower cost solution. It’s the same “nightmare” that was allowed to live following the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

Does it suck? Yes. It is especially unique? No. It’s a feature built-in to the American health care system.

A real “nightmare” would be having a family member with a chronic illness and not being able to get insurance. Or getting into an accident or discovering cancer without having access to affordable, effective insurance. Both those issues are largely resolved under the ACA.

Sounds like Preferred One made a business bet and lost. Happens all the time. Good thing there’s a marketplace where those affected can go and get new insurance.

politics

Nullify the nullifiers

Welcome to anarchy

Saw this on Facebook this morning. Yeah. Funny stuff.

You’d think folks in Kentucky would remember the last time their elected leaders started picking and choosing which federal laws there were going to obey and which they weren’t.

Lincoln didn’t start fighting the Civil War because he wanted to free the slaves. That’s what happened, eventually, but the reason the war started was because Lincoln knew that nullification was the acid that dissolved democracies. We are a nation of people bound together by laws and the customs by which those laws are made. This can only have meaning and function when we all agree that the laws and customs mean something. A state cannot decide what is or is not Constitutional. A state cannot make laws that nullify those lawfully made by Congress. To allow them to (or to even pretend like they can) is a sickening and dangerous slope that calls into question the very ideal our country is founded upon.

I know. Big words. But it’s true.

This is also the exact reason demands from the Tea Party Republicans in the House to defund or delay or in any way change one whisker of the Affordable Care Act must be totally rejected. They’re not, as was the case in the late 90’s, balking at a budgetary disagreement between the Congress and the president. Those disagreements were germane to that shutdown. What they’re trying to do is nullify the ACA by first shutting most of the government down and then by perhaps breaking the Full Faith and Credit of the United States. 

The process must be followed. Laws are changed all the time by those who win elections. Don’t like the ACA? Get more of your guys in congress than the other party and then get your guy in the White House. That’s how the democratic process works in our country. Over 600,000 Americans died to keep it that way

politics

She looks pissed

ANNA REED/STAR TRIBUNE

This is a billboard that recently went up near the Minnesota Fairgrounds (presumably to be seen by the 1.7 million or so people who will attend the fair later this month).

  1. Around about half a million Minnesotans don’t have access to affordable insurance. They have no doctor, let alone their “own.”
  2. Different insurance plans have different networks of doctors. That’s a long-standing fact. If your insurance plan changes, it’s possible your doctor doesn’t accept it (even if your insurance company stays the same). This is not a phenomenon created by The Affordable Care Act or Minnesota’s implementation of its state exchange (MNsure).
  3. If you already have insurance (which most people do), there’s nothing in The Affordable Care Act or MNsure that changes which doctor you can see.

More FUD from the right meant to scare people into paralysis instead of actually addressing the issues we all have to face. Ironically, a single-payer system of health care would result in the widest choice of doctors since competing insurance plans with different networks of providers would presumable be eliminated. But let’s not talk about that.

From the Star-Tribune.