The Biggest Problem With Obamacare’s Rollout Is Being Caused Intentionally by Republicans

[applegrove]

The Biggest Problem With Obamacare’s Rollout Is Being Caused Intentionally by Republicans

by Joshua Holland at Bill Moyers .com

http://billmoyers.com/2013/11/21/the-biggest-problem-with-obamacares-rollout-is-being-caused-intentionally-by-republicans/

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The victims of Obamacare’s implementation problems being hit the hardest, by far, are those whose incomes fall between the federal poverty line and the eligibility cutoffs in those 25 states rejecting Medicaid expansion. Not only will they be left uncovered, they won’t even be eligible for the generous subsidies that people earning slightly more than they do can use to buy insurance. It’s brutally unfair. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that 4.8 million poor adults may fall into that coverage gap — about twice the number of people expected to pay more for their insurance when their substandard policies are cancelled.

And it gets worse. In 40 states, adults without children are ineligible for Medicaid regardless of their income level. In 30 states, the parents of children who qualify for Medicaid may not be eligible themselves. All of these people would be covered under Medicaid’s expansion, but they’re being left high and dry in the 25 states who have rejected expansion. And while the problems plaguing healthcare.gov result from mismanagement and a contracting boondoggle, those red state lawmakers who refuse to expand Medicaid are inflicting this harm intentionally, based solely on their ideology.

In other words, they’re actively working to maintain America’s shamefully high rate of uninsured. And that comes with deadly consequences. Because, in this country, we do ‘let ‘em die’ – we let the poor and the uninsured die from treatable illnesses every day.

Last week, the Texas Observer ran a heartbreaking essay by Rachel Pearson, who recalled being a young medical student volunteering at a free clinic in Galveston, Texas. Pearson had a patient – a poor, uninsured patient — who was obviously very sick. But Pearson couldn’t properly diagnose his ailment with the resources available to the clinic. When his pain became severe, she sent him to an emergency room, but the personnel there refused to treat him because his symptoms weren’t an immediate threat to “life or limb.” As time passed, his condition deteriorated until he began having difficulty breathing. It was only then that an emergency room finally admitted him and diagnosed the cancer that had metastasized throughout his body. “It must have been spreading over the weeks that he’d been coming [into the clinic],” she wrote. He died a few months later. “The shame has stuck with me through my medical training — not only from my first patient, but from many more,” wrote Pearson, who now heads the clinic.



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[gopiscrap]

1. Exactly but you won't hear about from the MSM

[defacto7]

2. It's the ugly truth. n/t

[dem in texas]

3. Republican Governors are to blame

Refusing the Medicaid money, not building their own state websites, making it difficult for navigators to have places to set up shop, doing everything they can to make Obamacare fail. And when the Fed web site bombed, they were the first to criticize.

In Arlington, Texas, next weekend, my daughter and her friends are holding a garage sale to help a lady whose husband was diagnosed with colon cancer. He was self employed and his business had dropped off, so they not afford to keep their insurance. He was sick, but did not go to the doctor because they had no insurance and very little money. As he grew sicker, his wife had to miss work and this reduced her pay. Now they are losing their home, his cancer is very advanced and they have no money and huge doctor bills. If he'd been able to keep his insurance, he would have gone to the doctor, maybe his cancer would have been treated before it got so advanced.

Stuff like this happening everywhere, not just in Texas.

[Cha]

4. Ratf***ing republicons because they

have nothing to offer besides pain.

mahalo applegrove~

[delrem]

5. The rollout was bungled.