The Strib “reported”, after a fashion, about attitudes about Obamacare after an election where it was primarily responsible for ejecting the DFL from power in the Minnesota Senate.
And it’s either a masterpiece of selective fact, or some fairly incurious reporting:
Anxiety is greatest among Minnesotans with preexisting medical conditions. Before the ACA, insurance companies could simply deny them coverage.
Which is technically true.
After which, in Minnesota at least, they would get insurance from one of the state-subsizied high risk plans.
Before MNSure, 92% of Minnesotans were insured, via the private market, a public plan, or some combination. It was the highest share in the nation. Of the 8% who didn’t have insurance, the vast majority were people who didn’t want insurance – mostly young, mostly healthy. There were exceptions – but they were few, rare, and mostly the product of poor information and a pre-Obama media who were actively pitching the “47 million uninsured Americans…” narrative.
Today, the state says half as many Minnesotans are uninsured – but networks have shrunk (in vast swathes of Minnesota, only one plan is available), premiums have skyrocketed for individual members (like me!), people could not keep their doctor (The Lightworker’s promises notwithstanding…)
So why is the Strib story – a “Team Report” by Jeremy Olson, Christopher Snowbeck and Glenn Howatt, no less – either so slanted or uninformed?
To borrow a Glenn Reynolds phrase – if you treat them as DFL operatives with bylines, it all makes sense.
There were never 47 million Americans without health care. A significant portion of the 47 million number were illegal aliens, about ten million. The statement shifted from “47 million people in America w/o health insurance” to “47 million Americans without insurance.” This number was repeated over and over. Media types never caught on.
Before the ACA, the uninsured fell into a few readily identifiable groups. There was no systemic problem with access to health care in the US. The reason why Obama had to lie and and say that if you like your health plan, you could keep your health plan, was because the vast majority of Americans were happy with their existing health plans pre ACA.
This was a studied, purposeful lie. He repeated it no less than 36 times. And when he lied, he was out of the loop on the actual wording of the ACA. That was Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi’s baby. They wrote it.
In other words, Obama knew that he was lying. Over and over.
Media swallowed the lie whole, and repeated it, uncritically.
https://www.nationalacademies.org/hmd/~/media/Files/Report%20Files/2009/Americas-Uninsured-Crisis-Consequences-for-Health-and-Health-Care/Americas%20Uninsured%20Crisis%202009%20Report%20Brief.pdf
The National Academies of Science, you know — those people you blow off as elites because they are knowledgeable and you don’t like facts.
If you want to understand the state of the health insurance system, these two interviews are the best. http://reason.com/blog/2016/11/05/kotlikoff-president-youngs * https://cei.org/blog/realclear-radio-hour-transcending-bipartisanship-money-and-politics
100% of Democrats are lying about what is wrong with the ACA or they are being deliberately ignorant. It needs to be wiped out, completely.
DG,
You were told to respond to the responses to this post before I’d let your comments out of moderation.
Go there and respond. Because you’re wrong, and you’re going to admit it.
Anyone wants to condescend to me, they’d damn well better pack the gear.
You do not.
Answer my questions at the link above, or find another playground.
There is no “c”.
OK, so to answer a criticism about the Health Insurance Deform Act, passed into law in March 2010, our resident manure spreader cites a white paper from 2009. “Clueless” does not even begin to cover it.
Adding to the anxiety is if you can’t get insurance through the marketplace, since the carriers can still limit how many policies they sell in the marketplace, you can be “taxed” a significant portion of your income for failing to have insurance.