The Problem With and Solution to the 5% Debacle

OK.  So Healthcare.gov was a complete botch.  Now what do we do? 

Roughly 5% of Americans now have to change their healthcare plans because they don't have coverage that conforms with the new law. Did President Obama "lie" about people not being able to keep their healthcare?  I don't think so.  I think it was a huge oversight, but I don't believe for one second that he was intentionally misleading the public.  He would have nothing to gain in doing so.

So, here's my solution.  First of all, President Obama needs to own up to the mistake, apologize for it and then, hopefully, Republicans can move on.  If they can't, which will probably be the case, that's their own issue.

Next, many Americans' plans were grandfathered in to the system.  Why not grandfather those who received letters from their insurance companies (way too late, I might add) stating they will be dropped and have to pay a higher premium for better coverage?  I feel, the insurance companies should keep the insureds' premium the same and have their policies comply fully with the law.  It's the insurance companies who provided a sub par policy to begin with, so they should have to honor these changes but not at the expense of the consumer.  Maybe, over time, the premium can be adjusted to match what the policy actually covers, but it shouldn't be immediate and certainly shouldn't be at the policy holders' expense, at least initially. Win-win in my opinion.  The insurance companies comply with the law and the insureds still pay something into the system.

Lastly, we all need to be patient.  A system that has been virtually unchanged for years and badly broken can't be fixed overnight.  But, a website can be fixed to meet the needs of all its' users.  Maybe not overnight, but in a relatively short period of time.  Is it embarrassing for the administration?  Of course.  Is it criminal or even as big of a deal as the media and right-wing pundits are making it?  Of course not.  We all live in a society in which everything is "on-demand".  We all need to remember a phrase that has probably been told to us at some point in our life: Good things come to those who wait.  And, once all the kinks get fixed, everyone will see what a good thing it is.

Ignorance or Propaganda?- The Republican Strategy to Misinform the Masses

Listening to the Sunday morning political talk shows this week gave me some insight on Obamacare that I had known about but hadn't really thought about until hearing again how the House wants to defund Obamacare or shutdown the government...yet again.  I'm not sure what the Republicans seek to gain by doing this, but using Obamacare as a "bargaining chip" is pretty self-defeating, in my opinion.

Let's take recent polls of Obamacare.  True, the polls that I've looked at show that Americans still aren't sold on the idea of the Affordable Care Act.  One poll indicated only 39% of Americans support Obamacare, while 51% are adamantly against it.  Another stated that 45% think it will have a "negative impact on the nation's healthcare system rather than a positive one."  Those numbers frankly shocked me.  One respondent, whom I saw quoted in many of the articles I read, was a Republican-leaning female from North Carolina whose biggest concern was that the bill has "death panels in there, and they're going to decide whether people are going to get treatment or not."  Wow.  First of all, there are no death panels anywhere in the bill.  The only provision that could even be considered close to a death panel is the one requiring Medicare to pay for end-of-life counseling, which was taken out of the bill altogether in 2010.  I'm not sure how someone can even make a statement like that, unless what they read (or more likely watch) led them to that misconception.

The term "death panels," I found out, was coined by Sarah Palin in 2009 regarding the healthcare bill, and was quickly shot down by those who actually fact check, instead of spout whatever they feel to get people to agree with them, whether it's true or not.  She was referring to the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) which makes recommendations of cost-savings to the Secretary of Health and Human Services if costs of Medicare raise too much.  This, in no way, is a death panel, or even close to it.  It's a provision that, in my opinion, is important in order to make the system work better and provides an entity that would keep the system in check, so to speak.

(This is an incomplete excerpt written a week before the Oct 1 rollout of ACA and before the shutdown.  Now, a month later it's old news so I didn't feel like finishing it, but felt compelled to post what I had anyway.)