Dispatches and Debunkery from the Trenches of the Obamacare Debate
I’m that guy.
Case in point, I spent several hours of my Saturday debating conservatives about Obamacare on Facebook, and I regret nothing. It turned out to be a case study in both the efficacy of Republican misinformation, but also in just how fantastically pissed off some people are about the idea of a law that helps Americans to acquire affordable healthcare.
A former colleague and friend of mine from when we both wrote for AOL’s now-defunct WalletPop website posted what I thought was a joke about Obamacare — I’m not sure whether it was a joke since it involved Ann Coulter, and so much of what she says is a joke even when she’s trying to be serious. Either way, via a tag, I was asked to respond. So I jumped in head first by describing my health insurance situation and concluded that Obamacare is not only good policy but it’s also good politics, based upon the fact that I and millions of others would gladly use our bodies as human shields against anyone who tries to repeal the law. A lot of us vote.
That’s when the insanity began. Repeatedly debunked myths aside, I get the sense that many Obamacare opponents don’t even know what the hell it is.
Out of the gate, someone replied: “This is [about] many people suffering in order to pay for the health care of the relatively few people who couldn’t get insurance.”
I really have no idea what this means (hence my reply: “Nonsense.”). This guy appears to have been suggesting that “many people” are either paying higher taxes or egregiously higher premiums in order to pay for “the relatively few people” without insurance. Well, no. There’s no hard evidence showing widespread suffering from higher premiums or anything else due to the law. He also seems to forget that health insurance wasn’t a panacea before the law when you could be dropped just after being diagnosed with an illness or, after paying thousands in premiums, told that your medical treatment won’t be covered because you reached an annual or lifetime limit on benefits.
This guy seemed to be opposed to the wildly popular section of the law forcing insurers to accept people with pre-existing conditions because, he wrote, it causes “suffering” in others. If this was really his point, he’s definitely in the extreme minority here since 78 percent of Republicans support this aspect of the law — again, that’s among Republicans.
Another commenter complained, “Under Obamacare, my adult daughter’s health insurance policy premiums virtually double and she gets less coverage than she had before.”
Of course there’s no real way to verify this statement, but it sounds eerily similar to the dozens upon dozens of alleged and subsequently debunked “horror stories” we’ve been hearing about since October. He neither clarified what his daughter was paying before and what it covered nor did he elaborate on what her Obamacare policy options were.
But let’s take this guy at his word. Later in the thread, he praised “so many other people who were responsible enough to maintain their own health insurance or look for an employer who would provide that benefit.”
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By: Bob Cesca
Bob Cesca is the managing editor at The Daily Banter (www.thedailybanter.com) and a Huffington Post contributor since 2005. He's worked in journalism since 1988 as a print writer/editor, a radio news anchor, a digital media columnist/editor, a book author and blogger. He's the co-host of the Bubble Genius Bob & Chez Show podcast and a Thursday regular on the syndicated Stephanie Miller Show. He's appeared on numerous other radio shows including the John Phillips Show and Geraldo Rivera Show in Los Angeles. Bob has been a commentator/analyst on the BBC (TV and radio), MSNBC, Current TV, CNN and Sky News. Following him on Twitter: @bobcesca_go