Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Obamacare - Is it for Good or Evil?

Like anything else, you can use a thing or abuse it. The Affordable Care Act is being shredded for political reasons in many states to create proof that it doesn't work. It's a shambles in the hands of those who want to use it as a cudgel with which to beat up Obama.  More enlightened states are taking every advantage of the ACA and in doing so they are better serving their citizens and improving their state budgets. Here below is a snippet from an article in the Washington Post:

How we got Obamacare to work

By Jay Inslee, Steve Beshear and Dannel P. Malloy, Published: Washington Post, November 17, 2012

[snip]  In our states — Washington, Kentucky and Connecticut — the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare,” is working. Tens of thousands of our residents have enrolled in affordable health-care coverage. Many of them could not get insurance before the law was enacted.
People keep asking us why our states have been successful. Here’s a hint: It’s not about our Web sites.
Sure, having functioning Web sites for our health-care exchanges makes the job of meeting the enormous demand for affordable coverage much easier, but each of our state Web sites has had its share of technical glitches. As we have demonstrated on a near-daily basis, Web sites can continually be improved to meet consumers’ needs.
The Affordable Care Act has been successful in our states because our political and community leaders grasped the importance of expanding health-care coverage and have avoided the temptation to use health-care reform as a political football.
In Washington, the legislature authorized Medicaid expansion with overwhelmingly bipartisan votes in the House and Senate this summer because legislators understood that it could help create more than 10,000 jobs, save more than $300 million for the state in the first 18 months, and, most important, provide several hundred thousand uninsured Washingtonians with health coverage.
In Kentucky, two independent studies showed that the Bluegrass State couldn’t afford not to expand Medicaid. Expansion offered huge savings in the state budget and is expected to create 17,000 jobs.
In Connecticut, more than 50 percent of enrollment in the state exchange, Access Health CT, is for private health insurance. The Connecticut exchange has a customer satisfaction level of 96.5 percent, according to a survey of users in October, with more than 82 percent of enrollees either “extremely likely” or “very likely” to recommend the exchange to a colleague or friend.
In our states, elected leaders have decided to put people, not politics, first.
_______________ ... _______________
If you feel  that the media isn't doing a good job of covering the positive side this story and isn't reaching the ACA doubters and haters you know, then do something about it. Point them to this article or refer them here to read something that is directly from the chief executives of states where the ACA is working.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please feel free to comment or make suggestions

Counter