America Before ObamaCare
Before the Affordable Care Act, lifetime spending limits would prevent people from getting coverage: ofa.bo/gZ #TBT
—
Barack Obama (@BarackObama) January 09, 2014****
NBC: Health Insurance Caps Leave Patients Stranded
Mary Wusterbarth thought her toddler was struggling with an ear infection when she seemed sluggish. Instead, a virus had attacked the little girl’s heart, damaging it beyond repair. Brea needed a transplant. Within three weeks of a 2007 doctor visit, the 20-month-old had exhausted the $1 million lifetime maximum on her health insurance. Her parents have scrambled ever since for ways to cover thousands of dollars in monthly medical costs.
“We have no idea what kind of financial future we have,” said Wusterbarth, of Wake Forest, N.C. “The medical bills come almost daily. There’s never an end.” Insurers set lifetime limits to keep rates low on some policies, but holders are learning that individual caps that seemed large quickly max out as health care costs soar. Several patient advocacy groups are prodding insurers to raise the caps, which generally don’t adjust for inflation.
More here
****
America With ObamaCare
FACT: Lifetime limits on health care spending are gone, thanks to the Affordable Care Act. http://t.co/bgACzeKyaB
—
Barack Obama (@BarackObama) January 09, 2014****
The Obama Diary 
Hello. 🙂
Hi tnmtngirl. Congrats on 1st.
This also raises questions about her vote in the Senate for the war in Iraq.
It now seems that it was not simply a political vote.
I see Martin Bashir has resurfaced. I join the others who are replying saying how much they miss him and his great show. Ari Melber, who has been filling in at that time slot is competent, but——lacks all the pizazz and sharp dialogue, personality and interviewing style that made the Bashir show must see. Wondering if he has any irons in the fire—–hope so, altho he’s featuring this musical tribute, “Be thankful for what you’ve got”
I hope this tweet is real – Twitter account doesn’t seem to be confirmed yet. Miss him!
Is that really him?
hmmm—–I forgot to pause to consider that it might not be. (I’m from Iowa) (where a handshake was a binding deal) (explanation)
Who knows—–odd either way, I guess.
If Kornaky’s theory has validity. Why would Kristy not want NJ to profit from the building near the bridge? Would it be more than political retribution? Might he be in with any competitor to have the complex built in a different location? Kickback or what?
My guess is that Christie wants a bigger slice of the pie. More money and/or more control
more likely, more corruption.
He maybe wanted to sink it so he could ride in on the white horse & resuscitate it – Christie want’s no-one except Christie to get political thanks in NJ
GOP disaster doesn’t serve their interests so no surprise
GOP: Regulations are B-A-D!!!!
hope the people of WV can have some normality restored soon – water is life and when you don’t have a clean supply, you feel it very deeply
LIVE NOW: West Virginia Chemical Spill Press Conference – http://www.cbsnews.com/liveFeed/widget.shtml
thanks jer. my heart goes out to everyone in the affected area.
It’s Obamacare!
Was that photoshop imposed on The Body of Pres Obama from during the Sandy aftermath?
If so, why would someone do that? Town Crier Rusty Orange Crush Boehner doesn’t deserve PBO’s shapely Body.
Eek. I hope not!
Why is Karen Finney telling everyone to “watch the Golden Globes on NBC!” on twitter? Was that an order?
Infotainment is who we are and what we do.” says Phil G. “Undoing GOP lies, not my job” says C. Toad.
I can’t be the only one who has noticed a growing trend away from news towards gossip and entertainment.
Soon there will be little difference between David Letterman and MSNBC.
Just saw this—-maybe she wanted us to enjoy the attendees navigating the sewage soaked red carpet. A pipe burst. Ewwwww.
http://gawker.com/the-golden-globes-are-off-to-a-very-smooth-start-1499823219
hahahaha
She just interviewed the real Philimena.
Is the GG awards on NBC? That would be my guess.
test
Such good news about the Iran agreement.
I don’t watch television news except for the MSNBC prime time line up that I’ve recorded.
But I do flip on the radio news for national updates on the hour mark and this was the lead story this morning on the West Coast @knx1070, CBS affiliate.
They also covered the WV water crisis, but the good news is that their “exclusive” Bob Gates interview on Face the Nation was overshadowed with actual news.
One thought about the MSM and GOP marching lockstep supporting the idea that young people won’t be interested in medical insurance. MSM/GOP really should qualify that claim — this might be true of young men, but virtually all young women don’t want to have 7 children by the time they’re 28 years old, regardless of marital status.
Girls become aware of the need for health insurance/contraception when they become women.
So this “claim” that the insurance/MSM/GOP were promoting had no basis in fact, something they might have become aware of if they had interviewed a few young women.
I am not an expert on aquatic ecosystems and the impact of toxic spills;
but common sense would suggest that if the waterways are declared toxic to humans, this will have some negative impact on the aquatic life in the same waterway.
I don’t know WHY a governor would make such claims of “no impact on aquatic life from the spills”;
and
WHY would a news outlet repeat this without challenging the governor to prove it or without getting feed back from local aquatic experts;
I agree…
Sorry, dotster, this year’s Golden Globes may be interesting and fun.
My local radio station, CBS affiliate @knx1070 always covers the GG and Academy Awards and they say the buzz for tonight’s winner circle are for “Twelve Years a Slave” and “American Hustle.”
I didn’t say they wouldn’t be fun. I was just saying the gals with long trains on their dresses may be at a disadvantage tonight. 🙂
She’s gorgeous! Love the dress.
Looking forward to seeing Tina Fey and Amy Poehler host.
The Globes are usually entertaining. I’ll be watching.
And on a lighter note, as people are settling in for the Golden Globe awards (as demanded by Karen Finney apparently), here’s a tweet from @PeteCashmore, Mashable founder — I changed his instagram pic to one where you can compare Pete to his coffee.
Nice looking Jaw Lines….wow. Not a fan of facial hair.
And the weather report for Australia this week doesn’t look good.
Above 40C is over 104F:
Adelaide has always had the weirdest climate in Australia – top of the hot days in the country is not unusual – they never seem to get mild days – it is either hot or cold. That they are now exceeding previous highs is the obvious concern
Flawless. Stunning. Gorgeous. Breathtaking.
That skin! Black truly is beautiful.
Wow! She’s not only beautiful, but that dress is stunning.
Response to JER’s tweet above re: WV water truck:
Sorry, the original tweet was from globalcitizenlinda. My bad.
that is fine – we are one team
Subject: Sunday special
> A little boy was waiting for his mother to come out of the grocery store. As he waited, he was approached
> by a man who asked, “Son, can you tell me where the Post Office is?”
>
> The little boy replied, “Sure! Just go straight down this street a coupla blocks and turn to your right.”
>
> The man thanked the boy kindly and said, “I’m the new pastor in town.
> I’d like for you to come to church on Sunday.
> I’ll show you how to get to Heaven.”
>
> The little boy replied with a chuckle.
> “You’re bullshitting Me … You don’t even know the way to the Post Office
bah ha ha 😀
Happy birthday you! 😀
Ha ha ha!
🙂 smart kid
So it sames. Hallo there down under.
Good evening up there – hope you had a great Sunday – I have just finished the morning chores and catching up on TOD
Finishing up a thawing out and expecting a bit of a temperature drop tomorrow. Spring ain’t gonna come easy I fear.
Seems our place is warming up again – autumn isn’t coming too easily either.
utastinliberal, thanks for the reminder that the line between ‘before’ and ‘after’ obamacare is like the line before and after antibiotics– people’s lives will be changed dramatically. hard to see it now, but as we look back at the ‘before’ picture, the contrast will be increasingly stark.
So Bret Hume thinks that the reason Christie is in any kind of trouble is due to Feminism?
Fox, please proceed.
Please, the reason Christie is in trouble, is because his ass is crazy, just like Kwame Kilpatrick was/is here in Detroit. Being a egotistical, greedy, bully was his downfall too.
many politicians never learn from the mistakes around them
San Fran with the 49ers are Victorious. Congrats.
Cam’s came in short. Hopefully next year is theirs.
Bahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Jimmy Fallon just made a funny—–said it was a nightmare getting there (to the Golden Globes), that Chris Christie is out there directing traffic.
In other GG news, the words stunning and amazing are already so tired. They have been used to describe every single actress and every single dress. Some may be, most are not.
And do you realize how many times everyone uses the word amazing to describe everything? I’ve heard it about 50 times in the last few minutes in the little pre-GG interviews. It’s amazing!
bah ha ha!
😀 😀 😀
Happy Birthday Alice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is the gibberish I got from Senator Cardin after I told him I wouldn’t contribute or support him if he stood against the POTUS on Iran. I have donated just over 5k to his previous campaigns. He’ll get nothing from me in the future.
Thank you for writing to me about the recent negotiations with Iran and new sanctions legislation. I appreciate your sharing your thoughts and concerns with me.
On November 23, 2013, the P5+1 (the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia and China) announced an initial agreement to halt Iran’s nuclear program. Among other things, this six -month plan places limits on Iran’s enrichment capabilities, reduces existing stockpiles of enriched uranium, halts plutonium production and provides for unprecedented access and monitoring of Iranian nuclear facilities. In return, the P5+1 have agreed to “limited, temporary, targeted and reversible” sanction relief. This partial relief includes the suspension of sanctions on gold and precious metals, the Iranian auto sector, and Iran’s petrochemical exports. The bulk of international sanctions, including banking, oil and financial sanctions will remain in place. The purpose of this initial six -month agreement is to slow Iran’s nuclear program while continuing to negotiate a long-term solution that addresses the broader concerns of the international community. If at any point during the initial six -month period Iran fails to uphold its commitments, sanction relief will cease and new, tougher sanctions will be enforced.
Both Congress and the Administration share a common resolve that the preferred way to get Iran to give up its nuclear weapons program is through diplomacy. But we must be prepared to test Iran’s sincerity to comply with these latest efforts to keep them from acquiring nuclear weapons capabilities. I remain deeply concerned about Iran’s ability to follow through with these new commitments. Iran’s track record gives us good reason to have new and stronger sanctions at the ready, which is why I am a cosponsor of the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act . While I understand the Obama Administration is opposed to this legislation, it is consistent with the President’s commitments that no new sanctions would go into effect as long as Iran is in compliance . It also reflects the President’s public statements that if Iran does not negotiate in good faith, new sanctions will be swiftly implemented.
Again, thank you for contacting me. I want to assure you that I remain committed to preventing Iran from achieving nuclear weapon capability and will be monitoring developments closely over the next six months.
Claire, nothing is more infuriating than getting processed BS like this in response to our opposition. This could have been written by Sarah Palin. “While I understand the Obama administration is opposed…It is consistent with the president’s commitment…” Does he even read this stuff? He’s shafting the president and says it’s consistent with what the president wants. Keep the calls up to this idiot. Tell his staff you were insulted by his response because you are not an idiot.
Telling that any political nonsense that comes out of congress is now described as “this could have been written by Sarah Palin”
She lowered the political reality so far below where it had ever been before she is the yardstick for the stupid.
Yes, as is Johnny McCain for ever choosing that woman. Ugh.
WOW! That is the EXACT same response I got from him. Unfuckingbelievable. I emailed him back and tweeted him – told him forget about my vote. He and the other 14 backstabbing Dems can go to hell. I’m done with Cardin. Mikulski is standing strong under a lot of pressure. I sent her an email thanking her and asking her to please stay strong.
One size fits all – what they learn when they enter congress.
funny – feed back from the ordinary folks
I’ve been catching up on TOD reading – there is much criticism of Democrats who are not supportive of PBO – with which I so agree – but it is incredibly frustrating that we have to assume that 100% of republicans will also be against the President and no-one is calling them out.
I remember when the President went to congress in regards to Syria – before this happened – virtually EVERY republican was in favor of a strike in Syria – suddenly they all changed their mind & wanted “diplomacy”. It seems just insane – but the President probably needs to come out in favor of sanctions against Iran to get them stopped – the world understands what is happening – but the GOP will never agree with anything – domestic or foreign that is supported by the President.
THISSSSSSSSSSS!!!
Hi pf – very quiet here – I guess everyone is watching the awards – which we might see in 24 hours.
I am beginning to believe that Christie is toast – some really good comments here – especially the one comparing watergate and bridgegate
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116177/chris-christie-did-know-david-wildstein-high-school-coach
not very clear if the lady in this story is just the girl friend or wife – but the story is really annoying!
it is hard for most NORMAL people to respond like she is responding in her post;
well some people loose their souls when they get into contact with money;
I am amazed this is not at the top of the news – one of the MAJOR requirements of good government is the provision of clean water
The media sure is looking the other way when the GOP have problems
Bryan Cranston aka Walter White aka Heisenberg just WON.
YES! YES! YES!
Lost my Glasses
Yesterday my daughter asked
(again) why I didn’t do something useful with my time. Talking about my
“doing something useful” seemed to be her favorite topic of conversation
anymore. She was “only thinking of me” and suggested I go down to the
senior center and socialize with the other seniors and play games, do
crafts, play cards or bowl, and have lunch.
I did this a few
times and when I got home last night, I decided to teach her a lesson
about staying out of my business.
I told her that I had a great
time and met one of the volunteers there who signed me up for a
parachute club.
She said, “Are you nuts? You’re over 85 years
old and you’re going to start jumping out of airplanes?”
I proudly showed her that I even got a membership card.
She said
to me, “Good grief, where are your glasses! This is a membership to a
Prostitute Club, not a Parachute Club.”
“Well then I’m in
trouble twice… I signed up for five jumps a week,” I told her.
She fainted.
Life as a senior citizen is not getting any
easier, but sometimes it really can be fun…..
🙂 🙂
Haven’t laughed so much in a long time, that will show them always wanting to control your life and thinking we’re stupid and don’t know what we want… Night all got to work in the morning
Rest well. Tomorrow is gonna be a good day.
by the way, this accompanying article from Think Progress suggests that Arkansas’s Medicaid expansion could serve as a model for other red states that are still resisting
thanks to OFA volunteers working very hard to enroll people into ObamaCare
Aaahhhhh!!! Have been reading back thru the day and only just finding it’s a4Alice BIRTHDAY!! Happy Happy Birthday to you, gurl!!
Oh, my! I missed it. Happy Birthday, a4Alice – and many, many more!
I missed it to. Happy Birthday a4Alice!!!
That’s IT in a nutshell! Or a Pepsi cup!
pox: Obama’s cokegate.
/fixt.
Heartwarming. The way these stories should end!
https://twitter.com/lnspiringPhotos/status/419664635227549696
That brought tears to my eyes.
So wonderful how his life has turned out! There are so many suffering people in the world, who just need a warm touch and a soft voice to help them out of the depths. Tears in my eyes, too!
I don’t tear up alot – but when young men see no way forward – or die for all the wrong reasons (war being a major wrong reason) – I find it excessively sad. In their late teens, twenties – should be the time for people to discover the best that life has to offer – it was so nice to see some-one who cared enough to bring this young one back to the life he now has.
As the mother of a son, I totally agree. Thank my lucky stars every day he has purpose – and joy – in his life.
HOT DAMN! This is what sex looks like.
You’re really enjoying yourself tonight, aren’t ya? (Of course, you seem to enjoy yourself every night, UT, there’s that!) 🙂
😆 I’m loving tonight because Twitter makes award shows, hilarious. My timeline is cracking me up.
How did we exist before Twitter?
I ask myself that question every night – Ha! Sometimes the show on Twitter is better than the show on the teevee, that’s for sure!
Plus, since just about everybody in my timeline is liberal, it totally confirms my feeling that liberals are the only ones with a sense of humor. And I love to laugh as much as the next guy.
Carry on with the fun!
“… totally confirms my feeling that liberals are the only ones with a sense of humor.”
So true 😀
Yo! 🙂 Like you, Bob!
If that is what sex look like, then all these years I have been fool.
Key to this progression has been the fact that, rather than building cumulatively on successes, more often than not conservative succession has been built on successive failures — each one sold as a “common sense” way of dealing with the chaos created by previous conservative incarnation.
/
Reagan created massive federal deficits, and presided over rapid deindustrialization. Gingrich skillfully tapped into Ross Perot’s mobilization of the resentment this fueled, and tried to redirect it toward a massive restructuring of government and dismantling of the welfare state. His aggressive, confrontational, no-holds-barred politics soured the public so profoundly it was necessary to bring in something completely different — the “compassionate conservatism” of Texas Gov. George W. Bush, touting his bipartisan record as “a uniter, not a divider,” which, in turn, once tested in the White House, was eventually revealed as a hollow fraud, signaling the need to return to an even more extreme version of Gingrich’s politics of government dismantlement and implacable resistance — or if that began running out of steam, another go at a “bipartisan” governor from “outside of Washington.”
For conservatives themselves, almost every stage of this process requires massive forgetting, if not rewriting, of what conservatives stood for and supported just a heartbeat previously. All that mattered was that the new incarnation provided easy, self-evident answers to all the most pressing problems. At the same time, the wider political system had to be convinced to see this latest stage of lurching from one spectacular failure to another in much more normalized, humdrum terms, say, as a question of seeking “strong leadership” framed within a personality-based account of politics — an account in which actual material policy consequences all but disappear, except, of course, for those that concern the minuscule class of major political donors. Such is the context in which right-wing radicalism of various different stripes has been repeatedly reinvented as folksy common sense.
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/06/from_nixon_to_paul_ryan_how_right_wing_radicals_deceive_america/
A very good read
Every last report in the MSM (Times, WAPO etc) while critical of Christie – HAS to mention something bad about the President. They have been doing it for 5 years & just can’t stop. Obama syndrome is a real disease of the media.
What Christie has done – has NOTHING to do with President Obama – the governor of a small state has stepped well in it – and there should be NO mention of other politicians in relation to what has happened in NJ. If Christie survives this politically the US GOP will be corrupter than ever before – with the help of the media.
New post.
http://theobamadiary.com/2014/01/12/laugh-laugh-laugh-2/