ObamaCare Means: No Longer Being Treated As Second Class

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By 57AndFemale

I’m posting a comment I made at dKos. Some of this my TOD family already knows, but here was yesterday’s experience at my doctor: “Before ACA there was no one, at any price, that would cover my asthma. I was rejected outright for all insurance. The high risk pools were ridiculous in deductibles, premiums and would have made running our small business almost impossible.

I’ve been self-employed for 30 years. I had insurance in the past – those exalted “how dare you cancel my plan” type plans that, if you tried to use them, all claims were rejected short of bleeding on the ER floor, and then cancellation after that. Living in the uninsured world of the U.S. was terrifying.

I paid for cataract surgery out of pocket. I’ve gone to my asthma doctor and thought I was receiving good care. He’s a great doctor. I’ve been paying him, and for my meds to stay out of the hospital, out of pocket all these years. That was ‘yesterday’. ‘Today’ I went to see my doctor with an insurance card through ACA and he was going to get an insurance payment for me after 30 years. I’m not destitute. I was frankly surprised and a tad alarmed and still thrilled when he said, “Now I can get the tests and numbers on you that I need to treat you properly.”

He did some lung tests on me: I’m at 50% lung capacity and the test he ran showed, in his words, “Your airwaves are on fire.” This, with expensive meds that I’ve been paying for. I’ve been under-treated and didn’t even know it. For God knows how many years.

Now, as an aside, he should have told me about the tests he needed and we would have found the money somehow. This is the shadow you live under even with a sympathetic doctor – you don’t even know what it means to be treated properly by the American health care system. He should have let me make that choice, but I’m assuming these tests were REALLY expensive (have I mentioned American health care system sucks?)

Adjustments to my meds. An entirely different regimen for my blood pressure. Full blood work next time (although we’ve done basic blood work in the past). I may need a chest x-ray to see if I have low level pneumonia since I’ve been sick three times this winter. But he wants the basic treatment first and then we’ll assess. My last bout of flu or whatever it was – I knew I was over a line. I called the doctor, got some meds prescribed over the phone, but I knew I’d gotten progressively worse through the winter (my insurance kicked in February 1). I wish I could express the alleviation of fear and the peace of mind I had that, if I needed to go to the ER, I could go.

I’ve applied and dealt with private insurance for years so none of this process was foreign to me. I’m going to be 64 in May so I am at the top of what can be charged for insurance. I took a low deductible, maximum flexibility knowing that I will be on Medicare May, 2015 (if we don’t elect RWNJ’s to the Senate and the House – VOTE, PEOPLE). I got a small subsidy. My premium is less a month than I was paying for my meds out of pocket and understand, everything else concerning my health was at risk and we would certainly face financial ruin if I needed any kind of serious medical care.

I chose a co-op plan. These plans were meant to bridge from insurance to a public option-type plan since there is no profit incentive and the overhead is similar to Medicare. Illinois grandfathered in on this grant. The GOP made Obama jettison this program in the 2012 budget deal, God damn them. Even in my doctor’s attitude, the difference between ‘yesterday’ and ‘today’ was astounding. Every one of the RWNJ’s should rot in hell for doing everything in their power to keep Americans sick and second class. Rot. In. Hell. “

This and That

Yet another TOD post that has been reblogged by Jueseppi B, despite requests that he make his own effort to support PBO rather than copying others simply to drive up his reblog’s traffic. He doesn’t take kindly to being challenged, as another woman found out: explicit. Genuine bloggers are welcome to use anything they ever see at TOD. Thanks

Steve Benen: …. I watch a whole lot of Obama’s speeches, and I’d say he seemed a little more fired up than usual. (Pay particular attention to his tone of voice in the last 90 seconds.)

Las Vegas, August 22

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Politico: President Obama said he’s beating Mitt Romney “by a few points” and said time is running out in the 2012 presidential election.

“I can’t resist a basketball analogy,” he told donors at a Lincoln Center fundraiser that featured NBA commissioner David Stern and current and former basketball stars including Michael Jordan. “We are in the fourth quarter. We’re up by a few points but the other side is coming strong and they, they, they play a little dirty. We’ve got a few folks on our team in foul trouble. We’ve got a couple of injuries and I believe that they’ve got one last run in them.”

“I’d say there’s about seven minutes to go in the game. And Michael’s competitiveness is legendary and nobody knows better than Michael that if you’ve got a little bit of a lead and there’s about seven minutes ago, that’s when you put them away.”

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Cagle

Politico: President Obama mocked Missouri Rep. Todd Akin here, telling a fundraising crowd packed with pro basketball stars that the embattled Senate candidate “somehow missed science class.”

“Recently some of you have been paying attention to the commentary about the senator from Missouri, Mr. Akin,” Obama said. “The interesting thing here is that this, this is an individual who sits on the House Committee on Science and Technology but somehow missed science class. And it’s representative of the desire to go backwards instead of forwards and fight fights that we thought were settled 20 or 30 years ago.”

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Politifact

A Word from 57andfemale

Political ‘speech’ has historically been given more latitude than other ‘free speech’ but only because there were some limitations. There was a mechanism of accountability: all donors had to be disclosed and the amount of their donations would be limited, thereby limiting their influence to some extent. So if you stretched the truth, shaded the truth, manipulated the truth – the people who paid for that ad would be known to the public. It would take a large number of donors to generate said political speech. There were some consequences.

For many, many years, Republicans cried that we didn’t need no stinkin’ campaign finance laws. All we needed was disclosure, which by its very nature would put common sense limits and some accountability on those donors and thereby the campaign that they supported. Where did I hear this? Let me think…….

Oh, yes. Mitch McConnell.

Any many other Republicans.

Those crazy Democrats – well, they always thought that the public would not have its interests represented if there were NO limits on political speech through money. Money would drown out the interests of the people who could in no way compete with corporate and wealthy interests. It would, in fact, be the buying of public office by interests that could afford it more than the $50,000 family of four who would have to choose between school books or ear infection medicine and donating to campaigns. But as I said, those whacky Democrats…..

Fast forward to Citizens United. Money IS speech and well, no one could anticipate that foreign money would finance campaigns (Sheldon Adelson, Barclay’s Bank………) And certainly no one could ever anticipate that corporate money would drown out the interests of the millions of Americans who could not compete with that money. Why, that would be…….crazy.

Here we are. 2012. Mitch McConnell actually said with a straight face (and that may be the straightest face I’ve ever seen on a human being) that IF we demanded disclosure, well, the Koch Bros. might lose business because their customers wouldn’t like what they were advocating.

Someone in polyester elastic waist pants might actually decide to donate $50 to PBO rather than hand it over – I mean, gamble – it away in a Sheldon Adelson casino. Oh, the HORROR. It might hurt their bottom line if the American people saw how every package of Angel Soft was helping to elect Mitt Romney (God forbid). Or every Brawny towel or quarter slot machine might be buying the end of Medicare as we know it, dirty air, no clean energy, no safe food, no safe medications, no health care, no safety net, no investment in infrastructure. But we certainly wouldn’t want to have the Koch Bros. – or Bain Capital — damaged in any way by the TRUTH. Why, that would be anti-capitalism. That would be anti-rich. That would be anti-entitlement. In the truest sense of the word.

To review: unfettered money flowing to political campaigns/PAC’s could be controlled with disclosure. But not one Republican – I’m talking to YOU, John McCain – voted FOR disclosure. Now we have unfettered money — oh, I’m sorry Justice Kennedy, I mean ‘free’ speech – with no controls, no disclosures. Just money – able to lie and cheat and steal and buy our government. Thank you so much, you libertarian piece of crap. Your legacy of ‘freedom’ has now denied millions of Americans the right to an honest, informed election. Are you proud?

Money to LIE.

Which brings me to my point: no longer should political ‘speech’ be exempt from libel or slander laws. Political speech should now be held subject to any and all laws that are on the books to protect the public interest from disinformation. Drug companies aren’t allowed to do it, food manufacturers aren’t allowed to do it. Why should political campaigns and affiliated PAC’s be able to do it?

You manipulate PBO’s statements? You have now broken the law. You cut out what he said to make it sound like he said the opposite? You get your ass sued with an injunction slapped on your ass. And since the airwaves are given to networks as a courtesy, they are REQUIRED to pull such ads.

You want to spend unlimited amounts of money? You don’t want to disclose WHO is spending that money? Then you tell the effing TRUTH or you don’t get access to so much as a used piece of newsprint, much less the networks to spread your lies.

You can’t lie about Angel Soft. You should not be able to lie about PBO.

I await your comments.