Tag: health care

Implementation woes and ACA

Lisa Schweitzer

I don’t know what to say that hasn’t already been said, other than, for the love of God, you people. Anybody who didn’t know that the Affordable Care Act was going to be difficult to implementat was kidding themselves. I did wonder where the big roll-out was in terms of public education a couple months ago. We did a better job with rolling out mandatory seat-belt laws, but in fairness, that was less ambitious. But still, that means more prep, not less. Perhaps I just missed it, as I was focussed on other things, but right now progressives should be seething. They played chicken with the Tea Party types and forced a shutdown over a program that clearly wasn’t ready for roll out. That’s bad. Ack. ACK.

The problems:

1. The health care industry is unbelievably complicated. Most people have no idea what their insurance really covers–or how expensive charges can really get–until the very worst happens.

2. The ACA is more complicated than it should be. It’s a plan with many moving parts, as we say. There’s not much we can do about it due to the horse-trading nature of most legislatively created programs, but still. That doesn’t help.

3. But no, people, the ‘way it was’ before the us attempted to provide health care wasn’t sunshine and roses, either. Just because things were fine for you doesn’t mean it was fine for society, unless you are Margaret Thatcher, and you plan to live your life in such a way that you die disliked even by your own party and appointees. (I think that’s a fair statement.) Your political and economic community matters even if the only political factors you care about are taxation and liberty.

Help for Ann Romney’s speech writers

Lisa Schweitzer

It’s hard to tell what actually got said in this bit from the HuffPo, but…Ann Romney’s comments about not feeling wealthy because she has MS rather reinforces the criticisms of clueless wealthy people:

In an interview Monday on Fox News, the wife of the Republican presidential front-runner, Ann Romney, was asked about criticism that her husband can seem out of touch with average Americans. His worth has been estimated as high as $250 million.

Mrs. Romney said her struggle with multiple sclerosis has given her compassion for people who are suffering from multiple sclerosis, cancer or other diseases.

“We can be poor in spirit, and I don’t even consider myself wealthy, which is an interesting thing,” Mrs. Romney said. “It can be here today and gone tomorrow.”

The last bit of that quote makes me think she was saying something that had more to do with health as being realwealth.

But still.

MS is terrible disease, but I’m pretty sure that being a millionaire helps out there. Rather a lot. MS symptom management medications are wildly expensive. And while your husband is zooming around talking about undoing Obamacare, pointing out that you don’t “feel” rich because you have a disease that is much, much more manageable when you have money and insurance than when you don’t does not help your case that you understand what others in America, even others in America who share your suffering with this horrible disease, struggle with.

I don’t feel fat, either, but the BMI says I am. Majorly. Just like she’s pretty well-to-do, and always has been.

So what’s the stronger approach for Romney here, to win more empathy and respect? Here’s one: