In some states, the poor have been avoiding “Obamacare” because of the political stigma:
Health professionals, state officials, social workers, insurance agents and others trying to make the law work for uninsured Americans say the partisan divisions and attack ads have depressed participation in some places. They say the law has been stigmatized for many who could benefit from it, especially in conservative states like West Virginia that have the poorest, most medically underserved populations but where President Obama and his signature initiative are hugely unpopular.
These are also states with the most competitive Senate and House midterm election campaigns, so the right-wing super PACs have poured millions into advertisements demonizing the ACA and the Democrats who support it. As a result, the poor have been convinced that Obamacare is evil on steroids.
Other problems stymied the introduction of the law, notably the initially dysfunctional federal website. But the political polarization “complicates our efforts to enroll people and to educate people about the Affordable Care Act, there’s no question,†said Perry Bryant, head of the advocacy group West Virginians for Affordable Health Care, based in Charleston, the capital.
“Literally, people thought there would be chips embedded in their bodies if they signed up for Obamacare,†Mr. Bryant said.
Far to the east, at a branch of the Shenandoah Valley Medical System in Martinsburg, Sara R. Koontz, a social worker, said she had heard people express fears about chip implants as well as “death panels†as she sought to enroll uninsured residents. Some told her that they would rather pay a penalty than sign up for insurance, she said, and even people who did enroll paused in their excitement to ask, “Wait — this isn’t that Obamacare, is it?â€
The wealthy people spending money to discourage people from getting health insurance get great health care, I’m sure.
I’m sorry, but give all of these ignorant MFing dipshits a “Darwin Award” if they haven’t already reproduced.
And if they have, track their kiddies to see if they’ll qualify for a “Darwin Award!”
Jayzooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooos!!!
You have to go through all sorts of tests to get a “Driver’s Permit,” and then a “Driver’s License,” but any f*cking moron can buy a gun and/or reproduce.
If’n all y’all want to cull yourself from the herd, go ahead, and make my day!
Fear not: despite ideology, people will find ways to rationalize what they need – even when the rationalizations are in fact valid! So tell the hesitators that it’s the Affordable Care Act; no doubt very different from Obamacare.
An acquaintance of mine, a woman in her early 60s, asked me in all seriousness when I urged her to check out Covered California, “Won’t I have to get a microchip?” And though I believe I did finally convince her that the story about the ACA microchip is a lie, she still refused to sign up for health insurance through the ACA. She is quite poor: it would have cost her $1 a month for a very decent Silver Plan.
Hooboy…
If this is true, there are going to be people dying over this. And it makes me sad that the people who most need to have these deaths rubbed in their faces would refuse to accept responsibility for it.
Let’s face it – you can call someone a baby killer, over and over, and get to feign shock and outrage that someone decided the world would be better if said baby killer was killed.
Getting people scared to buy health insurance, so they die earlier of preventable diseases, that’s far too subtle for anyone to accept responsibility in a world like that.
I’m sorry, but if morons want to die, who are we to stop them?
We are their brothers and sisters. I feel sorry for them. I want to make their lives better. And the thing is, by making their lives better I automatically make mine better too, so even if I were a selfish bastard I’d want to help them. Assuming I were an intelligent, thoughtful and thinking, selfish bastard.
I took an 11 question test from Facebook. The first person reported a score of 46 – I got 91% – the person who posted the link later reported she got a 91%. The person with the low score is a conservative – we have tangled a few times online. Anyway, after he called me an idiot in a later post, I was indiscreet enough to point out that the scores suggested otherwise. The interesting point of this story is his defense. His rebuttal was that he test was ‘skewed liberal’ and ‘ ‘asked for a lot of opinion’. The answers were sourced – the answers were objective and factual, but they were targeted to point out popular misconceptions.
It was a classic example of the underlying rationalization conservatives are conditioned to. If an objective fact contradicts your world view, it is an ‘opinion’ and you have every right to the opinion which does support your world view regardless of how detached that view is is from reality.
Liberals can fall prey to the same rationalizations. True. I can only speak for myself but when I encounter a fact which runs contrary to my expectation, I do more research, and if the evidence demonstrates that my premise or expectation was wrong, I rewrite to conform to the facts.
Sometimes I’m lucky enough to discover the truth before I have to extract my foot from my mouth, but the regulars know I have done it here from time to time. If Rush Limbaugh held to that standard of honesty, his regular doctor would have to be certified as both an oral surgeon and a podiatrist.
Isn’t his regular doctor a proctologist? Well, if it isn’t it should be.
c u n d gulag, you read my mind. These people are Darwin Awards waiting to happen. I really don’t feel bad for them. In time, the Obama association will fade and these same people will be saying, “Get your government hands off my health care subsidies.”
These poor people learned to be afraid of the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare. The meme about death panels and microchips must have been pushed very hard for it to have become so viral in the population.
These people are ignorant, but they were taught to be ignorant in this particular fashion about this particular thing. Which means that they could have been taught to have the correct understanding of the ACA. For every false meme, there should have been a stronger and opposite meme.
Are they so isolated that they never get anything but “the company store” of information?