It’s been awhile since I’ve written anything about Michelle Malkin, since I rarely run into her on the Web any more. We travel in different circles, apparently. But today I bumped into a column she wrote about Obamacare that shows she’s still the same toxic waste dump of stupid she ever was.
Here’s the story: Because she’s self-employed — a “self-employed small-business owner” in her words — she buys insurance on the Colorado state insurance exchange. But she is not happy.
Our most recent plan features a $6,000 deductible with a $1,000 monthly premium. It’s nosebleed expensive, but provides us access to specialists not curtailed by bureaucratic gatekeepers. This has been important for us because several members of my family have required specialized care for chronic illnesses.
Once again, however, I’ll soon be talking about our plan in the past tense. Choices for families like mine have evaporated in the era of Obamacare. In Colorado, UnitedHealthCare and Humana will cease selling individual plans next year. Rocky Mountain Health Plans is pulling out of the individual market in all but one county. Nearly 100,000 of my fellow Coloradans will be forced to find new insurance alternatives as open enrollment approaches on Nov. 1, according to the Denver Business Journal.
Here’s her punch line:
Every time we receive a cancellation letter, I recall President Obama’s big lie: “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”
Now, that was an ill-advised thing for the President to have said; he probably meant to say that if you like the insurance you have the government won’t take it away from you. But that’s not what he said, so it’s been held against him, and the ACA, ever since.
But it’s not as if people didn’t have their health insurance ripped out from under them before the ACA was passed. It happens frequently enough to people who get their insurance through employment. It’s happened to me at least twice, when an employer decided to go with a different company for group insurance. I remember finding a co-worker weeping, because the new network didn’t include the trusted oncologist who had been helping her husband battle cancer. This was sometime in the late 1990s, long before the ACA.
I don’t know why Colorado or some other states are losing insurance companies, although see Sarah Kliff for one explanation. But this is nothing that a federal pubic option wouldn’t fix, I suspect.
And you’d think that health insurance costs had never gone up before the ACA was passed. The chart from Kaiser shows how employer-based health care has been going up all these years:
But now I want to go back to what Malkin wrote — she’s self-employed, and “several members of my family have required specialized care for chronic illnesses.” And it’s expensive, but it “provides us access to specialists not curtailed by bureaucratic gatekeepers.” I want to know what Malkin was doing for insurance before the ACA. Did she have any at all? If so, did it provide as much coverage? Does she realize that in most states before the ACA, if you had a chronic condition you could be denied coverage? Those pesky pre-existing conditions!
So, thanks to the ACA, she’s got insurance, in spite of the cancellations. Other policies are available in Colorado. She may not like her choices as well, but she’s got choices. Before the ACA, lots of people had no choices. And because so many states stubbornly refuse to expand Medicaid, lots of people who could have choices still don’t have them.
Are some of those family members with chronic conditions children? Remember the war Malkin waged against the S-chip program?
And if she hates Obamacare so much, why is she using it? Oh wait .. because there’s no other insurance available to her? Just a guess. Before the ACA, where you could buy private health plans at all, they tended to be ripoff plans with lousy coverage. In states that didn’t allow ripoff insurance to be sold, often there was little to no private insurance market. Complain to the insurance companies about that, toots.
And yes, health insurance is expensive because health care in the U.S. is expensive. That’s because it’s a mostly private, for-profit system, and there are few controls on price gouging. That was true before the ACA was passed, and it will still be true if the ACA is repealed.
And most of these problems would go away if we reduced or eliminated our dependency on a private, for-profit health care industry — which I’m sure Malkin opposes.
In her family, ‘this has been important for us because several members of my family have required specialized care for chronic MENTAL illnesses!
Malkin’s a real work of art:
Graffiti, generously sprayed on walls with paint made out of bullshit.
I would still be bankrupt had I not had health insurance through state employee benefit plans during the last 38 years. My son’s condition would have been uninsurable at birth. we were making teacher pay, and that would not have been enough to buy insurance for a child with spina bifida. Michelle is paying an amount she can clearly afford, and getting coverage in specialty clinics. Why is she griping?
Bill, why is she griping?
Because now “her lesser’s” aren’t being denied!
One time, Rocky was plummeting to a near certain death, and Boris Badenoff wanted Fearless Leader to share his binlculars, so that he could see part of it too.
“NO!”, shouted FL.
“But why not, FL?”, whined Boris.
“Because the only thing better than seeing something really great, is keeping others from seeing it!”
That’s the best description of conservatism I believe I’ve ever heard.
It’s all about not sharing, and punching down, while kissing up!
And also about stepping on the fingers of those below you on the ladder, lest they reach your rung, and, it’s back to sharing again then, isn’t it?
It’s not about health care – it’s about who rules. MM thinks the people with money should rule and most of us who hang out here think the people should rule. That includes people with money but the concept that people with money should have the SAME influence on government as people with less money frightens the crap out of her. (Some radicals have come up for a catchy name for the concept – Equality.)
If people with less money see government working for them, then the people with more money can expect they will be required to pay more because there are more people with less money. People with less money still want clean air, clean water, decent working conditions and the opportunity for a decent standard of living. To prevent the masses from demanding the rich pay their share of what these services would cost, they are determined to castrate government as far as services and regulation are concerned. That means demonizing every government program except defense, prisons and police which all protect the rich.
Completely OT, my favorite comment of the day, written in response to a right winger’s defense of Donald Trump, despite the latter’s sinking fortunes:
“Face up to it Tommy. Your boy is in the hole and getting in deeper every day. You have nearly 4 weeks to refill your meds and restock you liquor cabinet, so get to it. November 9 is going to be hell for you.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Not sure I would really want a “federal pubic option”. But … I promise to give it some thought.
CUND’s comment hit the mark, it also reminded me of a time a few decades ago, when a friend of mine married a pastor. Christianity was just shifting towards the “religious right†in those days. In the midst of a discussion she remarked that “she didn’t want to go to Heaven if everyone was going to be there.†Shortly later, she came to her senses.
“(I)t’s about who rules. MM thinks the people with money should rule.â€
In a better world, where we were a species better equipped for enlightenment, the figure of Trump would make rethinking this conviction impossible to avoid. He is the raw display of the hollowness and sociopathy at the core of “men of power.” For any rational, well-intentioned person this would demand a radical change in the way they see the world.
But, somewhere Brahma sleeps and dreams the world into existence and mankind collectively dreams the notion that we are capable of reason. The phenomenon of Trump will shatter their world, but, they will piece it together again and the fragments will fit together even more poorly than they do now. It’s going to be quite a spectacle.
So, CUND, what happened to Rocky? I expect that he survived, being a “flying” squirrel, after all.
I am a consultant and I buy my own insurance for me/family. No one needs to go thru Obamacare unless you want federal subsidies. You can go thru Obamacare regardless. Same(identical rates) insurance choices are available outside Obamacare as well. I wanted to buy it thru the exchange to support but the process of proving I am a US citizen is painful(for us) and it never worked (thanks to republicans). I also noticed that the same insurance at Obamacare has slightly less benefit (pediatric dentists preventive care) than if you were to buy it outside.
For anyone to complain that insurance isnt available to them is just BS. You can always buy it outside the exchange, especially if you are a wingnut. I used eHelathInsurance.com.
Donnie has the answer to all this, as he says: “one thing we have to do is, we have to make sure that, because there is a problem. I mean, whether we like it or not and we could be very politically correct, but whether we like it or not, there is a problem.â€.
And If you still don’t understand Sarah will explain it: “So up there in Alaska, across the way Russia,” Sarah Palin said. “You know there is a name for this taking advantage of America. There is a Russian name for that. And it is called ‘fortushka.’ And that means Obama’s window of opportunity. So as Obama leads from behind the skirt of his right-hand man, Valerie Jarrett, then it’s up to Congress to close that window. He may propose. You dispose, Congress. You gotta be in it to win it because we want peace. With unapologetic mighty red, white, and blue, will have peace.”
See it is simple.
bernie …. 🙂
I actually think Palin is smarter and more politically astute, than Dumb-‘n-old t-RUMP!
The government should either get out of the healthcare industry or take it over completely. Why should good, affordable insurance only be available to people who work for a large company? Why are healthcare premiums not tax deductible for the self employed but you can have your employee premium deducted from your gross pay?
Medicare and Medicaid pay for millions of peoples healthcare (like me) but uses private doctors. Fraud is rampant. If you have single payer you have to have single provider, the VA for everyone. Don’t laugh, if 75% of the population depends on it no congressman could get reelected if his constituents don’t think they are getting good care.
I’m still waiting for the ‘replace’ part of “repeal and replace” to see the light of day from the Republicans. I think they’ve had enough time to work out a viable alternative, if they really wanted to…but they don’t want to. The ACA was regulation on the insurance industry, and the (R)’s don’t like any form of regulation – particularly if it helps out those ‘others’.