I hope you’re right. I want it to stick to Democrats as a whole. Obama is a lame duck, who cares.
Fully agreed.
Though Obamacare will play a part in the mid-term election cycle it is entirely likely that we may not have seen even the first glimpse of what will become the dominant issue.
The American public is so easily distracted by whatever becomes The October Surprise.
Most of the time, I agree with you. Most folks focus on a thing for a while and then forget about it. I haven’t heard anyone talking about the Iraq War lately, or Terry Schiavo, or Elian Gonzalez. Obama is particularly good at getting people to ignore things. Witness his slaughtering thousands in Pakistan and Yemen with drones, and most of his base reacting with a yawn.
But this time, I think it’s gonna’ be different.
Simply put, people care about health insurance. Almost everybody likes to have good health insurance at reasonable prices. If the only problem with the ACA was the lousy website, that could be fixed or the administration could work around it. But that’s actually a minor problem. The major problem is that many millions of people are losing their insurance, or seeing their rates go through the roof, or seeing the quality of their policies plunge. That makes people seriously upset, and they won’t forget it as easily as they’ll forget something like Terry Schiavo.
While I agree with your assessment of Carter, I don’t see Obama like that at all. He is aloof, egotistical, dishonest and haughty, but very politically attuned. He’s anything but well-meaning in my estimation.
As for the disapproval rating, I see it dropping farther to around 30%.
That may be, IDK. I base my opinion on his apparent support for social programs and minority rights - things like abortion, contraception, gay marriage, and of course health care. That he might be motivated by a desire to be remember by history rather than a genuine concern for people is fine. I don’t especially care what his motivations are. I DO care how skillful he is at executing them and much of the time he seems to be quite the klutz.
But even more millions are either seeing an improvement or nothing change at all. Just because it may be affecting millions…well, this is a country of 300,000,000 people. It can affect millions and still be a problem that a very small percentage actually encounter in their own lives. It’s only a “problem” in the world of talking heads and political junkies where anecdotes drive the story.
I will wait and see if this actually becomes a full-blown problem that actually affects more than 5% of the country. If it does, then I hope we can start talking about fixes rather than blame.
From the abbreviated news reports I’ve seen, it’s seems pretty clear there’s no way it will affect more than 5% as long as people are able to sign up for policies. And anecdotes aside, it really does sound as if the people who are being forced into new policies will in fact be better off since they didn’t actually have the coverage they believed they did. It’s one thing to be paying $200 per month and think you’re getting certain coverage only to find out you’ll now have to pay $400 but it’s something else if for $200 you were really getting jack and were just to stupid to know it.
What a smug and condescending misrepresentation of what’s happening. So you think that people who have been covered by a plan don’t know what it covers and what they have to pay? Of course not, they must be so stupid they need the government to step in and tell them what they really need - like obstetric care and pediatric care when you are 55 and your kids are grown. Oh, that 70% premium hike is for your own good - hold your nose and swallow the medicine.
I’d suggest the exact opposite will happen next year when people who have not been covered by insurance figure out that in addition to whatever premium they are paying (after the welfare payments pay the rest) they are responsible for paying the deductibles and copays. What do you mean I owe $190? I have Obamacare insurance! What do you mean I have to pay 40%? I have Obamacare insurance!
I do tend to be something of an elitist, but those comments weren’t based on prejudice, rather that’s what I’ve been hearing in news reports. Of the people that were affected by cancellations I think roughly half fell into a category they gave a certain label I can’t recall. But the gist was that these were sham policies - things like those income protection policies that claim to pay you so much per day but have so many traps and limitations that they end up paying little or nothing.
And honestly, I don’t know how many people you know, but I’m a retired lawyer and even I don’t read most of my policies. I read the summaries or rely on my agent except maybe for certain clauses that may be of particular importance to me. Most of it is boilerplate in my state anyway since they have to follow certain guidelines so it’s really a waste of my time anyway.
I wasn’t thinking of the sham policies to which you refer. Yes, they are clearly not comprehensive health insurance policies. Do people really think they are? Probably some, but it seems like misdirection to suggest that these policies are reflective of the problem.
Yes, people often don’t know what their policy really covers and what it doesn’t. Having spent the last decade selling health insurance, my opinion of the the general public and their knowledge of their plan has plummeted. Most people’s understanding of the PPACA is laughable as well. That being said, I do think the Presidents approval rating will probably fall a few more points to closer to the 30% mark.
Unfortunately, I think the problem with those policies is significantly larger than you imagine but I honestly don’t know. The CBS report I heard made it sound like it was close to half but I could misheard and they could have been biased. I haven’t seen any hard data. But I’m inclined to agree with Antinor01’s observations. I know people in the retail insurance business, have been related to a few in fact and if you think my opinion of people is less than charitable, you wouldn’t want to meet any of them.
The original quote:
Oh, I understand where you are coming from. Before I had to start buying my own insurance, I was uninformed. But I researched and learned what I needed to know in order to choose the best policy for my needs. And I assume other self employed people did the same. It’s insulting and dismissive to wave aside the problems and sticker shock we’re experiencing due to “stupidity”.
You would be one of the fairly rare ones if you actually understood what you had researched. I specialized in small business plans and the percentage of business owners that were completely clueless about either what they were buying, or what they already had was staggering.
I work in car insurance, so kinda similar, and I spend a good portion of my time actually explaining to people what coverages apply and what they actually mean.
Oh, I won’t claim I know everything in the 80-page policy, but I think I have a pretty good handle on it. And it took me a couple of months and several interviews with an insurance broker, plus visits to health insurance websites and message boards. Yes, health insurance is complex, and it’s in the insurance companies’ interest to write the policies in their favor, yet remain competitive.
Do I like insurance companies? No. Do I like dealing with them when there is a dispute about my coverage or a claim? No. Do I think physicians like spending huge amounts of money dealing with insurance? No. But there is nothing in ACA that seems to change any of that, and in fact makes it worse in many respects. And if there’s one thing I trust less than insurance companies to be fair, efficient and responsible, it’s the government.
I used to think of Obama as a modern-day Jimmy Carter, but I think I’ve got a better read on him now. He’s a “big picture” type of person who doesn’t want to be bothered with the details of anything. Unfortunately for all of us, such people tend to be lousy leaders. Being a good leader requires more hands-on involvement than such people are willing to give. No, our prez basically wants to give speeches and enjoy the prestige of the office, while leaving the job of actually running things to other people.
The Obamacare rollout is Exibit A. By now, it is painfully obvious that Obama didn’t know anything about how the rollout was progressing, beyond maybe a 1-minute summary at meetings occasionally.
While I’m sure that rip-off health insurance policies existed, I’ve seen no serious source for the claim that half of the cancelled individual insurance policies were in that category. The facts I’ve seen suggest that most of the individual health insurance market, including the plans that got cancelled, was perfectly good insurance.
I don’t trust polls … even brand name polls. You don’t know who they are asking or what mood they are in when they are being asked or what time of day it was or even where the moon was.
Did they ask a thousand people outside of Piggly Wiggly or Kroger or Costco or Sam’s Club? What state were they in, what was the weather, what grade did they finish, what did they have to eat last night?
Do you look at polls to see if they agree with your views or do you look at polls to see which way you should go?
President Obama may not even finish office not over this silly ACA problem, but just in general. He may very well turn the office over to Vice President Biden and take a hike to Hawaii to write his book and open his library.
Well he could you know … 