A Healthy Six-Year-Old. Why Do Some People Want To Kill The Kid?

Six years ago today, President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law.  Happy Birthday, ACA!  As an early supporter of the proposed reform, I lobbied my elected officials relentlessly.  For my efforts in championing the cause, I received the genuine, mass-produced, signature-stamped Presidential certificate of appreciation shown here.  It's suitable for framing, but I haven't framed it yet.  But I do like it!

I was also invited to attend and speak at a Columbus victory party in April 2010, and I did.  I was among a few amateurs on the dais making brief comments.  The major talkers were Sen. Sherrod Brown, Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy and Mayor Mike Coleman.  No photos taken while I was speaking, but here I am seated to the left while Mayor Mike was at the podium, and at far right with Brown and Kilroy at left.  Got a signed thank-you note from Sherrod.  Did frame that one.

And, of course, I've written about American health care in these pages many, many times.

I bring all this up only to note that six years in, all the job-killing, premium-raising, health system-ruining, sky-is-falling nonsense about the ACA from right-wingers remains just that -- nonsense.  Obamacare is a healthy six-year-old, and doing well:

• 13 million Americans signed up for Obamacare in 2016.
• 20 million more of us have health insurance than before the law took effect, including 6.1 million young people age 18-26.
• Over 120 million Americans with pre-existing conditions are now protected against discrimination.
• 90% of Americans now have health coverage, which is an all-time high.  Put another way, the uninsured rate is at an all-time low.

Now, some will say "Hang on, Buster.  Health insurance premiums are in fact rising."  That's perfectly true, and it was just as true before Obamacare.  But it's also true that the rate of premium increase is less than before the ACA.  Health premiums are always going up, for reasons that have nothing to do with Obamacare.

Slowing the rate of increase is cold comfort.  I wish that Obamacare could have accomplished more on the cost side, but paid-off politicians beholden to Big Medical/Big Pharma/Big Hospital interests made sure that wasn't going to happen.  But one of these days, it will happen.  It's necessary, inevitable.  A single-payer, Medicare-for-all system with government-negotiated prices is the logical and overdue next step.

But until then, why are some people still so opposed to Obamacare?  (And by people, I mean real people, not conservative D.C. douchebags and presidential wanna-be's.)  Just two reasons -- ignorance and meanness.

No respectable person can be opposed to giving more people more access to more health care, especially for those people who unfairly had none before the ACA.  So for most real-people/real-world Obamacare opponents, it's simple ignorance:  You wrongly believe that Obamacare is personally costing you a shit-ton.  The Congressional Budget Office estimates that for the ten-year period of 2016-2025, the premium subsidies of Obamacare will cost taxpayers $850 billion.  OMG!!  But wait.  That's an average of $8.5 billion per year, which, divided by 250 million American taxpayers, works out to a whopping average of $34 per taxpayer per year.  $34.  A year.  Nine cents a day.

So it's not a personal financial burden and the benefits of the ACA to our society are obvious.  So what else could it possibly be?  I think I know.  You're just a mean old SOB:  You want health care to be a strictly financial winner/loser proposition.  And you're a winner who's not paying 9 cents a day for loser deadbeats.  If you have a really good job with top-notch, low-deductible coverage heavily subsidized by your employer, good for you, you win, and you have no clue about what health insurance really costs.  With your employer coverage, you can indulge in elective procedures and unnecessary surgeries and whatever.  But if I don't have those things, I lose, and I'm allowed to know far too well how much insurance premiums really cost.  If I actually need to use my high-deductible coverage, I get to pay lots more than you for the same thing.  And if I don't like it, well, it's my own fault -- I should have had a better job, and I just don't deserve what you have.

If you dislike Obamacare, you are clearly irrational, but here's hoping it's because you're just simply ignorant.