Balanced Examination on Health Care

For John, BLUF:  When the Government delves in, someone is helped and someone is hurt.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

---

You May Like Obamacare, But Don’t Forget About The People It Has Hurt

Here is the sub-headline:

Arguing about this as if beneficiaries of ACA don't exist isn't right.  Arguing about it as if people like me don't is also not right.

This is from Columnist Mary Katharine Ham, win The Federalist, on 5 May 2017. Here is the lede plus two:

You may know me as a political pundit and writer who has spoken publicly about how the Affordable Care Act negatively affected my family.  What you might not know is two years ago, I was a seven-month-pregnant widow with one toddler who got a letter two weeks after my husband died, informing me I’d lost my third or fourth health insurance plan since the Affordable Care Act passed.  If you’ll remember, the promise was that I could keep my plan if I liked it.  I could not.

I predicted what would happen to my family’s insurance, and to much less fortunate people subjected to the exchanges with us, many of whom have seen doubled premiums and tripled deductibles.  If you’ll remember, the promise was everyone’s premiums would go down.  They did not.  For predicting it, I was routinely called a lying hack in public.  It’s a hazard of the job, but I wasn’t lying.  I was right.  I also thought it was improbable the federal and state governments could handle building these exchanges and that they’d likely blow up and be inoperable, thereby preventing people like me from actually purchasing the new plans the ACA required we purchase.  Again, I was not lying for partisan gain.

ACA has helped people.  I know some of them well!  I have two friends with serious health challenges, one of whom I can say was probably kept alive by Obamacare; the other by the fact she was able to keep her grandfathered pre-ACA plan.  I am not in the habit of asserting any piece of health legislation is either perfect or a tool of evil designed by hateful actors.  They’re not.  I will not assert either of these fundamentally shallow and manipulative things about either ACA or adjustments to it (and, yes, this piece of House legislation is an adjustment or a reform, not a repeal, which would change dramatically in the Senate if taken up and change again before eventual passage).

To whom do people go when the promises of politicians are negated by their legislation?

What does are Senior Senator, Ms E Warren, think about this?  Is our Junior Senator, whatever his name is, even aware of this?  Where does our US Rep, Ms Niki Tsongas, stand on this?  Right now they seem to be on the "just let it roll" platform, watching the train rumble through the station.  Maybe they don't even know there is a crash coming.  Maybe they think they can blame it on President Trump, or Speaker Paul Ryan.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff