Obamacare

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The USA’s Third World

The Impact of Obamacare, in Four Maps By MARGOT SANGER-KATZ and QUOCTRUNG BUI OCT. 31, 2016

Just had a look at the progress of “Obamacare” according to a study by the New York Times.

Apparently this insurance program is fated to be linked to President Obama in perpetuity, but you could have a worse legacy– for example the War in Iraq.

The bad news is that four states have barely budged in reducing the number of uninsured from 2013-16, leaving their citizens as poorly insured for medical care as they were four years ago. The prize-winners are Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Mississippi. As the Times pointed out, neighboring states Kentucky and Arkansas have left them in the dust.

The states have some control of these developments, depending on whether they opted into the Medicaid provisions of Obamacare. There are plenty of citizens on Medicaid in those four states, but their leaders spurned the incentives for adopting the Medicaid provisions of Obamacare, because of their repugnance for federal help in general and Obamacare in particular. They are beginning to look like Third World countries, with their outstanding neglect of the social and biological needs of their citizens. It is hard to imagine such callous disregard for the needy within the boundaries of the U.S.

It is likewise hard to imagine how these needy could fail to vote and vote against the Republican leadership prevailing in these states. Still, you have to walk a mile in their shoes to appreciate their hopelessness and paralysis in the depths of a political climate that blames the poor for their circumstances.

If the tired, poor and huddled masses of the Deep South could only amass the political will to turn on their oppressors. I am no Marxist, but witnessing this wanton neglect in this poverty zone of America brings revulsion and revolution to my heart.  How can we deliver these citizens from a life unworthy of our standards of compassion?

For all its flaws, Obamacare offers a safety net to citizens who are in free fall. May these falling ones grab a corner of this net and vote against the harsh rule that has pulled it out from under them. A flawed program is better than no program at all, if it rescues the citizens of the Deep South, the USA’s Third World territory.

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Money Overtaken by Surprise

The most gratifying result of the 2012 election has been the defeat of big money at every level. Billionaires could not buy a President in the national election or defeat an international bridge in Michigan. Our faith in the democratic voice has been vindicated.

But more intriguing is the possibility that uncontrollable conditions might have elected our current President, events that no one could have bought or predicted.  We have no way to measure the impact of three men or a hurricane, but their effects are impossible to ignore.

The first surprise was John Roberts who blind-sided the country with his vote to let the Affordable Health Care Act stand. If anyone was betting on the Supreme Court decision, they probably lost a lot of money.  Not only did he vindicate the President’s primary first-term accomplishment, but he changed public sentiment about the law. Polls immediately started to support the law after a year of decline.  Potential voters increasingly said they supported “Obamacare” and President Obama himself decided to own the mocking expression “Obamacare,” defusing much of the criticism from the right.

Two Senatorial candidates managed to alienate most of the female voting public with ill-advised pronouncements about rape and abortion in the late summer.  Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin gave more support to pro-choice candidates than millions of dollars in campaign ads could have yielded.  The public remarks were so outrageous and unanticipated that political operatives on both sides of the issue were shocked into nearly identical denunciations of the Republican candidates’ insensitivity.  Most stunning was the fact that Akins’ public humiliation did not deter Richard Mourdock from duplicating the outrage.  The voters might have forgotten one silly blunder, but the coupled insults to women sent an indelible message.

And, of course the real October surprise was from Hurricane Sandy, which took aim on the most populated area of the country and showed how ill-prepared we were for an ocean surge, even when we were forewarned and forearmed. President Obama and Governor Christie suddenly became partners in the rescue of victims of coastal flooding, and even the opposition candidate had to grudgingly admit that FEMA had performed with swiftness and grace.

The mere presence of FEMA on the northeast coast suddenly highlighted the role the federal government had to play in preserving its citizens. All the bad air about the inefficiency and cost of federal programs suddenly dissipated as citizens could see their tax dollars put to indispensable use.

None of these factors should underestimate the amazing efficiency of the campaign’s get-out- the-vote army.  Republicans and Democrats alike will learn about mobilizing voters from the surprising results on November 6.

But the moguls who thought they could buy this election should reflect on what uncontrollable events can do to change the outcome. Three men and a natural disaster trumped billions in p0litical advertising and deceitful messaging.  You can’t buy what you can’t predict, and a democracy thrives on the unpredictable.