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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (236180)	10/31/2013 9:46:17 AM
From: Bread Upon The Water	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 542059

The young and healthy are definitely a mixed bag and we will see how they vote with their pocket books come next year. If not enough of them sign up the AFCA is more or less toast as the premiums forecast for different age groups will no longer work, and revising them probably makes the act non-affordable. You can castigate the WSJ for many things, but they do bring out the screw ups going on when their are screw ups on both sides of the aisle. I'm not saying the editorial page doesn't have an agenda, they do, (the individual and the marketplace need mostly the absence of governmental interference to function efficiently and therefore government is best when it creates a level playing field and then gets out of the way), but then so does the Times (we need to be told what to do and be made to do what is good for us). The problem, now revealed, with the AFCA is that it was sold as one thing and is turning out be another thing altogether--especially for individuals who picked the insurance plan that suited their needs and pocket books (about 15 million of them according to the Journal). Take the independent contractor in Colorado who was insuring his family of 4 for $550 a month with a $22,000 deductible and no bells and whistles (like maternity care etc.) It may not be the play you and I would have chosen, but this suited his needs. He also, thanks to the President's statements, thought he would be able to keep it. Instead he gets the cancellation notice from the insurance company saying due to the AFCA the policy will no longer comply with the law as of Jan 1st and a policy that does which is similar to the one he had, but also meets the law's requirements (to provide maternity coverage etc.) will now be over a $1000 a month. He is not going to be a happy camper. Take 15 million people bitching about it to their 10 closest friends and relatives and you have half the population that is going to get an earful. This is real problem if you are Democratic politician having to run in any kind of competitive situation, and nationally it is going to make the Democrats play defense far longer than offense. And this is why the Journal serves us a function here to point out the shortcomings of the AFCA as promised versus delivered so that at least those supporters of it can try to correct the misunderstandings already created and the huge rise in apprehension about it. If the Dems can't get the AFCA problems under control this has the potential to cost them control of the Senate--IMHO. So the Journal is like a political Hurricane warning for the Democrats and the President and thus is a useful tool for them.