Breathing Life into Obamacare?

The Affordable Care Act, popularly called Obamacare, seems like good intentions gone wrong.  In my job I have done the calculations according to the government’s formula and determined that my employer is offering “affordable healthcare” as set forth by the guidelines.  But what if it’s still not affordable?  This dilemma has led some employees to decline coverage through their employer even before Obamacare was available, only to discover that they don’t qualify for the subsidies and their rates through Obamacare are even more than the employer plan.  And yet, despite all of the documented problems such as those with the government healthcare website and with Americans losing their coverage due to non-conformance, the current administration still wants everyone to believe that Obamacare is a success. 

Tami Luhby is just one of many who reports that it’s too soon to tell.  In an article from CNN Money called “The truth behind Obamacare 6 million figure,” Luhby says that the 6 million number of enrollments is actually deceiving.  According to the article, more than half of those enrollments were for Medicaid.  She explains that the Medicaid system is so cumbersome that it does not distinguish between the newly qualified enrollments under Obamacare and the renewals.  So the 6 million enrollment figure is not an accurate measure of the effectiveness of Obamacare.  Time will tell if this massive healthcare reform plan succeeds or flat-lines.

Where Do I Start?

      Following politics has never been an interest of mine; quite the opposite actually.  I’ve listened to people debate issues formally and casually and honestly it’s a bit hard to follow because I haven’t paid attention to what each party stands for, who represents each party, what each candidates’ experience, education, and affiliation are.  What are the issues plaguing our country, how are they affecting individuals, businesses, families?  What can be done about them and what are the pros and cons for each possibility?  There seems an endless amount of information to try to decipher.  So where do I start?

      Taking the advice of my government instructor, Professor Scott, I took the civics quiz online offered by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and another online quiz offered by the Center for the People & the Press to determine my political typology.  First I took the civics quiz and I scored 72%.  Yikes… that is the kind of grade that I normally cringe at but then I read that “the average score for all 2,508 Americans taking the following test was 49%.”  So now I’m thinking, hmm - not too shabby.  There is hope for me yet.  Then I took the typology quiz and out of eight categories ranging from “staunch conservative” all the way down to “bystander” I fell smack in the middle at something called “post-modern.”  I have included the helpful list of bullet descriptions under my profile.  So it seems that I have some basic knowledge about our government with the ability to build on that, and I have some opinions that I could use as a starting point to start to learn about the different political parties and their candidates.  Actually, this is good news to me and I’m feeling pretty good.