As I said before, I think that the problems with the Affordable Care Act are technical and therefore soluble. It is already the law and is not going to be repealed. While it is true that the implementation of the ACA has problems, some of them serious, The Daily Show wonders why those opposed to it feel the need to exaggerate and even flat-out lie about them.
(This clip aired on November 5, 2013. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)
I tend to think of The Daily Show as mostly attracting a young audience but they frequently reference things, like the Edith Bunker allusion in the above clip, that only older people like me would recognize so I suspect that their audience is of a wider age-range than I initially suspected.
Didn’t watch the video. No need too.
1. It’s simple. The GOP are openly trying to sabotage the ACA.
The lies are numerous and increasing by the day. Death panels, the IRS is your doctor now, mandatory anal probings by Reptilian UFO aliens, mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds, the ACA is going to take your guns away and on and on. I stopped keeping track out of sheer boredom.
2. As to why. They are afraid it is going to work and prove wildly popular. It’s what happened to them when they opposed Social Security and Medicare.
3. It probably will work and work well. We won’t know for a few years though. One state web site I’ve checked still isn’t working very well. They have no idea when it will work. The other problem with it, is that it is overloaded. AFAICT, the interest in this program is huge, demand exceeding whatever they designed the web sites for.
4. Ironically, one of the main users of the ACA is likely to be the Tea Party. More GOP than Democrats have already put their adult to age 26 children on their policies under the ACA. And part of the Tea Party demographic is dropping dead early, white rural women, most likely from lack of access to…affordable medical care.
Hey! Mid-50s is the new 30s.
“3. It probably will work and work well. We won’t know for a few years though. One state web site I’ve checked still isn’t working very well. They have no idea when it will work. The other problem with it, is that it is overloaded. AFAICT, the interest in this program is huge, demand exceeding whatever they designed the web sites for.”
This is the other side of the problem with the outrageous lies coming from the GOP; people on the left having to spend their time pointing out the lies while misrepresenting actual problems. I can guarantee you the problem is not an overabundance of demand that they could not have predicted. The failure of this exchange is politics -- favors instead of what will be better.
A way you can place some blame on the GOP for the problems with the online exchange is the fact that so many republican-led legislatures decided they were not going to set up their own exchanges in their respective states. This was supposed to be a huge incentive but ended up being a poor miscalculation; the GOP are not so much about “states’ rights” as they are anti-Obama.
That in no way excuses the problems, especially because the Democrats know what’s at stake.
I agree. Although I consider myself 49.885 years young, I really love Jon Stewart’s comedic spin on the news and I don’t technically fit into that “Young Audience” demographic.