The Affordable Care Act will have its usual detractors and promoters this week, but today is a deadline, the first of December. Sure, make merry, as the second leg of the glorious Winter holiday season looms. But for the usual suspects, today will also be a special day to better lie, cheat, insult, obfuscate and otherwise misinform the American public, the land of the free and the home of the uninsured; almost 50 million citizens lack healthcare coverage of any sort and millions more are under insured on junky policies. A huge number of the uncovered are also mired in poverty, exacerbating that dismal metric. Obamacare can address a lot of it, although millions will be left naked again, at least this year and most often next too, at least until saner heads prevail, in those red states where ledges or governors have chosen to withhold free healthcare from the least fortunate. That’s a sad commentary on the wealthy-political axis; forever in pursuit of any thing smacking of indecency or inhumanity, provided there’s so much as a tiny chance it may sway the news cycle against Barack Obama for a single morning. [Read more…]

Suzanne Somers once played a part on a less-than-exciting, thank-god-it-ended 1970s TV show that exploited the twin stereotypes of flaming gay men and brainless blond bimbos. She tried to jack her costars for an extra cut of the loot when the series became briefly popular, they told her to get lost, and her career promptly took giant shit. Somers mercifully almost disappeared from the public eye, only surfacing more recently after medical technology saved her life, a favor she returned by putting out books hawking quackery and quack cures. So clearly when the Wall Street Journal needed an expert on healthcare, she told them to come and knock on her door. The link below goes to LGF so don’t feel like you’re rewarding the Journal for the bait. Let’s do a quickie fisk: [Read more…]

Nicely done and obviously not the answer Rep Camp (R-grifter) was angling for. Shorter version: “The insurance company was jacking your constituent for premiums on a junk policy they planned on cancelling the minute he got sick or injured, and the ACA has put that particular scam out of business. … and you’re welcome.”

It wasn’t my choice to become a walking, talking healthcare reform example. But lately that is my fate. Friday night I got a sore throat — these things seem to always happen on the weekend of course. By Sunday it was incredibly painful and so swollen my face was beginning to be deformed. Fortunately, Monday my PCP was in, a quick visit, a $20 copay and $10 more for prescribed antibiotics and now, less than 24 hours later, it’s already noticeably better.

It was bad enough that I was completely out of the game all day yesterday and I’m still running a pretty good fever. It’s scary to think what might have happened without health insurance, because this was the most painful sore throat I have ever experienced and it was spreading rapidly — a side effect of being on auto-immune drugs and cortisone no doubt.

First thing I see now that I’m up and running is this lovely article making the rounds with the usual suspects: [Read more…]