Eric Stern over at Salon.com gives a shining example of how to expose the bullshit being peddled about the Affordable Care Act. This was my favorite one.
When I spoke to Robbie, he said he and Tina have been paying a little over $800 a month for their plan, about $10,000 a year. And the ACA-compliant policy will cost 50-75 percent more? They said this information was related to them by their insurance agent.
Had they shopped on the exchange yet, I asked? No, Tina said, nor would they. They oppose Obamacare and want nothing to do with it. Fair enough, but they should know that I found a plan for them for, at most, $3,700 a year, a 63 percent less than their current bill. It might cover things that they don’t need, but so does every insurance policy.
A great example of willful ignorance and the very real monetary cost it brings with it. More importantly, however, this illustrates the trap that people can fall into when they believe the Big Lie. Stern echoes this as well.
Strangely, the recent shutdown was based almost entirely on a small percentage of Congress’s belief that Obamacare, as Ted Cruz puts it, “is destroying America.” Cruz has rarely given us an example of what he’s talking about. That’s because the best he can do is what Hannity did—exploit people’s ignorance and falsely point to imaginary boogeymen.
Once people realize how the law works, the ignorance will fall away and there won't be any more boogeyman they can pull out of their hat.
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"And the ACA-compliant policy will cost 50-75 percent more? They said this information was related to them by their insurance agent."
Yeah, they trust a guy whose job it is to sell them overpriced insurance to tell them how to get an ACA policy that costs them less. One reason ACA policies can be cheaper is that they eliminate overhead like insurance agents who never do anything but sign you up.
Do you really need to pay an insurance agent to hold your hand while you look at a website? Especially considering that he's selling you a competing product. These people are simply bad consumers.
The other problem is that these folks live in states that have been doing everything they can to sabotage the new health care law. If people in states like Massachusetts and Minnesota have good experiences with the ACA, the Tea Party folks may be hounded out of office by the same people who put them there for screwing their own people out of decent medical care.
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