‘Obamacare’ – Insurance Hunt

The topic of health care reform has been on the front pages of American newspapers for months. First, Republicans tried to block it by “shutting down” the government for two weeks. They gave up at the last minute, and for a while, it seemed it would go smoothly. However, just a few days later, the anticipated website — which was to provide millions of Americans with access to information and a selection of insurance policies — turned out to be a great failure.

It is a big disaster for Democrats and Obama, maintains the interested public. It is a water mill for his opponents. The website is overloaded, the browser does not work, and users get a message that an error occurred and are left without an insurance policy. Yet, access to “Obamacare” and a minimal effort required to buy adequate insurance are the cornerstones of the reform, which aims to enroll mostly young and healthy people. They are to pay for the treatment of the seriously ill. Even if the underpinning software is not equivalent to the reform, only those dying and in great need had enough determination to struggle with the crashing website.

It is obviously just the beginning, a false start, Democrats consoled themselves. It is a disgrace that Obama hired the wrong information-technology specialists, but software is not reform. What matters is that disqualifying people because of pre-existing or potential disease will never make a comeback, just like a 20-something-year-old man will never come back to check out the “Obamacare” website, which he visited out of curiosity in October — he is now just shrugging his shoulders. The website being unable to serve too many clients at the once is making people linger in wait. It is well known that the deadline to buy insurance and pay fees have now been extended.

If only that were the issue! Around a week ago, it turned out that not only is Obama unaware of whom he hires, but he is also unaware of what he says. Soothing reassurances that clients will be able to keep their current insurance, if they like it, are empty promises. This is true for many reasons, including because insurance companies cannot provide the same conditions to old clients. Many previous offers are false packages, which would expire the moment a patient got seriously ill.

Obama is facing a dilemma — break a promise and rescue the health care reform or show his political reliability at the expense of “Obamacare.”

Now, the website works better, as confirmed by the author of this article and Paul Krugman, who registered and went through the consecutive steps, holding back only from the final click, which would have meant buying a policy, because — as he modestly observed — he already has insurance, being an employee of Princeton University. He probably did not experience many difficulties because, during those days, Americans were engaged in the annual Thanksgiving turkey feast and following Black Friday shopping spree.

Whatever the reason, more and more users report a happy ending to their insurance hunt. One of the smaller problems is insurance for small businesses: We will still need to wait for that because the government wants to focus on individual clients for now.

In the meantime, the issue of funding contraception was brought to the Supreme Court — the next attempt to make “Obamacare” a moral scandal. Conservatives are fighting for their “religious rights,” trying to prove that companies, just like individuals, are entitled to religious freedom, and no one should require them to provide employees with access to contraception if that hurts their “feelings” — I am referring to companies, not employees. It sounds irrational because if we insist on treating them as individuals, eventually, companies should express not only the ideology of their owners, but also their employees. However, if you have enough money, you also have a sufficiently large podium in Washington.

Republicans are left with nothing else but to concentrate on details. For example, The Wall Street Journal readily reports that the new offers are “worse” than ones preceding the reform, and we are informed by analyses and numbers, although no one has had a chance to test “Obamacare” yet.

It is similar to the case of the subway in Washington. It is the cleanest and the most punctual subway I have ever used, but you need to listen to citizens to hear all the grumbling. The Red Line is closed again! The train was one minute late! The escalator does not work. Need to take the stairs! Most Republicans probably do not condescend to use public transportation, just like they do not condescend to use public health services.

Maybe the website keeps crashing, maybe the subway is late, but the truth is that 49 million people live without insurance in America.

When you cannot afford a limo, you wait a few minutes for the subway. You stamp your feet on the platform, and eventually, you are happy you are on the train.