The healthcare.gov website is a disaster. CGI, the Canadian
owned company that built it should lose ALL its contracts with the
US government, period. That's what you do when an employee or
vendor screws up this badly. But that's about the website, not
Obamacare as a whole.
Let's get one thing straight. Obamacare is not, as Kathleen
Sibelius has argued, a website. It's a major program. Facebook and
Twitter and Google are websites. But the ACA, otherwise known as
Obamacare is far more than just a website. I've expressed my
dissatisfaction with ACA before-- because it does not go far
enough. As the leading nation in the world economically and in
other ways without me engaging in exceptionalism, the USA should be
providing healthcare as a human right to all-- medicare for all.
That's what every single other G20 nation does.
There are a lot of reasons to criticize Obamacare, but it
looks to me, from my point of view, that it will be good for most
Americans-- better than what it is replacing.
That may not apply to the millionaires who sit in media anchor
seats on the major networks. And it may cost a bit more for some
companies-- companies that have not treated their employees right
and which have been parasitizing the government to help pay for
their employees needs-- like Walmart and McDonalds.
But most Americans are going to see benefits-- many already
have-- for example, young adults 26 and under.
It looks like, for me, my health insurance, without the
subsidy I will be getting for low income (running a non-profit does
not pay great) will go up the smallest percentage in many years,
and my co-pays will be going down. WITH the government subsidy, it
looks like I will be paying a lot lot less than currently. That's
great news for me.
Here's a link to info on subsidies individuals earning under $46, 201
or families of four earning under $94,200 will receive.
Here are some numbers from the page linked to above:
I was never able, after at least four tries in the first week,
to get anything meaningful out of the official obamacare website at
healthcare.gov. But if you go to Kaiser ObamaCare Cost
Calculator you can probably get an idea of how
the program will be for you.
The devil is in the details here. I won't really believe the
promise until I get a tax credit. I guess that means the final
test, for me, won't be graded until 2015, when my taxes for 2014
are calculated.
Bottom line, I've been a big critic of Obamacare because it is
not single payer. But it IS progress and will help a lot of
people.
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