Over on Twitchy.com, the anti-Obamacare forces have collected a number of reports from people saying they’re losing the health insurance plans they love because of Obamacare.
We’re not taking sides over here at clearhealthcosts.com. Our primary issue is transparency: We think people should be able to know what stuff costs.
In this case, we are interested in the way this conversation is framed. The insurance company in question never says “We made a business decision that your policy is not effective for us” or “The ACA requires us to change some parts of the policy your currently carry, and here’s the closest thing to that we’ll be offering next year” or “We’re leaving the individual insurance market in your state because we don’t get enough business out of it.” Instead, it’s all Obamacare’s fault.
One of the standard-bearers is Michelle Malkin, the conservative pundit, who wrote on her blog a
piece called “Obama Lied, My Health Plan Died,” accompanied by a picture of President Obama with an extended, Pinocchio-type nose.
We are reminded of the Cleveland Clinic, which is laying off staff and blaming it on Obamacare. Maybe they needed to be more judicious on their staffing levels before, but it’s easy now to blame it all on Obamacare.
Home Depot, Trader Joe’s and other businesses are ending limited medical insurance plans that had been offered to part-timers, and instead sending them to the exchanges to buy insurance. That, too, has been blamed on Obamacare. But perhaps those limited medical insurance plans are not much good for anyone anyhow — they offer a false sense of security, which is upended in many cases when the insured person really needs help and finds out there’s not much there. This is a good thing about the law: it keeps people from spending money for insurance that’s not really insurance.
So: it’s sometimes hard to hear around here because of the sound of partisan name-calling and so on. But … lose your health insurance because of Obamacare? Really?
