An Obamacare success story

[Bob78164]

Dean Angstadt was adamantly opposed to Obamacare. Now he's a fervent believer.

He's also quite lucky, because his health happened to turn for the worse while open enrollment was still available. If he'd held out for another month or so, he'd be locked out of the insurance market until 2015 or until he died, whichever came first. And in his case, dying would probably have come first.

And that brings me to a number of ads that I find truly despicable. There was a lot of advertising discouraging people from signing up for Obamacare during open enrollment. After all, the sales pitch went, you could always wait until you got sick and sign up then.

That turns out to be a lie. Now that open enrollment is over, in the absence of a qualifying event, you can't get coverage that kicks in before 2015. So all those people who bought into the anti-Obamacare campaign are going to have to live with their decision for the rest of the year. If they can. The same conservatives who were encouraging people to avoid Obamacare or to game the system by waiting for an illness before buying insurance are now brimming with outrage that the system was designed to avoid exactly the sort of gaming they were encouraging. I'm brimming with outrage that millions of dollars were spent on advertising that will result in avoidable deaths and financial ruin. --Bob

[silverscreenselect]

Now that open enrollment is over, in the absence of a qualifying event, you can't get coverage that kicks in before 2015. So all those people who bought into the anti-Obamacare campaign are going to have to live with their decision for the rest of the year. If they can. The same conservatives who were encouraging people to avoid Obamacare or to game the system by waiting for an illness before buying insurance are now brimming with outrage that the system was designed to avoid exactly the sort of gaming they were encouraging. I'm brimming with outrage that millions of dollars were spent on advertising that will result in avoidable deaths and financial ruin. --Bob

There's plenty of blame to go around on this. With all the money that was spent on Healthcare.gov commercials and ads, I can't remember one that made that point. They were too busy trying to produce "cool" ads for 20-somethings to encourage them to buy healthcare. And frankly, it's not the responsibility of someone who opposes something to be honest about pointing out its requirements. As a public service, the Obama administration should have made that point clear instead of relying on a feel-good hip ad campaign. I think a lot of people probably thought that the March 31 deadline was only the deadline to avoid the tax penalty, not the deadline to actually get coverage.

Having said that, the state insurance departments in a lot of states, including here in Georgia, also had a responsibility to the public to notify them about insurance developments that directly affected them. Unfortunately, in Georgia and a lot of others, they chose to do absolutely nothing to try to inform or assist the public with Obamacare, which in my view is a shocking dereliction of their responsibility under the law.

[Bob78164]

There's plenty of blame to go around on this. With all the money that was spent on Healthcare.gov commercials and ads, I can't remember one that made that point. They were too busy trying to produce "cool" ads for 20-somethings to encourage them to buy healthcare.

I agree with you that the federal government should have made this point much more loudly than they did. So, too, should the media, particularly in markets where the false advertising was happening. This should have been all over the newscasts. --Bob