Professor Krugman is (IMO, unduly) optimistic:
Lots of people having fun with this great report from Jason Cherkis at the Kentucky State Fair:
A middle-aged man in a red golf shirt shuffles up to a small folding table with gold trim, in a booth adorned with a flotilla of helium balloons, where government workers at the Kentucky State Fair are hawking the virtues of Kynect, the state’s health benefit exchange established by Obamacare.
The man is impressed. “This beats Obamacare I hope,” he mutters to one of the workers.
This goes along with all the polling evidence, which says that people like the actual provisions of the Affordable Care Act, but have no idea that those provisions are in fact the substance of that terrible, tyrannical “Obamacare” program they keep hearing about. And because the insurance exchanges that are at the heart of the program will be run at the state level, with many different names, we’ll have quite a few people happily signing up for Obamacare while denouncing the program and believing it has nothing to offer them.
And I say that it’s all good….
Jewish Steel
Apropos nothing at all, Glenn Gould playing piano with his dog.
Mnemosyne
I’m not terribly hopeful — my parents never had any trouble simultaneously praising Medicaid and denouncing “Obamacare” no matter how many times I tried to point out that the person we were discussing was able to get that Medicaid because of Obamacare.
Oh well. I guess I’m still liberal enough to be happy that people who need healthcare will be getting it even if they don’t understand where it came from.
Omnes Omnibus
In the words of one of my best friends: I hate idiots.
Suffern ACE
Is the rattail making the rounds? I saw two mid-teen boys sporting them this evening and I hope we looked better in them.
Also, the World’s End is so so, but has a good soundtrack.
Shalimar
I love Leonard Cohen. The man is brilliant. Still, after listening to the Concrete Blonde version so many times in my youth before I discovered Cohen himself, this always sounds to me like Shatner trying to cover popular rock songs.
NotMax
Navigating reality can be so… tricky.
All the more for those who purposely shun reading and keeping up with actual policy news.
Omnes Omnibus
@Shalimar: If this blog were Amish, you would be shunned for that. And with good reason.
NotMax
@Suffern ACE
Every time I see the name of that flick, all I think of is the state park in Pennsylvania.
Yatsuno
Keep the Obamacare out of my Kynect? Works for me as long as it benefits them.
I still say there’s a sneaky backdoor into universal coverage in ACA. I’m amazed no one is talking about this more.
PsiFighter37
Give me my free health care as long as it has nothing to do with the Kenyan socialist!
Oh wait? He has everything to do with it?
*heads explode somewhere in Appalachia*
Okay, that’s too optimistic.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Yatsuno: Shhhhh. Don’t tell anyone or it won’t happen.
James E. Powell
@PsiFighter37:
It is too optimistic. The right-wingers have that special genius for multi-level delusion. If you were to explain to the Kentucky Obamacare hater that the program he likes is Obamacare, he will stop listening after the first three or four syllables. He will walk away convinced that you just explained to him how this Kentucky program was a better, less-socialist, perhaps even whiter, program than Obamacare, that it’s what the good people, the Republicans, tried to enact, but Obama & the liberals wouldn’t let them. He will repeat this to others who will also believe it.
xenos
@Yatsuno: The first rule of Presumptive Eligibility club…
Seriously. The only right wingers who actually do their homework are the subsidized creeps at ALEC. The rest of the movement has such a loose grip on reality that they still do not know what is in the ACA. We have to get to Jan 2014 and the ACA will largely take care of itself. Meanwhile, don’t let the bastards know what is going to hit them, or they may find a way to disrupt it.
Amir Khalid
@Jewish Steel:
Could Glenn Gould’s dog play this?
xenos
@xenos: I would add that this is how a lot of people end up on medicaid. They go the the ER when someone in the family is sick and they get handed a medicaid application form that they fill out then and there. The finance department at the hospital mails the application to the local medicaid office and an appointment is set up to see if they can be covered. Once in the program they are in, records and addresses are tracked, annual reviews scheduled, and so on.
When I worked in the business we would get middle class people coming in and they were either ashamed or really pissed off, but they usually did not qualify for coverage because of their new cars, new boats, and so on. Sometimes they had just a little too much income to qualify and had not been splurging on rapidly-depreciating crap. But most often it was the crap that disqualified them.
Villago Delenda Est
The wingtards, for years, have been demanding that the Federal government keep its hands off of Medicare and Medicaid.
Why should we be the least bit surprised? All they hear is “Obama” and it’s blackity-black-black evil socialist muslim whatever.
PIGL
@Suffern ACE: No we (and be “we” I mean “you”) really didn’t. I had a friend who snuck around Halifax bars with serruptitious scissors. Obviously, she never got caught.
max
@Suffern ACE: Is the rattail making the rounds? I saw two mid-teen boys sporting them this evening and I hope we looked better in them.
Much like the mullet, no one looks good with one. Same for the funky colored leisure suit. (On the other hand, zoot suits are ridiculous yet still manage to look pretty cool. Go figure.)
@Mnemosyne: I’m not terribly hopeful — my parents never had any trouble simultaneously praising Medicaid and denouncing “Obamacare” no matter how many times I tried to point out that the person we were discussing was able to get that Medicaid because of Obamacare.
Jen Sorensen toon.
Idiots abound! Even At The Liberal New Republic:
An odd fact: all the reputed chemical warfare attack have occurred in the immediate vicinity of Damascus. So if you go after the chemical weapons (whether it was Assad using them or not), you’re going to be surgically striking in Damascus. And by surgically striking we mean ‘lots of dead civilians’ –
almostcertainly more than the number of dead from the chemical attacks. This will also incidentally put Assad in the ‘use it or lose it’ position regarding said chemwar equipment. So, totally neat idea, huh?max
[‘They have a theory, at any rate.’]
Klare
I live in KY, born in WV. It’s a close knit tribe of which I am part and parcel. It’s a love/hate relationship on my part. Love for the deep decency of Appalchians. Horror at the ignorance, which is a charitable description. This comic, tragic story is like the recent survey showing more people in Louisiana think President Obama is more responsible for the mishandling of Hurricane Katrina than was Pres. Bush. Lots more public blather should marvel at the effects of right wing propaganda. It is an astounding feat of disinformation to get people this stupid.
I too am happy just to see the health care available. That’s the rightness of the liberal position. Treat people decently even if they don’t want to pass it on or share it. It is just darn wearying sometimes.
on a more hopeful note, i marveled at Anderson Cooper’s 360 show tonight. Sometimes progress sneaks up on us. An accomplished gay guy interviews a lovely, astonishing heroine in Antionette Tuff. She & the 911 rep are cool black ladies who handled themselves with more aplomb than a movie hostage negotiato. Tuff saved all the children, staff, herself & the shooter. Geez, move over Batmam. She gets a call from Obama while getting fluffed for the CNN appearance. All on the 50th anniversary wkend of the civil rights march on Washington. Pretty moving stuff.
BillinGlendaleCA
@max: And, most discussions that I’ve seen about Syria fail to mention that Russia has military personnel there.
TriassicSands
@Shalimar:
Shatner? Really? Like Cohen or not, at least it sounds like music.
TriassicSands
@Yatsuno:
I wish that were true.
I also wish more people were addressing, if not talking about it, then trying to do something, is the likelihood that many of the new Medicaid enrollees may have a hard time finding a primary care physician — because of a shortage of PC doctors — and specialists — because so many already refuse to see Medicaid patients.
The clinic where I see my primary care physician is probably the main source for coverage for Medicaid patients in this area. It is owned and run by the local Native American tribe. Last year, with the PPACA on the books, I talked to one of the administrators at the clinic and given the patient load their primary care physicians have now — and the clinic already makes extensive use of nurse practitioners — he didn’t see any way they would be able to help much, if at all, with a huge increase in Medicaid patients. It’s not that the clinic refuses to see Medicaid patients, after all there are many tribe members on Medicaid and the clinic, while open to all, is first and foremost a service for the tribe.
I asked the administrator about specialists and he said that right now it is difficult to find specialists who will see Medicaid patients. For example, he said that locally there is not a single dermatologist who will take Medicaid, and only one within 60 miles.
I’ve always been worried about this aspect of the PPACA and there are studies that suggest this is going to be a real problem. When Republicans say that people are better off with no insurance than they are with Medicaid, they’re simply lying and recent reports have shown what liars they are. However, I have heard a few Republicans talk about the shortage of primary care doctors. They are on much firmer ground when they claim that if you can’t find a doctor who will see you, then having Medicaid isn’t any better than being uninsured. Since virtually all Republicans hope that Obamacare fails, anything they say about it is suspect. However, from the discussion I had with the clinic administrator and the reports I’ve seen or read about that deal with this problem, this may be the weakest aspect of the entire bill. (There was a recent article in the NY Times, I think, that said this looked like a real problem, and not just more right wing scaremongering.)
(I’m on Medicare and I’ve long favored moving Medicaid patients into Medicare, because that would make it harder for doctors to discriminate against the poor. I also favor reforming Medicare to make it more cost-effective, but I’m not holding my breath.)
Aimai
@TriassicSands: this is one reason the aca contained money for clinics. You’ve already got a clinic so maybe that won’t help but maybe there is money to expand services. We have a primary care GP shortage. Nothing can fix that except opening the pipeline in medical schools and raising rates in under served areas.
Botsplainer
The value of the propagandists to the hard right has been immense, insofar is it comes to appealing to the credulity of white conservatives.
If a white guy in a slick suit says it, then it must be true.
Randy P
Tech question for BJ. I’m thinking of reintroducing TV to my life. I actually already have a cable signal (Verizon Fios) as part of my internet package. We have a monitor which we use to watch streaming content from Netflix. Generally from an old Macbook which isn’t used for anything else.
So my question is do I actually need a TV? Surely in 2013 there exists some cheaper box which will decode the TV signal and play it to the monitor, right? What are my options?
I was just looking at the Apple TV and trying to figure what the heck that is all about. So it can go online, access Youtube, Hulu, iTunes and Netflix and play them on a monitor? Doesn’t a computer already do that? Is an Apple TV just a computer which has been crippled to only access certain websites?
HeartlandLiberal
Love Leonard Cohen. Do you readers know he was one of the celebrity investors screwed out of his life savings by Bernie Maddoff?
http://encoremag.com/new-york/articles/433/leonard-cohen-comes-down
I truly hate the white collar criminals like Maddoff who are destroying the economic integrity of the nation.
But as a result, another generation gets to witness Leonard Cohen live, who at a somewhat advanced age is just as truly compelling and great as ever.
cmorenc
@Mnemosyne:
That damn gubbmint better keep their hands off my Medicare!
Linda
People, why is this unduly optimistic? Are we so used to getting pounded in the butt for the last 30 odd years that we can’t accept a victory? We are slowly moving towards universal coverage. The usual suspects are fighting hard, but they are losing. We can’t enjoy victories if we don’t see or accept them–even if Obamacare isn’t perfect, and people are still ignorant about it.
Baud
Health Wars, Episode V
WereBear
@Baud: Awesome!
When is it ever not thus? We said in the sixties that life would be better if African Americans had full civil rights. We said in the seventies that life would be better if women were treated like people. We said in the eighties that life would be better if gay people were recognized as people.
Lots of idiots still don’t agree. But life is better with such advances, and not just for African Americans, women, and gay people.
So yes, Obamacare is going to make life better even for idiots. But don’t you know your true wingnuts? Don’t you know that a good thing done for them is met with scorn and whining about how much more they deserve?
Do you think any of them ever feel gratitude?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Randy P: Though I’m on the PC side of things, no Apple at all, I use Hauppauge for my TV. They have cards and USB TV tuners, I believe they’re Mac compatible. http://www.hauppauge.com
scav
@WereBear: Jefferson Davis was just on the point of implementing the popular aspects of Obamacare before that Lincoln and that time-traveling Uppity President confounded him. They’ll never acknowledge that they’re soaking in it.
gelfling545
@Yatsuno: “Do not speak so loudly. The aristocrats might hear you.”
OzarkHillbilly
@WereBear:
Which 80’s was that? In the St. Louis 80s, they were saying, “Life will be better after all the gay people die from AIDS.” Not kidding.
Today, after a long week of framing in excessive heat, I am rewarding myself with the annual pig-out that is the Festival of Nations in Tower Grove Park. Earlier in the week I worked on expanding my stomach to maximum proportions by eating as much as I could, as often as I could. Yesterday I stopped eating entirely to ensure that nothing could get in the way of my impending episode of pure gastronomic excess. By this time tonight, if all goes well, I should be completely miserable and asking myself once again, “Why do I hate me?”
khead
@Klare:
I had to explain to some of my WV friends just this week that the deficit is, in fact, decreasing. I was told that it is clear that “we see things differently”. I told them it was “basic math” and that they could “accept that fact…. or not”. Then I got a 47 percent lecture….
WereBear
@khead: Exactly. One thing the propaganda does really well is create an alternate universe for them to live in, where they are not confronted with how poorly their reality handling works.
They watch Fox, hang with the like-minded, and simply dismiss anything that would challenge them. Like, you.
jayackroyd
The HuffPo post is a pretty strong argument for the people who say 1) the PPACA was the best we coulda done and 2) it’s good enough.
GOP has helped enormously by setting the bar so low.
Poopyman
@PIGL: Took the words right out of my mouth. Except the Halifax part.
Bobby Thomson
@NotMax: Me too.
Bobby Thomson
Don’t be dissin’ the Shat.
Ben Cisco
@Baud: Win.
Villago Delenda Est
@WereBear:
They never felt any gratitude toward FDR for saving this country from bloody revolution that would have led to some sort of totalitarianism, be it of the right wing variety or left wing, so why should they show any gratitude now?
polyorchnid octopunch
@Shalimar: I first learned the Concrete Blonde version myself. That dude is a great guitarist; it’s a great line he comes up with for that song.
Chris
Called it. I said this would be the ultimate conservative response to Obamacare; accept, use and praise all of its individual provisions, but never connect them to that dreaded beast “Obamacare,” and continue to wail for decades to come about the horrors that this “Obamacare” has inflicted on you.
Same basic principle as “keep your government off my Medicare!”
Same basic principle as hating the federal government but loving the military, Medicare, Social Security and each of its individual departments, and praising state governments as so much more efficient while bashing public schools and the DMV.
They are absolutely incapable of connecting the dots between the things they see in their actual life, and the things in politics that they religiously get their information on from Fox News every night.
RP
Of course it’s unduly optimistic, because everything is terrible, and nothing ever improves, we’re all fucked, blah, blah, blah…
Comrade Mary
@scav: Damn it, beat me to it! The reference for you ridiculously young people.
Jay in Oregon
@Randy P:
The AppleTV is a conduit for getting internet content onto your TV, either streaming off of the internet (Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, etc.) or from your Mac or PC running iTunes, storing media from the iTunes store or downloaded from other sources. It runs iOS with a modified, TV-friendly UI. I thought about getting one for my parents but their ISP has a crazy bandwidth cap (like, 2GB—downloading large OS or application updates can put them over the cap!)
You can probably buy or assemble an inexpensive PC with a TV tuner or PVR card to decode TV signals and use something like XBMC to navigate; I use XBMC on a Mac Mini for my shows.
Chris
@WereBear:
Yeah. I really don’t know what to do about the alternate reality, either now or in the long term.
@Villago Delenda Est:
Well, the 1%ers never did, but for the heartland-based nuts (the people who are now the Angry White Conservatives) I think FDR was probably the last time they had a Democratic president they actually liked – he was the last one before civil rights. Back then, all the Obamacare-style reforms were understood as being for them (white people), so they had no problem with them. Some of the most radical movements of the Progressive and New Deal eras actually came out of that rural/white/SoCon demographic (William Jennings Bryan).
LAC
@RP: I know. It is almost like a fetish to see the glass half empty. And ironic, since some of us on the left were handing the wingnuts buckets to get as much as they could out of the glass.
bcinaz
The essence of our current politics. Because people this dumb vote, our politics are dumb and getting dumber. When Paul Ryan is a genius in the GOP and Rand Paul could run for president, yikes! word fail, yet nothing done on the right is surprising. Just stupid.
lojasmo
@Randy P:
I would suggest a smart blueray player. They come with youtube, hulu+ and netflix so you can stream a ton of content. Netflix is something like $10/month, and hulu+ is about the same. The only couple of downfalls is that sports are pretty much a no-go, and all TV content is available the day AFTER it airs on Hulu+
VincentN
@Randy P:
Roku is also a good device for watching tv. It’s small and light weight. You just hook it to a TV with a USB cable and you can watch stuff on Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, etc.
Tripod
@Randy P:
Pretty much. If you’re just looking for something that will easily plug into a HDMI capable monitor, Roku is a good low cost option with a ton of content options. Blu-ray and game consoles also do HDMI out and provide online content(as do many TV’s), but the services available tend to be more limited.
Jasmine Bleach
@Randy P:
Yeah, Apple TV just allows (fairly inexpensively) to get all your computer TV and video stuff to your actual television set.
Y’know, if you want to watch on a large screen, watch from your couch or e-z chair, maybe with groups of people–all hard to do with a laptop, for example.
Roku does pretty much the same thing. If you have a lot of Apple gear and content (e.g., if you use iTunes a lot for purchasing or renting movies), Apple TV might be better.
Steeplejack
@HeartlandLiberal:
Leonard Cohen was cheated by his manager, not Bernie Madoff. The article that you linked to says:
Further details at Wikipedia.
fuckwit
They want the government’s hands off their Medicare too.
But what a great strategy, hide the ACA as a state program, so the wingnuts will buy it.
We’re going to help you have a better life, despite your every attempt to stop us.
And the whole country becomes healthier, happier, more financially and physically secure… which dries up the pool of economic terror and fear that feeds right-wing ideology in the first place. If you have a happy life, there’s no need for hate. In a world of plenty, it’s fun and natural to share.
They point guns at us, and we kiss them and put flowers in the barrels. Love your enemy. If you do it aggressively, with an attitude, it works.
I have to agree with Krugthlu; this is fucking brilliant.
Ted & Hellen
Because, for the millionth time, the Democrats as national institution seemingly, intentionally, SUCK at messaging on just about everything. Republicans excel, of course, no matter how false their message.
You figure it out.
lojasmo
@Ted & Hellen:
You’ve got it backwards (of course). Republicans can sell their message because their consituents are fucking morons.
Democrats assume their natural constituents can read and figure shit out for themselves, and thus, do not need to be spoon fed pablum.
Mnemosyne
@Randy P:
You probably won’t see this, but the advantage of an Apple TV is that it lets you stream your existing video files directly to your television. So let’s say, that, theoretically, you had figured out how to rip movies from DVDs and that, theoretically, you had them all saved to a hard drive. You can use your Apple TV to stream those theoretical files to watch on your TV instead of watching on computer monitor. This also applies if you’ve purchased and downloaded movies or TV shows from Amazon, iTunes, etc.
This is, of course, all theoretical, because no one we know would ever be doing anything like that, especially if anyone from the FBI might theoretically be reading a public website.
maryQ
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow. Do good anyway. Do good anyway.
Nancy Irving
@scav:
“Obamacare? You’re soaking in it!” Love it.
Matt McIrvin
They’ll come to love these programs, and continue to rail against Obamacare. The moment it becomes possible, they’ll have Obamacare repealed, and all these nice things will go away.
And then they’ll believe that Obamacare took them away, and demand that Obamacare be repealed again, and ACORN defunded for good measure.
Klare
@WereBear: Not looking for gratitude from right wing nuts. Rather keep my distance. My gratitude goes to the civil rights activists who fought for their rights, making it a more humane country for all. And for this blog where I can talk to people other than conservatives.
Klare
@Ted & Hellen: Dems don’t like 3 word slogans? As a life philosophy? A broad coalition of progressives are hard to encapsulate? DK but it does seem like we could sloganize better. I liked ‘Medicare for All’. But then I like the post office.