01.16.14

Obamacare, finally (continued)

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, WhiteManistan at 3:30 pm by George Smith

Yesterday I went off to get a flu shot. It gave me the opportunity to see of my Medi-Cal health insurance was active, part of the Obamacare Medicaid expansion in California.

It was.

However, it did not cover the flu shot. Why? I went to the Ralphs supermarket to get the cheapest price at their pharmacy and was informed by their pharmacist that Medi-Cal requires recipients to be referred to a doctor’s office for the immunization.

I paid for it in cash. It was easier and relatively inexpensive. But I was still happy to be informed that I had the health insurance benefit.

This is a very big deal.

Why?

Because Obamacare and Covered California, the state run on-line exchange made it relatively easy.

It was not without glitch. From the start, Covered California was swamped by volume. This made it impossible to get someone on the phone if you had a question. And if you tried to get someone in on-line chat, also recommended by the site, that also proved problematical. Sheer numbers of people applying did it.

But I was able to enter all my information on the website and after analysis, Covered California determined I was eligible for Medi-Cal.

And behind the scenes wheels began to turn.

My materials were handed off to a state social services division in southern California, as well as one in Sacramento. At the beginning of January, I received my benefit card.

On Monday, I received notification that my policy had been active since January 1. It also informed that the card would follow.

As I have found, the order was reversed, the mail twisted up. But upon talking with another person, the experience was similar.

Although the enrollment and issuing of documents were not perfectly coordinated, it was accomplished, anyway. And it has convinced me there are people trying very had to make Obamacare in California work and work well.

It made me think again about the sheer malice of the Republican Party, a tribe that is attacking its own in red states, denying them health care millions of others will get across the border, all for mad hatred of the president, his national health care initiative and the poor.

You want to know the faces of evil? Just look at the GOP. Wishing ill of others and working to guarantee it are what they are.

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For an example, take my old Pennsyltucky home. Pennsylvania voted for Obama over Romney, yet due to gerrymandered districts and it’s Tea Party governor, Tom Corbett, the state has been held hostage by the Republican Party.

The Allentown Morning Call newspaper published a recent article on Corbett’s plan to give health insurance to the poor. What it boils down to is trying to get around the Medicaid expansion of Obamacare by making their own program, one that involves turning health insurance for the bottom into a workfare program.

The Call:

Audience members at hearing are lukewarm to plan, which would establish possibly illegal work requirements on some Medicaid recipients

For the seventh and final time, Bev Mackereth took to a stage to tell a largely skeptical audience why her boss’ plan to reform and expand Medicaid to more poor Pennsylvanians was a better option than the one available to states under the federal Affordable Care Act …

The federal government has rejected other states’ requests to institute work requirements for Medicaid recipients.

The Corbett administration does not appear willing to alter its stance on requiring some Medicaid recipients to work at least 20 hours a week or show proof they are looking through work by logging on to a state website multiple times a year …

Requiring Medicaid recipients to send 72 job applications in six months appears onerous and unrealistic, said Richard S. Edley, president and CEO of Rehabilitation & Community Providers Association, a Harrisburg umbrella roup of mental health and addiction counselors.

Mackereth’s department has heard mixed reviews about the work requirement, she told the audience. But she said if children can get up and head to class each morning, adults should be able to go to work each morning, too.

Note the standard GOP insinuation that “the poor” have shitty values and habits. Work is just like school. You just have to get up in the morning and go to it and not be a gold-bricking moocher.

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