It is an uncomfortable position for many members of the creative classes to be in. “We are the Obama people,” said Camille Sweeney, a New York writer and member of the Authors Guild. Her insurance is being canceled, and she is dismayed that neither her pediatrician nor her general practitioner appears to be on the exchange plans. What to do has become a hot topic on Facebook and at dinner parties frequented by her fellow writers and artists.Isn't that cute? For it, but what is it? Dear, sweet, oh-so-creative Camille the Writer, seemingly flipping the old Groucho Marx lyric:
“I’m for it,” she said. “But what is the reality of it?”
December 13, 2013
"Many in New York’s professional and cultural elite have long supported President Obama’s health care plan."
"But now, to their surprise, thousands of writers, opera singers, music teachers, photographers, doctors, lawyers and others are learning that their health insurance plans are being canceled and they may have to pay more to get comparable coverage, if they can find it."
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They're *all* Obama people? Isn't there something wrong with an entire class of people lining behind one single politician?
Or is this like when all the heterosexuals assumed everyone else was heterosexual?
A system that worked well for 80% of the Americans has been destroyed by Obama and Pelosi and replaced with a disaster that only works for Friends of Obama and about 40% of the other Americans.
Spin that one you Tyranny lovers.
Embrace the Suckage!!
Hey, Camille! They passed "it" just so that you could find out what's in "it". Weren't you paying attention?
That's right. You're taxpayer no.#3455488. There's a headset over there. Start taking calls.
You get a half-hour lunch and your workbook better be done by the end of the shift.
"Embrace the Suckage!!
That's what "it" is. It's a suck maximizer.
“I’m for it,” she said. “But what is the reality of it?”
Should we organize a rescue mission to save the remaining few that aren't this far gone?
It is an uncomfortable position for many members of the creative classes to be in.
Good. And. Hard.
I hope they get their Obamacare good and hard. Too bad the effects aren't limited to Obama supporters.
I've heard it said that this was passed by Democrats in order to destroy America. Or maybe it's been said that it's a plot to give us universal health care.
I've also heard it said that President Obama is brilliant.
What more evidence does a person need to see that Obama isn't brilliant and there was no plan?
President Obama and the Democrats want power, that's why they ran campaigns and were elected. That doesn't have to mean they wanted power to actually do something with it. You can want to be elected prom king, it doesn't mean you're going to change the world.
President Obama is happy being the Prom King of the United States. That's it. He's achieved what he's wanted. Fame. Fortune. Applause.
The rest is just bull in the china shop stuff. He isn't someone's puppet. He doesn't have a grand plan to destroy the United States. There is nothing sinister going on. He's just a petulant child/man who now gets to have his way until he doesn't get to have his way anymore.
He doesn't understand economics. He doesn't understand how to run anything. All he understands is how to be popular, and he's really good at that.
Obamacare is our best example of just how inept he is. Let's hope we can recover from this bull in our china shop.
Oh, and by the way, Dear Leader sent back all plans for the diversity mural, the equality libretto, and the lemon duck sauce risotto for the 4th of July parade.
Try again next year.
But at least these NYC "cultural elite" no longer have to work! Remember what helpful and caring Democrat Speaker Pelosi said: "If you want to be creative, and be a musician, you know, whatever, you can leave your work,
focus on your talent, your skill, your passion, your aspiration 'cause you will have health care."
Neither affordable nor available. There is a correlation between medical insurance and medical care... Perhaps the next reform will address the issue on its merits. Too often, advocacy or activism precedes a rational perspective.
Artistes and the creative class should absolutely not think of this as getting publicly screwed by millions of politically connected people.
Instead, they should think of it as an enormous performance art installation that they are curating every time they fail to get the exchange to work, cut an enormous check for an inferior ACA plan, or have to go to a doctor that they didn't choose.
It's a ground breakingly transgressive piece, really, and the bourgeoisie are always getting their panties in a wad over this sort of artwork. Perhaps what is needed to make this palatable and to make the message clearer to the critics is some symbolic referent to the old, inadequate health care system in this country... perhaps some benefits statements showing the amounts paid to their beloved former doctors by their old insurance plans, with the statements laminated and displayed in clear buckets of urine... This new system is but the art of the human body, art that will be written upon the body in very large scale, and the President and I cannot help it if these Phillistines are unable to understand the significance of it, or to discern the message in it.
Say what you will about millions losing coverage or having to pay much more to keep their current coverage, this is one of the most impressive pieces of nihilistic Art Moderne that we will ever see. It will someday be ranked alongside things like the First Five Year Agricultural Plan of the People as a great work.
Every con man knows how to use the mark's little bit of knowledge as a vital component of the con.
Of course, all these "brilliant" NYC artsy-fartsy types knew nothing about the medical insurance business or about the business of medicine in general. But they knew well that Sarah Palin & her snake-handling Christian troglodytes were agin' it, so they had to be for it. Now they are finding out whose income is getting redistributed to pay all those subsidies to the un-insured.
“I’m for it,” she said. “But what is the reality of it?”
That pretty much sums up the blind followers of Obama, like Hollywood, and democrats in general, does it not?
Reminds me of Bridget Jones being asked at a dinner what her political thoughts were. "Well, I am labor, of course!" She replied. A diner asked her why? "Because they are for the people." Got it.
Government programs are for the little people. There must be some mistake.
Government programs are for the little people. There must be some mistake.
I guess I should have some sympathy. The New York Times readers don't know what hit them. As a Wall Street Journal reader, I've known "you can keep your plan" was a lie since the summer of 2010.
Stupid twits. They thought Obamacare was just for the little people.
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh at this article.
If you had just read the comments, you would see that it is all the republican's fault.
Stupid twits. They thought Obamacare was just for the little people.
She shouldn't complain. Without Obamacare's welfare reform, metropolitan areas like New York City would have a higher mortality rate. Think of it as protection money; or perhaps a progressive measure to delay the Detroit effect. Either way, Obamacare is a boon for highly financed and subsidized districts.
The comments are precious - it's all the Republican's fault - don't you know. But at least the NYT Commentariat has dropped the notion that the cancelled plans were all substandard rip-offs. It wouldn't do to accuse the cultural elite of buying plans like that.
My sister lives in a liberal haven in NW Wisconsn...Lake Pepin area. The last I heard about Obamqacare from her or her firends was the snarky comments saying the GOP could shut down the government, but not the ACA exchanges. Then crickets. When Obamacare bombed, you would think that it didn't exist at all...not a peep.
Many of these folks are self employed. Guess what, panic over cancelled policies, price jumps, and access to doctors and hospitals. They blame it all on the GOP, after all it was compromise that led to Obamacare as we know it....otherwise it would be an awesome SINGLE PAYER plan that they really want!
The fact that there is not an ounce of truth in their position matters not. This country is fucked.
"We're Obama people, as long as other people pay."
FU, lefty hypocrites.
Consider that you may be too stupid to vote.
And this is exactly why George Will was correct to laugh at the public education of President Obama.
Education for the Self-Annointed.
traditional guy,
I hate to tell you this, but all Americans, other than the Obama crowd, will have their health insurance destroyed. But more important, health care in the US is not tied into health insurance, especially with the exchange plans. Most of my patients will not be able to afford health care with what is being offered. But all you are seeing so far is just the tip of the iceberg. More is coming and you will not like it.
Now we know that when we look up "low information voter" in the dictionary we have a name.
Now we know that when we look up "low information voter" in the dictionary we have a name.
Just how foolish are these people?
They were for "it" before they understood what "it" is.
Now that they understand that "it" is quite bad for them, because it limits their choices as independent elite humans, they can't change their view because they are Obama People. Their identities are so entwined with their political outlook that they can not grasp that they might have been wrong. And they really can't grasp that it might be even worse for all the non-elites across the nation, many of whom they disdain for their supposed ignorance and lack of enlightenment.
Here's a simple thought. If you love freedom, if you truly aspire to a diverse, free and dynamic culture, increase in government power is not your friend. Not in health care. Not in anything.
You have become the right wing, which once was (or at least was viewed as) the force that will use government to control your lives.
Well, this just goes to prove that certain "creative" elite people couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the directions were written on the heel. Wait until they find out what their options if they get sick are.
Tough luck accessing the truly extraordinary medical institutions of NYC.
What else could they possibly have expected?
Before they were getting their health insurance by going to the drive-through at the insurance restaurant, and there was competition for the business, because there were plenty of competitors, and there could be no cabal among the competitors because customers could simply opt out entirely.
Now they are getting their insurance coverage by standing in line at the insurance DMV. That's a giant bureaucracy that controls access to the plans, and the companies who participate compete on the basis of pleasing the bureaucracy and price - customer dissatisfaction is no disqualification. Since the customers can't opt out, their insurance companies' profits are dependent on policies place on the DMV menu, not on whether the hapless consumer can actually access health providers.
It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at these knee-jerk Obama supporters.
Elections have consequences, don'cha know?
"They're *all* Obama people? Isn't there something wrong with an entire class of people lining behind one single politician?"
This has been going on for generations.
Pauline Kael, 1972:
"I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them."
Clear example of "being for it before being against it".
"Isn't there something wrong with an entire class of people lining behind one single politician?"
In the 2004 Presidential election, Kerry won New York City by an overwhelming margin, while the vote in the Midwest was much closer (e.g. Wisconsin was essentially 50/50). An article in the NYT the day after the election sought to explain this. They asked New Yorkers why they thought the results were what they were. One woman explained it this way, "In New York we all think for ourselves, while in the Midwest, people just vote for whom their friends tell them to vote for."
How could she not be for it when all her creative, independent-thinking friends are also for it?
Lena Dunham said: ?????
Lena Dunham said: ?????
> the creative classes
These folks think that they're creative, but they're not. Their distinguishing feature is that they don't manipulate atoms for a living. Instead, they manipulate symbols.
A few are creative (just as some folks who manipulate atoms are creative), but most do rote stuff and the remainder are hacks.
From the NYT comments:
"Simple solution: Cut out the middleman, Single Payer, aka Medicare for All!"
Someone doesn't understand what a middleman is.
Government regulation, here in NY, is why health insurance premiums are as high as they are, because health insurance has to cover things many people woild not buy coverage for. Like in patient treatment for drug or alcohol abuse. As far as health care goes- so far the government hasn't succeeded in destroying it. My wife will be getting her second artifical knee this month- 3 weeks after telling the doctor she's ready. That doesn't happen in England or Canada, where you're put on waiting lists for what is now in the United States routine procedures. Expensive routine- but routine.
In Nova Scotia 5 of 10 petients wait less then 242 days. http://waittimes.novascotia.ca/procedure/knee-replacement Manitoba- 12-23 weeks http://www.gov.mb.ca/health/waittime/surgical/knee.html
Britain isn't as transparent- but months-years appears to be common- if you can get on the waiting list. Other countries with government run healthcare apparently don't publish statistics. But in Germany- international patients- that is cash paying- can get one immediately without going on a waiting list.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with the US healthcare system. Obamacare can't fix a system that isn't broken- it can only break it. As for healthcare insurance- you can argue that reform was needed. But Obamacare isn't reform either. It broke the existing system and replaced it with- well- something that isn't working. And it isn't done with the breaking yet. Next up- emploer health plans.
I've said this many times -- John Roberts did us a favor when he allowed the bulk of Obamacare to stand. He said that the SCOTUS should not protect the American from bad policy choices. If the SCOTUS struck down the law, it was all over for the GOP in the next elections. But he effectively neutered the law and allowed it to stand. Finally, the 53% of voters who thought it was a good idea to reelect this nimrod can feel the consequences of their decision. If they don't, they the rest of us will continue to feel the consequences of their stupidity. Even though it's painful, he did us all a great favor.
Barack Obama said that he sought out Marxist professors in college, and his family had a close friend named Frank Marshall Davis. Davis was a terrible poet and a member of the CPUSA. Obama refers to him as a kind of godfather of his thought in his books. We have all met Barack Obama, and some believe that his communism is a good thing.
My critique of communism came originally from the anarchists. I loved all of the anarchists. This is Max Stirner: "Communism rightly revolts against the pressures I experience from individual proprietors; but still more horrible is the might that it puts in the hands of the collectivity." (The Ego and Its Own, p. 257.)
"The Obama People"
"Attack of the Obama People"
"Invasion of the Obama People"
"Obama People of the Stratosphere"
"Obama Cat Women of the Moon"
"The Obama People Walk Among Us"
"Beginning of the End of the Obama People"
"The Obama People Who Could Cheat Death"
"Abbott and Costello Meet the Obama People"
"The Incredible Shrinking Obama People"
and my favorite
"Invasion of the Health Insurance Policy Snatchers"
I'd been afraid a lot of times in my life, but I didn't know the real meaning of fear until, until I voted for Obama. A moment's lever pulling and the nation I loved was an inhuman enemy built on my destruction. That vote was death to my soul and to every other Democrat and all the rest. Their bodies were now hosts to an alien form of health insurance, a cosmic form which to survive must take over every health insurance policy, so I ran, I ran, I ran as little Jimmy Grimaldi had run the other day. My only hope was to call into the Rush Limbaugh Show to warn the others of what was happening!!! Listen to me!!! You're in danger!!! There isn't a human being left in Washington, D.C.!!! Look, you fools! You're in danger!!! They're here! You're next....
Ann, I found it. Your article has to be paired with this earlier explication of the benefits of ACA-cancelled policiesNYT editorial board.
If liberals think single-payer would not have had problems they are just ignoring the problems vets have. And they probably are ignoring vets.
The real thing to take away from that article:
But while those policies, by and large, had been canceled because they did not meet the law’s requirements for minimum coverage, many of the New York policies being canceled meet and often exceed the standards, brokers say. The rationale for disqualifying those policies, said Larry Levitt, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation, was to prevent associations from selling insurance to healthy members who are needed to keep the new health exchanges financially viable.
Siphoning those people, Mr. Levitt said, would leave the pool of health exchange customers “smaller and disproportionately sicker,” and would drive up rates.
Even if your insurance is totally up to code, as it were, you can't keep it. Because we really, really need you to pay more.
I want to add that Mr. Levitt talks of "siphoning" people, as though some giant sucking machine was taking them out of the PPACA. Whereas what is actually happening is that the PPACA is siphoning out of the insurance they have already got.
Michelle Dulak Thomson @ 05:07PM:
+1, that's exactly right
St. George,
You forgot "Mars Needs Obama People."
Now more than ever.
"Barack Obama said that he sought out Marxist professors in college, and his family had a close friend named Frank Marshall Davis. Davis was a terrible poet and a member of the CPUSA. Obama refers to him as a kind of godfather of his thought in his books."
Kirby, I've got some news for you. Frank Marshall Davis was indeed a friend of the family but I don't think "godfather" quite describes the relationship. Although you're close. Do a little research.
“I’m for it,” she said. “But what is the reality of it?”
Shouldn't an intelligent person understand what the reality is prior to taking a stand for or against? Almost makes one question the assumption that Camille Sweeney is intelligent, doesn't it?
On the other hand, Democrat Congresspersons agreed to vote "aye" on the bill in the first place, even though their leader admitted that no one knew what was in it so perhaps Steve Jobs' famous "reality distortion field" is part and parcel of 21st century liberalism.
“We are the Obama people,” said Camille Sweeney, a New York writer and member of the Authors Guild. Her insurance is being canceled, and she is dismayed that neither her pediatrician nor her general practitioner appears to be on the exchange plans.
Hmmmm. Simple, really. She just needs to find a GP and a pediatrician who are Obama people. And now that she helped elect de Blasio, she might want to find a good trauma surgeon while she's at it.
Good and Hard!
When I read of people like this all the fraud and horror of Obamacare is worth it. I'm a contented guy.
When I read of people like this all the fraud and horror of Obamacare is worth it. I'm a contented guy.
If you like your health insurance, doctors, and medicines, you can keep them. *
*As long as you have never, ever watched a program on a Fox network. Not even in the airport. That includes Simpsons and Malcolm in the Middle.
They should have read the fine print!
In engineering we know:
"In theory, there is no difference between Theory and Practice. But, in practice, there is."
This is why I extend C P Snow's thinking as follows: An American should not be allowed to vote unless they can give a coherent description of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, and also an explication of the main themes of at least one Shakespeare play.
"He doesn't understand economics. He doesn't understand how to run anything. All he understands is how to be popular, and he's really good at that."
The bill was written by a bunch of young lawyers who know no more about health care then they do about economics.
This thing was a cargo cult operation from the beginning. BY summer, I expect Democrats to be desperately looking for an out and that will probably be to make Obamacare optional. That will kill it without repealing it and all the humiliation that would involved.
I will never forget the sight of Nancy Pelosi carrying her giant gavel in triumph while taunting middle class people whose lives she had just destroyed. When she and her fellow radicals didn't provoke any untoward response they made up lies and spread them far and wide that the people had shouted racist epithets at her and her colleagues. I will never forget how Nancy Pelosi, Barak Obama and all the Democrat leaders taunted their fellow Americans and called them racists and Teabaggers because they peacefully opposed their own destruction. Frankly, at this point I don't care what happens to Obama care.
If the Democrats had cultivated bipartisanship and good will, Obamacare could have been much better and could have succeeded. Now that the well is poisoned we are in for a hard ride in this country.
The problem with these people is they supported the "concept" of Obamacare as presented by the President but didn't bother to worry about any of the details beyond the sound bites.
Now it sounds like they're trying to get educated. Several years and several billion dollars too late.
The reality is that this is a law that was designed and implemented by people who do not understand the complexity inherent in large systems, and certainly didn't respect the possibility that a massive overhaul run on a political schedule instead of reality had the possibility of catastrophic failure. The whole thing right now is a haphazard juggling act to keep the system from collapse by any means.
And it's not like there's a quick fix coming down the road either. As our politicians are likely going to realize, they can destroy a complex system like healthcare relatively easily, but they are not going to find it easy to rebuild it, such a thing is beyond their competence.
Just finished reading the new Bill Bryson book "1927." Apparently prohibition was somewhat like Obamacare.
The Amendment got passed without anyone really comprehending its implications. People were actually surprised when, aha, booze, wine, and beer were made illegal.
Most bizarrely, the federal government started putting deadly poisons like strychnine into alcohol. Why? To intentionally poison anyone wicked enough to drink demon rum. They would get what they deserved!
It took 13 years for Prohibition to be overturned. All the while people drank like fish.
By this standard, Obamacare will linger on for years, and its staunch proponents will gloat over the miseries of the greedy clingers who must suffer without health insurance.
Proof that New York's professional and cultural elite are the stupidest elite the world has seen in a long time.
Not just stupid. Morally stunted.
Are the Obamacare apologists still trying to convince us that only the small fraction of the population who are in the individual market will be affected, or have they moved on to a different talking point by now? The people in this article aren't (or weren't) in the individual market.
What's the fuss?
Pre-Obamacare, creative class have to report enough incomes to qualify to buy private insurance. Obamacare enables them to report less incomes to qualify for Earned Income Credits, and "free" Obamacare. Double wins for their creative incomes reporting.
First they came for the secured debt-holders in auto manufacturer bankruptcies, but did not speak out because I was not a secured debt-holder in an auto manufacturer bankruptcy.
How many young people will try to get on their parents heath insurance only to find out their parents can't afford it?
And how many orphans, with NO PARENTS, will find out they have to pay their own, while trying to pay for collage?
And how many lower middle class people, struggling to make ends meet, will be socked with thousands of unexpected dollars of premium bills they can't afford.
Do not be shocked when after Christmas, they find this years sales one of the lowest ever all cause people know they won't be able to afford spending money.
And that translates in to jobs, that is mass layoffs of people. So how can the newly laid off people afford Obamacare?
The young will do the math and just pay the fine, just as all those lower middle class people. And Obamacare will bankrupt itself. Meanwhile unemployment will go up again.
So "intelligent" yet so DUMB!
Coral of the Sea http://youtu.be/FIfbghHdG1s --- 1216@kathy-stevens.de Dear Christy Turlington, Thank You for being our woman's health postergirl. Love, Susanné
The reality is that:
Your insurance was cancelled.
If you can find another insurance policy, it probably will be more expensive.
And have higher deductibles.
And cover numerous contingencies that don't apply to you.
And you probably won't be able to continue to see at least some of the doctors you know and trust, unless you pay for it 100% yourself.
And you were in favor of this and voted (in effect) for it.
That's the reality.
What Zero told you was a lie, because he is a lying liar and a con man. You are the mark.
That's the reality.
The fact that brings their general idiocy home: Obamacre will not decrease the total number of insured. So they pay more, receive less, and they can't even point to "the uninsured" as benefitting from their loss.
There's a pretty clear line between people who don't understand economics and support for leftism.
St. George,
Most bizarrely, the federal government started putting deadly poisons like strychnine into alcohol. Why? To intentionally poison anyone wicked enough to drink demon rum. They would get what they deserved!
Well, they still do that today. Not strychnine, I think, but certainly methanol. "Denatured alcohol" has many industrial uses; "denaturing" is supposed to render it undrinkable, because, by alcoholic-beverage standards, it's dirt cheap.
I think modern "denaturing" focuses less on making it actually poisonous than on making it really, really unappetizing -- throwing in extremely bitter flavors, or ipecacuanha, or nasty-looking dyes, so you won't accidentally confuse it with premium vodka or something.
De-denaturing alcohol involves putting gasoline in it.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
I hope you get cancer and die because your new "Exchange" doctor wasn't as good as the one you had, and doesn't know you as well, and is far more rushed because of the lower payment scales, and so misses the signs of cancer until it's too late.
Enjoy your ObamaCare, you worthless leftist weasels.
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