Canceled Policies and Name Calling

The political rhetoric around the Affordable Care Act remains unabated and disingenuous. Republicans and the Tea Party are feigning surprise that Obama exaggerated when he said that nobody would have their current policy cancelled. Actually, they are calling him a liar. Name calling seems to be the standard in Washington. Especially among the opponents of the Obama Administration.

Those who actually followed the debate knew well before this current storm that certain policies would not qualify. Here's the issue according to FactCheck.Org

The issue now getting attention is that the new law sets minimum standards for health insurance coverage, requiring, for example, that all health plans carry mental health benefits, prescription drug coverage, vaccinations, dental and vision care for children, maternity care for women, and more. Coverage also must be available to all regardless of preexisting medical conditions. In effect, this outlaws many existing “bare bones” plans that were cheap, but didn't cover all (or any) of the required benefits and were available to mainly healthy persons. Those plans are now outlawed, and not all who had them welcome better insurance at greater cost.

Over 30 million people need affordable health care. Many millions more need coverage that will actually take care of their needs. This isn't about freeloaders (more name calling). This about the working poor, children and people with disabilities.

The Affordable Care Act requires that insurance companies actually cover your health care needs. The cheap product insurance companies offered for individuals cost a lot and didn't cover much of anything.  Our politicians are supposed to know this stuff. Why didn't they bring this discrepancy up in 2010? Why wasn't this more widely reported by the media in 2010? I guess bringing it up now is an opportunity to grandstand and to call people names. It would have been much more beneficial to actually do something to make people aware of the issue three years ago and, to look for a way to fix the issue.