'Obamacare' To The Rescue

A woman who believed the GOP Obamacare negative propaganda was so upset with President Obama for having "let down the struggling middle class" that she switched her registration from Democrat to Independent and altered her Obama bumpers sticker to read "Got Nope" is apologizing to the President. She says that while she was angered by Obama's plan, she's suddenly come to appreciate it, now that she's benefitting from it personally.

Two years ago, Spike Dolomite Ward and her husband had to choose between paying their mortgage or keeping their health insurance. They kept the house, and now at 49 Ward has been diagnosed with breast cancer. She didn't know how she'd afford months of expensive treatment, until he discovered the Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan, which is part of Obama's healthcare plan. Now she's publicly "outed" herself in the hopes that she can teach ObamaCare opponents that the uninsured aren't just lazy freeloaders. She writes:

LA Times

I want to apologize to President Obama. But first, some background.

I found out three weeks ago I have cancer. I'm 49 years old, have been married for almost 20 years and have two kids. My husband has his own small computer business, and I run a small nonprofit in the San Fernando Valley. I am also an artist. Money is tight, and we don't spend it frivolously. We're just ordinary, middle-class people, making an honest living, raising great kids and participating in our community, the kids' schools and church.

We're good people, and we work hard. But we haven't been able to afford health insurance for more than two years. And now I have third-stage breast cancer and am facing months of expensive treatment.

ObamaCare’s Hidden Time Bomb That Benefits Every Insured American

PoliticusUSA

There are times that the title of legislation does not adequately describe the nature and purpose of a law that leads to confusion and uncertainty in the population. In March 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law and over this past weekend, one specific provision of the law went into effect and it epitomizes the meaning of the law irrespective of all the other benefits to Americans. All at once, the law’s detractors on the professional left and wary Americans will see immediate benefits that will change the nature of health care insurance for the better and it has the potential to push health care in America toward a single-payer, universal care system.

The provision that seemed to be buried in the extensive law, the medical loss ratio, requires health insurance companies to spend 80-85% of consumer’s premiums on real medical care and not overhead, profits, or marketing expenses. If insurers fail to meet the requirement, they are bound by the law to send rebate checks to consumers “representing the amount in which they underspend on actual medical care.” Now, before any conservative or naysayer claims the provision is not workable or true, California school teachers began receiving their rebate checks on Friday for premiums they paid that were not used for medical care. According to a report in Forbes, “This is the true ‘bomb’ contained in Obamacare and the one item that will have more impact on the future of how medical care is paid for in this country than anything we’ve seen in quite some time.”

Nomination Race Hurting GOP, But Not Helping Obama

Pew Research Center: As the fight for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination unfolds, more Americans say their impression of the GOP field is worsening than improving. Those views, however, have not resulted in a better view of President Barack Obama at this point.

By a margin of two-to-one, more say that their impression of the GOP field is getting worse (31%) than getting better (14%). Half (50%) say their impression remains the same as they learn more about the Republican candidates.

About one-in-five (19%) say their impression of Obama has improved as they learn more about the Republicans. About as many (21%) say that the GOP campaign is worsening their impression of the president. Most (58%) say the Republicans have had no effect on their feelings about Obama.

The negative margin in evaluations of the GOP field rises to three-to-one (29% worse vs. 10% better) among independents, according to the latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and The Washington Post, conducted Dec. 1-4 among 1,008 adults. Still, more than half (55%) say their impression is unchanged.

Only Republicans are more likely to say their impression of the field is improving (30%) rather than getting worse (8%).

Nearly six-in-ten (58%) say their take hasn’t changed. Last month, about half of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (48%) said they saw the field as excellent or good; about as many (46%) said they saw the candidates as a group as only fair or poor. (See “Obama Job Approval Improves, GOP Contest Remains Fluid.”)

Among independents, 14% say the GOP campaign has improved their impression of Obama while 20% say it has made them more critical of the president. Nearly two-thirds (64%) say their opinion remains the same.

More than a third of Democrats (36%) say the GOP campaign has made them feel better about Obama, while 6% say it has made them feel worse. Most (56%) say their impression of the president has not been changed as they learn more about the Republican candidates.

From the Pew Research Center.