Let’s go back to a time when Obamacare was still being talked about positively and when President Obama was talking up his healthcare plan meant to combat the issue of our time: Coverage for those who do not have health insurance. Here he is in a joint session of Congress back in September of 2009:
Our collective failure to meet this challenge — year after year, decade after decade — has led us to the breaking point. Everyone understands the extraordinary hardships that are placed on the uninsured, who live every day just one accident or illness away from bankruptcy. These are not primarily people on welfare. These are middle-class Americans. Some can’t get insurance on the job. Others are self-employed, and can’t afford it, since buying insurance on your own costs you three times as much as the coverage you get from your employer. Many other Americans who are willing and able to pay are still denied insurance due to previous illnesses or conditions that insurance companies decide are too risky or too expensive to cover.
We are the only democracy — the only advanced democracy on Earth — the only wealthy nation — that allows such hardship for millions of its people. There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage. In just a two-year period, one in every three Americans goes without health care coverage at some point. And every day, 14,000 Americans lose their coverage. In other words, it can happen to anyone.
It seems pretty clear there and from all of the other speeches, ads, tweets, etc., that they number one goal of the Affordable Care Act was to provide health care coverage for those who did not have it. Right? Right.
So why did Gary Cohen, the deputy director of of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, who has been tasked with overseeing the exchanges and deal with those signing up, say the following:
CMS' Cohen, asked how many uninsured signing up for ACA: “That's not a data point we are really collecting in any sort of systematic way”
— Sam Baker (@sam_baker) March 6, 2014
Seriously? The entire premise of the freaking law was to get health insurance coverage for people who did not previously have health insurance coverage!
And now they’re saying they’re not even collecting that data? What in the world is with these people?