3 Comments

  1. LB on May 26, 2010 at 2:17 pm

    While I genuinely appreciate the efforts of organizations such as The Women’s Economic Agenda Project in informing the public about the individual mandate, perhaps updating the literature would be helpful. I think people are far more likely to disregard the information presented if it seems to be outdated. For instance, the handout states: “Presidential hopefuls like Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards and our own California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger all use some form of an individual mandate in their health reform proposals.”

    The propaganda machine has been very effective in misinforming us regarding the President’s reform bill, with many believing all of their health care worries will soon be over. A significant percentage of the public thinks in generalities, not specifics, and in spite of the insurance mandate, many are under the mistaken impression that this bill provides affordable, available, and comprehensive coverage for everyone. Without specific reference being made to the health care legislation that was actually passed, the reader may quickly (and wrongly) assume the handout refers to previous reform proposals and thus dismiss the information as being irrelevant.

    Thank you for all the good work you do; I hope you’ll consider what I’ve said in the spirit in which it was intended.



  2. MirIam on May 26, 2010 at 5:37 pm

    The individual mandate, which Obama explicitly rejected when he was campaigning combined with this bill’s inherent discrimination based on age and gender will force me to abandon the health insurance I’ve had for years.
    This law is nothing less than cruel to the self employed unemployed and those whose employers don’t provide coverage.



  3. Denise Black on June 8, 2010 at 3:36 pm

    I have been uninsured since I had to leave work for cancer treatment. My cobra benefits ran out years ago. I am not employable at age 57 with severe disabilitys. I was unable to get disability coverage because I did not know that I needed to get a lawyer. I kept filling out the forms that were always returned to me because my MRI’s were out of date by the time they got to looking at my applications. Now, since I have been out of work for over 7 years I no longer qualify for disabilty. During those 7 years I was fighting cancer and taking care of my dying mother who died with COPD at age 79 and later my father who needed full time care due to Alzheimer’s disease. Thank God they had social security and Medicare. But, I’m too young to qualify for those benefits which I hear Obama is now trying to dismantle in the name of bipartisanship. If you can’t trust the Democrats with programs already in place and seeing how Obama dismissed the single payer advocates and ultimately threw out his “public option” (which was nothing but smoke and mirrors to begin with) what hope do we have of getting any real change? Unless we get rid of special interest money in politics we have no chance for real reform. I’m more fortunate than most of my friends because I made a lot of money and have invested it in annuitys that allow me to survive, not grandly but well enough. I know I’m lucky to have survived cancer but it was only luck. Most are not that lucky. I don’t know what will happen to me if it returns or I get any other medical problem. I know I am hardly alone with that fear. Even my friends with health insurance say they can’t afford the co payments and out of pocket expenses. What I don’t understand is why more people are not furious that we are one of the few nations with great wealth that spend it on non stop wars but have for profit healthcare. Something is fundamentally wrong with this. It’s class warfare and we, the people are losing that war to huge corporations. They are aided and abetted by our politicians who depend on their political $ to pay for their campaigns. While I never thought Obama was a progressive..like many people I could never have voted for McCain/Palin. Obama made many promises but even before he was elected he bailed on FISA. I knew we were in trouble when he picked his cabinet. Let’s face it, Rahm Emanuel is a back room wheeler dealer on interested in getting corporate money. So far the Democrats are acting like old time Republicans and the Republicans are totally off the rails. It’s no longer viable to vote on the “lesser than two evils” as we have for the past 30 years. Since Ronald Reagan’s “New morning in America” campaign things the privatization of everything including our prison system has bankrupted the people. We don’t have to fear socialism as the right wing nuts fear….we should fear the corporate fascism that is now the status quo. I do hope people wake up before they find themselves sick with a disease, without healthcare and discover that they are unable to work even if there were enough jobs to go around. Corporations sent our jobs overseas for cheap labor. Before that they sent jobs from the Northeast to the South in order to get cheaper labor. We spent 1 TRILLON dollars (that is a huge amount of money, folks) on a war where I don’t even know what a win constitutes. That trillion would have paid for every citizen to have universal healthcare. We were never given that option. Something stinks.