Lori Gottlieb, a writer at The Atlantic found out that she can’t keep her plan even though she liked it, and the new one will cost $5400 more.
Writing in The NY Times, she explained that her friends insisted her sacrifice was small compared to easing the suffering of millions helped by Obamacare, Daring to Complain About Obamacare:
THE Anthem Blue Cross representative who answered my call told me that there was a silver lining in the cancellation of my individual P.P.O. policy and the $5,400 annual increase that I would have to pay for the Affordable Care Act-compliant option: now if I have Stage 4 cancer or need a sex-change operation, I’d be covered regardless of pre-existing conditions. Never mind that the new provider network would eliminate coverage for my and my son’s long-term doctors and hospitals.The Anthem rep cheerily explained that despite the company’s — I paraphrase — draconian rates and limited network, my benefits, which also include maternity coverage (handy for a 46-year-old), would “be actually much richer.”
I, of course, would be actually much poorer. And it was this aspect of the bum deal that, to my surprise, turned out to be a very unpopular thing to gripe about.
“Obamacare or Kafkacare?” I posted on Facebook as soon as I hung up with Anthem. I vented about the call and wrote that the president should be protecting the middle class, not making our lives substantially harder. For extra sympathy, I may have thrown in the fact that I’m a single mom. (O.K., I did.)
Then I sat back and waited for the love to pour in. Or at least the “like.” Lots of likes. After all, I have 1,037 Facebook friends. Surely, they’d commiserate.
Except that they didn’t.
Of course they didn’t commiserate. Read her account of the “smug” reactions, the insistence that her $5400 was a small price to pay for covering others, and basically what a bad human she was for daring to complain.
That wasn’t just the reaction of her liberal Facebook friends. Paul Waldman at the liberal The American Prospect called it “Maybe the most ridiculous Obamacare “victim” story yet”:
How terribly smug [of her friends], to think that the fate of millions of poor people who will now get insurance is as important as the suffering of this one person who might have to pay more for comprehensive coverage, and also happens to have access to The New York Times where she can air her grievances! If only it weren’t so “trendy to cheer for the underdog.”
Would it be too smug to suggest that her friends foot the bill for her? After all, she’s a single mom! Why do liberals hate single moms?
How’s this for even more outrageous smugness.
The American Prospect is “non-profit.” That’s right, while asking this lady to pay more for her health care for the sake of others, The American Prospect assures donors that their donations are tax deductible. So that The American Prospect may thrive, there is less tax money to help the “millions of poor people” get insurance. That’s not fair!
Tax The American Prospect to help this lady. It’s the right — and smug — thing to do.
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