If I get invited to a July 4 BBQ (won’t happen) and I meet a person who has taken this advice, I will kick him or her right in the knee and flounce my outraged ass right home.
Tips for Talking to Your Family about the Affordable Care Act this Fourth of July
This Fourth of July, families across the nation will gather around hot dogs (or their favorite vegetarian alternative) and potato salad to spend some quality time together, watch fireworks and reflect on the holiday’s meaning. But as much as we love our families – and we do, seriously –we don’t always agree when it comes to current events, like last week’s Supreme Court decision upholding tax credits that help make insurance under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) more affordable for millions of people.
Misinformation about the ACA is everywhere, and there’s been a lot of money spent to spread that misinformation – as much as half a billion dollars in ads, according to one 2014 estimate. Not surprisingly, many Americans still don’t know how changes the law made to insurance and the health care system can help improve their lives.
You should be prepared when Aunt Janine says something like, “Obamacare hasn’t helped anyone!” So here are a few points to remember during this long holiday weekend:
And then there are scripts, I kid you not, actual press conference prep talking points for the following:
Situation: Uncle Ted claims Obamacare is a train wreck and has cost jobs.
Situation: Your brother has a great idea for a start-up, but he’s afraid to lose benefits when he leaves his current job.
Situation: Before reaching for another burger, your uncle mentions he’s been meaning to get a blood pressure screening he’s been putting off.
Situation: Your younger cousin is about to graduate from college. She’s found a great internship that could really help her career, but it doesn’t offer any benefits.
The government spent your money doing this. Serious money, by your standards or mine. Some lower-level manager decreed that it should be brought into being. Some writer wrote it*. It was staffed to death at a catered 4-hour editorial meeting. Some IT geek – well, more likely a bloated team of IT geeks – posted it. Everybody agreed it was just the best idea EVAR. Because after all Pajama Boy had led the way…
…and you can’t argue with success like that.
Serious money. All in the (please dear god misguided) belief that if they keep lying loud enough and often enough, they can somehow change the very fabric of reality and this pig will pull out of its nosedive and fly before it augers in. Or at least that they can convince enough people that it will long enough for them to get to retirement and that awesome pension before the torches and pitchforks arrive in the hands of the starving, emaciated, disease-ridden masses.
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*And let me say as someone who has written ad copy and advocacy articles (and articles that were really ad copy): If I had shown up at my manager’s office door with this appalling drivel he’d have booted me to the parking lot personally.
The affordable care act is a Marxist plan which cannot succeed in any good way. It was designed to provide “free stuff” to an ever growing pool of welfare Democrat voters at the expense of people in the middle class. It is a massive transfer of wealth that incidently will destroy the greatest health care in the world. Obama may not be the Manchurian candidate who intends to destroy the U.S. but you have to ask what he would do differently if he was.
If you were a Preferred Species and an AA hire, you would be PRAISED for such excellent work. Simply shows that you have no idea how the government – and that would be local, state, and federal – operates.
Pajama Boy meets Jayne Cobb and Hoban Washburn…oh now, that’s so freaking perfect, I still can’t stop chuckling!
Well played!
MM: I meant in any company I’ve worked for, doing honest or at least non-coercive work. I have made mistakes, but I never wrote copy for any government.
Where’s your sense of fun? Invite all your guests to wear buffalo plaid onesies, serve them hot chocolate and tofu dogs. Then play games: For instance, the person who can come up with the funniest answer to “What does ‘consent of the governed’ mean?” gets to change out of the onesie, drink something cold and eat a steak. And so forth.
Oh, there are lots of fun things you could do with the ACA; just use a little imagination. And maybe a blowtorch.
Sez right at the top of the page, “The ultimate answer to kings is not a bullet, but a belly laugh.”
I suspect overreach on the part of the ruling class. I doubt it will go over well.