World News Korner

“I just instantly burst into tears.” Woman describes her emotions when she discovered that through the ACA she would only have to pay $3.19 a month.

Courtesy of NBC News:

It took two months, weekly visits to the jammed-up federal website and a half-dozen phone calls, but JoAnn Smith finally got health insurance Monday. It’ll only cost her $3.19 a month to cover herself and her husband.

“I just instantly burst into tears,” she says.

Smith started working on getting insurance even before the federal website, HealthCare.gov, opened Oct. 1, pre-registering to get a headstart on the process. But, like millions of other Americans who tried, she was stymied by the website’s glitches.

She told NBC News her story last week, and as of Friday, a week after the federal website was supposed to have been much improved, Smith still could not get all the way through the process.

Smith, a 60-year-old medical transcriptionist in Clearwater, Fla., must use the federal website to buy health insurance because Florida opted not to run its own. She’s been without health insurance for years and had been looking forward to getting subsidized coverage for herself and her husband Eric, 56, who’s unemployed.

The 2010 Affordable Care Act aims to get health insurance to the 16 percent of Americans who don’t have any by helping some buy health insurance on new websites, and by widening Medicaid benefits to others. People have until Dec. 23 to sign up for health insurance that starts on the first possible day, Jan. 1. They have until March 31 to sign up and avoid paying a tax.

Smith’s employer doesn’t provide health insurance. “They took a vote at the company and people wanted more money in their pockets,” she says. And business has been thin. “I have had four paycuts in one year,” says Smith, who estimates she will earn $23,000 this year for her 40-hour a week job.

This makes her eligible for a hefty federal subsidy.

The current Right Wing strategy is to use horror stories about higher premiums and cancelled policies to attack Obamacare. That is why it is very important for those of us who are supporters, to promote positive anecdotes, and stories of real success for those signing up though the website and exchange.

I have to say that a few more stories like this and the Right Wing is going to have NOTHING at their disposal to convince the American people that Obamacare is a bad thing.

And as a matter of fact the President and the ACA's approval ratings are already returning to the pre-rollout levels.

Let's face it the Right Wing is fighting a losing battle here, the only question is how many bodies will they pile up before finally admitting defeat?

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