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Editorial wrong on Obamacare

About 4 million Americans, including more than 875,000 Floridians, have signed up for an Affordable Care Act plan on healthcare.gov since open enrollment began on Nov. 1. With the Dec. 15 deadline to sign up for an ACA plan that begins coverage on New Year’s Day, the Obama administration reported a surge in enrollment this week. In 2016, more than 1.5 million Floridians were enrolled in an ACA plan.
About 4 million Americans, including more than 875,000 Floridians, have signed up for an Affordable Care Act plan on healthcare.gov since open enrollment began on Nov. 1. With the Dec. 15 deadline to sign up for an ACA plan that begins coverage on New Year’s Day, the Obama administration reported a surge in enrollment this week. In 2016, more than 1.5 million Floridians were enrolled in an ACA plan.

They’re failing us!

The New York Times should stop relying on memos from the Democratic Party and do some old-fashioned reporting. If they did, their editorial staff wouldn’t appear to be a bunch of uniformed, ideological buffoons. The NYT editorial that appeared in the Jan. 6 Bradenton Herald was alarming.

That editorial made a number of ill-informed statements about health care in America. The editorial said “opponents of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) insist it has failed.” Those Americans who must fend for themselves in this new world of healthcare know it has failed.

Opponents say “it has driven up costs.” We were promised $2,500 a year in premium savings. We never saw any savings. In fact premiums went up, and deductibles doubled for most Americans.

The editorial warns that if the Republicans have their way, “health insurance marketplaces will collapse in much of the country ...” How can they not know the marketplaces are already collapsing all over the country?

Repealing the ACA is, the editorial says, “dangerously irresponsible governance.” Really? Dangerously irresponsible governance is passing the ACA bill, which impacts 16 percent of our economy and 100 percent of the American people without reading it!

Healthcare is personal and affects every citizen. Americans understand that nobody has all of the answers to difficult healthcare questions. The American people are begging politicians to shed their party affiliation in favor of doing what is right for Americans. (See the results of the last election.) We are begging news sources to return to the days when they did real reporting, when they reported political wrongdoers regardless of party affiliation, when we trusted them.

Our politicians and our news organizations have failed us! It is time they begin rectifying these failings before it’s too late.

Robert J. Wolf

Bradenton/Battle Creek, Mich.

This story was originally published January 16, 2017 at 3:19 PM with the headline "Editorial wrong on Obamacare."

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