Why There’s So Much Bad Information About Obamacare

Ezra Klein explains The fog of health reform: Why there’s so much bad information about Obamacare

Last month, [Barrette] received a letter from Blue Cross/Blue Shield informing her as of January 2014, she would lose her current plan. Barrette pays $54 a month. The new plan she’s being offered would run $591 a month, ten times more than what she currently pays. ‘What I have right now is what I’m happy with, and I just want to know why I can’t keep what I have. Why do I have to be forced into something else?’

Her current health insurance plan, she says, doesn’t cover ‘extended hospital stays; it’s not designed for that,’ says Barrette. Well, does it cover any hospitalization? ‘Outpatient only,’ responds Barrette. Nor does it cover ambulance service and some prenatal care. On the other hand, says Barrette, it does cover ‘most of my generic drugs that I need’ and there’s a $50 co-pay for doctors’ appointments..A middling hospital stay could well have bankrupted Barrette under her current insurance.

Then the New Republic's Jonathan Cohn called Barrette and walked through the subsidies she'd qualify for and the precise plans she might be able to get. Her response? 'I would jump at it,' she told Cohn. 'With my age, things can happen. I don’t want to have bills that could make me bankrupt. I don’t want to lose my house.' 'Maybe,' she said abut Obamacare, 'it’s a blessing in disguise.' In the space of about a week, in other words, Barrette went from Obamacare victim to Obamacare beneficiary."

I'll add, there's one part of the media that is exploiting these stories and not correcting them.