It appears the San Jose Mercury didn't get the memo from the White House forbidding so-called news organizations from saying bad things about the so-called Affordable Care Act.
The surprises didn't end with Saturday's surprising headline "Obamacare's Winners and Losers in Bay Area":
Cindy Vinson and Tom Waschura are big believers in the Affordable Care Act. They vote independent and are proud to say they helped elect and re-elect President Barack Obama.
Yet, like many other Bay Area residents who pay for their own medical insurance, they were floored last week when they opened their bills: Their policies were being replaced with pricier plans that conform to all the requirements of the new health care law.
Vinson, of San Jose, will pay $1,800 more a year for an individual policy, while Waschura, of Portola Valley, will cough up almost $10,000 more for insurance for his family of four.
Want a real shocker? Those three paragraphs weren't buried deeply in the piece.
Nope. Those were the first three paragraphs.
I'll let you catch your breath before I continue.
Tick, tock, tick, tock.
Everyone okay?
Well, there's more:
For years, the nation has been embroiled in the political rhetoric of "Obamacare," but this past week the reality of the new law sank in as millions of Americans had their first good look at how the 3 1/2-year-old legislation will affect their pocketbooks.
This much quickly became clear:
As state- and federal-run health insurance exchanges debuted across the country offering a range of prices for different tiers of insurance coverage, the new online marketplaces -- which represent the centerpiece of Obamacare -- could greatly benefit more than 40 million Americans who now lack coverage. But an additional 16 million -- who buy individual health insurance policies on the open market -- are finding out that their plans may not comply with the new law, which requires 10 essential benefits such as maternity care, mental health care and prescription drug coverage.
In California, 1.9 million people buy plans on the open market, according to officials with Covered California, the state's new health insurance exchange. And many of them are steaming mad.
"There's going to be a number of people surprised" by their bills, said Jonathan Wu, a co-founder of ValuePenguin, a consumer finance website. "The upper-middle class are the people who are essentially being asked to foot the bill, and that's true across the country." [...]
"I was laughing at Boehner -- until the mail came today," Waschura said..."I really don't like the Republican tactics, but at least now I can understand why they are so pissed about this. When you take $10,000 out of my family's pocket each year, that's otherwise disposable income or retirement savings that will not be going into our local economy." [...]
"Of course, I want people to have health care," Vinson said. "I just didn't realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally."
Well, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) infamously said they'd have to pass the bill for people to find out what was in it. Now that folks are finding out, they're not pleased.
Of course, this is why the law didn't go into effect until after the 2012 elections because Obama knew full-well he wouldn't get reelected if it had gone into effect before.
If only media would have been honest about this at the time rather than participating in a propaganda campaign to win support of folks destined to be harmed.
How any of them can sleep at night is anyone's guess.
