CNN summarizes a lot of the misinformation about people losing their ACA plans. It also explains why club thrifty has so few choices– a number of insurance companies are hoping that the plans that join the exchanges now will attract all the truly sick people who won’t shop around, staying on those early plans, and then they’re planning on coming in the market a year later with lower prices in order to sweep up all the healthy people. So in a year there will be more choice and prices will settle.What the hell is wrong with you? Who opposes healthy babies? From mike the mad biologist.
We’d like to read our regular reader’s comments on this not of general interest post. So go over there and make some. :)
The chronicle of higher ed publishes a lame patrarichy-spreading click-bait non-book-review. Read all about it from historiann.
Yeah, this yoisthisracist post pretty much sums things up.
It’s the little things from ombailamos.
This post not for the article, but for the better book tales down at the bottom.
Interesting tufts magazine feature.
Pottery barn catalog as written by an aspiring crime novelist.
Grumpy Rumblings (of the formerly untenured) 
November 9, 2013 at 10:02 am
Thanks, nicoleandmaggie! I really do wonder what readers would say about what matters/what doesn’t.
November 10, 2013 at 11:13 am
I chimed in on not of general interest’s post.
Love the CNN link about people losing their ACA plans. Sounds like folks are finally getting an education about their former “junk insurance plans” but still aren’t comprehending the risks they had been taking (they never realized how risky their old plans were because they were lucky enough to never get really sick, and never file a claim and be bankrupted.) At least now they’ll be more likely to get what they think they’re paying for (even though they still have to deal with a shady insurer of course, now at least there are some consumer protections).
I still haven’t heard a great defense of Obama’s promise (I mean, where’s Bill Clinton to step in and properly spin this one?), but honestly who cares? It is political theatre at this point. I think it boils down to something like there are people who are just way too literal about politicians’ election promises. By all evidence, Obama meant well, made a claim that is still true for the majority, and he probably didn’t intend to make a false statement when he said it (so in my book, that was no lie). There’s something kind of silly about this idea, ‘well, the president said I was going to keep my plan’ as if Obama is all-knowing and can see the future. Actually, no — you can still be legally booted from insurance: if you become a felon; if your company goes out of business because they can’t afford health care anymore; if you are self-employed and are late paying a premium, gone – you don’t get to keep your plan. Would be nice if the Republicans would line up with an alternative of their own about how they plan to bring down costs and provide health care — not health *insurance*, but health *care* — to all Americans.
November 10, 2013 at 7:32 pm
Why the heck can a felon be booted from health insurance?
November 10, 2013 at 8:48 pm
Felons, ex-felons, and people who are incarcerated are not protected classes of people under state or federal law. They are discriminated against in housing, employment, and insurance every day of the week and nobody can do anything about it – and the ACA does little to improve their lot. Insurers are allowed to make a business decision not to offer or continue any products for individuals with criminal activity, a felony conviction, or previous incarceration – which they see as demonstrative of behavior and judgment characteristics that present an increased and unacceptable risk of loss insured under their policies.
November 11, 2013 at 12:48 pm
Because our society does its utmost to punish, not to rehabilitate.
November 11, 2013 at 12:41 pm
I would be fine with insurance companies not offering policies to those convicted of insurance fraud. But otherwise, it strikes me as just another way for society to create some kind of bullshit untouchable criminal caste. Wft is wrong with people?
November 11, 2013 at 12:46 pm
from the ACA horror debunked article: “But when I read blog commenters who are doing a better job at detailing the law than the administration has, I can’t help but to think the Obama team is inadvertently sabotaging one of its biggest accomplishments by derping its way through the process.”
hee hee hee