Source: Democratic Underground.com
I had a very interesting weekend helping out at my first health fair, one entirely run by a student organization of our med school and open to anyone who doesn’t have insurance and needs free medical care.
Throughout the day these were the major observations I made:
The number of people that attended this fair simply astounded me.
I knew our healthcare system is broken but I was shocked that there was a 2 hr waiting time by the middle of the morning….and most of the people waiting in line didn’t mind the long wait!
The ACA was a major point of discussion among my discussions with many patients.
A lot of them said that they never truly understood the effects of Obamacare, but that this recent govt. shutdown made them interested in learning about it. And a lot of them said that after their research they realized that they had many misconceptions about the program.
Most said that after reading up about the ACA they immediately made an effort to sign up for it or are planning to do so. So even though the Obama administration has never been good at selling the program in my honest opinion, a huge thanks is due to the its opponents for putting spotlight on the ACA. Most of the people who said that they would be beneficiaries of the ACA also told me that:
While they’ve never made an effort to be involved in politics, but now they are truly motivated to do so.
One young lady told me that she feels an obligation to vote for Democrats in future elections and that she’ll make an effort to tell her friends and family to do so too. One person told me that they had been a pretty staunch republican for most of their life, and that now they feel ashamed of being one. One middle-aged man even told me that the ACA has made him “a democrat for life…”
…and that is what truly scares ACA’s opponents.
The reason they keep fighting against it is that they know that the ACA is a great program- one that the masses will truly embrace. They know that once people realize how much the program is helping them they will want to vote in the party that helped establish it aka the democrats. With the changes in demographics they are already on their last legs (along with taking the wrong stance on every important issue). And with the impending success of the ACA, they are truly toast.