Richard Cohen explains how two people being married is icky in “conventional views“:

Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled — about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts — but not all — of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all.

because one of those people is black and has been in same sex relationships before. racist and homophobic statement, all at once.

Remember he writes for Washington Post our nation’s pre-eminent political paper.

I would like to believe that the following passage would disqualify you as a political columnist:.

I sometimes think I have spent years unlearning what I learned earlier in my life. For instance, it was not George A. Custer who was attacked at the Little Bighorn. It was Custer — in a bad career move — who attacked the Indians. Much more important, slavery was not a benign institution in which mostly benevolent whites owned innocent and grateful blacks. Slavery was a lifetime’s condemnation to an often violent hell in which people were deprived of life, liberty and, too often, their own children. Happiness could not be pursued after that.

Steve McQueen’s stunning movie “12 Years a Slave” is one of those unlearning experiences. I had to wonder why I could not recall another time when I was so shockingly confronted by the sheer barbarity of American slavery. Instead, beginning with school, I got a gauzy version. I learned that slavery was wrong, yes, that it was evil, no doubt, but really, that many blacks were sort of content. Slave owners were mostly nice people — fellow Americans, after all — and the sadistic Simon Legree was the concoction of that demented propagandist, Harriet Beecher Stowe.

-Richard Cohen, Washington Post, November 4, 2013

Note: In addition, Custer wasn’t defeated by “Indians”, he was defeated by the Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne.

Many of the Obamacare cancellation rate shock news reports have been vetted as well as a facebook post from the guy who sat next to you in junior year study hall. That is to say: not at all.

From LA Times’ Michael Hiltzik

I talked with Cavallaro, 60, after her CNBC appearance. Let’s walk through what she told me.

Her current plan, from Anthem Blue Cross, is a catastrophic coverage plan for which she pays $293 a month as an individual policyholder. It requires her to pay a deductible of $5,000 a year and limits her out-of-pocket costs to $8,500 a year. Her plan also limits her to two doctor visits a year, for which she shoulders a copay of $40 each. After that, she pays the whole cost of subsequent visits.

This fits the very definition of a nonconforming plan under Obamacare. The deductible and out-of-pocket maximums are too high, the provisions for doctor visits too skimpy.

As for a replacement plan, she says she was quoted $478 a month by her insurance broker, but that’s a lot more than she’ll really be paying. Cavallaro told me she hasn’t checked the website of Covered California, the state’s health plan exchange, herself. I did so while we talked.

Here’s what I found. I won’t divulge her current income, which is personal, but this year it qualifies her for a hefty federal premium subsidy.

[…]

The sad truth is that Cavallaro has been very poorly served by the health insurance industry and the news media. It seems that Anthem didn’t adequately explain her options for 2014 when it disclosed that her current plan is being canceled. If her insurance brokers told her what she says they did, they failed her. And the reporters who interviewed her without getting all the facts produced inexcusably shoddy work — from Maria Bartiromo on down. They not only did her a disservice, but failed the rest of us too.

via Another Obamacare horror story debunked – latimes.com.

Cavallaro wasn’t being swindled, but she was making a very high risk bet. She was betting $293 that:

• she would only ever need 2 doctor appointments
• $8500 of medical care costs in 2013

Catastrophic coverage is actually a misnomer, it doesn’t actually cover catastrophes! Or maybe having this type of coverage is catastrophic.

Cavallaro responded with an interview with Hugh Hewitt to maintain Obamacare is a raw deal for her. I won’t link to that jerk, but you can search “Hugh Hewitt Deborah Cavallaro” and find the “debunking” article. She tells Hewitt she can’t save with Obamacare and Hiltzik is wrong. Why? She doesn’t want to go on the California exchange and put in her personal information because then it will be in “cyberspace”.

Someone should remind Cavallaro that insurance companies have interwebs too! And sometimes they get hacked too! Cavallaro doesn’t want to use the exchanges (and she is in California where the exchanges work) for whatever reason, which is fine, but that means she is choosing the bad deal through her insurance broker over the better deal.

This is why the healthcare.gov problems really are causing major political issues for Obama: this becomes harder to prove since you have to log-in to shop! Part of having a store is marketing the products that can be bought. Healthcare.gov stymies that marketing and in being a broken, poorly designed insurance portal has aided Obamacare naysayers.

Right now, the administration is working on getting the site functional, but they need to find a way to get cost matrices to insureds who have had their policies canceled so they understand the more modest difference in cost and the better quality of service in real terms.