They really hate it

By Mustang Bobby

Josh Marshall does the numbers and notes that as more and more people sign up for Obamacare, so grows the rage among the right-wingers.

It is amazing to witness the sheer depths of rage, denial and disgust many people experience as they see millions of people gaining access to affordable health care for the first time. Back on the 31st I wrote this overview which outlined how more than 9 million people now have health care coverage because of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). It now seems like the number is more like 10 million (more on that in a moment).

This evening I mentioned this number on Twitter and saw the full force of denial and outrage as many anti-Obamacare diehards made first contact with the actual number of Americans who’ve gained coverage under the program. More though, it was clear how in the absence of a dead in the water website to cry crocodile tears over, anti-Obamacare hardliners have suddenly gotten a whole lot angrier about Obamacare.

[...]

…there are a lot of Obamacare dead-enders out there who just blow a gasket when they make first contact with these numbers. The first claim is that Medicaid expansion somehow doesn’t count. Or it doesn’t count if a 24 year old is now covered under their parents policy because well that happened a while ago or well, something.

The best dead-ender argument is that well, maybe these people who’ve signed up for subsidized private insurance policies won’t end up paying their premiums. When the arguments get down to this level you know you’re dealing with a deep and intense form of denial. I mean, what if all these people change their mind next month and decide they don’t want the coverage after all? What if Obamacare is so bad they all die in the Spring? What if Spartacus had an airplane? If you really, really are hoping for bad news you can come up with anything to keep hope, as it were, alive.

What I find most disturbing is that these conservatives would rather that 9 million people either don’t have adequate health insurance or none at all; that people suffer through catastrophic illnesses and lose their fortune, or have to support a family member because their coverage was null and void because of a pre-existing condition. That’s not what they’d say out loud, of course — who but a pre-spectral-seeing Scrooge would want poor people to suffer? — but that is the end result.

The real fear they harbor is that the Affordable Care Act will work and they will have been on the losing end of a century-old battle to provide better healthcare for everyone in the country, not just the rich or the employed.

It’s just one more loss to be added to the column along with Social Security, civil rights, women voting, and the many other things they’ve fought against.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)