In the lead up to the ACA passing in March 2010 dairies were posted fast and furious around here. What makes the ACA unique is that the fight over the bill continues. It's been over three years since President Obama signed the law, but here we are with a bunch of sore losers still acting like they can kill the bill law.
I had reservations three years ago, but the ACA is outperforming many a health care worker's expectations. Since I work in health care and teach college courses to health care workers, it became my mission to make sure all the students I have understand ACA.
If you understand the politics of Miami-Dade County, Florida, you'd know that the Hispanic community is splintering. Older Cubans are still predominantly Republicans who constantly accuse Democrats of being communists. The younger generations, not so much. The rest of the Hispanic community is comprised of all the nations of South America and don't assume they are Republicans. South Florida is the blue part of Florida. Nonetheless, support for the ACA is partisan here.
Anytime I teach a class that deals with medical billing, administration, compliance, medical ethics, medical legal issues, HR, health care customer service (my transcripts and credentials let me teach a lot of health and medical classes): any class that I can connect to the ACA; the first assignment is for the students to do a complete analysis of the healthcare.gov website. I have a list of questions they must answer about the ACA. When my conservative supervisors first complained to me, I successfully pointed out that we don't have to agree with the law, but we do have to comply with it. You can't comply with a law you don't understand. If we are teaching allied health, we must include this law in our curriculum otherwise, we'd not be in compliance with our accrediting authority. They backed off and later I ended up giving workshops to other allied health instructors on how to present the ACA (it hasn't made it into our text books yet).
Hardliner conservatives disrupt my classes, but this is one unit out of 12, so the controversy always passes quickly. When someone tries to insert the politics into our classroom discussions, I firmly move the conversation back to implementation. When a student spews Faux News bunk, I can shut it down with facts and assigned readings of the pertinent sections of the law, federal register and HHS web sites. I take a WIIFM (What's In It For Me) approach and present the law as how it helps medical business and the patient. Sometimes the financial argument that wins the day. The increase of patients with insurance, reduced junk insurance policies, paid for preventive care, more standardized insurance policies wins over my greedy soon to be healthcare executives. Sometimes it's personal. I can't tell you the number of students who say, "I never knew how much this law was helping me....helping my family. Why don't we see more news stories about how helpful this law is?" I never can answer that question to their satisfaction.
On my business level I did my part. I will continue to inform people about the ACA.
The news media has not done their part to inform the public of what's in the public's interest to know about the ACA.
I'm having far more trouble winning over friends and family.
Kaiser Family Foundation's September Tracking Poll has a good explanation for that. The news media has spent an inordinate amount of time publicizing the politics of the ACA and far too little about how the law works and how it will impact people's lives. My friends and family are more focused upon the politics and the negatives and they don't give a damn about who this law helps if it isn't them. Taking the WIIFM approach with family and friends is more difficult when they have their health care situation well in hand and resent anyone who doesn't.