Will Obamacare cover senile DeMintia?

Patients at work in the laundry room of the Texas State Lunatic Asylum, 1898. Via.

Sorry for the coarseness of the headline, but Jim DeMint, former senator (Nullificationist-SC) and now in charge of the Heritage Foundation, the former stupid-but-respectable [jump]
think tank that he is turning into his own private mental hospital, has himself gone way over the edge over the Obamacare Crisis in his current editorial:

Morning Bell: This Fight Is for You

DeMint is fighting!

We’re fighting for the grandmother who is counting on her trusted physician to guide her through the challenges of aging. Because Obamacare means you can’t necessarily keep your doctor if you like him, and it’s cutting down on the health care choices available to seniors.

No, it doesn't. See the not flamingly liberal US News & World Report discussion.

We’re fighting for the couple who’s raising their own children while wondering how they’re going to care for their aging parents. Their premiums are going up and they’re wondering how they’ll afford it.

They're going up no matter what, for reasons that have nothing to do with the Affordable Care Act, according to a very careful study by Sarah Kliff in the Washington Post. They're also going up for people who have crappy plans, because the Act requires plans to be less crappy and that will cost some money. But if you really can't afford it any more, the ACA is likely providing you help, or an alternative that you can afford, including for 30 million people who are wondering how to care for themselves right now.

Incidentally, nobody knows exactly how the new rules limiting medical loss ratio are going to affect premiums, but it can only be somewhere between down by a little and down by a lot. I'm convinced the reason my Blue Cross went up by a gigantic amount at the beginning of this year is that they know they won't be able to raise them like that again.

We’re fighting for the waiter who’s going to school and working full-time. Obamacare is causing many employers to cut back on workers’ hours so that they don’t have to provide them with health insurance. For many people, that means losing income and losing health insurance at the same time.

Obamacare will not make your boss a decent human being.  Sad but true. This kind of thing went on long before the passage of the ACA and if you want to stop it the legislation will have to be a lot more radical than that. I remember 13 or 14 years ago working freelance for the travel guides division of a very famous publisher (hint: Rupert Murdoch runs it) when the entire salaried department was sacked one day and the freelancers expected to carry on, so that Rupert and Anthea would be able to pay less in benefits. That gig didn't last more than a few months, of course.

But Obamacare does have something to offer your student waiter there. If the restaurant employs fewer than 50 people the employer won't have to offer him insurance and hence won't feel the need to cut his hours; our friend can buy his own, generously subsidized, on the exchange. Or if the boss is really a pig, there's greatly expanded Medicaid providing him with comprehensive care for free: unless he lives in a state with a Republican governor/legislature that refuses to let him have it. So don't talk to me, Senator, talk to your friends.

We’re fighting for the single mom who needs a steady job to support her kids. Obamacare is making jobs tougher to find, because a lot of businesses are saying they just can’t hire anyone new. The burden of the law’s mandates and regulations is making it too costly.

Oh, shut up already. They've been making excuses for not hiring anybody since 2007, and this is just another one. If you really care stop trying to cut off unemployment benefits. And encourage better bosses with government investment in infrastructure, clean energy, and education. And one business that is definitely hiring more under the Obamacare regime: health care!

1857 lithograph by Armand Gautier, showing personifications of dementia, megalomania, acute mania, melancholia, idiocy, hallucination, erotomaniaand paralysis, in the gardens of the Hospice de la Salpêtrière. Wikipedia.