Obamacare

So, I don’t want to jinx anything, but when it comes to the ridiculousness surrounding the much-ballyhooed Obamacare rollout/circus/tragicomedy/Exxon-Valdez-meets-the-Titanic-meets-the-Edmund-Fitzgerald level of disaster, I think we’re close to hitting bottom.
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...the wondrous powers of Twitter unearthed the “Thanks Obamacare” ad campaign, created by the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative and a group called ProgressNow Colorado Education. The campaign features various demographic-targeted ads trumpeting the greatness of Obamacare, a tactic which, in terms of both marketing and propaganda, is totally normal. What is not normal, however, is that one of the targeted demographics is a group widely known as “bros.”
A “bro,” to be brief, is basically a beer-drinking frat guy. If you go to Buffalo Wild Wings on NFL game day, you will see a lot of bros. Baseball hats and flip-flops are good identifying markers. If you venture into an actual fraternity party, you will have the opportunity to see bros in their native habitat
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The campaign’s “bro-oriented” ad—lovingly nestled between others targeting nervous expectant mothers, cool dads who kayak on dangerous rivers, and deep-in-thought guys who are about to accidentally hit their best friends in the face with golf clubs—features two clueless-looking young men clutching “party” red Solo cups, with a third “bro” attempting a keg stand (Bro No. 3, as an aside, looks about 48, but Obamacare doesn’t really care how long you take out student loans, I guess).
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At first, I thought this must be a parody—a clever, subversive, maybe even Koch Brothers-funded illustration of the utter, embarrassing dumbness of Obamacare. I mean, really, is there any better summation of the folly of the welfare state than “Don’t tap into your beer money to pay those medical bills?”
The only recent contender I can think of came from Cindy Vinson, an Obamacare supporter who, shocked at her brand-new insurance rate increase, told the San Jose Mercury News: “Of course, I want people to have health care, I just didn’t realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally.”
But, alas for us all, I went to the “Thanks Obamacare” campaign’s grammar-challenged website (which is, no joke, www.doyougotinsurance.com) and it appears to be quite real. They have a Twitter feed. They have sponsors who are apparently not embarrassed to have this page link back to theirs (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/10/23/short_on_beer_money__look_to_obamacare_120427.html).

The official name for “ObamaCare” is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), or Affordable Care Act (ACA) for short.
The ACA was signed into law to reform the health care industry by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010 and upheld by the Supreme Court on June 28, 2012.
ObamaCare’s goal is to give more Americans access to affordable, quality health insurance and to reduce the growth in U.S. health care spending.
The Affordable Care Act expands the affordability, quality, and availability of private and public health insurance through consumer protections, regulations, subsidies, taxes, insurance exchanges, and other reforms (http://obamacarefacts.com/obamacare-facts/).

De Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, informeel bekend als Obamacare) is een Amerikaanse federale wet, op 23 maart 2010 getekend door president Barack Obama. De wet doelt op het hervormen van gezondheidsverzekeringen in de Verenigde Staten door de kosten van medische zorg te drukken en verzekeringspolissen goedkoper te maken.

Deze wet, die stapsgewijs in werking zal treden tussen 23 maart 2010 en 1 januari 2020, waarbij de grootste stappen voor januari 2014 genomen moeten worden, behelst onder andere de verplichting voor iedere Amerikaan om een zorgverzekering af te sluiten en een onvoorwaardelijke acceptatieplicht voor zorgverzekeraars (https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act).

Vanaf 1 oktober 2013 kunnen Amerikanen online een verzekering afsluiten. De Republikeinse Partij is gekant tegen de ziekteverzekeringswet en probeert de invoeging ervan uit te stellen. Zo forceerde zij op 1 oktober 2013 een "shutdown" van de overheid. In het Amerikaans Congres werd geen overeenkomst bereikt over de begroting en verdere overheidsbestedingen, omdat de Republikeinen dit gekoppeld hadden aan het met een jaar uitstellen van de invoer van "Obamacare", wat door de Democraten en de president niet werd aanvaard. De "shutdown" had tot gevolg dat vele overheidsdiensten gesloten werden en dat de overheidsambtenaren gedwongen met verlof moesten gaan (https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act).

De Republikeinse meerderheid in het Huis van Afgevaardigden heeft de overheidsfinanciering afhankelijk gemaakt van uitstel en aanpassing van 'Obamacare', de wetgeving die alle Amerikanen dwingt een zorgverzekering af te sluiten. De door Democraten gedomineerde Senaat weigerde zich echter te laten afpersen, zoals zij het omschreven (www.hln.be/hln/nl/2002/Dossier-Obama/article/detail/1714453/2013/10/01/Shutdown-overheid-VS-is-een-feit-Ze-hebben-het-echt-gedaan.dhtml).

Staken om je doel te behalen omdat de politieke weg heeft gefaald? Je zou verwachten dat republikeinen dan naar de wapens zouden grijpen een een 'zwarte vlag'-incident zouden uitvoeren...

Of ga ik nou te ver? Nouja chantage is nou ook niet echt bepaald netjes...

We zijn nu 2 jaar verder en hoe is het gegaan?

How Obamacare ls About to Change the Way You Order a Beer

Obamacare is bringing calorie information to a restaurant near you later this year. Craft brewers and their restaurant partners just wish they knew about this earlier.

Section 4205 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare, was signed into law in 2010 and mandated the labeling of caloric content and nutritional information on menu items at chain restaurants with 20 locations by Dec. 1 of this year.

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Restaurants and brewers alike were under the impression alcoholic beverages including beer and wine would be exempted. As they found out in November, that wasn't the case.

The final rules presented by the Food and Drug Administration were vague, but excluded beers offered for limited runs of less than 60 consecutive days, test items offered for less than 90 consecutive days and beers that are on tap but not on the menu.

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There are 3,418 licensed craft breweries in the U.S., with more than 1,400 of them functioning as food-serving brewpubs. As a result, the Brewers Association is waiting for the FDA to state its tolerances for those batch-to-batch differences, while its restaurant partners go into a holding pattern as they prepare seasonal menus.

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CraftWorks Restaurants is based in Broomfield, Colo., and Chattanooga, Tenn., and operates 195 restaurants under the Gordon Biersch, Rock Bottom and Old Chicago brands, as well as a host of specialty restaurants. Its brands brew their own beers at 70 locations and most of its beers aren't on the menu long enough to fall under the FDA's final rule. But it also finds itself waiting for a hand from the FDA.

“We have not done full-blown nutritional testing on our core craft beers to date,” says Rebecca Fischer, general counsel for CraftWorks. “One of our brands [Old Chicago] is in the business of having over 100 selections of beer on site at any time, and that has thrown us into an enormous body of work — and we average more than 30 taps in each of those restaurants, so that work has been ongoing. I think we are trying to stay on hold on that portion of our beverage menu that deals with craft beers that we make.”

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While [Paul Gatza, director of the Brewers Association craft beer industry group,] isn't necessarily worried about the impact on craft beer all around — noting that drinkers might switch to low-alcohol, lower-calorie session beers instead — he does fear that a complicated menu labeling process may take the choice out of consumers' hands and leave them to brewers or restaurants looking for the simplest answer.

“This could inadvertently drive sales to mixed drinks, which are exempted,” Gatza says. “It could also be a non-consumer reason why more sessionable beers take share and menu placements from beers with unattractive calorie numbers. Menus are going to be changing, and it may not be consumers deciding what's available to them.”