August 23, 2013

Here’s Hoping That Obamacare Is Better Than That Appalling Obamacare


A few days ago I mused on the possibility that when Obamacare finally hits the streets, the actual state programs that implement it will refer to it as the “Affordable Care Act” and all the folks who hate Obamacare might not even recognize it. It turned out that Jonathan Bernstein has been making this same point for a while—great minds think alike and all that—but today Sarah Kliff passes along the perfect anecdote to support this. It comes from HuffPo’s Jason Cherkis, and what I’d forgotten is that the state programs don’t even call it ACA. They all have their own names:

A middle-aged man in a red golf shirt shuffles up to a small folding table with gold trim, in a booth adorned with a flotilla of helium balloons, where government workers at the Kentucky State Fair are hawking the virtues of Kynect, the state’s health benefit exchange established by Obamacare.

The man is impressed. “This beats Obamacare I hope,” he mutters to one of the workers.

“Do I burst his bubble?” wonders Reina Diaz-Dempsey, overseeing the operation. She doesn’t. If he signs up, it’s a win-win, whether he knows he’s been ensnared by Obamacare or not.

This is officially too good to check, but I checked anyway. If you go to the Kynect website, you can look far and wide and never get a clue that it has anything at all to do with Obamacare or ACA or even the federal government. “kynect is here to help you find the right coverage,” the fact sheet says cheerily. “It’s a new kind of health insurance marketplace — convenient and easy to use. With one application, kynect will check your eligibility for programs that can help you pay for health insurance for yourself, your family or your employees.” Roger that.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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