The Obamacare Success Stories

by Eleanor Clift Oct 23, 2013 7:20 PM EDT

From a retired business owner in Arkansas to a young freelance filmmaker in Hollywood, Eleanor Clift highlights a few of the people the media has found who are happy to have Obamacare.

The White House is getting hammered for the rocky rollout of Obamacare, but around the country news outlets are reporting a more positive story as Americans of various ages and from all walks of life look into what the newly launched program has to offer.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution tells the story of Lissie Stahlman, 60, who credits “a combination of patience, luck and different platforms” for getting her through the system late last week after trying for three weeks. She says she saved 50 percent over her current premiums and cut her deductible in half from $5,000 to $2,500.

ThinkProgress, a liberal website, reported on a 61-year-old lifelong Republican, Butch Matthews, who was heavily skeptical of the Affordable Care Act when it first passed. A former small business owner in Little Rock, Arkansas, Matthews used to get up every morning before dawn to deliver canned beverages to retailers before he retired three years ago. Medical care is his family’s biggest expense, since his home and vehicle are paid for. So he was pleased to discover his local Blue Cross Blue Shield would cover him under Arkansas’ Obamacare marketplace for less money than he had been paying, and with more benefits.

If you’ve read this far, you’re probably skeptical of extrapolating too much from these examples of people in their early sixties, who are too young for government-provided Medicare and probably willing to crawl over broken glass to find good health-care coverage. But stories abound about younger people as well. Enroll America, working to recruit people to Obamacare in Texas, a state that has been ostentatiously hostile to the law, tells the story of Mark Sullivan, a 31-year old worker in Austin’s tech sector who immediately created an account on healthcare.gov and settled on a bronze plan with added dental insurance. He will receive an $82 per month subsidy, which will halve his monthly premium to $78, giving him the financial freedom and security to put his energies into his new tech startup.

full article
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/23/the-obamacare-success-stories.html