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Hi, I'm Amanda! My family farms corn and soybeans in Southwest Michigan. I'm also a practicing attorney.

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Obamacare – Not Affordable for Farmers

March 1, 2014

My mom wants Sec. Vilsack
to know that Obamacare
is NOT affordable.

On Thursday, Brownfield Ag News reported that USDA Secretary Vilsack was out and about touting the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), saying:

“There are a lot of benefits in this law to folks who live in rural areas and obviously we want folks to take advantage of it. They look on the website, healthcare.gov, they might be surprised that they can find maybe insurance for as little as $100 a month.”

Well, there was one farm momma that was not happy by the Secretary’s statements, and for good reason.

Theresa, my mom, was notified that the health insurance plan that currently covers my parents and brothers would be ending in August. It had been purchased through a group plan with Michigan Farm Bureau. However, because the enrollment period for Obamacare ends in March, MFB urged them to find a different plan now.

So, that’s what my mom set out to do on Thursday — find new health insurance via the insurance exchange.

She was quickly disappointed when she found out that the only available plans meant the premiums would be doubled and the deductible — set at a whopping $13,000 — would triple. And they aren’t eligible for any subsidies.

Needless to say, she was angry. And that caught the attention of Julie Harker at Brownfield Ag News. Julie asked my mom to give an interview about the struggle and a response to Secretary Vilsack.

You can listen to it here.

She said:

“It makes me angry that they aren’t listening to the people that are actually going through this. And when, you know (Senator) Harry Reid says everybody’s liars who have these horror stories, it’s just, it’s really frustrating.”

As I reported previously, the Affordable Care Act was leaving a lot of rural Americans behind. Many farmers, of course, get their insurance through employer insurance plans from a spouse that works off the farm. But for those farmers that don’t have that option, this situation is frustrating and, quite frankly, disastrous. With a $13,000 deductible, unless something catastrophic happens, what’s the point of even having insurance?

My parents actually had a discussion where they considered paying the penalty for not having insurance and simply increasing their life insurance policy. They would simply hope and pray nothing happens until someone fixes the law and they could purchase insurance again. Folks, that is NOT a conversation we should be having in the United States in the year 2014. That’s a disgrace.

Definitely not a good situation for my family and, as I imagine, we aren’t alone.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: family farms, farm economy, federal government, politics, presidential politics, USDA

Comments

  1. Anonymous says

    March 1, 2014 at 9:13 pm

    Obamacare was written by and for the big insurance companies to nationalize health care. It will destroy health care as we knew it in the USA. It is a complete disgrace, but that is what you get with complacent citizens that keep voting these monkeys in. By the time people figure it out, things will be too late to fix. The same with the food safety and modernization act, it is designed to shut down small farms and ranches period.

Hi, I'm Amanda. My family farms corn and soybeans in Southwest Michigan. I'm an attorney and I'm passionate about agriculture!

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