The Commonwealth Fund has looked at the data and found that the legislation will improve the lives of millions of women.
Here's a summary of the findings:
The new health reform law, the Affordable Care Act, bodes well for as many as 30 million women -- a number that includes 15 million women who are uninsured, according to a new report issued by the Commonwealth Fund, a private health research firm in New York City.
This new report is the first in a series that will look at how health care reform will affect specific populations.
While women as a group are just as likely as men to be uninsured, they are more likely to have medical debt, bill problems, and have trouble getting insurance," Karen Davis, the Commonwealth Fund president, said during a telephone conference. "This report brings good news to all women who will now be more likely to get the care they need with a reduced risk of incurring the unaffordable medical bills that have affected so many Americans."
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Blogger Man of the West takes issue with the phrase "zanies on the right" from this AltTulsa blog entry.
It is poor usage, he says, to apply it to the people who disapprove of Health Care Reform. He reads this number as being up to 60% of the population on some polls.
(The recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll showed 50% percent of the public viewing the new law favorably, 35% unfavorably, 14% no opinion. I won't quibble, even 35% is a significant number of people. However, very little in the law has actually taken effect yet.)
Is that how AltTulsa used the word? I did a quick survey of the contexts in which AltTulsa has employed the word "zanies":
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"Tea Party folks and the militia movement, Jim Boyd, a Nashville activist and losing candidate for the City Council there, Michelle Malkin and Lou Dobbs, the idiotic birthers, the hyperbolic deathers, and other zanies, motley collection of malcontents, true believers."
"...and clueless conservatives known as the Tulsa Tea Party. Unfortunately for the Tea Party gang, their leaders include the right-wing fundamentalist Randy Brogdon, would-be candidate for governor, and Clay Clark, the Boy Wonder of Tulsa free enterprise and pretend candidate for Tulsa mayor... But hey, it's a free country, and a few zanies probably won't hurt anything. "
"Coburn also attracted a few political zanies (to put it politely). The Tulsa World reported this week that Coburn 'traded Bible lessons with a constituent worried about President Barack Obama's religion.'"
"Talk radio's blowhards are at full scream, while the Tea Party folks and other wingnuts are advocating revolution. Sad to say, it's true. The climate of fear created by the zanies and zealots isn't funny—people are reacting in highly irrational ways."
"So there's little to recommend the local Tea Party blog, not even the usual comic relief provided by the ordinary Tea Party zanies..."
"T-Town zanies Biker Fox and Paul Tay."
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So Alt Tulsa includes in his group of "zanies": Tea Party activists and leaders, birthers, deathers (who believe or pretend to believe that Health Care Reform means letting old people die,) and right-wing media demagogues.
According to the dictionary, a "zany" is:
A comical person given to extravagant or outlandish behavior.
Original meaning: a subordinate clown or acrobat in old comedies who mimics ludicrously the tricks of the principal.
AltTulsa's usage seems fairly appropriate to me.
It would indeed be poor usage to to apply the word "zanies" to a group of people who answered "disapprove" to a poll question. It doesn't rise to the energy level required of a card-carrying zany.
But then, that isn't the way AltTulsa used the word, as shown above.
Speaking of the Tea Party, an apt reader comment at TPM:
"...I think you're on to why the "Tea Party" was created, i.e. to give conservatives a way to rally with the Republican brand name in ruins, nothing more. They're the Altria of politics."
(Altria Group, previously named Philip Morris Companies)
It would be even more apt if you pictured an Altria rally as a congregation of fanatic, diehard smokers defiantly smoking an entire pack at once and expecting thereby to persuade onlookers that smoking is no health risk.
In another context, MotW estimated that "43 percent of Oklahoma’s adult population reads at a seventh grade level or lower."
Presumably he would concede that at least 50% of Oklahomans disapprove of the as-yet unexperienced Health Care Reform.
I don't know how these two percentages relate or correlate to each other (or whether either/both correlate with zaniness) but it's food for thought.
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