Dying Obamacare Memes?

Yep. Pretty much. 

Keeping Your Doctor?

A Selfie With The President

The president has a good couple of days and the photo above shows that there is a spring in his step (even if he is a White Sox fan). Big Papi and 44...nice!

Seven Million

It looks like the Affordable Care Act has surpassed its revised goal and now has hit its original goal of seven million enrollees. The GOP has quickly shifted its talking points to issues of non payment and the coming economic apocalypse which will result from the ACA. We also have this poll from ABC and the Washington Post.

49-48, in favor. Wow.

As I have been saying these last few weeks, Democrats need to run proudly on the ACA and note that it's part of an overall plan to bolster the middle class (of which a minimum wage hike is a strong part). They do this and they hold the Senate in the fall and possibly narrow the gap in the House.

No Such Thing As Obamacare

There is no such thing as ObamaCare. You can't sign up for ObamaCare. You're signing up for an Anthem (ph) policy or an Aetna policy, or a WellPoint policy. It is private insurance. And private insurance companies have been doing closed networks for years.

Senator Angus King, I-Maine, on the lying about the Affordable Care Act.

So Much For The Obamacare Horror Stories

Koch Group Abandons Obamacare 'Horror' Stories After Fact-Check Backlash.

Perhaps they have finally learned their lesson:)

Stamp the ACA Right On Your Forehead

If Democrats want to retain control of the Senate this year, they need to stand proudly behind the Affordable Care Act. They can cite all of the people that are now covered that weren't covered before. They can hold up the basic fact that if you have a pre-existing condition you can't be dropped by your insurance company. They can illustrate how you won't go bankrupt if you have an illness. They can discuss how children and young adults up to age 26 are covered under the parents policies.

And they can reveal that the Republicans have nothing but spite, anger and fear to offer instead of the ACA.

Take the example of Mark Udall who is running for re-election in Colorado.



He'd vote for it again. Damn right!

Gunning Down Obamacare

If there was any doubt left about the maturity level of the GOP...

Between Two Ferns Lies Regret

Much ado has been made about President Obama's recent appearance on "Between Two Ferns" a Funny or Die interview show hosted by Zack Galifianakis. Critics have said it was undignified and beneath the president. Yet the one who comes off as a real douchebag is Zack Galifianakis, not Barack Obama. I get the whole concept of the show is supposed to be a roast type atmosphere but you can be critical of the president (as Jon Stewart has been when he has interviewed him) without demeaning the office. And that's just what Galifianakis did.

I like Zack Galifianakis and will always continue to see his films as he is a very funny guy. But this was a real career blemish that's going to stick with him for a while. Here is the full piece.

Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis: President Barack Obama from President Barack Obama

FL-13 Special Election

The special election being held today in Florida's 13th Congressional District is being touted as a "bellwether" for the 2014 mid term elections and a referendum on the ACA. Haven't we seen this movie before?

Here is what I predict will happen. If Alex Sink wins, there will be a little bluster and chest thumping from Democrats about how this means the public has embraced the ACA and the GOP should finally just shut up about it. They will also say that this means the 2014 elections aren't a slam dunk for the Republicans. This will all be quickly forgotten as the president won this district in 2008 and 2012 and Sink is expected to win.

If David Jolly wins, the right wing blogsphere will explode with howls of "I told you sos" and high pitched and overly excited voices about how this spells doom for the president in the fall. The left wing media will hand wring themselves to death and pray every night to their Rachel Maddow doll that somehow, some way, things won't be so bad this November and the president will save the day.

All of this prognostication (on both sides) when there aren't even candidates officially set yet in nearly all of the elections. Wow!

Another ACA "Horror Story" Shown To Be A Lie

Dexter cancer patient who called health care 'unaffordable' will save more than $1K.

I wonder how more of these are going to unravel in the next few months. I still contend that some vulnerable Democrats may want to rethink their strategy on running away from the ACA. Stamp it to your foreheads, dudes!!

So Much For Freedom of Speech

Louisiana, MoveOn group tangle over political billboard

Wall Street Journal: Affordable Care Act Effects Account for Most of Income, Spending Increases

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Affordable Care Act is already boosting household income and spending.

The Commerce Department reported Monday that consumer spending rose a better-than-expected 0.4% and personal incomes climbed 0.3% in January. The new health-care law accounted for a big chunk of the increase on both fronts. On the incomes side, the law’s expanded coverage boosted Medicaid benefits by an estimated $19.2 billion, according to Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. The ACA also offered several refundable tax credits, including health insurance premium subsidies, which added up to $14.7 billion. Taken together, the Obamacare provisions are responsible for about three-quarters of January’s overall rise in Americans’ incomes. 

Wow. 

Anecdata a la Markadelphia

If I used the same logic as a conservative, I would say that MN Sure is doing just fine. Every person I know who has signed up for it has had no problems whatsoever with the site or the registration process. Yet that is not the actual case in reality. There have been some improvements of late but the web site has encountered significant problems during its tenure. This would be a great example of why anecdata is complete bullshit.

Any time you hear "Everyone I know..." at the beginning of a sentence, don't listen.

Younger People Signing Up For Health Insurance

Looks like younger folks are starting to sign up for health insurance.

Even more promising, the percentage of young adults — the coveted demographic considered key to making the insurance pools viable — rose 3 percentage points during January. People ages 18-34 now account for 27 percent of the total exchange enrollment, up from 24 percent in December. "The 65 percent growth rate" of young adults signing up "is larger than all other age groups combined," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters in a conference call.

Good news!

Delusions of Failure

Paul Krugman has a great piece up detailing how the Right lies about the Affordable Care Act. Some choice cuts.

But isn’t Obamacare in a “death spiral,” in which only the old and sick are signing up, so that premiums will soon soar? Not according to the people who should know — the insurance companies. True, one company, Humana, says that the risk pool is worse than it expected. But others, including WellPoint and Aetna, are optimistic (which isn’t a contradiction: different companies could be having different experiences). And the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has run the numbers, finds that even a bad risk pool would have only a minor effect on premiums.

Ah, so no boiling pit of sewage. Just the usual free market stuff.

Bette’s tale had policy wonks scratching their heads; it was hard to see, given what we know about premiums and how the health law works, how anyone could face that large a rate increase. Sure enough, when a local newspaper, The Spokesman-Review, contacted Bette Grenier, it discovered that the real story was very different from the image Ms. McMorris Rodgers conveyed. First of all, she was comparing her previous policy with one of the pricier alternatives her insurance company was offering — and she refused to look for cheaper alternatives on the Washington insurance exchange, declaring, “I wouldn’t go on that Obama website.” 

Even more important, all Ms. Grenier and her husband had before was a minimalist insurance plan, with a $10,000 deductible, offering very little financial protection. So yes, the new law requires that they spend more, but they would get far better coverage in return.

Wouldn't go on that Obama website...I don't get the personal hatred toward the man. If it's not racist, what is it?

Saving $$$ With Obamacare?

Financial adviser Jay Larson has done quite well for himself in life so it makes sense that he would look to save money on his health care expenditures. Guess what he found out?

I am 63 and my wife is 61. Beginning on July 1, 2012, through Jan. 1, 2014, the cost of our MCHA premium was $1,788 per month for my wife and me. This was for a $1,000 deductible plan for both my wife and me, with a maximum lifetime benefit of $5 million. My wife and I have now enrolled in Obamacare via a large, well-known health insurance company with coverage that began Jan. 1, 2014. We are now paying $1,053.98 per month (compared with $1,788 per month in the previously mentioned pre-Obamacare plan) with a similar $1,000 deductible. This is a savings of $734 per month ­— $8,808 per year. A 41 percent cost savings. Wow!

Wow is right...even the wealthy are saving money now?

75,000 New Democratic Voters in West Virginia?

Sharon Mills is a great example why the Democrats should take Reince Priebus's advice and "stamp Obamacare to their foreheads."

Ms. Mills, 54, who suffered renal failure last year after having irregular access to medication, said her dependence on others left her feeling helpless and depressed. “I got to the point when I decided I just didn’t want to be here anymore,” she said. So when a blue slip of paper arrived in the mail this month with a new Medicaid number on it — part of the expanded coverage offered under the Affordable Care Act — Ms. Mills said she felt as if she could breathe again for the first time in years. “The heavy thing that was pressing on me is gone,” she said.

And how many more people in West Virginia are there like her?

Here in West Virginia, which has some of the shortest life spans and highest poverty rates in the country, the strength of the demand has surprised officials, with more than 75,000 people enrolling in Medicaid. While many people who have signed up so far for private insurance through the new insurance exchanges had some kind of health care coverage before, recent studies have found, most of the people getting coverage under the Medicaid expansion were previously uninsured. In West Virginia, where the Democratic governor agreed to expand Medicaid eligibility, the number of uninsured people in the state has been reduced by about a third.

The question now becomes how many people will shift over to the Democrats as a result of the ACA. I think it's going to be far greater than people imagine because there are many poor people who have come to realize that conservatives are not helping them at all. This is a big reason why Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election. They are seen as the party of the aristocratic class.

Of course, we still do have plaque..

Still, even among those who most need insurance, there has been resistance to signing up. President Obama — often blamed here in coal country for the industry’s decline — remains deeply unpopular. Recruiters trying to persuade people to enroll say they sometimes feel like drug peddlers. The people they approach often talk in hushed tones out of earshot of others. Chad Webb, a shy 30-year-old who is enrolling people in Mingo County, said a woman at a recent event used biblical terms to disparage Mr. Obama as an existential threat to the nation. Mr. Webb said he thought to himself: “This man is not the Antichrist. He just wants you to have health insurance.”

How did the froth about the president get to be so thick? Honestly, it's a combination of many things. I think it begins with the fact that they are massively insecure, angry and hateful at someone else succeeding where they are failing. That's rooted in the adolescent behavior that I think is at the core of all of this. As I have mentioned previously, conservatives are also secret aristocrats who don't think Democrats deserve to run anything. Only members of the "club" should be at the high of a station. Race plays a part, of course as does pride and hubris in tandem with an extreme difficulty to admit error. But, as the article notes,

Eventually, though, people’s desperate need for insurance seems to be overcoming their distaste for the president. Rachelle Williams, 25, an uninsured McDonald’s worker from Mingo County, said she had refused to fill out insurance forms on a recent trip to the emergency room for a painful bout of kidney stones. “I wouldn’t do it,” she said. But when she got a letter in the mail saying she qualified for Medicaid, she signed up immediately.

Uh Huh:)

Still Slow

A recent report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services shows that health care spending is down for the fourth year in a row. Patients have greatly benefited from this considering past increases in medical and premium costs. The Affordable Care Act has had minimal impact on this slowed growth even though the White House has taken credit for it in terms of lowering Medicare spending by penalizing hospitals with high readmission rates, for example.

Regardless of why it is happening, we are heading in the right direction. Reducing the growth of health care is vital to the overall integrity of our economy. People can't live their lives being one crisis away from losing everything they own.

Why is the Affordable Care Act Unpopular?

Michael Moore explains why. 

What we now call Obamacare was conceived at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and birthed in Massachusetts by Mitt Romney, then the governor. The president took Romneycare, a program designed to keep the private insurance industry intact, and just improved some of its provisions. In effect, the president was simply trying to put lipstick on the dog in the carrier on top of Mitt Romney’s car. And we knew it.

Even still...

And yet — I would be remiss if I didn’t say this — Obamacare is a godsend. My friend Donna Smith, who was forced to move into her daughter’s spare room at age 52 because health problems bankrupted her and her husband, Larry, now has cancer again. As she undergoes treatment, at least she won’t be in terror of losing coverage and becoming uninsurable. Under Obamacare, her premium has been cut in half, to $456 per month.

And people wonder why it's tough to be a liberal...