Good Words

But the thing that is really killing Mitch McConnell, I think, is the incredible success of Kentucky Kynect. They don't call it Obamacare, very smartly. But this is probably the best run state exchange in the country. Governor Beshear, a Democrat. And the fact that these people have health care after all this time and Mitch McConnell did everything he could to stop them from getting health care. That's got to be a factor here. 

You are going to see this all over the country, in fact you already are seeing this all over the country. There's a poll today, the folks suggested that we ought to be on the offensive on Obamacare. We ought to be supporting it. We ought to be proud that we supported it because it is in fact providing people with health care. And nobody knows that better than the people of Kentucky. This is a poor state. A lot of people uninsured. A lot of those people have insurance [now]. That's not going to help Mitch McConnell.

(Howard Dean April 15, 2014)

Still No Obamacare Boiling Pit of Sewage In Which We Will All Roil and Scream

The CBO and Joint Committee on Taxation released a series of new estimates Monday on the law’s costs and the number of people it will cover. Here are the numbers and main points:

• Insurance premiums under Obamacare are projected to rise less than 3 percent in 2015, a smaller-than-expected jump as the health insurance exchanges enter their second year.
• 12 million more Americans will have health coverage in 2014 than would have been the case without the ACA
• Coverage through the law will cost the federal government about $5 billion less than expected this year.
• The law’s 10-year cost for the coverage provisions is pegged at $1.383 trillion — $104 billion less than prior calculations. Both figures are lower than prior estimates mostly because the CBO and JCT anticipate premium subsidies being smaller.
• The budget estimates now project premiums to be about 15 percent lower in 2016 than initial projections four years ago.

SMALLER premium rises? Really? That's not what the folks are telling me inside the bubble.

The Only Health Care Nightmare? Pure Spite

Paul Krugman's recent piece on the Affordable Care Act pretty much sums everything up to current status. Some choice cuts...

But wait: What about all the people who lost their policies thanks to Obamacare? The answer is that this looks more than ever like a relatively small issue hyped by right-wing propaganda. RAND finds that fewer than a million people who previously had individual insurance became uninsured — and many of those transitions, one guesses, had nothing to do with Obamacare. It’s worth noting that, so far, not one of the supposed horror stories touted in Koch-backed anti-reform advertisements has stood up to scrutiny, suggesting that real horror stories are rare.

Rare indeed. So much so that you really don't here about them much except for in the right wing blogsphere with the sole intention of increasing mouth foam.

Republicans clearly have no idea how to respond to these developments. They can’t offer any real alternative to Obamacare, because you can’t achieve the good stuff in the Affordable Care Act, like coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions, without also including the stuff they hate, the requirement that everyone buy insurance and the subsidies that make that requirement possible. Their political strategy has been to talk vaguely about replacing reform while waiting for its inevitable collapse. And what if reform doesn’t collapse? They have no idea what to do.

This is especially true since it was their idea to begin with!

What’s amazing about this wave of rejection is that it appears to be motivated by pure spite. The federal government is prepared to pay for Medicaid expansion, so it would cost the states nothing, and would, in fact, provide an inflow of dollars. The health economist Jonathan Gruber, one of the principal architects of health reform — and normally a very mild-mannered guy — recently summed it up: The Medicaid-rejection states “are willing to sacrifice billions of dollars of injections into their economy in order to punish poor people. It really is just almost awesome in its evilness.” Indeed.

Motivated by pure spite...one could extend that to pretty much every issue the Right whines about. They really don't have any there there...

Gruber's point really drives home how this issue ties into all the other ones that will part of this year's election. Last Wednesday, in a single committee meeting, Republicans voted against the Minimum Wage, Equal Pay, LGBT Rights, and Mine Safety. Add in a decided lack of movement on the immigration issue and the Republican party is pretty much the same one that ran behind Mitt Romney in 2012. Have they learned anything?

More importantly, do they honestly think voters aren't paying attention to this?

Kentucky Cuts Uninsured By 40%

The Affordable Care Act has cut Kentucky's uninsured population by more than 40 percent, signing up roughly 360,000 residents since enrollment opened up on Oct. 1. Some 75 percent of them -- 270,000 -- were previously uninsured. That means Kentucky's uninsured population of 640,000 has come down by 42 percent.

And the Democrats want to run away from this? I think we are going to see a whole lot of about faces over the next few months when candidates realize just how many voters are better off as a result of the ACA.

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?