Please stop telling me how bad Obamacare or more accurately the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is. First, all evidence suggests that it exceeded the Administration’s and the Congressional Budget Office’s expectations by a significant margin.
The report found that coverage is likely to cost less thanks to premiums being lower than expected through the exchange marketplaces. In other words, take pretty much everything you’ve heard from congressional Republicans lately and believe the opposite.
And as part of the same review, of course, the CBO added that the Affordable Care Act will also continue to reduce the federal budget deficit, which is also the opposite of critics’ claims. […]
So, taken together, what have we learned of late?
* ACA enrollment through exchanges reached 7.1 million, ahead of early estimates.
* The ACA is quickly reducing the uninsured rate.
* Thanks in part to the ACA, health care spending has slowed dramatically and health care inflation is at its lowest point in 50 years.
* According to the Department of Commerce, the ACA is also having a positive effect on personal incomes.
* And according to the CBO, the system is even more affordable than perviously projected.
Second, most of the issues with the rollout of the ACA is a direct result of obstruction by Republicans in states which refused to expand Medicaid, thus dramatically putting the health of millions of Americans (including ones covered by health care insurance) at risk.
The Lower Oconee Community Hospital, a so-called “critical access” hospital in southeastern Georgia with 25 beds, will close down and possibly re-open as an urgent care center that provides services that aren’t quite serious enough to necessitate an emergency room visit. Patients in the Wheeler County region who need more extensive medical care after the hospital closes will need to travel upwards of thirty miles in order to receive it.
“We just did not have sufficient volume to support the expenses,” said CEO Karen O’Neal in an interview with local CBS affiliate WMAZ. “It’s a terrible situation, and it’s tragic, the loss of jobs and the economic impact.”
Finally, until you Conservatives and Republicans can come up with a better plan, you have no legs to stand on regarding criticizing the ACA. To date all the talk by Republicans about how they will do much better by repealing the ACA and providing an alternative health care reform program has all been a bunch of “sound and fury signifying nothing,” since you people have not provided any viable alternative to the ACA, much less one that would work better.
Four years after Obamacare was enacted, and more than 50 House votes to undo it, Republicans remain dedicated to destroying the law. But they’re still lost on what they’d put in its place if given the chance.[…]
Simply repealing Obamacare would, at this juncture, take away coverage from upwards of 10 million Americans who are benefiting from the law’s insurance subsidies, Medicaid expansion or the provision that permits children to stay on their parents’ policies.
And their own ideas would have sweeping impacts, too. Health policy experts say allowing insurers to sell plans across state lines, for example, would upend the system by motivating insurers to cancel policies and relocate to states with the fewest consumer protections. Any such bill would be scored by the Congressional Budget Office, and that would force Republicans to answer for the downsides.
In short, the ACA is the most conservative option to improve our health care system, as acknowledged by the GOP’s own policy analysts.
“If you want to say the further and further this gets down the road, the harder and harder it gets to repeal, that’s absolutely true,” the aide said. “As far as repeal and replace goes, the problem with replace is that if you really want people to have these new benefits, it looks a hell of a lot like the Affordable Care Act. … To make something like that work, you have to move in the direction of the ACA. You have to have a participating mechanism, you have to have a mechanism to fund it, you have to have a mechanism to fix parts of the market.”
In short, shut up until you come up with a replacement that has any chance of improving the current health care reform law. Your lies aren’t being believed, not even by your supporters.
According to new polling by Public Policy Poling conducted for MoveOn, in voters support Medicaid expansion in key states by wide margins: 52 to 35 percent in Kansas, 58 to 33 percent in Florida, 59 to 30 percent in Pennsylvania, 54 to 38 percent in Georgia. All are states where Medicaid expansion has been blocked by Republican politicians.
People are seeing your true colors and they aren’t liking what they see.
I think the Republican party should continue to run on repealing the ACA.
Any somewhat intelligent Democrat should then ask them what the GOP plan is to replace the ACA’s more liked/known attributes.
Dear GOP: STFU on ACA Repeal
That headline is three terms too long.
Quite seriously though, I am as confused as anyone about what the GOP is planning to do. I know what ACA provides. I know it is far from perfect (“Single Payer” – not possible because of the political realities of living in an oligopoly). But I know it is far better than what it replaced.
So WTF does the GOP do? They have painted themselves into a corner.
Alas, there are a lot of people who benefit from ACA who also think it is worse than Hitler. We rightfully call these racist assholes “wingnuts”, but they number in the many millions and together with the “I got mine – fuck all of you under 55 years old” GOP social security/medicare recipients there is a big voting segment. Add in enough centrists-for-centrist’s-sake voters and GOP vote rigging and the wingnuts may actually win the next two elections. If they do, what the fuck will they do to ACA? I suspect they themselves don’t know.
Medicare is age 65 not 55
Wasn’t it Paul Ryan who was willing to keep Medicare the same for those over 55 and make cuts to the younger? Perhaps that was the reference.
“Medicare: Starting in 2022, the proposal would end the current Medicare program for all Americans born after 1957 and replace it with a new program (still called Medicare) which uses a voucher and would increase the age of eligibility for Medicare.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Path_to_Prosperity
Exactly. So when people over 55 vote GOP they are voting to end guaranteed retirement health insurance for people under 55. Granted, the media and the GOP has worked extremely hard to hide this fact – but it is what is happening.
I’m not convinced this is part of the voting calculation for most 55 – 65-year-olds. First, because very few Americans are at all familiar with the proposals for Medicare in the Ryan budget, second, because all except the rabid 27% know that the Ryan budget is an unworkable sop to the base, and third, because many people in that age range have health insurance problems in the here and now that are being addressed by Obamacare. A lot of them were holding off retirement because they couldn’t afford health insurance; a lot have pre-existing conditions and were terrified of losing jobs for that reason; quite a few have lost jobs and have been going without needed care; many have children under 26 who need health insurance; and many have children older than 26 who did not have health insurance before Obamacare and it worried their parents sick (I can personally vouch for the last one).
I think you are right. Many are afraid of Obamacare because of the GOP propaganda that the White House never pushed back on. If they see it working, they will come around. I’m afraid that they may be buying junk Bronze policies that don’t pay squat and will feel they have been ripped off.
Gov. Deal’s solution to the financial crisis with rural hospitals was for the legislature to pass a state law repealing the Reagan era Congressional law requiring that all hospitals, via their ER’s, treat all comers. Just another day in the nullification wars down here in the Southland. Course, most of my fellow citizens buy all the garbage being spewed by their elected Republican representatives.
Another reason why 2010 was so devastating for Democrats, the losses in red states hemorrhaged out the remaining Democrats in the state legislatures, making the climb back to parity and political power an awfully hard and long slog.
The GOP isn’t interested in replacing ACA at all. As long as there are 30-40% of Americans overall (and a larger percent who actually vote) the GOP strategy will be repeal and that’s all.
When they take the Senate this fall, expect more hostage taking. Then they will make the 2016 election all about repeal. And if they win on that platform? ACA should be repealed. At this point, given all that’s happened, it’s clear that we overreached. We may sneak by this time, but we ought not do it again. It’s not worth the effort.
Sorry, I really don’t get your logic here. It’s like saying we shouldn’t stand up to a bully — just give him your lunch money up front because doing anything else is not worth the bother. It rewards Repugs for some very bad behavior and ensures they will do it again, every time.
The effective way to deal with a bully is to punch them in the face, HARD.
Bullies are cowards that prey on the weak. Stand up to them and they back down.
I suppose if you think that the opposition to reform was a form of bullying… It was a policy debate. And we quite obviously were unable to generate consensus. That makes it a particularly bad policy… Kind of like going to war against the will of most Americans (as in Vietnam).
We failed to generate a consensus with the party of rabid obstruction -and so we should just give up, roll over and throw the game?
Good luck having any sort of worthwhile existence with that attitude!
Well… My existence is worthwhile no matter how much I pay in taxes, how many wars we fight (or don’t), how much of a safety net we have in America, how much we spend on defense or on any number of other policy choices. These are all policy choices that we simply have to negotiate. And right now, a large % of the population doesn’t want to provide a system of universal health care. They don’t much want even a system to provide affordable insurance.
I want nice things too. But when you live with an unruly teenager – even if you live with a bully – you have to move on at some point. You get a divorce, you throw the kids out, you move away… It’s not my goal in life to force dumbass americans to be nice to each other… as I said… it’s not worth the effort anymore.
So, in sum, your philosophy is that when the going gets tough, the true liberal runs away?
In 2010 the democrats had a majority in the House and Senate. We lost the House in an historic wave. We likely would have lost the Senate except for stupidity and overreach on the part of the GOP (putting on the ballot lunatics unacceptable even many republicans). We lost control of a number of state governments at a critical time for redistricting.
Now many are forecasting the loss of the Senate. At what point do we all realize that our wonderful ideas to change America are simply too much?
Yes, Democrats should limit their public policy choices to what’s considered acceptable on the Sunday morning shows.
Or alternatively,more Democrats can learn to stop wetting the bed.
We should limit our policy choices to what’s considered acceptable to the people who bother to show up on election day.
FIVE MILLION.
FIVE MILLION.
the number of the working poor in states controlled by sociopathic GOP Governors that refuse to expand Medicaid.
FIVE MILLION of your fellow citizens are being cut off from access to healthcare because of these sociopaths.
The ads truly do write themselves.
I’m hoping this is true, but the Republicans keep trying to repeal Social Security and Medicare. They’ve only got to repeal them once while we have to defeat repeal every time. Hardly seems fair.
The GOP has the same advantage terrorists have* — they only have to succeed once, while the counterterrorists have to succeed every time. Still, I’d rather be in our place than theirs.
*May Godwin strike me dead.
dear lord, no no no …
wingnuts should please proceed, and loudly — at least through election day.