Category: Healthcare

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The Pendulum Swings Both Ways

 

It took about 35 years, but the Republican Party is just where it wants to be. They have a Congressional majority and are flush with the optimism of a political movement that they believe has broad popular support. They are looking forward to perhaps winning the presidency in 2016 and finally being able to implement the agenda that Ronald Reagan gave voice to in 1980. Democrats are supposed to be on the run. President Obama is spent.

It’s a nice tale, this one. The problem is that it’s full of inaccurate assumptions and leaves out the fact that the Republican Party is split and the far right has so far given no indication that they are in any mood to compromise. They will pass bills and send them to the president, and he will veto most of them. Obama will propose legislation that the Congress will not consider. In many ways, the gridlock will continue.

But there is cause for optimism on both sides. The GOP knows that they will be burnt toast in 2016 if they can’t pass some kind of immigration bill that allows people to stay in this country with their families. They also know that they are on the wrong side of history when it comes to marriage equality and that very soon most southern states will be forced to recognize all marriages performed in other states. After all, this is the party that wants government out of people’s lives and wants United States citizens to be free to follow the lives that they choose to live.

On health care, the Republicans will vote one more time, probably within a week or so, to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Then they will need to get serious about how they would implement health care without taking it away from the approximately 10 million people who’ve bought it on the exchanges or qualified for it under the expanded Medicaid program. It is true that the party could wait until the Supreme Court rules in June on whether people who bought policies on the federal exchange qualify for subsidies, but I believe that they will be disappointed. Supreme Court justices read the news and they know that denying people subsidies would cause a mammoth disruption in the lives of millions of people. John Roberts will once again come to President Obama’s rescue and provide the fifth vote to uphold the law.

Democrats have essentially lost the fracking debate because not enough people are having their tap water catch fire to offset the millions of people who are now paying $2.00 for unleaded gasoline. Yes, Governor Cuomo outlawed fracking in New York State last year, but that will mean that upstate will remain an economic wasteland for years to come, but at least will have casinos so people with little money can lose it on their own rather than having to pay higher taxes.

The low gas prices will also make the XL Pipeline a moot point. There is little need now to push for more oil when oil producing states will be experiencing budget crises over the next year or so. If anything, many Republican lawmakers will need to hope that gas prices moderate a bit so they can pay for the services their constituents sorely need. That was a joke, by the way. In the end, though, low gas prices will provide a nice boost to the economy and another boost to American foreign policy, which will see much more pain for Russia, Iran and Venezuela.

What the GOP cannot argue, thought, is that much of this optimism and hope will greatly help President Obama. The economy is already improving and having people spend less on gas will help it more. Does the right believe that people will give the president no credit? If Russia and Iran have to pull back their dastardly initiatives because of falling revenue, does the GOP believe that they will get credit for that? Of course not. The president gets the blame when things go wrong and the credit when things go right, and an expanding economy is the number one issue on most Americans’ minds.

Perhaps this is the moment when both parties realize that they do need to work together if they want to achieve anything, and activists on both sides will need to recognize that they will have to give something up in order for legislation to move forward. I can confidently say that there will be no broad tax cut this year, nor will an immigration bill contain a path to citizenship. There will be no carbon tax or an increase in the gasoline tax. The Common Core is not going away. Neither is Social Security or Medicare.

Our country was born of compromise. It’s the only way we will move forward.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Barack Obama Healthcare

More Americans Sign Up for Obamacare

The Obamacare love grows. And I’m absolutely positive that a lot of Republicans are covered and enjoying their Obamacare!

Nearly 2 million people have signed up for health insurance for the first time through HealthCare.gov and close to 6.4 million people were enrolled in the federal marketplace one month into the 2015 enrollment season, HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said Tuesday.

“People are shopping for coverage and people are signing up,” Burwell said in a rare press conference, adding that she was encouraged by strong start.
Story Continued Below

The pace means HHS is well on its way to having more than 9 million people covered in state and federal exchanges in 2015. The sign-up season ends Feb. 15.

The enrollment update included both new customers as well as people who got covered for 2014 and are renewing. About 1.8 million people actively renewed their health coverage as of Dec. 15, the cut-off for Jan. 1. coverage. Others who were covered in the first year were automatically re-enrolled for a second year.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/obamacare-enrollment-numbers-113765.html#ixzz3MkEUDrer

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Healthcare ObamaCare

Obamacare is Working – Look at The Numbers – PIC

If all this positive change happened in just the last year, imagine how much better off we as a society will be 5 years down the road.

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Healthcare

Report – Number of Americans Without Healthcare at Record lows – #ThanksObamacare

It’s a very simple concept – provide people with the opportunity to buy their own life saving health insurance and the average, sensible American would jump at that opportunity. Then there are  those who would deny themselves life saving healthcare if they think doing so would hurt the president.  We will call those people Republicans. You should always stay away from Republicans

But I digress.

A new report out today finds that the amount of uninsured in America is at record lows.

Earlier this week, the National Center for Health Statistics released new data on health insurance coverage during the second quarter of 2014, the first federal survey data that largely capture the effects of the Affordable Care Act’s first open enrollment period. These new data confirm earlier findings that 2014 has seen dramatic reductions in the share of Americans without health insurance, reductions that correspond to an estimated 10 million people gaining coverage since before the start of open enrollment.

This progress is even more striking when viewed in historical context. Building on work by other researchers, the Council of Economic Advisers has constructed estimates of the share of Americans without health insurance extending back to 1963. These estimates show that the drop in the nation’s uninsured rate so far this year is the largest over any period since the early 1970s, years in which the Medicaid program was still ramping up and the Medicare and Medicaid programs were expanded to people with disabilities.

With this year’s decline, the nation’s uninsured rate is now at or near the lowest level recorded across five decades of data. Furthermore, new data out today on Medicaid enrollment and data on Marketplace plan selections from earlier this week show that progress in reducing the number of uninsured Americans is continuing.

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Healthcare Mitch McConnell ObamaCare Repeal

Mitch McConnell Promising an Obamacare Repeal Vote in The Senate

Republican Senate Majority Leader-elect, Mitch McConnell, campaigned on repealing Obamacare, promising to uproot Obamacare “root and branch” he often said, and the voters in Kentucky, who benefit most from Obamacare decided to put McConnell in charge.

So in an effort to keep his promise to take away his constituents healthcare, McConnell is already gearing up for a repeal vote in the senate.

“Number one: We certainly will have a vote on proceeding to a bill to repeal Obamacare. … It was a very large issue in the campaign,” he told Roll Call in an interview published on Monday.

Republicans will have 54 members in the new Senate to convene on January 3 – short of the 60 needed to overcome an expected Democratic filibuster on a bill that repeals Obamacare.

Though he spoke of a more cooperative and functioning Senate, McConnell insisted that Republicans “will go at that law [Obamacare] – which in my view is the single worst piece of legislation passed in the last half century – in every way that we can.”

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Is It Just Me?

Is it just me, or does it still not feel like the holidays yet? Perhaps the warmish, wet weather we’ve had here in the Northeast is partly to blame, or maybe it’s that the calendar has jammed the buying season into one less week this year because of a late Thanksgiving. Yes, yes, Chanukah, for once, is neither early nor late, which is rare for a Jewish holiday, but I think there’s something more than this going on in the country that’s partly clouding the season.

We have other things on our minds. Ferguson. Staten Island. ISIS. Oil prices. Wages. Equality issues relating to gender, age, sexual preference and orientation. Supreme Court arguments over worker disability rights and whether someone can post noxious, threatening dreck on Facebook, call it rap, and never mind the effect on the intended target. Even sports won’t let us relax and enjoy, what with players being suspended, unsuspended, arrested, concussed and, heaven forbid, involved in some of the aforementioned social issues. Why can’t they just be like Mike and play the game?

It seems as if the country is a bit more serious than normal this holiday season, weighing the price of our freedoms against the responsibilities that come with them. We’re looking at race and wondering why we still have problems and why whites and African-Americans still have such differing perspectives on how they are treated by police, the courts, storekeepers and mall security. We’re looking at income inequality and wondering why companies that make billions can’t lead by example and pay workers what they are worth, which is a wage that allows them to live a decent life. We’re looking at who is an American and how we can make sure that people who live here and contribute to their families and communities can stay here without the fear that the government is going to deport them because of a long-ago action. In short, we’re looking at justice and trying to make sure that everyone gets it because more than any other freedom afforded us, justice must be applied equally at all times.

In the end, I think this makes us stronger, and makes the season of giving that much more important. When we discuss, protest and even engage in some civil disobedience, we are reminded that we have given ourselves the greatest gifts of all: to live in a free society where we can air our concerns and make others realize that many groups in the United States are uncomfortable and unwealthy and insecure, and that each of us is responsible to make sure that every citizen is safe. That way, we can give other gifts, the material ones, knowing that we have done our part to make this a better country. The holidays we are about to celebrate are religious, but we need to remember that our national religion is democracy, and as such, we must all practice it.

So although it might not feel like the holidays just yet, I’m a little more optimistic that this season will see us do more good for ourselves and our neighbors.

Is it just me?

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Healthcare immigration reform Immigration Reform News ObamaCare Politics Racism Tea Party Teaparty

TIME FOR OBAMA TO DECLARE WAR….ON REPUBLICANS

As seen on America The Not So Beautiful

November 17, 2014

By Mike Caccioppoli

No need to mince words here. Starting with immigration reform President Obama must do what is best for the country and the people who live here and not give a fuck what the Republicans, still very much led by the Tea Party, think about it. After being stymied for six long years by a Congress that did not want the first black President to have a legacy of any kind, he must now give it back to them in a big way. There is nothing to lose, no Republican lite Democrats to protect. After Obama was elected twice, by landslide electoral college victories, Republicans refused to admit there was any mandate, even any legitimacy to his victories. Now Obama must tell them loud and clear that he feels the exact same way about their victory.

Immigration reform is a no lose deal for Obama and the Democrats. First of all it’s the right thing to do. It will prevent 5 million people who live and work here, have families here, from being deported. It will also cement the Latino vote in 2016 and the Republicans have little chance of winning without a decent chunk of the Latino vote. As the Republicans complain and talk about impeachment, this will only make Latinos hate them even more than they already do. Any attempt to impeach Obama for something totally lawful and correct, will further destroy Republicans just as the impeachment of Bill Clinton did.

So there really is no downside to Obama acting by executive action on Immigration. As I had mentioned in my last column, the next two years must be executive orders and veto’s and that’s it. There is no negotiating to do with Republicans, not anymore. Been there for six years, done that for six years. You can’t negotiate with neanderthals. They don’t have the brains nor the heart to do what is right for the American people that are not in the top one percent. On the Keystone pipeline Obama must use his veto pen. Obama must show that America will take the lead on global warming. Funny how a party that hasn’t cared one bit about creating jobs, all of a sudden cares about a thousand short term jobs that would lead to about 50 permanent jobs. The over 200,000 jobs that Obama has been creating every month, they won’t talk about of course.

There is nothing more to talk about. Obama must now finish carving his legacy. A legacy that is about taking us out of a recession, ending two wars, finishing Bin Laden, bringing affordable health care to over 10 million people, a stock market that hits record highs daily, gas prices that continue to plummet, cutting the deficit in more than half, and so on and so on and so on.

Republicans will scream and shout, they will have tantrums and curse and threaten. Too damn bad. They have and will continue to misread this past election and overplay their hand. Obama must use this against them and continue to watch the infighting within the Republican party. Let them continue to have to answer impeachment calls from the Tea Party members, let them continue their infighting over this and other issues. Let them fight over shutting down the government. The more resolute he is the more infighting there will be as they try to figure out what to do with this newly defiant President that they are certainly not accustomed to.

I’m cautiously optimistic.  Obama has had these opportunities before and has squandered them. However maybe with Immigration reform, the great climate deal with China, and his recent comments about the Keystone pipeline, we are indeed seeing a new Obama. An Obama that has finally realized what the agenda of the Republican party is and has been since January 20, 2009. They couldn’t prevent him from being elected twice, but they still believe they can control his destiny.

They can do so only if he allows it. He is the President. He has the moral high ground and the law on his side. He has the veto pen. He cannot allow Republicans to hurt this country anymore than they already have. He cannot allow them to destroy all the good he has done and take us back to 2008.

He must forge ahead. All they can do is cry about it. He has all the power. They know it. Let’s hope he does as well.

Mike.Caccioppoli@yahoo.com

@CaccioppoliMike

 

Visit America The Not So Beautiful

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Healthcare ObamaCare

New Poll – Majority of Americans Love Their Obamacare

Although Republicans are still dead set on taking away Anericans’ healthcare, a new poll released by Gallup finds that for those who signed up for Obamacare during the first enrollment period, 70% say their coverage is “good” or “excellent.”

Over seven in 10 Americans who bought new health insurance policies through the government exchanges earlier this year rate the quality of their healthcare and their healthcare coverage as “excellent” or “good.” These positive evaluations are generally similar to the reviews that all insured Americans give to their health insurance.

Among those who bought new health insurance policies through the exchanges, the majority are about as satisfied with their coverage and healthcare as are other Americans — suggesting that the end result of the exchange enrollment process is a generally positive one for those who take advantage of it. Americans who still lack health insurance will have the opportunity to buy coverage when the national insurance marketplace exchanges open again on Nov. 15.

These data reflecting newly insured Americans’ attitudes toward their healthcare coverage are based on interviews conducted Oct. 22 through Nov. 12 on Gallup Daily tracking. Gallup asked all Americans with health insurance if their coverage was new for 2014, and if so, whether they had obtained their coverage through federal or state exchanges. About 4% of the adult population classify themselves as being newly insured this year through the exchanges. The comparison group of all Americans with insurance is from Gallup’s annual healthcare survey, conducted this year Nov. 6-9.

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Healthcare ObamaCare

Republicans In Charge – Supreme Court Will Hear Case to Gut Obamacare

Republicans are moving quickly. On Tuesday, they scare the American people into giving them control of Congress and now, two days later, the Republican led Supreme Court has announced that it will hear a case whose purpose is to gut Obamacare and destroy it from within.

ThinkProgress reports: In an unexpected step into a politically charged case, the Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would hear a lawsuit seeking to strip health care from millions of Americans.

The Affordable Care Act gives states a choice whether they will set up their own health exchange where consumers can buy health insurance or whether to allow the federal government to do so for them. This lawsuit alleges that subsidies helping individuals buy health insurance are only available in exchanges run by a state, not by the feds. If it succeeds, the likely result will be a “death spiral” where higher premiums cause healthy consumers to drop out of the insurance market, which will cause higher premiums, which will cause more consumers to drop their insurance. Eventually, many states’ individual insurance markets are likely to collapse if this lawsuit prevails.

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The Post-Modern Mortem

The days after elections are so much fun. Sort of like the day after Thanksgiving when the turkey and fixin’s get a chance to mature and mellow and the remembrance of a holiday is still fresh in the memory.

Well, at least it’s like that for the Republicans. They get a chance to gloat and tell the country just how much they’re loved and how the voters want them to change the tenor and direction of the debate in Washington and how the war on women didn’t work and Hispanics are more interested in the economy than immigration and that the president is not relevant any more and other things that, take a breath please, just aren’t true.

Democrats did a terrific job with those rose-tinted political spectacles on their noses hoping that the poll numbers were under-counting the young and African-American and female voters who were poised to spring out of their homes and rescue the party one final time before Obama takes his techno-laden GOTV effort back to… well, wherever he’s going come January 20, 2017.

What this election will be remembered for is that the South went all Republican, completing a 150 year flip from solidly Democratic and segregationist to solidly Republican and conservative. We can talk all we want about how diverse the country is becoming; the South is having none of it, even in Georgia where the left left its heart in the not very capable hands of the descendants of Carters and Nunns. What, none of the Mondales or McGoverns wanted to run? And who’s up next? A Clinton? We might need to rethink this one.

This election will also be remembered for how ordinary it turned out to be. The unpopular president’s party took a beating in his sixth year. Yawn.

The Republicans had better candidates who mentioned rape not once and found that they could win more votes than the Democrats who ran Usain Bolt-like from Obama. Yawn, roll over.

The right finally learned how to use the new media and mobile landscape to close the techno gap that the Democrats owned for two election cycles. Bound to happen. Yawn, toll over, hit the snooze button.

We also got the day-after sermons from the pulpit about how Boehner, McConnell and Obama will now learn to work with one another for the good of the country and find common ground on the major issues that concern Americans in their daily lives. And they said all of these things with straight faces.

What will really happen is that the Republicans will take out their pent-up frustrations with Harry Reid with laser-like precision, using their slim majority to pass as many bills as they can using reconciliation, which only requires 51 votes, rather than submitting legislation that could be filibustered. There will be no climate change regulations or carbon taxes, but we will get the XL Pipeline. There will be no immigration bill with a path to at least being able to stay in the country, but we will get a bigger, thicker, more secure fence in Arizona and New Mexico, ensuring that fruit prices will skyrocket because it will be rotting on the vines and in the fields for lack of pickers. We might even get some modifications to the ACA, but just enough to mess the law up for those who need it most. And we won’t get any judicial nominees through the Senate. Period.

The country will muddle through for the next two years with the economy continuing its slow $8.25 per hour recovery, states will continue to lead on marriage equality and legalization of marijuana, lower gas prices will help squeezed households, and technology will wow us anew with its ability to make us more productive and efficient.

Big change, though will need to wait.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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AMERICA: AFRAID OF EBOLA BUT NOT THEM ALBINO DEER!

As seen on America The Not So Beautiful

October 23, 2014

By Mike Caccioppoli

It never ceases to amaze me what cowards Americans are. They are afraid of everything. Afraid of terrorism, afraid of air travel, afraid of countries thousands of miles away, afraid of Cuba, afraid of rare diseases. Yet somehow they think they are the most courageous people in the world. The rest of the world doesn’t see it that way, which would be the majority of the earth. And for good reason because it’s not true.

Three people have contracted Ebola, only two of them while in the United States. Both of those people are nurses that had direct contact with the man who died. That’s it. Yet, there are screams for travel bans and paranoia over how easy it is to contract the disease. None of it is based in reality, just fear and of course crass politics.  And hey right wingers..don’t tell me about Obama’s “late” response to Ebola when your hero Reagan let over 40,000 Americans die of AIDS before he would even mention the word!

What is really killing Americans at an alarming rate is obesity, alcohol and cigarettes. This is reality, but all we hear about is how frightened Americans are over Ebola. About as frightened as they are over ISIS. Neither poses any imminent threat at all. AT ALL. But they want travel bans as well as boots on the ground in Iraq so more strangers can die in the name of “freedom.”

It’s not freedom at all but fear. They are afraid so they want others to protect them from their uniquely American fears. Notice how most other nations including Canada have no such fears. They don’t worry about ISIS or Ebola the way Americans do. Maybe the real fear should be with Texas and its health care system. A place where they send you home from the hospital with 103 fever and a free cowboy hat and an autographed Rick Perry head shot.

It’s stunning how Americans have the inability to look around them and see how other countries handle things. It’s like they live in a vacuum. The first reaction to any crisis is fear. Not a common sense solution or a dialogue but outright hysteria. There is no weighing options because that would take brains and courage. Two things that too many Americans are lacking. Stop flights! Don’t allow them damn foreigners in our schools, to learn or teach! Doesn’t matter if you aren’t from anywhere near West Africa or Africa for that matter…you look foreign so you must have the Ebola! You must be feared!

It’s fucking pathetic. It continues generation to generation because kids see their parents being afraid so they become afraid. Speaking of the children, an 11 year old shot and killed an albino deer and now feels like a “rock star” according to his wonderful father. Albino deer are so rare that I didn’t even know they existed. They are also beautiful. They don’t inspire fear at all. They inspire hope about nature and what evolution has given us. Yes evolution. Because if they were created by the lord why would most Christians not be up in arms about the murder of one..right?

The murder took place in Howell, Michigan. Mostly Michigan is fine, but not Howell.  It is a right wing shit fest. Home to the KKK. No wonder this kid is a hero there. So are guys in sheets. Now I don’t want to be too hard on the kid. I do however despise his parents. Instead of teaching their son about empathy and concern for weaker creatures, they have taught him to kill and to love it. To bask in it. Maybe a school or a politician can be his next target? For this there should be a nice place in hell prepared for them. The same can be said for the right wing propaganda ragUSA Today that actually glorified the killing.

This is an all American story for sure. If the obstacle is tough and powerful like ISIS or Ebola, we cower. If it’s an easy target like a poor Albino deer we shoot to kill and show off. What courage! I know what…let’s sing “God Bless America” one more time! Notice how they don’t have the need to sing about blessing Canada in the middle of every hockey game? But Americans wouldn’t notice that, they never notice anything outside their own little universe. Other nations advance while we are stuck in the dark ages.

How to deal with terrorism or a disease? Fear and discrimination. How to raise a child? Violence and power is good, honorable. Dress them up in camo (what war are they fighting?) and send them out to kill nature, destroy the environment, hey it’s OK, you are an American son!

Fear the unknown and the strong, bully the weak and the defenseless. Makes my skin crawl.

Mike.Caccioppoli@yahoo.com

@CaccioppoliMike

 

Visit America The Not So Beautiful

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The Political Muddle

If the sentiments expressed in this article in the New York Times today is any indication, then the Democrats are in deep trouble in the November Senate elections. President Obama still has his fans, but even people who voted for him are losing some faith that he can lead the country out of its present political torpor in the last two years of his term. His opponents, and at this point there are more than ever, are downright gleeful at the thought of having the GOP take both houses of Congress, though they do express frustration and anger at his failures.

RealClearPolitics is being a bit coy about it, but most of the recent polling gives the Republicans leads in the states they need to win to take control of the chamber. The same is true over at Electoral-Vote, except the Votemaster is not being coy at all and is saying at this point that the GOP will claim at least 52 seats after the elections. And even over at the Princeton Election Consortium the news for Democrats is not positive, with the prognostication currently calling for 51 Republicans come January.

Does this mean that it’s over? Not at all. Democrats famously under-perform in midterm election polling and there’s still a half-month to go before the votes are counted. President Obama has lent his also famous get-out-the-vote apparatus to the national party and most polling organizations make an assumption that the electorate in 2014 will look a lot like that of 2010. If that’s true, then the GOP will win. If not, and more of the Democrats’ constituents come out to vote, then there will be many surprises on election night.

The mood of the country will have a good deal to do with the outcome, and right now the Republicans have the upper hand. Of course, they are running on the fear of Ebola and ISIS, which they are convinced will both run through the United States over the next couple of weeks. It also doesn’t help that the seats the Democrats have to defend are in mostly red states.

If the Republicans win this year, then payback will most likely come during a more favorable cycle for Democrats in 2016. In the meantime, look for Congress to try to repeal the ACA, continue to investigate Benghazi, fortify the Mexican border against terrorists, and lower taxes on the wealthy.

You know, the real issues.

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