Category: ObamaCare

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Healthcare Mitch McConnell ObamaCare Politics

Mitch McConnell Has a Deer In Headlight Moment – Will He Repeal Kynect?

AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley

While the rest of the Republicans are running away with breakneck speed from their “repeal Obamacare” nonsense, Mitch McConnell is slowly moseying along. Apparently, he didn’t get the memo that Obamacare is a hugely successful law and that millions of Americans are presently benefiting from it.

Mitch McConnell is running for the Senate again, the man has been there like, 100 years or so, but he is running again by telling the voters of Kentucky that he is still going to repeal Obamacare. You see, Kentuckians loathe Obamacare, so this repeal nonsense promised to be an easy win for McConnell. But there is only problem for Mitch – Kentucky residents loves Obamacare… sorry, they hate Obamacare but they love Kynect!

Kynect is what Obamacare is called in Kentucky!

When asked if he is going to dismantle Kynect, Mitch showed physical pain. His face said it all. His very being showed what is meant by the phrase, caught like a deer in headlights. You could see the wheels in his head turning, trying to figure out who was asking the question and why were they trying to put him on the spot. You saw the pain of him trying to muster words into a sentence that he hoped would explain that Kynect would stay even if he somehow managed to repeal Obamacare. You saw the pain of a man who knew he was lying to himself, but went ahead and lied anyway. After what seemed like an eternity, Mitch slowly turned to the general direction of the question and said, “I think that’s unconnected to my comments about the overall question.”

Another lie by McConnell of course, because Kynect is Obamacare and Obamacare is Kynect!

This is how one of the biggest papers in Kentucky responded to McConnell’s deer in headlight Moment:

Huh?

Nothing could be more connected — or should be more important to Kentucky’s senior senator — than the fates of the more than 400,000 Kentuckians who are getting health insurance, many for the first time, and the federal Affordable Care Act, which is making that possible.

Repeal the federal law, which McConnell calls “Obamacare,” and the state exchange would collapse.

Kynect could not survive without the ACA’s insurance reforms, including no longer allowing insurance companies to cancel policies when people get sick or deny them coverage because of pre-existing conditions, as well as the provision ending lifetime limits on benefit payments. (Kentucky tried to enact such reforms in the 1990s and found out we were too small a market to do it alone.)

Kentucky’s exchange also could not survive without the federal funding and tax credits that are helping 300,000 previously uninsured Kentuckians gain access to regular preventive medicine, including colonoscopies, mammograms and birth control without co-pays.

As a result of a law that McConnell wants to repeal, one in 10 of his constituents no longer have to worry that an illness or injury will drive them into personal bankruptcy or a premature grave.

Repealing the federal law would also end the Medicaid expansion that is enabling Kentucky to expand desperately needed drug treatment and mental health services.

Video

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Healthcare ObamaCare

Republican Pollster – Republicans will Shift Their Stance on Obamacare

Well that was quick. It only took six years of lying and over 50 votes to repeal, for Republicans to realize that Obamacare ain’t going nowhere!

The New York Times reported on the comments made by Bill McInturff, a partner in Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm, at a conference for the American Association for Public Opinion Research in California.

“After the primaries, expect a shift in Republican candidates’ rhetoric against Obamacare,” McInturff said.

“Only few want to repeal the law; most want to fix and keep it,” he continued, likely referencing the consistent polling that has shown Americans would rather improve the law than repeal it.

He added that the law could still be a net negative for Democrats in 2014, but predicted the Republican shift because its approval numbers have improved in recent months

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democrats Healthcare ObamaCare Politics

Clinton’s Message to Weak-back, Feathery-knees Democrats

The “Explainer-In-Chief” has a word or two for the weak-back, feathery-knees Democrats who are laying down to the Republicans false attacks on Obamacare – Don’t lay down, fight for what you’ve accomplished!

“What I advise the Democrats to do is talk about the good things that have happened under the bill, acknowledge the problems and say, ‘Let’s do what sensible people would do. We had a problem we had to deal with, Albert Einstein couldn’t have done it perfectly the first time, now let’s set a long-term repair process,’” Clinton told moderator Gwen Ifill.

“Nobody could’ve done this perfectly,” he added.

Noting a recent bipartisan agreement over one of the small business requirements within the bill, Clinton suggested Congress should have more special committees that work every year to get bipartisan improvements to the law.

“I think we’re rocking along pretty good here,” Clinton said after touting some aspects of the Obamacare’s successes.

“It’s a beginning, and I think that the people can handle the truth. Talk about what’s good about it, talk about the remaining problems, commit to fix the problems. That’s the best political position,” Clinton said.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/bill-clinton-midterms-advice-106678.html#ixzz31ip8GdHt

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Healthcare ObamaCare Politics

Insurance Executives Shut Down More GOP Lies About Obamacare

Photo: Screenshot

House Republicans were fishing around today for anything negative to about Obamacare. They thought bringing the executives of the insurance companies to Capitol Hill to testify about the law would be a great way confirm their already debunked talking points about Obamacare. Their plan however backfired, as one executive after the next shut down their crazy assumption.

One of the talking points floating around now is that Obamacare policy prices would explode in 2015. House Republicans were trying to get the executives to admit that this was true, that 2015 would be the year Obamacare dies, but they failed tremendously.

Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA), chair of the subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that hosted the hearing, opened the questioning with what seemed like a laundry list of potential problem spots for the health care law.

Are people going to paying higher premiums in 2015?

“I can’t say for certain,” one of the executives replied. “I don’t have the exact numbers yet,” another said.

Do you know if your enrollees are paying more for insurance now under Obamacare? Do you know how many had their previous health plan canceled?

“We currently do not have that data,” one of the witnesses said.

A little while later, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), one of the more outspoken Obamacare critics in Congress, got audibly flustered as she continued to press insurers to reveal their business plans in front of their competitors, pressing the witnesses to give some indication of what Obamacare’s 2015 premiums will be.

“At this point, we can’t offer any guidance on where they’re going to fall,” Paul Wingle, a top executive at Aetna, told Blackburn.

“At this juncture, we do not have that information,” another witness said.

“A lot of uncertainty floating around up there,” Blackburn quipped. She then implored the witnesses to offer anything — even some kind of preliminary guess that might have been given to their top officials — of what was going to happen with the next year’s premiums.

“Have any of you conducted any interim analysis of what your organization’s premiums are going to look like?” she said. She asked for a show of hands. No witnesses volunteered.

“You have done no internal analysis on what the trend line is for these premiums? None?” Blackburn said, clearly exasperated. “It is baffling that we could have some of our nation’s largest insurers, and you all don’t have any internal analysis of what these rates are going to be.

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ObamaCare Politics

PolitiFact to Rand Paul – Your Lie About Obamacare is a ‘Pants on Fire’ Lie

So Rand Paul has sent out mailings to his supporters telling them some rather impossible to believe claims about Obamacare. Of course his supporters drink it all as truth. They happily believe everything these Republicans say. But PolitiFact has checked and this lie got their Pants on Fire ratings.

According to PolitiFact, someone sent them the mailing from Rand Paul claiming that “for every Kentuckian that has enrolled in Obamacare, 40 have been dropped from their coverage.” An insane ratio, I know. And I’m not the only one who found this claim rediculous. It also caught the attention of PolitiFact. They checked into Paul’s claim and found this:

Tracking cancellations isn’t so easy, because cancellations are issued by private health insurance companies, and regulations differ in each state. The Associated Press assembled a comprehensive, 50-state look at Obamacare-related cancellations and concluded that, in Kentucky, 130,000 people received cancellation notices. Meanwhile, the Kentucky Department of Insurance has put the number at 168,000.

So a reasonable number for cancellations in Kentucky is probably between 130,000 and 168,000.

How many Kentuckians have signed up for Obamacare?

The answer depends on your definition of “Obamacare.”

The broader measure includes both signups for private insurance at the state-run Kynect insurance marketplace, as well as signups for Medicaid, the longstanding government-run health insurance program for the poor that Kentucky chose to expand under Obamacare.

In late April 2014, the state announced that 82,795 Kentuckians had purchased private plans on Kynect and 330,615 others had qualified for Medicaid coverage, for a total of 413,410. Data from the federal Department of Health and Human Services that counts a few more weeks of signups had slightly higher numbers.

Comparing the two numbers

Using just these numbers, Paul is either wrong or very wrong.

The smaller number — private-insurance number of signups (82,795) — is exceeded by the number of cancellations (up to 168,000), but at most, the discrepancy is only twice as big, not 40 times as big.

But it’s not clear that this is the right number to use. Paul’s newsletter didn’t only refer to private plans, and the Medicaid expansion was just as much a part of Obamacare as the marketplaces for private health insurance plans.

So if you include both types of signups (413,410), then the combined Medicaid and private-insurance signups in Kentucky actually exceeded the number of cancellations by more than double. So Paul’s claim is not just off-base, it’s actually going in the opposite direction.

In fact, the 40-times-higher claim is ridiculously off-base.

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Healthcare ObamaCare Politics

How Obamacare Saved The Life Of a Doubting Republican

Dean Angstadt fells trees for a living.

He’s a self-employed, self-sufficient logger who has cleared his own path for most of his 57 years, never expecting help from anyone. And even though he’d been uninsured since 2009, he especially wanted nothing to do with the Affordable Care Act.

“I don’t read what the Democrats have to say about it because I think they’re full of it,” he told his friend Bob Leinhauser, who suggested he sign up.

That refrain changed this year when a faulty aortic valve almost felled Angstadt. Suddenly, he was facing a choice: Buy a health plan, through a law he despised, that would pay the lion’s share of the cost of the life-saving surgery – or die. He chose the former.

“A lot of people I talk to are so misinformed about the ACA,” Angstadt said. “I was, before Bob went through all this for me. I would recommend it to anybody and, in fact, have encouraged friends, including the one guy who hauls my logs.

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Healthcare ObamaCare Politics Repeal

Fox News Cannot Get This Republican To Say What Their Obamacare Replacement Plan Is

If Fox News – the people who are the authors of some of the Republican talking points against Obamacare – cannot get a Republican to disclose their secret Obamacare replacement, then who can?

Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) struggled to articulate a credible GOP alternative to the Affordable Care Act during an appearance on Fox News Monday morning, promising only to replace President Obama’s health care reform with “legislation that does give people more opportunities” and “better ideas.”

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Healthcare ObamaCare Politics the supreme court

Not So Breaking News – Fox News Contributor Thinks Obamacare is Unconstitutional – Video


George Will

To hell with the Supreme Court and their interpretation that the Affordable Care Act better known as Obamacare was constitutional. What do they know anyway. If you really want to know if the healthcare law is constitutional, just ask George Will – a Fox News contributor whose opinion apparently matters to those at Fox.

On Sunday, Mr. Will once again offered his opinion and guess what? The Fox News regular disagrees with the Supreme Court and has determined that Obamacare is in fact, unconstitutional.

Sidenote: It can be argued that opposition to Obamacare is all one needs to be a contributor on the Fox “News” Network. Mr. Will fits this description perfectly.

Now back to your regularly scheduled Fox News Obamacare bashing…

Mr. Will continues… “On May 8, here in the second-most important court in the land — the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals — there will be an argument that this is objectively a revenue measure,” Mr. Will said. “The Supreme Court said as much, a tax measure.”

“It did not originate in the House. And under the standards of origination, the whole thing is unconstitutional, so this argument, again, is far from over.”

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Healthcare ObamaCare Politics

The Simplest Reason Obamacare Succeeded – Explained

Sarah Kliff explained – There’s a very simple reason that Obamacare hit 8 million sign-ups: Being uninsured is horrible.

But the political conversation over Obamacare was driven almost entirely by people who had, and knew they would be able to keep, their health insurance. It was filled with a lot of assumptions, theories, and speculations about what people who didn’t have good insurance, or any insurance, would do. And after Obamacare’s disastrous launch, the theory took hold that these people wouldn’t find this untested program worth the trouble. It was the permanently insured speculating about the uninsured and the barely insured – and, unsurprisingly, they got it wrong

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Healthcare ObamaCare Politics Repeal

Republicans to Republicans – Where’s Our Obamacare Replacement Bill?

Photo: P2012

It seems that Republicans are finally waking up and realizing that their leaders have no plans for health care, except to take away the care that millions of Americans now enjoy.

The Hill is reporting that top House conservatives are pressuring Republican leaders to bring an ObamaCare replacement bill to a vote by the August recess.

Conservatives cheered when Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) pledged a vote during the House GOP’s annual retreat in January, viewing the commitment as a central element of the party’s vow to be “the alternative party” and not merely stand in opposition to President Obama.

Yet 10 weeks later, party leaders have given no indication when they might present a plan or what form it will take.

Conservatives like Rep. Steve Scalise (La.), chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), are pushing for a vote by the time lawmakers leave town for five weeks at the end of July.

“At the end of the day, we feel it’s really important to bring a bill to the floor that is a true replacement to the president’s healthcare law,” Scalise said in a phone interview Tuesday.

“Look, leadership’s come a long way in the last six months on that, and we’re continuing to talk to them to try to get to a point where we actually have a vote on the House floor by the August recess.”

Scalise wants the party to adopt a single, comprehensive replacement for ObamaCare, but party leaders have not signed off on that approach. In recent weeks, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has suggested the House might vote instead on a series of healthcare bills.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has shied away from making any commitment at all, appearing to downplay the importance of holding a floor vote within a specific timeframe

h/t The Hill

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Healthcare ObamaCare Politics

President Obama – “Republicans Were Wrong” – 8 Million People Already Signed Up

And still, the Republicans are stuck on stupid! They’re still talking about repealing a law that is helping the economy, and helping millions and millions and millions of Americans! And as they talk about repeal, they have no idea on what to replace the law with if they somehow manage to repeal it.

President Obama announced Thursday that 8 million people have signed up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, calling the feat a success story that Democrats should “forcefully defend and be proud of” in the face of Republican election-year attacks on the law.

The enrollment figure, revised upward from the 7.5 million signups that the administration had announced earlier this month, renewed hopes at the White House that Democrats will be able to overcome the initial rocky rollout of the health law in the fall as they battle to maintain control of the Senate in the midterms this fall.

“This thing is working,” Obama said at an afternoon news conference. Of the GOP, he added: “They said no one would sign up. They were wrong about that. They are wrong to try to repeal a law that is working.”

The final figure is well above the White House’s initial target of 7 million signups.

Republicans, who have fought the law since it was passed by a sharply divided Congress in 2010, escalated their call for the law to be repealed after the problems with the enrollment Web site, which repeatedly broke down in its first few months. Obama’s job approval ratings dropped, and Democrats worried that the bad headlines would harm the party at the ballot box.

But a buoyant Obama said the better-than-expected enrollment news should convince Democrats to not shy away from embracing his signature domestic achievement.

“I don’t think we should apologize for it, and I don’t think we should be defensive about it,” he said. “I think it is a strong, good, right story to tell. I think what the other side is doing and what the other side is offering would strip away protections for those families.”

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Featured Healthcare ObamaCare Politics

Fox News Outrage – Because of Obamacare, People Must Now Wait to Buy Healthcare

Fox News has something else to complain about. They are now blaming Obamacare for the people who chose to remain uninsured past the enrollment cycle. You know, those same folks Fox News told not to buy healthcare.

On the so-called “news” network’s website, this was written;

There is yet another ObamaCare surprise waiting for consumers: from now until the next open enrollment at the end of this year, most people will simply not be able to buy any health insurance at all, even outside the exchanges.

Apparently, the concept of an enrollment cycle is foreign to the good ole folks over at Fox. Of course, the rest of us already know that enrollment in health insurance happens every year and anyone who missed or failed to enroll because, they listened to Fox for example – would usually wait for the next enrollment cycle. But according to the foxers, Obamacare is now the culprit.

I still cannot figure out why their audience continue buying their bull!

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