A huge step forward for Obamacare: Pennsylvania's Republican governor embraces Medicaid expansion

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Greg Sargent reports:

In another sign that the politics of Obamacare continue to shift, the Medicaid expansion is now all but certain to come to another big state whose Republican governor had previously resisted it: Pennsylvania.

The federal government has approved Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett's application for the state's own version of the Medicaid expansion, without a handful of the conditions Corbett had hoped to impose, Dem sources tell me.

Corbett just announced that he will accept the expansion that has been offered, perhaps with some last-minute changes — expanding coverage and subsidies to as many as half a million people.

As a Republican, Corbett either opposed Obamacare on principle (however ignorant) or had to pretend to oppose it, or at least thought he did. So even though Pennsylvania is mostly a blue state, it's an extremely positive sign that he has come around.

Yes, the politics of Obamacare continue to shift, as it entrenches itself as the law of the land and proves to be a success. Democrats demand its implementation and overall the electorate is either embracing it or softening, and clearly Corbett realized that he could no longer oppose Medicaid expansion. It's shameless political calculation, no doubt, but it's telling that the calculation is that the pro-Obamacare position is the more desirable one. Don't expect this to happen in hardened red states, at least not anytime soon, but slowly and surely Obamacare is succeeding.

And just take a look at that figure. We're talking about health care coverage expansion to hundreds of thousands of people. That alone is significant, as these are people who need Medicaid and obviously cannot pay for health care otherwise. But what's also significant, let us not forget, is that we're talking not just about Medicaid recipients, but about citizens, about voters, which is what most of them are. And voters will have their voices heard, and those who were against them -- namely, Republicans -- will ultimately face their electoral wrath.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Is Spinning in her Grave. Laughing.

By Carl 

Who would ever have thought that the five stages of grief could apply to politics? And yet, Nick Gillespie (!) and The Daily Beast give us the first hard evidence that the GOP has reached acceptance:

Last month, even as President Obama touted the "8 million people" who signed up for individual coverage under the Affordable Care Act, he granted that the program was far from perfect -- or even complete. "There are going to be things that need to be improved," he told the press, insisting that there wouldn't be "any hesitation on our part to consider ideas that would actually improve the legislation."

OK then. Even though I think Obamacare is a truly epic mistake (more on that later), here are three obvious ways to make the president's signature legislative achievement better, cheaper, and more cost-effective.

The three ways?

Allow people to purchase plain vanilla "catastrophic health insurance": In other words, the same crap policies that insurance companies have been issuing for decades to people who don't give a damn that they'd file bankruptcy and stick us with their medical bills.

Force insurers to compete across state lines: In other words, nationalized health coverage is an improvement over "states first." Gillespie's not wrong here, of course, but the reason it wasn't included specifically is because idiots who like Gillespie's way of "libertarian" thinking would have been all over socialized medicine like white on rice. So great idea, really rotten politics.

Grow the supply of medical care: In other words, the market should determine pricing and the best way to encourage the market to determine pricing is to increase supply and let microeconomics hold sway. In theory, it makes sense. In a macroeconomic world, however, it's not supply that's going to determine how pricing is structured.

It's demand. The only way Obamacare works is if more and younger people start engaging in preventive care. Indeed, Gillespie even accounts for as much when he notes that there are effective barriers to competition in many states under the current system. There was actually an oversupply of doctors and medical facilities, and those facilities were concerned about protecting their profits. If they were truly inundated with patients (and not artificially creating over-demand), they’d welcome clinics and offices to shunt off some of their diminished capacity.

A large part of the problem is introduced as far back as medical school admissions. Indeed, to become a doctor requires you already have financial resources beyond those of your patients. That is not conducive to a classical capitalist solution to the delivery of healthcare. If anything, it's going to retard the growth of the medical industry as doctors will demand a certain level of comfort in their lifestyle, rather than accept the market for what it is (read that as income from practises).

Still, I should give kudos to Gillespie for finally admitting that Obamacare is not going to go away, even if somehow Marco Rubio manages to survive the primary and general election and steal the White House back for the GOP.

It's a start.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Republicans just don't want reform

By Frank Moraes

Jonathan Chait wrote an excellent article yesterday, "Springtime for Obamacare." In it, he goes through a number of arguments that conservatives have made about Obamacare and discusses how recent events have refuted them. I recommend reading the whole article, especially because I'm only going to talk about one small aspect of it.

He used a quote by Tennessee Republican State Senator Stacey Campfield to make a general point. Campfield recently argued that Obamacare is like the Holocaust, because it was the government deciding who lives and who dies. It's actually a hoot if you brush aside the fact that it was said by a man with a lot of political power. I mean, you need extremely twisted logic to come to that conclusion. You have to assume, for example, that providing more healthcare will actually kill people because it will make the care so much worse. But I suspect that Campfield also thinks that huge numbers of the "right" kind of people don't have health insurance because they've been priced out of the market by the government's paying for the "wrong" kind of people.

Chait's point is that wackos like Campfield are actually in an easier position because they make no factual claims to be refuted. After all, they aren't saying that Obamacare will lead to death. They are simply claiming that the very idea of Obamacare is deciding who lives and dies. No proof needed. But here's the thing: those who present actual claims and those who do not are against Obamacare for the same reason. They just don't want the old system changed.

This fact is clear enough in one of the standard arguments against Obamacare: "Health insurance doesn't make you healthy." This was a big deal last year when a small study out of Oregon didn't find health improvements in a couple of categories for people who had health insurance. Of course, since then, a much larger study out of Massachusetts has found that increased health insurance coverage actually saves lives. So that argument ought to be gone, but of course it will continue on because facts don't seem to matter in these cases.

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Obamacare is now a losing issue for Republicans

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Oh, Republicans. So desperate, so very desperate, and yet it's all just slipping away: 

Republicans struggled to land punches against ObamaCare in a hearing Wednesday, as responses from insurance companies deflated several lines of questioning.

Democratic lawmakers were emboldened to defend the Affordable Care Act with renewed vigor and levity, creating a dynamic rarely seen in the debate over ObamaCare.

Adding to the irregularity, exits on the Republican side at a subcommittee hearing led by Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) allowed multiple Democrats to speak in a row and let heavy Democratic criticism of Republicans go unanswered, a contrast with the heated exchanges of last fall.

*****

Republicans were visibly exasperated...

Yes, because reality is not matching up with their ideological bullshit.

**********

Look, Obamacare is far from perfect, and many of us would prefer a single-payer system, but it was really only a matter of time before those early tech glitches were fixed and the system started working effectively. And it's not just working effectively, it's working brilliantly, and should just keep getting better and better as more and more people sign up and costs continue coming down. 

Which is why it's always seemed crazy to me that Democrats would try to run away from it instead of embracing it. The fact is, while Obamacare may be toxic to Republicans, and while some Democrats in red or reddish or otherwise swing districts may be concerned about being too closely connected to it, Obamacare is the signature achievement of this Democratic president. And that means it's seen as a major Democratic achievement. And so if you're a Democrat, you're on board whether you like it or not. Even if you think you can run away from it, you'll never be able to match Republican extremism in opposition to it.

There is political calculation involved, but there is also myopia and, worse, cowardice as well. Many Democrats tried to take cover when the glitches hit and that's all the media could focus on. But they were going to be fixed. And while maybe you couldn't quite predict just how successful Obamacare would be this early on, why bet on failure? Why not embrace it and hope, given expectations, that it would work out?

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Respect your elders

By Capt. Fogg

One of the things that annoys me the most about living in the most crimson county in a red state is the presumption by the inmates that you couldn't possibly be anything else but one of them. The lack of inhibition allowing them to launch into some vicious right-wing verbal assault, packed like a fat kid's lunchbox with unhealthy swill gives me no end of grief, but of course there are times when it backfires on them.

Republican Governor Rick Scott had one of those precious moments the other day, naturally assuming that a group of retired folks in nearby Boca Raton would, like a juke box, play his song when he pushed the right buttons. Wrong. The expression on his face tells it all.

Scott, who is filling my TV screen every evening with scurrilous lies and sleazy half truths about his Democratic opponent, blaming him for the recession, but worse, blaming him for not hating Obama and everything he's done enough -- Scott who oversaw what was at the time the largest medicare fraud in history, expected the doddering old folks to respond Republican-style to his questions about just how much they hated Medicare and the Affordable Care Act.

What he found was a satisfied group with few complaints, says the Sun Sentinel. Some actually praised "Obamacare." One woman, some years younger than I responded that if young people don't have insurance the rest of us will have to pay their bills and if there really were cuts necessary under the ACA to provide equal care for others, as Scott claims it would, ( he lies) then people like her weren't going to fight to keep every last benefit because "it isn't the United States of senior citizens."

Another older fellow said if there really were cuts to Medicare, he hadn't seen them and that's of course because the cuts aren't to the beneficiaries but to service providers.  Perhaps people with some time to read noticed that the "cuts" were actually Medicare cost-savings passed by a Republican Congress.

Other people confirmed that they had seen no cuts, that they were satisfied.  Others affirmed that contrary to Scott's claims no doctors were quitting.  We get used to the image of everybody over 65 as feeble, barely rational and uninformed. That's as wrong as Scott's (did I mention that he ripped off Medicare for billions?) similar presumption that they aren't only drooling morons but Republican stooges? Is that redundant?

Did Scott's condescension and presumptions irritate his audience as much as his corruption and apparent dishonesty? Who knows? Stealing so much money from Medicare that he can become a governor through paid TV lies about Medicare, makes me glad I wasn't there at the Volen Center in Boca Raton to comment. I'm old enough, of course, but sorry to bust the stereotype, I'm more likely found in other venues like gun ranges, waterfront dives and biker bars where we've seen too damned many liars and con men like Rick Scott and remember him all too well to be fooled again.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Kathleen Sebelius resigns amidst triumphant success of Obamacare

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Emphases mine:

-- The New York Times: "Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary, is resigning, ending a stormy five-year tenure marred by the disastrous rollout of President Obama's signature legislative achievement, the Affordable Care Act."

-- The Wall Street Journal: "Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who led the government's troubled rollout of the 2010 health-care law, will step down, her spokeswoman confirmed Thursday, capping a rocky five years in the Obama cabinet.

-- USA Today: "After a difficult five years shepherding President Obama's signature health care law, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has tendered her resignation, according to two senior administration officials."

-- Politico: "Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is resigning six months after a disastrous rollout of President Barack Obama's signature health law, according to administration sources.

See what's going on here? From how the story is being reported in the media (and these are but four major examples), you'd think Sebelius was a disaster as HHS secretary because the Obamacare rollout, which is apparently all that matters about Obamacare, was a disaster. End of story.

Were there early tech glitches that stalled the rollout and delayed sign-ups and made it seem as if Obamacare was in trouble (at least because that's how the media were treating it)? Sure. But, first, I just don't think that Sebelius should be held singularly responsible for what happened. Furthermore, second, the rollout was not the only thing that happened during her tenure; aside from any number of other HHS matters, there has also been the entirety of Obamacare development and implementation to date. And, third, the glitches were fixed, the rollout was smoothed out, and Obamacare has gone on to be, thus far, a huge success.

Yes, a huge success.

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Obamacare is working. Period.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Certainly there are a number of different ways to measure Obamacare's success (or failure, according to Republicans, for whom no empirical evidence will ever convince them otherwise), including health care cost control, a key to America's future fiscal health, but the most important one, to me, is access to affordable health insurance for millions upon millions of uninsured Americans (together with more affordable health insurance for some who already had it).

And in that regard, Obamacare is already proving to be an enormous success, according to Gallup:

The uninsured rate has been falling since the fourth quarter of 2013, after hitting an all-time high of 18.0% in the third quarter -- a sign that the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as "Obamacare," appears to be accomplishing its goal of increasing the percentage of Americans with health insurance coverage. Even within this year's first quarter, the uninsured rate fell consistently, from 16.2% in January to 15.6% in February to 15.0% in March. And within March, the rate dropped more than a point, from 15.5% in the first half of the month to 14.5% in the second half -- indicating that enrollment through the healthcare exchanges increased as the March 31 deadline approached.

And that's just the start. The fact is, for all the outreach efforts (and after all the early online glitches), a lot of Americans didn't know about the March 31 deadline, or what it meant, and so didn't sign up, despite the individual mandate. But while open enrollment is currently closed, it will start up again, for 2015, in November, and so one can expect the number of uninsured Americans to drop further, likely much further, as Obamacare becomes more widely understood and more deeply embedded as a core component of America's overall health care system. In other words, this wasn't just a one-time thing. Millions of people signing up will generate awareness and interest, leading to more and more people signing up.

It's still early, and this initial success will beget more success. (Republicans know this, which is why they've been fighting so hard to stop Obamacare before it could catch on.) And as costs go down, as the number of uninsured goes down, as affordable health insurance becomes more and more widely available, and as this new system becomes more and more a part of people's lives, easy to sign up for and a significant improvement over what they had before, if anything, there will be no denying the clear and overwhelming evidence that Obamacare is working brilliantly. (Except to Republicans, of course, for whom ideology trumps reality.)

And that Americans are so much better off because of it.

Behind the Ad: Former Mass. Sen. Scott Brown comes to New Hampshire (and not for a vacay)

By Richard K. Barry

Who: End Spending Action Fund

Where: New Hampshire (on WMUR TV and cable sports networks).

What's going on: The End Spending Action Fund is a group backed by billionaire Joe Ricketts, which, as the name suggests, is a Republican advocacy group. This ad is in support of former Massachusetts GOP Sen. Scott Brown, who has been toying with the idea of running for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire. Now comes word via the Boston Globe that he will in fact take the plunge, and make his intentions clear this Thursday.

The incumbent is Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, who was first elected in 2008 with 52 percent of the vote, defeating then-GOP Sen. John Sununu. As you will recall, 2008 was a particularly good year for Democrats, which is likely why Brown is thinking he can poach the seat in this year's midterm, when Republicans have done well more recently.

Scott Brown won, I'm sure you'll remember, an upset special election in 2010 in Massachusetts to fill the remainder of Ted Kennedy's term, but was than unseated in 2012 by Democrat Elizabeth Warren.

As for polling in New Hampshire, HuffPollster's trend line has Shaheen ahead of Brown by a margin of 49.8 percent to 40.3 percent, though this was done before it was clear he was running. The most recent poll (March 13-16) has Shaheen up 50 percent to 38 percent. Still, if Democrats
want reason to worry, they can direct themselves to President Obama's job approval rating in the state. Just 31 percent say they like the job he is doing, while 56 percent disapprove.

As we've seen in the past, all bets seem to be off in the midterms.

The ad in question features a clip of Brown criticizing Obamacare in his victory speech after the 2010 special election in Massachusetts. “It will raise taxes; it will hurt Medicare; it will destroy jobs and run our nation deeper into debt,” he states. And then the announcer intones: “Scott Brown was right on ObamaCare then. He’s right for New Hampshire now.”

Grade: While Republicans running hard against ObamaCare makes sense now, it is hard to tell how the issue will play in November. Maybe it will still work. Maybe not. In a state where Obama's favourability is seriously underwater, health care reform has to be a part of that. The funny thing about Brown is that he campaigned in Massachusetts as a moderate, as you would expect, but became a Tea Party favourite as they dreamed of swiping Ted Kennedy's seat. It will be interesting to see how he plays his candidacy in New Hampshire, especially as outside money designs a message that may not be very moderate at all. The ad is effective for now, to the extent that ObamaCare is a negative proxy for President Obama, but that may change. In fact, the more popular ObamaCare becomes, the more likely Republicans are to start calling it the Affordable Care Act. B

Obama and Galifianakis ramp up the funny on "Between the Ferns"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

President Obama faces an obstructionist, disloyal, and perhaps even treasonous Republican Party; an often cowardly Democratic Party with many in the ranks who don't have his back; a media establishment cowed into submission by the right-wing propaganda machine; a divided and apathetic electorate that allows itself to be manipulated by that machine; and a world in which the U.S., through no fault of his, just doesn't have the overriding influence it once had.

So, honestly, can you blame him for turning to comedy on Funny or Die's "Between the Ferns"? Besides, he was really funny, as was his hirsute, spider-bitten interviewer (a certain Zach Galifianakis, from The Hangover Part III), and it was all for a good cause that Republicans hate. 

And all the "worried harrumphing" is just nonsense. As Chait writes: 

One can certainly understand why the White House would be concerned about upholding the dignity of the office. Presidential dignity is one of the most powerful tools the president has. He commands a vast state apparatus designed to create a sense of grandeur around him, and this aura bestows upon him a power unavailable to his rivals.

Is this apparatus really too weak? Why is it the role of the press to worry that the president is coming across too much like an equal citizen and not enough like a monarch? Washington’s dignity fetish is one of those manifestations of the cult of the presidency that expresses some really weird ideas about how democracy is supposed to work.

Besides, if members of the media are so worried about "dignity," maybe they should look at their own chosen profession, and at themselves, before turning their noses up at the president. And as for the Obama-can-do-no-right conservatives, which is pretty much all of them, well, whatever. They have no dignity anyway, and their shameless hypocrisy is nothing new.

Anyway, back to the show. Here you go... Enjoy!

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

Republican class warfare on Obamacare

By Frank Moraes 

Brian Beutler wrote an interesting article over at Salon recently, "Why They Hate Working America: GOP Equates Benefits With Personal Failure." It is about the Republican reaction to the CBO report that said that, because of Obamacare, some people would cut back the hours they work and others would stop working altogether. The information in the report is mostly good news. In particular, it gets rid of the problem of job-lock where people are stuck in jobs just because they need the health insurance it provides.

Back in 2009, Paul Ryan himself asked, "[A]re we going to continue job-lock or are we going to allow individuals more choice and portability to fit the 21st century workforce?" But as usual with them, Republicans approach any problem with a long list of solutions that are not acceptable. So they may all be in favor of affordable healthcare, but they aren't willing to do anything about it that would actually work. So it isn't surprising that Republicans would twist themselves in knots to attack Obamacare with information indicting it is fixing a problem they've claim to care about.

Beutler notes that the main argument that is appearing from Republicans about the CBO report is pretty much the same as Romney's 47% narrative. "They're not condemning 47 percent of people in the country, but they are being much more specific about the class of people they're condemning." The best example I have of this is a two-income family where the one person only wants to work part time but has to work full time in order to have health insurance. So Obamacare allows the family to go from two incomes to one and a half incomes, allowing more time for managing the home and children. That ought to be something that conservatives would applaud -- especially social conservatives!

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Even Paul Ryan realizes the latest Republican line of attack on Obamacare is bullshit

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Well, maybe "even" isn't the right word. Paul Ryan is a fairly smart guy, whatever you think of his atrocious views, and so one should expect him to understand the difference between the truth and partisan spin -- and his own party's dishonesty. He's no Louie Gohmert, after all, to name but one of his embarrassing colleagues. In a caucus full of morons, that is to say, Ryan does stand out as a man with some capacity for independent thought. Which isn't saying much, but still.

Anyway:

At least one Republican is setting the record straight on what the Congressional Budget Office actually said this week about Obamacare and its effect on jobs.

House Budget Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) explained in a Wednesday hearing with CBO director Doug Elmendorf that the health care reform law wouldn't cost the U.S. economy more than 2 million jobs, as many of his colleagues alleged, but that Americans would choose to work less.

"I want to make sure we accurately understand what it is you are saying," Ryan said, before leading Elmendorf through a series of questions to explain the report and its findings.

Ryan and Elmendorf combined to explain that Obamacare would lead to a decrease in the number of hours worked by up to 2 percent in 2024. Most of that drop, the CBO said, would be the result of Americans choosing not to work, for various reasons, but not because employers would want to hire fewer workers on account of the law. Translate those lost hours into full-time employment and it equals up to 2.5 million jobs by 2024. But that's not the same as jobs being cut.

"Just to understand, it is not that employers are laying people off," Ryan said.

"That is right," Elmendorf said.

That's a pretty direct contradiction for the attack adopted by many GOPers following the report's release. Senate Republicans blasted out an email, saying that Obamacare would "print more pink slips." Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and others alleged that the law would "cost" the country more than 2 million jobs. A number of conservative outlets framed the report as "pushing" Americans out of the workforce, rather than it being of their own volition.

It's a pretty easy thing to understand. There are people who only work because they need the health coverage. With Obamacare, that is, with access to affordable health insurance, they won't need to do that. Ryan opposes Obamacare, but at least he seems to grasp that. The problem is that many in his party either don't or don't want to, and so what we're getting from Republicans and their allies in the media (and even some in the "liberal media" who are too stupid to figure it out or who just regurgitate GOP lies) is yet more distortion, yet more dishonesty, yet more lies, which is pretty much all they've got in their ongoing assault on Obamacare.

It's a job-killer, they scream. Repeal, repeal, repeal!

That the truth is against them, as Ryan himself knows, hardly matters.

No, Ron Fournier, you punditocratic hack, Obama is not like Bush

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Today's primary example of punditocratic hackery comes from National Journal's odious Ron Fournier, who tries to make the case that Obama in his second term is basically Bush 2.0:

Claiming a mandate he never had, the newly reelected president foisted a bold agenda upon Congress and the public, then watched it collapse within months—a victim of scandal, cynical opponents, and his own hubris. One despairing adviser declared, "This is the end of the presidency."

That was George W. Bush in 2005. Or was it Barack Obama this past year? Reading Peter Baker's extraordinary account of the Bush-Cheney era, Days of Fire, I found a striking number of parallels between Bush's fifth year in office and the atrocious first 12 months of President Obama's second term.

My takeaway: Obama needs to shatter the cycle of dysfunction (his and history's) or risk leaving office like Bush, unpopular and relatively unaccomplished.

Fournier then proceeds to go through "nine analogues between Bush's 2005 and Obama's 2013. I'll leave you to read them on your own, if you haven't already. But be forewarned: You'll be wading into a stink-pool of bullshit.

Consider, for example, this gem:

First-term success haunted the second term. The increasingly unpopular Iraq war Was an issue in 2004, even after Saddam Hussein's capture, but Bush had managed to finesse it for reelection. Obama's white whale was the Affordable Care Act. In both cases, luck ran out after Election Day. The death toll rose in Iraq during Bush's fifth year. For Obama, the federal health insurance website didn't work, and millions of Americans lost their insurance policies despite his promises to the contrary.

Both presidents deceived the public about their signature policies, and their credibility crumbled. Insularity hurt both teams. Vice President Dick Cheney famously said the Iraq insurgency was in its "last throes." Obama and his advisers characterized catastrophic flaws with the ACA website as "glitches."

Nonsense. First, Obamacare is not, you know, the fucking Iraq War, which by Bush's second term was a full-on quagmire of bloodshed and devastation with no end in sight. The only problem with Obama's health-care reform has been the online rollout, which was indeed slowed down by glitches, which can be fixed (and have been or are being fixed), unlike, say a catastrophic and unwinnable war. Sure, some people have experienced some difficulties signing up, and some people are losing their (terrible) pre-ACA coverage. But how is that like the nightmare of chaos and death in Iraq?

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Behind the Ad: Pro-Rick Scott group attacks Charlie Crist on Obamacare

By Richard K. Barry

Who: Let's Get to Work (Pro-Florida Gov. Rick Scott group).

Where: Florida (web ad).

What's going on: As TPM reports, a 527 group supporting Gov. Scott launched an ad yesterday tying former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (D) to Obamacare. Crist is running to unseat Scott.

"Obamacare isn't working but instead of standing with Florida, Charlie Crist stands with Obama," a voiceover in the ad, produced by the pro-Scott Let's Get To Work committee, said. 

According to Politico, the "Republican Party of Florida and Scott’s committee plan a combined six-figure digital buy."

TPM notes an interesting inconsistency, however:

Here's the rub though: back in February Scott endorsed a Medicaid expansion in Florida under Obamacare, but the Republicans in the state legislature refused to approve it.

"I cannot, in good conscience, deny the uninsured access to care," Scott said at the time.

Although it is easy to expect a lot of this sort of thing run against Washington Democratic pols, it looks like the Republicans intend to use it at every level. We'll see how that works. 

Behind the Ad: Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu says she is "fixing" Obamacare

By Richard K. Barry

Who: The Mary Landrieu Senate campaign

Where: Louisiana

What's going on: Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu is in a tough battle to keep her U.S. Senate seat. And if you need further proof, as Tip O'Neill used to say, that all politics is local, she is doing her best to keep Obamacare at arms length as she campaigns at home.

Yes, she and other vulnerable Democrats are busy dirtying their diapers over the perceived disaster that has been the Obamacare rollout. Landrieu has launched her first TV ad of the season in which she argues that it wasn't her fault, and not even the fault of any Democrat who doesn't happen to live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Built around news clips, the 30-second ad highlights legislation Landrieu introduced to let people keep their health care plans after the public outcry over hundreds of thousands of cancellations.

Landrieu tries to pin the broken promise that Americans could keep their plans if they like them squarely on the president, not on the congressional Democrats who espoused the same talking point.

Well, one problem for the good senator is that she was, you may recall, a pivotal vote for the problematic law in the first place. If you don't recall, and you happen to live in Louisiana, conservative outside groups have spent and will continue to spend bucket loads of cash to remind you.

You can't hate the woman for doing what is needed to win. She's taking a hit in recent polls and only won in 2002 and 2008 by a mere  52 percent of the vote. Still,  it makes you understand why people dislike politics so much.

<>

Conservatives hate Obamacare for no reason

By Frank Moraes

As you've probably heard, the Healthcare.gov website is now working quite well. But I had the unpleasant experience of hearing Charles Krauthammer on Fox News yesterday. Do you know what he was saying about Obamacare and Healthcare.gov? Exactly what he was saying a month ago! Now instead of claiming that Obamacare is hopeless because the website wasn't working, it is that Obamacare is hopeless because it has a 1% error rate. He even had the pea-brained idea that the government can't do anything right because Amazon is able to manage a much larger flow of traffic with less difficulty. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, Amazon has been in business for almost 20 years. Second, and much more importantly, what Amazon does is trivial compared to what Healthcare.gov does.

The point is that the conservative complaints in general, and the Fox Newscomplaints in particular are of no value. They hate Obamacare and they will attack it no matter what. Their actual argument against healthcare reform is that it taxes the rich and gives health insurance to the poor. But clearly, that won't fly. Even most die hard Republicans would find that argument repellent. So they use the "government can't do anything" argument and grasp at any and every problem that comes along. And, let us not forget, they make up problems.

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A fix for HealthCare.gov, access to affordable care

By Michael J.W. Stickings

According to the WaPo, Obama Administration officials will announce tomorrow that they met today's deadline for fixing, more or less, HealthCare.gov, the website where you're supposed to be able to sign up for affordable health insurance under Obamacare, though questions and challenges remain:

Government and outside technical employees worked through the night on the latest upgrade, intended to increase the Web site's capacity for consumers seeking to go through the early stages of registering for an account and then logging in. The upgrade was successfully completed about 4 a.m. Saturday, according to a government official familiar with the project, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe details that the administration was not publicly disclosing.

But it was not immediately apparent, the official said, whether the improvement meant that the site can now meet one of the Obama administration's internal goals — for 80,000 people per hour to be able to register and 320,000 per hour to be able to log in — and added that the overnight tinkering was, at least for now, causing a slight increase in error messages on the site.

The fix can't come soon enough, because I really need to sign up for new insurance -- and to buy into this relatively progressive new system where insurance companies can't completely fuck consumers by denying them access to care for any number of reasons.

Oh... wait.

I live in Canada. And here, of course, we have a universal single-payer system that combines with private insurance to provide Canadians with guaranteed access to care as well as significant choice.

I feel for Americans, I really do. Unless you have a lot of money and/or excellent coverage through work, you're either fucked or in a position to be fucked at some point -- by having care denied or by being financially crushed by the overwhelming cost of care.

Or at least you were. Obamacare isn't perfect, but it's an effort to fix some of the American health system's worst abuses, both in terms of cost and coverage. Tens of millions of Americans stand to benefit from it, and they will once the registration process is fixed, just a technical glitch, though of course many have been able to sign up already.

But still, America, what we have up here is far better. Won't you join us in our more advanced state of civilization?

It worked, dammit

By Mustang Bobby

House Speaker John Boehner tried to prove that Obamacare is a massive failure by trying to sign up for it. And he would have succeeded had the program not worked.

He even did a special tweet noting his hopeless situation. Not terribly surprising given the frustrating experiences so many have had.

Actually, it turns out he had successfully enrolled and got a call confirming that about an hour after his tweet. But it gets better.

According to Scott MacFarlane, a reporter for the local NBC affiliate in Washington, reports that a DC Health Care exchange representative actually tried to contact Boehner by phone during the enrollment process but was put on hold for 35 minutes, after which time the representative finally hung up.

If at first you don’t fail, try, try again.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Behind the Ad: The Koch brothers feel your pain (stop laughing)

By Richard K. Barry

Who: Americans for Prosperity (a conservative outside group backed by the Koch brothers)

Where: Six Democratic incumbents

What's going on: Last week Americans for Prosperity, a front group for the obnoxiously rich Koch brothers, launched attack ads on the Obamacare rollout against three Democratic senators and three congressman. The lucky recipients of the attention are Sens. Mark Begich (AK), Mary Landrieu (LA), Kay Hagan (NC), and Reps. Ron Barber (AZ), Joe Garcia (FL) and Partick Murphy (FL). Obviously these folks are perceived as vulnerable.

The question is to what extent the rollout will be a campaign issue next fall. I'm as annoyed as any Democrat that Obama and team gave Republicans so much to work with. But I'm confident the plan will work eventually and be very popular. But timing is everything.

In the short term we can expect Republican money to make the best of the current climate. In this ad, targeted to women voters, the narrator says that "Obamacare doesn't work. It just doesn't."

"I trusted the president and Senator Begich. Lots of promises were made to pass ObamaCare. They knew the real truth," says the narrator in the Alaska ad. "Senator Begich didn't listen. How can I ever trust him again?"

Obamacare has been a favourite target of Americans for Prosperity (AFP) all year, as they have tried to convince women voters that affordable health care is not their friend.

In an article in The Hill, AFP President Tim Phillips is quoted:

Some politicians are scrambling to distance themselves from ObamaCare. But people are hurting. They're losing their doctor, seeing the plan they liked stripped away from them, seeing prices go up and their options dwindle. Political games won't fix this. We want to make sure this is the number one issue on everyone's mind.

You'll have to forgive me for not believing the Koch brothers give a rat's ass how much Americans might be hurting.

(Memo to the Koch brothers: Find an actress who doesn't seem constipated).

Behind the Ad: The Republican National Committee tries to go all hip and stuff

By Richard K. Barry

Who: The Republican National Committee

Where: The Washington D.C. area on selected cable programs

What's going on: The only reason I don't like Obamacare is that it's not a single-payer system, which was a bridge way to far for America. Only socialists would even contemplate such a thing.  And okay, fine, Obama and team blew the rollout, which is exactly what we needed: Give the GOP something to attack so they don't have to talk about the fact they are offering nothing to provide healthcare for the millions who don't have it.

A couple of weeks ago the RNC began airing ads based on the old and popular  "I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC" commercials. I've seen at least four of them. Maybe that's all there is. And maybe they're even sort of funny, though I find conservatives have no idea how to do humour. Every now and then they try a political comedy program on Fox and it ends up being either stupid or mean in that way that Fox likes to be.

Besides only running in D.C., the ads appeared on the Jon Stewart show in order to appeal to his younger demographic. Maybe it's been a long time since I knew what young people find funny, but I'll bet this isn't it. Come on, they have to have someone younger than 50 developing ads for the GOP. 

And, um, not to quibble, but the ads set up the adversaries as "the private sector" vs. "Obamacare." How does that even make sense? Oh, it's not supposed to. 

Here's one of the four. Laugh your ass off, if you are so inclined. 

Food stamps and the invisible poor

By Richard K. Barry 

Steve Benen at Maddowblog made a point yesterday that is so obviously true it made me shake my head:

In recent weeks, it's been remarkably easy to find so-called "victims" of the Affordable Care Act on various news shows, each telling their story about how they're going to lose their old, awful coverage plan. These horror stories generally don't stand up well to scrutiny – we're talking about folks who are getting a subsidized insurance upgrade – but they've nevertheless become an easy, popular story for those eager to blast "Obamacare."

I can't help but notice, though, that actual victims of food-stamp cuts aren't exactly blanketing the national airwaves. Arthur Delaney reported on Friday about food-bank directors worrying aloud about the consequences of shrinking benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). 

According to USA Today:

Food stamp benefits will be cut to more than 47 million Americans starting Friday as a temporary boost to the federal program comes to an end without a new budget from a deadlocked Congress to replace it.

Under the program, known formally as the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program, or SNAP, a family of four that gets $668 per month in benefits will find that amount cut by $36.

Those who need food stamps and are suffering from program cuts are largely, Benen ads, invisible to the Beltway media preoccupied with a temporarily dysfunctional website.

Some people count and others don't. That's just the way it is, as the media fabricates one crisis and ignores another.