The GOP's greatest nightmare

Obamacare is lowering costs for health insurance much more than initially expected.

The most comprehensive study on Obamacare to date finds that Americans’ insurance premiums under the health law will be “lower than expected.” Many Americans will pay even less than the top-line rates after factoring in government subsidies for their health coverage, with some paying nothing at all for crucial medical coverage.

And, it offers actual health care coverage unlike the sort of low cost private insurance with caps on coverage so low it wouldn't cover the cost of treating a hang nail.

Thus it's no surprise Republicans are now trying to kill Obamacare by sabotaging the rollout via cockamamie investigation. With less than a month before open enrollment begins, Republicans issued a massive document demand to the agencies assigned to assist Americans wishing to enroll in health care exchanges.

Welcome to new world of fiscal conservatism where public health is an impediment to thwarting the President. Their timing could not be more obvious. The GOPers are targeting the several states with the most uninsured. Clearly the Republicans aim to prevent as many people as possible from signing up. Once again I wonder, why in hell would anyone vote these heartless cretins into office?

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Public confused about Obamacare

A new poll from Kaiser Family Foundation shows a majority oppose defunding Obamacare. Only 36% would approve, whereas 57% would disapprove. Which makes the GOP's grand plan of shutting down the entire federal government rather than pass any appropriation bill  funding the ACA even more tone deaf than they usually do.

Meanwhile, Americans remain entirely confused about what Obamacare actually does, which is not surprising given the enormous amount of disinformation and outright lies circulating about the law. Especially egregious are the number of mega-corporations lying about Obamacare forcing them to cut their workforce and/or dropping coverage. As Think Progress points out at the link:

Large companies are blaming this move specifically on the health law. But in reality, Obamacare just serves as a convenient scapegoat for anti- labor practices. Employers have been attempting to shift more health costs onto workers for the past decade, and workers’ health care costs have been skyrocketing as the same time as their wages have stagnated. Indeed, studies have shown that large employers were trying to slash workers’ hours long before Obamacare was around. Most large companies aren’t actually planning to slash their employees’ benefits specifically in response to health reform, despite the headlines proclaiming otherwise.

The Kaiser poll also finds only 8% consider BigMedia as a trusted source of information. Ironically fully 81% are getting information from BigMedia. Small wonder everybody is so confused.

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No liberals need apply?

News isn't doing it for me today, so cleaning up a few amusing links. Rachel Maddow picks up on an odd Heritage Foundation event

What you need to know about the event
Date: August 19, 2013

Time: Registration begins at 6:00 p.m. Town Hall Meeting begins at 7:00 p.m.

Location: Pratt Place Inn & Barn, 2231 West Markham Road, Fayetteville, AR 72701

Cost: Free for conservatives. RSVP required.

Rachel wonders, "Have Heritage events always been listed as 'cost: free for conservatives'? or is this new for the DeMint era?"

I have no idea but I wonder how they figure out if you're a real conservative. And if you admit you're a liberal do they refuse to give you their "exclusive opportunity to meet Heritage President Jim DeMint?" As in, you're only to free to attend if you agree with DeMint's crackpot scheme to defund the entire federal government in order to overturn a duly passed law of the land?

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Defeating the propaganda

Where I come from we call it lying, but as President Obama points out, it's perfectly clear the GOPers are trying to confuse the public about the benefits of Obamacare. Of course, they wouldn't have had so much success in doing so if our "liberal media" was willing to point out the inaccuracies (if they need a polite word) instead of simply acting as stenographers for the GOP's false claims. Our insider media is perfectly willing to analyze the political implications (and subsequent benefits of lying) but only Obama is willing to point out the obvious adverse consequences of the GOP's perfidy.

A lot of Republicans seem to believe that if they can gum up the works and make this law fail, they'll somehow be sticking it to me. But they'd just be sticking it to you.

Fortunately for America, albeit unfortunately for the Republican party, the GOP propaganda is not working like it used to. Leaping in where the media fears to tread, the people are calling the Republicans liars to their faces. Far cry from the summer of the angry mob in 2009. To paraphrase Charlie Pierce, at least this summer they're hollering at the right people. So there's that.

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Obamacare lowering insurance rates

In a mad rush to beat the clock on reality, Republicans are still trying to figure out how to destroy Obummercare. It appears they're going to lose that race, as the good news on Obamacare keeps rolling in.

Health premiums in Maryland’s exchanges will be “among the lowest of the 12 states that have available proposed or approved rates for comparison,” the state’s exchange — Maryland Health Connection — announced Friday. The news comes just as New York,Oregon, Montana, California, and Louisiana are also reporting lower than expected premiums.

How did this happen, you ask? Well in Maryland:

Officials say they used their authority to deny rate increases to reduce the proposed premiums by “more than 50 percent.” Thirty other states have have similar authority.

Obamacare is destined to become a popular program once its provisions kick in and the inevitable kinks are ironed out. Which explains the crackpot cons mad rush to kill it and the sudden pushback among establishment Republicans (or what passes for such in these times) against their own crackpot caucus. Thinking the time will soon come when appeasing the GOP's shrinking base of angry old white men will do more damage to their election prospects than it's worth.

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The trouble with Obamacare

From the GOP's perspective the biggest problem is Obamacare is working too well.

Individuals buying health insurance on their own will see their premiums tumble next year in New York State as changes under the federal health care law take effect, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Wednesday.

State insurance regulators say they have approved rates for 2014 that are at least 50 percent lower on average than those currently available in New York. Beginning in October, individuals in New York City who now pay $1,000 a month or more for coverage will be able to shop for health insurance for as little as $308 monthly. With federal subsidies, the cost will be even lower.

This is just the latest report I've seen of plunging insurance rates coming from states that aren't deliberately trying to sabotage a successful implementation of the provisions. Meanwhile back in Boehner's House of Dysfunction, Republicans are still desperately trying to cripple the entire bill.

The House has scheduled votes later Wednesday to delay the law’s individual and employer mandates, the 38th time the GOP majority has tried to eliminate, defund or scale back the program since Republicans took control of the House in January 2011.

And that's not all that's troubling the GOP. Booman points out "an Obamacare pilot program successfully demonstrated that we can save money in Medicare."

Granted this behemoth bill is far from perfect for many reasons but when people start seeing their rates fall for the first time in many years and costs coming down, I suspect public opinion will warm up considerably. Which is of course, the GOP's worst nightmare.

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Obamacare must die

For the GOP's hardcore crackpot caucus there is only one overriding mission. They must kill Obamacare by any means possible and they don't care who gets hurt in the process. So this presents an interesting test for the more practical establishment GOPers.

It's inevitable a law as complicated as the ACA is going to need some tweaking. Only as the provisions go into effect will the unintended consequences resulting from the massive partisan horse trading be revealed. One such problem is the law leaves self-insured religious organizations in the lurch.

Months of outreach to Republican Senate offices by religious leaders have yielded no official GOP support to an appeal from a broad coalition of religious denominations to ensure that church-sponsored health plans can participate in the ACA’s health insurance exchanges. Worse yet, from a partisan Republican point of view, two Democratic senators, Mark Pryor and Chris Coons, were the first responders to this call, introducing legislation late last week. Pryor is widely viewed as the GOP’s number one senatorial target in 2014.

Without the requested “fix,” as many as one million clergy members and church employees now enrolled in church-sponsored health plans could soon face the choice of leaving these plans (designed to meet their unique needs, such as the frequent reassignment of clergy across state lines) or losing access to the tax subsidies provided by the ACA to help lower-to-middle income Americans purchase insurance.

I'd guess this will affect red state fundie churches even more than more liberal denominations. So the question is what are the Republicans going to do? Clearly the crackpot cons, considering they rejected a rather brilliant ploy to sabotage Obamacare simply because it would look like they were helping it succeed aren't going to agree to an actual fix. I imagine they believe they can raise some rage among the conservative congregations by allowing the inadvertent exclusion to stand.

Maybe they're right. It's not like their voters, who largely rely on Fox News, are going to be told Democrats are trying to fix the problem. How this plays out will depend largely on whether the rest of BigMedia focuses on the facts or goes for the click-bait and simply reports the controversy without the context.

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Jan Brewer, crazy but not stupid

No news because, Father's Day weekend, but didn't get around to posting this earlier and it's still worth mentioning. She's been a poster girl for crackpot conservatism, but apparently Jan Brewer understands the value of free money and figured out the economics of keeping uninsured people out of the ER is cost effective for the state's finances.

After a marathon session that lasted until nearly 4 in the morning on Thursday, the Arizona House approved a plan backed by Republican Gov. Jan Brewer to expand Medicaid under President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act by providing health insurance coverage to an additional 350,000 low-income Arizonans.

The 33-27 vote followed 9 hours of debate and fiery pleas by conservative Republicans who wanted to kill the expansion and break the bipartisan coalition that ultimately pushed it to victory, according to the Arizona Republic.

“I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut,” Republican Rep. Debbie Lesko told the paper. “And I feel like I’ve been betrayed.”

Because, nothing matters more than screwing Obama and pissing off liberals, no matter how lamebrained the policy or how much it costs. Gotta give Brewer credit for standing up to the constituency that pretty much put her in office in the first place. She forced the crazed cons to do the right thing.

In Arizona this week, black is white, up is down, left is right and Gov. Jan Brewer is getting praised by gay Democrats and slammed by Tea Party conservatives.

But this conservative edifice has come crashing down since she announced in her State of the State address this year, to the shock of everyone, that Arizona would accept Obamacare and expand its Medicaid coverage whether her Republican allies in the state liked it or not. Needless to say, they did not like it. But Brewer’s newfound love of Obamacare was so strong that she vowed to veto every single bill the Legislature sent to her office until they caved on Obamacare.

Ironically Democrats and our President could take a lesson from Brewer here. She won that fight because she didn't back down. Have to respect that kind of political courage. It's too rare.

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GOP Obamacare hypocrisy

Proving that the GOP's alleged concern about Obamacare is based solely on politics and Obama Derangement Syndrome, Lee Fang at the Nation unearthed a treasure trove of Republican requests for Obamacare funding from Republicans who trash the program on a near daily basis and have voted dozens of times to repeal the bill altogether.

The list of these hypocrites is too long to list to them all, but it's instructional to see how they praise the program when they've got their hand out for the money.

House Republicans and the Senate Republican Policy Committee have trashed the ACA’s Community Transformation grants as an Obamacare “slush fund.” In the letters seeking these grants, however, GOP lawmakers have heaped praise on their potential. Cornyn writes in his letter that the grant would help “improve the health and quality of life of area residents.” Congressman Aaron Schock, a Republican from Illinois, congratulated a local nonprofit for winning a Community Transformation grant, noting that the program will give “people the tools to live healthier and longer lives.”

And adding to their disgusting deceit:

Whether cutting a ribbon or signing a letter, no Republicans have acknowledged that the health programs they are endorsing are provided by Obamacare.

You won't see this mendacity reported on the teevee news programs outside of MSNBC. But the rest of the BigMedia will be happy to "report" every false utterance these asshats spew to try undermine the program simply to rob Obama and the American people of a chance at successful health care reform.

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