Day: November 10, 2014

Too Soon? Obama Comes Out Swinging After Midterm Elections

Trish

SwingingHow “not mopey” is Pres. Obama? Not mopey enough to send an email blast less than a week after the 2014 midterm elections that leads respondents to the screen shot shown.

Hertzberg: ‘Elections are decided by low-information voters, people who cannot be troubled to figure out whether they are Democrats or Republicans’

Republicans were already complaining that Obama wasn’t contrite enough about the recent Democratic election losses. They, of course, took the results as a mandate for their issues, like repealing the Affordable Care Act, building more fences along the border with Mexico, and keeping women from carrying out their reproductive lives in private.

Obama heard a different signal.

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SCOTUS Ruling in Favor of GOP Lawsuit Would Revoke Health Insurance of Millions of Americans

Jon Ponder
chart-red-stater-insurance-subsidies
The vast majority of Americans whose insurance would be revoked by the GOP lawsuit live in states controlled by Republicans

The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear a lawsuit on the Affordable Care Act, King v. Burwell, brought by Republicans seeking to revoke the health-insurance of 7.3 million Americans whose premiums are paid by government subsidies under the ACA. The lawsuit is based on a snippet of poorly constructed language in the law that suggests subsidies can only be granted to people who live in states that operate their own insurance exchanges.

After the law passed, Republican governors in more than 30 states opted not to build exchanges, thus requiring the federal government to step in and build the websites. Opting out was a cynical political tactic that put the governors’ desire to hobble the president’s reform law over the interests of millions of their uninsured constituents. Now, if the Supreme Court rules in Republicans’ favor on King v. Burwell, the vast majority of people whose subsidized insurance is at risk are residents of states where Republican governors forced the feds to step in and build exchanges.

What a neat trick.

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