Tag: Health Care Reform
Charge of the Lightweight Brigade
Rand Paul just mounted an invasion
With media alerted to the occasion.
He charged ‘cross the Hill
To wrest free the Obamacare bill,
But ’twas gone — though Rand Paul was not chastened.
Schumer: Democrats Blew It
Unfortunately, Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them… We took their mandate and put all our focus on the wrong problem — health care reform.
— Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), asserting that Democrats made a mistake by passing President Obama’s health-care law in 2010 instead of focusing more directly on helping the middle class, Bloomberg reports.
Affordable Care Act Still Viewed Unfavorably By Most Americans
64%
Of Democrats have a favorable opinion of the law and 75% of Republicans express an unfavorable view, a new Kaiser Health tracking poll finds. Overall, the Affordable Care Act is still viewed unfavorably by Americans, 45% to 38%.
Kentucky Proves Republicans Were Right About Obamacare
There’s no shortage of jokes about Kentucky.*
Q: What do a divorce in Kentucky, a tornado in Kansas, and a hurricane in Louisiana have in common?
A: Somebody’s fixin’ to lose the trailer.Q: What do you get when there are 32 Kentuckians in a room together?
A: A full set of teeth.We are a nation lost in tea party mission creep, as the Party of No struggles to figure out its evolving hostage demandTwo Kentucky guys were driving in the pickup, drinking a couple of long-neck Buds, when they came upon a police roadblock. The driver told his friend to peel off the label and stick it on his forehead, then stash the bottle under the seat, and he did the same. When it was their turn at the roadblock, the officer said, “Have you boys been drinking?” The driver replied, “No sir, we’re on the patch.”
So it came as small surprise that many in Kentucky who bombarded the state’s phone line and website to sign up for health coverage on Oct. 1 specified that they did not want Obamacare. Instead, they insisted, they wanted to sign up for coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
[Kentuckians, please note: Emergency FOXectomies are not covered under Obamacare.]
Kentucky’s response proves Republicans were right on almost every point.
Obama Said America Should Not Act Alone — In 2009
In a world in which threats are more diffuse and missions more complex, America cannot act alone. America alone cannot secure the peace.
— President Obama, quoted by the AP, in his Nobel Peace Prize speech in 2009.
Majority Opposes Defunding Obamacare
57%
Of Americans disapprove of cutting off funding for Obamacare as many conservative Republicans in Congress propose, while just 36% say they would approve such a move, a new Kaiser poll finds.
Van Hollen: GOP’s Threats to Unfund Obamacare ‘Going from Crazy to Crazier’
This is like going from crazy to crazier. Threatening to shut down the government is like playing with fire. Threatening to default on our debt obligations is the economic equivalent of playing with nuclear weapons. For the cooler heads in the GOP, this has to be raising all sorts of alarm bells.
— Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), quoted by the Washington Post, on using the debt limit to force the defunding of Obamacare.
Gingrich Notes GOP Has No Alternative to Obamacare
I will bet you, for most of you, you go home in the next two weeks when your members of Congress are home, and you look them in the eye and you say, ‘What is your positive replacement for Obamacare?’ They will have zero answer. … We are caught up right now in a culture, and you see it every single day, where as long as we are negative and as long as we are vicious and as long as we can tear down our opponent, we don’t have to learn anything. We have to do the homework.
— Newt Gingrich, reprimanding his fellow Republicans in unusually harsh terms, blaming GOP lawmakers for not developing alternatives to President Obama’s health care reform law, CNN reports.
Obamacare: It’s Working
Will good news about health care reform trigger yet another vote in the House repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare? Bet on it.
A new analysis by the Obama administration found that in 11 states where data is available, the lowest cost “silver” plan – which covers 70 percent of medical costs – will cost, on average, 18 percent less than the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] estimated.
And an ACA provision that allows states to review any double-digit premium increases appears to have had a chilling effect on the practice. In 2010, 75 percent of insurers proposed double-digit rate increases, but that number has fallen to 14 percent in early 2013, according to senior administration officials.
In Oregon, several proposed rate hikes in the individual market were cut by amounts ranging from a few percentage points to 30 percent. Similar results were reported in Washington, D.C., Rhode Island and Vermont.
Earlier this week officials in New York announced that final rates in the individual market would be at least 50 percent lower on average than current rates.
I blame Obama for this.
