Tag: Obamacare
Party of ‘Death Panels’ Feigns Outrage Over Insider Claim That Obamacare Passage Relied on ‘Stupidity of the American Voter’
Four years ago, the Republican Party launched a relentless propaganda campaign to convince their low-info, Fox-befuddled followers that the coming of Obamacare was a harbinger of the Apocalypse. The motive behind the propaganda campaign had nothing to do with the substance of the reform — Pres. Obama had based the Affordable Care Act on the Republicans’ own individual mandate system that Mitt Romney had successfully rolled out when he was governor of Massachusetts — and GOPers knew that, if passed, the ACA would provide health and financial security to their own working-class and self-employed constituents, many of whom would be insured for the first time in their lives.
To Republican pols, the bankruptcies, foreclosures and untreated illnesses of their constituents were just collateral damage in their campaign to destroy Pres. Obama by killing his signature law. And so was the truth. Remember these patently ridiculous lies they floated on Fox and right-wing radio and inserted into the Congressional Record?
Unfortunately, We Just Happen to Have Such a Party
Only a complete moron, or a political party filled with complete morons, would allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good.
— “Margie,” commenting on a story about United Healthcare’s decision to abandon its previously slow entrance into state health insurance exchanges and go from participating in only four states this year to nearly half next. Kaiser Health News estimates that if UHC been in more states in the first year of implementation of the Affordable Care Act, its premiums would be five percent lower.
Majority Now Want to Keep Obamacare
53%
Of Americans oppose the Affordable Care Act, a new Bloomberg National Poll finds. Nonetheless, 56% favor keeping the law with perhaps “small modifications,” while 10% would leave it as is. That’s the highest level of acceptance yet.
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%.
Rockefeller Draws GOP Ire for Linking Racism to ACA Opposition
I think it’s very important to take a long view at what’s going on. I’ll be able to dig up some emails that make part of the Affordable Care Act that doesn’t look good–especially from people who made up their mind that they don’t want it to work because they don’t like the president. Maybe he’s of the wrong color, something of that sort. I’ve seen a lot of that and I know a lot of that to be true.
— Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), suggesting that President Obama’s race “factored into opposition to the Affordable Care Act, sparking outrage on the part of one of his Republican colleagues,” National Journal reports.
Republicans Never Saw This Coming: Sen. Kay Hagan Owns Her Support for Obamacare
You know what’s at stake. Only six wins this fall for Republicans leaves them to rule the Senate. If that happens, House-passed bills outlawing contraception and abortion, promoting guns, and cutting food stamps even for children will be the law of the land. And those 50 votes to defund and rescind Obamacare? Done deal.
That’s why states where Democratic senators seem at risk are drowning in dollars from those who profit if Republicans are in charge. Can you blame the Koch brothers for spending millions through their front group, Americans for Prosperity, on ads to tip these races? They’ll earn back billions if their legislation — like a bill to charge people for using solar panels instead of burning the fossil fuels that are heating our planet but lining the Kochs’ pockets — passes.
Pundits, at first stunned by a Democrat not playing by the GOP rules, are realizing the brilliance of Hagan’s move.
North Carolina, where Sen. Kay Hagan (D) is up for re-election, could be drawing the most outside money.
Voters in North Carolina have already been bombarded with 15,000 television political advertisements thanks to the U.S. Senate race…
The cost of those ads is a whopping $6.3 million, and nearly all of them have been paid for by outside groups, according to an analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project.
Many of the ads criticize Hagan’s vote for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a strategy chosen by Republican consultant Karl Rove and the Kochs after the healthcare.gov website’s rocky launch last October. But the overall success of Obamacare’s first enrollment period leaves fewer one-issue voters who will go to the polls just to get rid of the ACA’s supporters.
Blame Obama: Uninsured Rate Sinking Like a Stone
Since healthcare is one of the few parts of the economy not yet easily outsourced overseas, the numbers mean economic growth across the board
A new Gallup/Healthways survey shows the number of uninsured has fallen to pre-recession levels, before so many Americans lost not only their jobs but their health insurance too.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but it wasn’t this way less than a year ago, even though the economy has long been picking up steam and employment continues to increase. Rather, at the end of last summer, the uninsured rate was about 18 percent, compared to 13.4 percent today.
What I’m trying to say is: Obamacare, Obamacare, Obamacare.
