“Knowingly Deceiving The Public”: Obamacare Truthers Get Caught In A Lie On Delinquency Rate
First, the Obamacare Truthers—the Republicans and conservatives who insist that every piece of remotely positive news about the health-care law’s impact has to be a filthy lie—lost the battle of the enrollment figures. The issue here isn’t whether the Obama administration is telling the complete truth when it says 8 million. The issue is that the Truthers predicted 3 million, 2 million, 1 million, 0 million, a death spiral. And whether the administration is gilding the lily and the real number is 8 or 7.7 or 7.4 million, the hard fact is the Truthers were just crazy wrong.
Having lost that battle, they’ve now opened fire on a second front. Maybe the enrollment numbers are wrong, maybe they’re right, the Truthers say, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is the percentage of people who actually pay their premiums.
There is some truth (as opposed to Truth) to this. People can sign up with every intention of paying and then get hit with something—an unexpected car-repair bill—and they can’t pay. Or more likely, they’re young and healthy, and they decide “What was I thinking, I got all caught up in Zach Galifianakis fever?”—and they don’t pay. And if the young and healthy (who cost the insurance companies nothing) don’t pay, then the only people in the system are the old and sick, who cost the insurance companies a lot, and premiums skyrocket.
So in some ways the “percentage paying” number is even more important than the raw enrollment number. It is, after all, the real enrollment number, the number of people actually getting and keeping health coverage. And so the second the Truthers lost the enrollment fight, they moved to the percentage battle. This will prove that Obamacare can’t work.
On Wednesday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee put out a report looking at enrollment (“report” is overdoing it; it’s one page). It was methodologically pretty simple. They collected data from every insurer participating in what’s called the Federally Facilitated Marketplace (FFM) and looked at who’d signed up for coverage and who’d paid a first premium by April 15. The House panel’s answer was 67 percent.
Now, 67 percent doesn’t sound half bad to me, but the GOP spun it as yet another Obamacare disaster—it would push the “real enrollment” number down near 5 million and mean that one in three people who’d signed up for health-care coverage was already delinquent. They didn’t quite say that, but it was obviously the whole point of the report. “Tired of receiving incomplete pictures of enrollment in the health-care law, we went right to the source and found that the administration’s recent declarations of success may be unfounded,” said committee chairman Fred Upton of Michigan.
The committee got what it wanted: Headlines saying only 67 percent of ACA enrollees were paying. I’m sure there was ample coverage on Fox News, and it blasted out across the talk-radio waves. They have a talking point now, and a number, and it’s low enough that they can spin it as a lousy number.
The only problem is it’s a wrong number.
The Democratic minority on the committee released a memorandum slicing the majority’s logic to pieces in a matter of three paragraphs. Actually, it can be done in one sentence: Lots of enrollees’ first premiums weren’t even due by April 15!
Here’s a little language from the Democratic memo that lays it out a bit more fully: “As of April 15, premiums had only come due for individuals who had signed up for coverage before March 15. Five million individuals had enrolled in coverage through the marketplaces as of March 17. On April 17, the president announced that 8 million Americans had signed up for coverage through the marketplaces. That means that more than 3 million enrollees—or nearly 40 percent of all enrollees—did not have premiums due by April 15 and therefore were not required to have paid them by that point.”
In other words, people who didn’t even have premiums due yet, and who account for 37.5 percent of all enrollees, are counted in this GOP report as part of the delinquent third.
If you don’t want to take it from Democrats, take it from the insurance officials themselves. They dispute the GOP numbers. Karen Ignani of AHIP, a large group of providers, said the pay-up rate so far in her realm has been 85 percent. The Blue Cross-Blue Shield group says 80 to 85 percent of enrollees have been paying. And WellPoint announced, on the very day of the GOP report, that its figure was 90 percent.
In addition, Talking Points Memo’s Dylan Scott got hold of the questionnaire the committee sent to insurers, and it’s a joke. One industry source—not a Democratic operative—told Scott: “Everyone who saw it knew exactly what the goal was.”
I asked the GOP staff at the committee if they had a counter to the argument that their numbers were incomplete and in essence rigged. On background, one staffer there basically told me that they didn’t have a counter. The committee press release makes it clear, I was told, that these data represent payments only through April 15, and the committee will seek another report May 20.
In other words, this staffer is saying: Yep. Which makes it rather hard to avoid the conclusion that the committee knowingly put out a bad number. Why would a committee of the House of Representatives do something like that? Well, what am I saying? We know why.
The continuing truth about Obamacare is that it’s going pretty darn well so far. The other truth is that the Obamacare Truthers will forever be among us, saying, ah, but it’s the next step that’s crucial, and that’s where the death spiral will begin! That’s our Republican Party: Hoping that millions and millions of people don’t get health coverage, just to deny the president a political win. They don’t care how many people die, as long as they take Obamacare with them.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, May 2, 2014
“GOP’s Fuzzy Math On Obamacare Enrollments”: Creating A Bubble That Keeps Reality Out, Then Reinforcing The Bubble With Nonsense
If the point of a press stunt is to generate some attention for your cause, House Republicans are waking up this morning happy: stories like these were picked up by quite a few news outlets.
House Republicans on Wednesday said they have data from insurance companies that shows only 67 percent of people who selected a health plan under ObamaCare have paid their first month’s premium. […]
The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s subpanel on Oversight and Investigations said it contacted every insurance company involved in the federal marketplace, and based its data on people who had paid by April 15.
It’s the latest evolution in the GOP’s anti-healthcare line. What started with “no one will want to sign up” eventually became “no one should sign up,” which morphed into “not enough people are signing up,” and finally “those who did sign up don’t count.”
Notice, of course, that Republicans involved in this debate make no effort to hide the degree to which they’re rooting for failure.
In this case, though, the trouble with the new GOP argument is that’s painfully, demonstrably wrong. It’s so wrong, in fact, that I’m a little insulted – regular ol’ hackery is occasionally functional, but this latest scheme is just sad. It’s one thing for House Republicans to try to mislead the public, it’s something else for them to be lazy about it, treating voters and journalists as if we were all easily fooled children.
How deceptive is the report from the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s panel? Let us count the ways.
First, note that the Republican numbers are sharply at odds with the numbers from the insurance companies themselves, most of which put the total of enrolled customers who’ve paid their first premium at between 80% and 90%. Given this, either the insurers or GOP lawmakers are exaggerating, and since insurers have no incentive to lie about this, it would appear Republicans are trying to pull a fast one.
Second, GOP lawmakers picked an arbitrary and misleading cut-off date: they only count customers who paid premiums by April 15. But that’s ridiculous – as Charles Gaba explained, literally millions of Americans enrolled very close to the March 31 deadline and they were still receiving their first bill around April 15.
Third, as Jonathan Cohn reminds us, insurers specifically told these lawmakers that the data as of April 15 would be incomplete and paint a misleading picture. Republicans ignored this in order to launch a cheap attack intended to mislead.
And while these factual errors are obviously important, and were very likely deliberate, there’s also a thematic problem hanging over the effort itself: House Republicans, who can’t produce a health care plan of their own despite promises to the contrary, still believe ACA enrollment totals are both too high and too low at the same time.
Remember, if these conservative lawmakers had their way, the total number of consumers signing up for coverage through exchange marketplaces and paying premiums would be zero. For them to keep whining about the successful enrollment process, looking for new areas to complain about, is effectively an “Annie Hall” moment: “Two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of them says, ‘Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.’ The other one says, ‘Yeah, I know, and such small portions.’”
Whether or not Republicans understand any of this is unclear. At a certain level, I suspect the substance doesn’t much matter to them either way – it’s about making an attack, hoping the media will repeat it, and counting on at least some of the public to buy it.
But in a case like this, even this is self-defeating, since the actual data will soon be published and we’ll have a new round of evidence that the Republican attacks were plainly untrue.
So why do they bother? To establish the basis for a bogus talking point: thanks to yesterday’s misleading committee “report,” conservative media will repeat as gospel that “only 67%” of consumers paid premiums, so the right no longer has to believe the evidence about the Affordable Care Act exceeding its enrollment projections.
It’s about creating a bubble that keeps reality out, then reinforcing the bubble with nonsense.
Update: The “report” itself is online here. Note how it fits comfortably on one page.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, May 1, 2014
“GOP Governors Hurting Their Own”: The Latest Plot To Undermine Obamacare And Prevent Millions From Enrolling In Medicaid
It’s actually quite easy to explain. The reason why 19 states have refused to expand Medicaid has nothing to do with the cost — the federal government would cover the full cost of the expansion for the next two years, then 95 percent of the cost thereafter. It definitely doesn’t have anything to do with a lack of need for such a solution. This, as with the refusal to establish health care marketplaces (exchanges), has everything to do with Obama Derangement Syndrome — Republican governors who refuse for a variety of cheap political excuses to attach their names to Obamacare. By doing so, they’re hurting their own people, including Republican voters by numbers into the hundreds of thousands per state.
The Affordable Care Act originally mandated that all states expand Medicaid eligibility from 100 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) to 138 percent of FPL. In other words, the government had previously established an income threshold for what constituted poverty: below the line and you’re considered poor and therefore eligible for certain safety-net benefits; above the line and you’re more or less on your own. But Obamacare raised the poverty threshold to qualify for Medicaid coverage, thus expanding Medicaid nationwide — until the Supreme Court ruled against that part of the law in 2012, allowing states to opt out of the expansion.
That’s a massive problem.
4.8 million Americans have incomes higher than the 100 percent threshold, so they don’t qualify for Medicaid without the expansion, but they don’t earn enough to qualify for health insurance premium subsidies through the marketplaces. The ACA was written with a nationwide Medicaid expansion in mind so the law’s premium subsidies only kick in where Medicaid coverage was supposed to leave off, after 138 percent of FPL. Hence the coverage gap.
In Kansas alone, home of climate and science denier Gov. Sam Brownback, there are 77,000 residents trapped in the coverage gap. 77,000 people who have no choice but to go without insurance and medical care, all because Brownback refuses to touch Obamacare with a 10-foot pole, either because of his raging ODS or because he and his fellow red state governors prefer to sabotage the law or both.
By the way, Medicaid expansion in Kansas is supported by 59 percent… of Republicans. Republicans! It’s supported by 72 percent of all voters.
In Georgia, there are around 400,000 residents in the gap, and no sign that Gov. Nathan Deal will participate in the expansion in spite of the fact that 54 percent of Georgians support it. 400,000 is a lot of people, and they’re being denied insurance in order for Deal to prove his quality to the extreme flank of his party.
In fact, Brownback and Deal are so maniacal about blocking the very popular expansion of Medicaid, they’re each lining up to sign recently passed legislation that would block future Democratic governors from expanding Medicaid without the approval of the solidly GOP state legislatures in each state.
In other words, GOP lawmakers have taken steps to guarantee that many of their poorest residents will remain uninsured under the health care reform law, no matter what happens in the gubernatorial election.
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) and Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) both oppose Medicaid expansion. They both look likely — if not quite certain — to win re-election in November. That should make the bills passed by their respective state lawmakers unnecessary, but they seem intent on guarding against even the remote possibility of a Democratic governor.
Actually, the possibility of Democratic victories aren’t as remote as Talking Points Memo reported. Polls in both races are neck-and-neck, with PPP showing a slight advantage for the Democratic challengers to Brownback and Deal, Paul Davis in Kansas and state senator Jason Carter (grandson of former President Carter) in Georgia. And there it is: a possible explanation for the laws.
This is how far they’re reaching to stymie evil, evil Obamacare. Not only are they refusing to create state-run exchanges, oddly ceding state power to the federal government, but they’re refusing to allow the expansion of Medicaid, even though they don’t have to spend a penny to do it — worse, they’re passing laws that will prevent others from doing it, too. It’s yet another way to sabotage the law in a long list of plots to undermine it.
So, what are the consequences?
On Wednesday, the Orlando Weekly published the explosive and infuriating story of Charlene Dill, a struggling, 32-year-old mother of three who collapsed and died on a stranger’s floor late last month. According to Weekly reporter Billy Manes, Dill suffered from a treatable heart condition. She also fell into what policy experts call the Medicaid coverage gap–a hole the Supreme Court punctured in the health safety net when seven of its justices rendered the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion entirely voluntary.
We have no choice but to call this what it is: death by Obama Derangement Syndrome.
By: Bob Cesca, Managing Editor for The Daily Banter; Published in The Huffington Post, April 28, 2014
“Rick Scott Gets An Earful In Florida”: Talking To Regular People Who Don’t Have A Script To Follow Could End Your Career
There’s a reason so many politicians embrace carefully managed, pre-scripted events: they never know what actual people are going to say. The spontaneity may be refreshing for the rest of us, but for politicians and their aides, it’s frustrating when the public goes “off-message.”
Almost exactly two years ago, this happened to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in Pennsylvania, when aides arranged for the candidate to chat with a group of regular folks about the economy. One voter said, “None of us like to pay more taxes, but sometimes that’s necessary.” Another added, “It’s a necessary evil.” “Right, right,” a third person said as the group nodded.
The Republican presidential hopeful didn’t do too many unscripted events after that.
This week, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) ran into similar trouble. The Republican governor, facing a tough re-election fight, is heavily invested in condemning the Affordable Care Act, so he visited a South Florida senior center for a roundtable chat with retirees he assumed would agree with him.
Oops.
The 20 seniors assembled for a roundtable with Scott at the Volen Center were largely content with their Medicare coverage and didn’t have negative stories to recount. And some praised Obamacare – a program that Scott frequently criticizes.
“I’m completely satisfied,” Harvey Eisen, 92, a West Boca resident, told Scott.
Eisen told the governor he wasn’t sure “if, as you say,” there are Obamacare-inspired cuts to Medicare. But even if there are, that would be OK. “I can’t expect that me as a senior citizen are going to get preferential treatment when other programs are also being cut.”
Ruthlyn Rubin, 66, of Boca Raton, told the governor that people who are too young for Medicare need the health coverage they get from Obamacare. If young people don’t have insurance, she said, everyone else ends up paying for their care when they get sick or injured and end up in the hospital.
Twisting the knife, Rubin added, “People were appalled at Social Security. They were appalled at Medicare when it came out. I think these major changes take some people aback. But I think we have to be careful not to just rely on the fact that we’re seniors and have an entitlement to certain things…. We’re all just sitting here taking it for granted that because we have Medicare we don’t want to lose one part of it. That’s wrong to me. I think we have to spread it around. This is the United States of America. It’s not the United States of senior citizens.”
The underlying point of Scott’s visit was to try to complain about Medicare Advantage reforms and how awful recent “cuts” must be for seniors. But when the governor asked one elderly woman if she’d seen any changes, she said, “Not really.” Another member of the roundtable said he’s “very happy” with the current coverage. A third person said he’s had “no problems.” A fourth said she and her husband are “very pleased.”
When Scott asked if they’ve found doctors opting out of Medicare, most said, “No.”
It was at this point that the governor probably decided he no longer wants to talk to regular people who don’t have a script to follow.
For the record, as Scott probably knows, these so-called “cuts” to Medicare Advantage aren’t really cuts to beneficiaries. At issue are Medicare cost-savings embraced by the Obama administration through the Affordable Care Act. The so-called “cuts” are changes to the way in which the government reimburses insurance companies, which have been overpaid in the Medicare Advantage program.
What’s more, congressional Republicans – not exactly a moderate bunch – have already endorsed and voted for these “cuts.”
It’s likely the governor understands this, but hopes to fool voters. If yesterday was any indication, his efforts aren’t going well.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 30, 2014
“We Can’t Handle The Truth!”: House GOP Leaders Scramble After Accidentally Telling The Truth
With a tip of the hat to Michael Kinsley, it appears half the House Republican leadership committed gaffes in recent days by accidentally telling the truth. They’re now scrambling to reverse course.
Late last week, for example, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the chair of the House Republican Conference, conceded to her local newspaper that the Affordable Care Act is unlikely to be repealed. Though she wants to “look at reforming the exchanges,” the local report added that McMorris Rodgers “said the framework established by the law likely will persist and reforms should take place within its structure.”
This was a perfectly sensible position for a House GOP leader to take. Yesterday, the congresswoman’s office assured the right she has no use for such reasonableness.
“The headline is not an accurate or representative portrayal of what the congresswoman said in the interview, what her voting record reflects, or what she believes. She will continue fighting to repeal Obamacare at every opportunity moving forward and replace it with patient-centered reforms,” McMorris Rodgers spokesman Nate Hodson said.
Also last week, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) conceded that opposition from rank-and-file House Republicans is to blame for the demise of immigration reform, and he was filmed openly mocking their reluctance to work hard. This morning, he walked it all back.
House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) reiterated Tuesday that he believes that the major impediment to moving forward with comprehensive immigration reform is a distrust of President Obama, and not an unwillingness of the members of his caucus to take up the legislation. […]
Boehner reassured members of the GOP House caucus during a closed-door meeting Tuesday morning that he was not mocking them and that he believes Obama is the reason immigration reform has not moved forward.
The message from Boehner and McMorris Rodgers couldn’t be more obvious: they’re awfully sorry they got caught accidentally telling the truth.
This isn’t even a close call. In McMorris Rodgers’ case, what she told her local paper made perfect sense. The Affordable Care Act isn’t going anywhere, so it stands to reason policymakers should move past trying to destroy “Obamacare” and start looking for how best to make the system work effectively.
So why does her office insist she’ll “continue fighting to repeal Obamacare at every opportunity”? Why bother? How many millions of Americans will lose coverage if she succeeds?
As for Boehner, what the Speaker said last week was entirely true: the “blame Obama” talking point is transparently dumb, so Boehner’s candor about who ultimately bears responsibility was a welcome change of pace. Why run back to Capitol Hill now to deny what is plainly true?
Worse, Boehner told reporters, “There was no mocking.”
Mr. Speaker, there’s no point in fibbing when we’ve seen the video.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 29, 2014
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