“Delusions Of Failure”: How Republicans Are Deceiving Voters And Deceiving Themselves
The Republican response to the State of the Union was delivered by Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Republican representative from Washington — and it was remarkable for its lack of content. A bit of uplifting personal biography, a check list of good things her party wants to happen with no hint of how it plans to make them happen.
The closest she came to substance was when she described a constituent, “Bette in Spokane,” who supposedly faced a $700-a-month premium hike after her policy was canceled. “This law is not working,” intoned Ms. McMorris Rodgers. And right there we see a perfect illustration of just how Republicans are trying to deceive voters — and are, in the process, deceiving themselves.
I’ll get back to “Bette in Spokane” in a minute, but first, is Obamacare “not working”?
Everyone knows about the disastrous rollout, but that was months ago. Since then, health reform has been steadily making up lost ground. At this point enrollments in the health exchanges are only about a million below Congressional Budget Office projections, and rising faster than projected. So a best guess is that by the time 2014 enrollment closes on March 31, there will be more than six million Americans signed up through the exchanges, versus seven million projected. Sign-ups might even meet the projection.
But isn’t Obamacare in a “death spiral,” in which only the old and sick are signing up, so that premiums will soon soar? Not according to the people who should know — the insurance companies. True, one company, Humana, says that the risk pool is worse than it expected. But others, including WellPoint and Aetna, are optimistic (which isn’t a contradiction: different companies could be having different experiences). And the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has run the numbers, finds that even a bad risk pool would have only a minor effect on premiums.
Now, some, perhaps many, of those signing up on the exchanges aren’t newly insured; they’re replacing their existing policies, either voluntarily or because those policies didn’t meet the law’s standards. But those standards are there for a reason — the same reason health insurance is now mandatory. Health reform won’t work if people go uninsured, then sign up when they get sick. It also can’t work if currently healthy people only buy fig-leaf insurance, which offers hardly any coverage.
And what this means, in turn, is that while we don’t know yet how many people will be newly insured under reform, we do know that even those who already had insurance are, on average, getting much better insurance. Since the goal of health reform was to make Americans more secure — to reduce their risk of being unable to afford needed health care, or of facing financial ruin if they get sick — the law is doing its job.
Which brings me back to Bette in Spokane.
Bette’s tale had policy wonks scratching their heads; it was hard to see, given what we know about premiums and how the health law works, how anyone could face that large a rate increase. Sure enough, when a local newspaper, The Spokesman-Review, contacted Bette Grenier, it discovered that the real story was very different from the image Ms. McMorris Rodgers conveyed. First of all, she was comparing her previous policy with one of the pricier alternatives her insurance company was offering — and she refused to look for cheaper alternatives on the Washington insurance exchange, declaring, “I wouldn’t go on that Obama website.”
Even more important, all Ms. Grenier and her husband had before was a minimalist insurance plan, with a $10,000 deductible, offering very little financial protection. So yes, the new law requires that they spend more, but they would get far better coverage in return.
So was this the best story Ms. McMorris Rodgers could come up with? The answer, probably, is yes, since just about every tale of health reform horror the G.O.P. has tried to peddle has similarly fallen apart once the details were revealed. The truth is that the campaign against Obamacare relies on misleading stories at best, and often on outright deceit.
Who pays the price for this deceit? In many cases, American families. Although health care enrollment is actually going pretty well at this point, thousands and maybe millions of Americans have failed to sign up for coverage because they believe the false horror stories they keep hearing.
But conservative politicians aren’t just deceiving their constituents; they’re also deceiving themselves. Right now, Republican political strategy seems to be to stall on every issue, and reap the rewards from Obamacare’s inevitable collapse. Well, Obamacare isn’t collapsing — it’s recovering pretty well from a terrible start. And by the time that reality sinks in on the right, health reform will be irreversible.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, February 2, 2014
“Bette In Spokane”: Consumers Hear More About The Horror Stories Than The Follow-Up Reports Proving The Horror Stories Wrong
For the last several months, conservative opponents of the Affordable Care Act, including congressional Republicans, have encouraged Americans to contact the GOP with “Obamacare horror stories.” The more the right can highlight those adversely affected by the law, the argument goes, the more ACA critics can undermine public support for reform.
To that end, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the House Republican Conference chair, used her party’s official response to the State of the Union to highlight a woman in her home state who, she claimed, was better off before the law.
“Not long ago, I got a letter from Bette in Spokane, who had hoped the president’s health care law would save her money, but found out instead her premiums were going up nearly $700 a month…. No, we shouldn’t go back to the way things were, but this law is not working.”
Almost immediately, red flags went up among those who follow the health care debate closely. And for good reason: over the last several months, Republicans and their allies have put a spotlight on quite a few “Obamacare victims,” but the stories invariably fell apart after modest scrutiny.
With this in mind, it was only natural to wonder about the circumstances surrounding “Bette in Spokane,” who presumably represented the single best piece of anecdotal evidence McMorris Rodgers could find as part of her ACA indictment. Fortunately, we now have a better sense of the relevant details, which, like so many “Obamacare horror stories,” don’t help the Republicans’ case at all.
The local newspaper, the Spokesman-Review, tracked down Bette Grenier, who wrote the letter used in McMorris Rodgers’ remarks.
[T]he “nearly $700 per month” increase in her premium that McMorris Rodgers cited in Tuesday night’s GOP response to the State of the Union address was based on one of the pricier options, a $1,200-a-month replacement plan that was pitched by Asuris Northwest to Grenier and her husband, Don.
The carrier also offered a less expensive, $1,052-per-month option in lieu of their soon-to-be-discontinued catastrophic coverage plan. And, Grenier acknowledged the couple probably could have shaved another $100 a month off the replacement policy costs by purchasing them from the state’s online portal, the Health Plan Finder website, but they chose to avoid the government health exchanges.
In a familiar situation, the horror story isn’t as horrible as we’d been led to believe. In this case, “Bette in Spokane” didn’t have a health care plan so much as she had insurance that covered catastrophic coverage – and nothing else – with a $10,000 deductible.
Because the law transitions consumers from these bare-bones plans to actual coverage – plans that offer meaningful health care security – she had to choose real insurance. For reasons that are unclear, “Bette in Spokane” refused to check the exchange marketplace to see if she could find a good deal and instead chose an expensive plan from her existing insurer.
Also note, it’s not too late for “Bette in Spokane” – the state insurance commissioner said his office can help her and her family review the available options.
In the official Republican Party’s SOTU response, all of these relevant details were ignored. Viewers were led to believe the law forced higher premiums on this consumer as part of some kind of inherent flaw in the system, but that’s not at all what happened in reality.
And circling back to the last time we talked about a story like this, it’s worth emphasizing that there are Americans who’ve been adversely affected by health care reform. In a nation of 314 million people, it will be possible to find some who didn’t benefit as much as everyone else. In fact, it’s inevitable.
But in the rush to condemn the law, the public has been confronted repeatedly with anecdotal evidence that’s completely fallen apart. Worse, consumers invariably hear more about the horror stories than the follow-up reports proving the horror stories wrong.
If the Affordable Care Act were really as awful as the right claims, shouldn’t it be easier to find genuine examples of Obamacare’s “losers”?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, January 31, 2014
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