“Fast And Loose With The Facts”: Lying About Obamacare Continues As Campaign Season Begins
You may want to sit down before reading this: Republicans aren’t being totally truthful about the Affordable Care Act (ACA). As the 2014 midterm elections approach, conservative groups are beginning to hit the airwaves with spots targeting vulnerable Democrats and their support for the health law — and the ads are playing fast and loose with the facts.
Americans for Prosperity, the tax-exempt conservative action group created by brothers Charles and David Koch, took out two ads against vulnerable Democrats: Rick Nolan of Minnesota’s 8th District and Ann Kuster of New Hampshire’s 2nd District. Both focus on the health-care law, and they are important to dissect because they are the first trickles of what is sure to be a torrent of anti-ACA advertising.
The ad against Nolan features a middle-aged Minnesota resident named Randy Westby, who [http://youtu.be/-VVwc60M8zg]says he lost his health care plan because it no longer qualified for purchase in the exchanges. “I’ve had three heart attacks in the last six years. Health care is something that’s essential, and my life depends on it,” he continues.
The ad leans heavily on Politifact’s “Lie of the Year” designation for President Obama’s “if you like your plan, you can keep it” claim, and gives the strong impression that sick people are much worse off under Obamacare.
But was Westby able to find another plan? Four million to five million people probably had their plan canceled because of updated coverage requirements, but the administration believes fewer than 500,000 of those people are still looking for another plan. The ad doesn’t tell us if Westby is one of those people.
Nor does it note that he can’t be disqualified from any of the plans on the exchanges because of his preexisting condition — and three heart attacks in six years is one heck of a preexisting condition. Are the plans available to him cheaper than what he had before? How much better is the coverage? We don’t know, although given Westby’s medical history and apparent age, it seems he is exactly the type of person most likely to benefit from how the new individual market is structured.
The New Hampshire ad is more general and features an actress, but it relies on the same central and shaky claim that “millions of people” are losing coverage. Both ads hit the Democrats in question for voting to keep the ACA in place. (Aside from firing up the conservative grass roots, there was a good political reason for all those repeal votes in the House: to get vulnerable Democrats on the record, again and again.)
A focus on horror stories like these is the likely new Republican approach to Obamacare, as the New York Times outlines today. “It’s no longer just a piece of paper that you can repeal and it goes away,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told the times. “There’s something there. We have to recognize that reality. We have to deal with the people that are currently covered under Obamacare.”
But Westby may well be one of these people. And he may be getting better coverage. These will be the battle lines for the upcoming year: Republicans are gearing up to tell the horror stories, and Democrats will have to respond with stories of their own — the eight million to 10 million people who will be getting coverage under Obamacare by the end of March.
By: George Zornick, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, December 27, 2013
“Yes, A Birthright To Health Care”: America Joins The Developed World, Thanks To Obamacare
I’m sitting here very early Christmas Eve morning staring at a chart from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. You know the OECD—they’re the people who keep all those annoying stats about how the United States is 17th in this and 32nd in that, the kind that alas aren’t very surprising anymore except that they do make us shake our heads and wonder how we managed to come in behind even Belarus.
This chart is on an Excel spreadsheet, so I can’t provide a link, but it shows access to “health insurance coverage for a core set of services, 2009.” It then lists the 34 OECD member states, showing percentages of citizens with “total public coverage” and with “primary private health coverage.”
In 19 countries, 100 percent of the population is covered via public insurance. In 11 more, more than 95 percent are covered the same way. So all but four countries basically provide universal or near-universal public coverage. In Turkey, Mexico, and Chile, between 70 and 80 percent are covered—also publicly. In the United States, that number is 26.4 percent. That’s the seniors, the veterans, and the very poor who get direct public health care. We then add 54.9 percent who get private coverage. No other country even bothers with private coverage at all, except Germany a little bit (10.8 percent). Our two numbers add up to 81.3 percent, ranking us 31st out of the 34. The rest of the advanced world, in other words, with not all that much fuss and contention, has come around to the idea that health coverage is a right.
As I think back over 2013, in my sunnier moments, I try to think of it as the year that future historians will point to as the time when the United States finally and grudgingly started joining this world consensus. Sometime in the 2030s, after Medicare for all has passed and we’re finally and sensibly paying taxes for preventive cradle-to-grave care, people will note—with pride!—that the long process started with Obamacare (yes, conservatives: I’m admitting gleefully that the elephant’s nose is under the door, so spare yourselves the trouble of thinking you’re clever by tweeting it!).
There were of course other important stories in the year now ending. For my number two, I’d choose Iran and Syria; that’s certainly one to watch heading into next year. Barack Obama mishandled Syria with all that talk of red lines that ended up being unenforced, badly letting down the small-d democrats in the region who count on the United States to countervail Iran. On the other hand, those chemical weapons actually are being destroyed, evidently. On the other other hand, the slaughter continues, and we will do nothing. Even a deal with Iran on nuclear technology, certainly a thing to be celebrated in one respect, will also allow Iran to show the region (that is, Saudi Arabia, its main competitor for regional domination) that it’s in the big leagues now too. As is typical in that part of the world, no diplomatic development is all good or all bad.
But this has been the year of Obamacare first and foremost. And next year pretty much will be, too. I’m glad the website was fixed, and glad for the apparent surge in the enrollment numbers. But it’s still the case for the change to take root and really succeed, Democrats from Obama on down have to defend this policy on principled terms, not just practical ones.
That is—right now, Democrats and progressive groups are mostly trying to get people to sign up for coverage by scaring them into thinking they might break their leg. But there are two problems with this approach. One, most people don’t break their leg. I’ve been on this planet 53 years and I’ve never broken a bone.
Two, it’s not completely honest as a selling point. Yes, liberals are concerned that people who face injury have coverage. But that’s not the main reason liberals support health care reform. We support it because we think health care coverage should be a right, and this is a big step down that road, or the best step we could make under current reality. Like any right, it comes with responsibility, so that’s why you have to buy it. But it’s a right. It’s not an extravagance or something you earn by having a better-than-Walmart-level job. You “earn” it by doing something a lot simpler than that—you earn it by being born.
This is one of those occasions where I wish desperately that Democratic politicians would just say what they believe without worrying how it’s going to be played in Politico or what those fat-mouth propagandists on the right are going to say about it. Obamacare isn’t just about getting people to fear illness or injury. It’s about changing people’s minds about what health coverage fundamentally is. And they’re not going to change any minds unless they’re willing to say that.
Hey, I’ve kept flipping through those OECD spread sheets and I’ve found some things we’re number one in. Male obesity—70.3 percent in 2011! Female obesity, too—56.1 percent! Infant mortality rate of 6.1 per 1,000 live births! Okay, we trail Mexico and Turkey there, but still. Income inequality—well, thank God for Turkey, Mexico, and Chile. Whoever let them in was really thinking ahead, so at least we’d look OK compared to someplace.
Something like reducing obesity can be best done through preventive care that kicks in well before a person has a BMI in the 40s. Obamacare already has started the process of changing this. More than 5 million Medicare recipients are getting free preventive treatments across a range of categories (PDF). That’s health care as a right. Democrats need to be unapologetic in talking like that.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, December 26, 2013
“Rove’s Republican Rivals Step Up”: With The Bloom Off The Rose, Struggle Over Money And Influence Is Roiling The Republican Party
About a year ago at this time, Karl Rove found himself in a fairly awkward position. While maintaining a prominent media role as a campaign analyst, the Republican strategist was also raising truckloads full of cash for his Crossroads operation, which was trying to buy victories for the candidates Rove was covering.
The result was a rather striking fiasco. Rove burned through several hundred million dollars, but lost nearly every race he targeted, culminating in an unfortunate on-air tantrum. Conservative activist Richard Viguerie said at the time that “in any logical universe,” Rove “would never be hired to run or consult on a national campaign again.”
Indeed, a Republican operative told the Huffington Post, “The billionaire donors I hear are livid…. There is some holy hell to pay.”
A year later, on a superficial level, much of the landscape appears similar – Rove still enjoys his media perches, still leads the Crossroads attack operation, and still hopes wealthy far-right donors will finance his election plans. But Nick Confessore reports that there’s one important difference: Rove has more intra-party rivals, hoping to take advantage of his record of failure.
A quiet but intense struggle over money and influence is roiling the Republican Party just as the 2014 election season is getting underway.
At least a dozen “super PACs” are setting up to back individual Republican candidates for the United States Senate, challenging the strategic and financial dominance that Karl Rove and the group he co-founded, American Crossroads, have enjoyed ever since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 cleared the way for unlimited independent spending.
In wooing donors, the new groups – in states like Texas, Iowa, West Virginia and Louisiana – are exploiting Crossroads’ poor showing in 2012, when $300 million spent by the super PAC and a sister nonprofit group yielded few victories. Some are suggesting that Crossroads’ deep ties to the Republican establishment and recent clashes with conservative activists are a potential liability for Republican incumbents facing Tea Party challengers.
It wasn’t too long ago that Rove’s name carried almost mythical weight in Republican circles, which no doubt made a difference when Crossroads approached donors for checks. But after 2012, the bloom is off the rose. Rove’s reputation took a hit and it hasn’t recovered.
In some respects, this is overdue. In 2000, it was Rove’s idea to keep George W. Bush in California in the campaign’s waning days, instead of stumping in key battleground states. Bush lost California by a wide margin, and Rove’s strategy practically cost his candidate the election.
In 2006, after nearly getting indicted, Rove’s sole responsibility was overseeing the Republican Party’s 2006 election strategy. At the time, he told NPR in late October that he’d found a secret math that gave him insights that mere mortals can’t comprehend, and soon after, Democrats won back both the House and Senate in a historic victory.
And then in 2012, Rove managed to strike out in ignominious fashion with other people’s money, raising questions anew about whether his reputation was ever fully deserved.
The result is skeptical GOP donors who not only see Rove as someone who can’t deliver victories, but also part of a tired Republican Beltway establishment that’s lost perspective. With the proliferation of groups similar to Crossroads, Rove has to worry about competition within his own party in ways he’s not accustomed to.
By: Steve Benen, the Maddow Blog, December 26, 2013
“Not A Bad General Election Issue”: Should Democrats Press The Public Option?
There’s no question that the Affordable Care Act’s rollout has been “rocky,” to borrow the common parlance of the Beltway. The Web site troubles and shifting health coverage for some Americans, despite over-assurances from President Obama during the 2010 political debate, have naturally turned off some people. A much-ballyhooed poll from CNN yesterday shows that support for “Obamacare” has dropped to an all-time low.
But conservatives toasting the apparent turn in public opinion ought to look a little closer at the polling data. It’s true that only 35 percent of Americans favor the law, while 43 percent oppose it. But there’s a crucial third group: 15 percent oppose the ACA because it’s “not liberal enough.” That means that 50 percent of Americans either support the law or want policy changes that shift leftward.
Looking at the polls in that light suddenly shifts the political calculus. Republicans who want to repeal and “replace” the legislation — with measures that have never been entirely clear, especially when it comes to the most popular provisions of the ACA — are suddenly facing an uphill battle with the public.
This presents a pretty clear road map for Democrats worried that the biggest legislative achievement of the Obama era might turn against them. The CNN/ORC poll didn’t press people on what, exactly, “not liberal enough” meant, but it’s not hard to imagine what those people might want. Recall that while the legislation was being crafted, the public broadly supported a “public option” in the bill that would allow people purchasing insurance on the exchanges to select a federal health insurance plan.
So what if Democrats pushed for it? A public option would save $100 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and could offer respite from the plan cancellations and rate hikes that still persist with private insurers with the ACA in place.
There’s essentially no chance President Obama will take another bite at the health-care apple, especially with so many other priorities to tackle: his professed desire to combat climate change and income inequality before he leaves office, along with getting comprehensive immigration reform passed. But strategists on 2016 presidential campaigns ought to take heed.
Imagine a candidate who comes out early, and strong, for adding a public option to the ACA exchanges. It could become a signature issue with the liberal grass roots during the primaries, and it wouldn’t be a bad general election issue either — the polls in 2010 showed support for a public option among Republicans and independents as well as Democrats. As Ezra Klein has noted, the sudden disappearance of the public option from Democratic politics has been “a bit curious,” but perhaps its day is coming.
By: George Zornick, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, December 24, 2013
“Evangelical Church’s Ugly Truth”: Duck Dynasty And Christian Racists
The Evangelical Church has a racism problem. And it is incumbent on us in this Christmas season to tell the truth about that. Recently A&E suspended Phil Robertson, the patriarch of its hit show, “Duck Dynasty,” for making incredibly homophobic statements in a GQ magazine interview. In typical fashion, he affirmed his evangelical belief that homosexuality is a sin, but went even further, comparing gay people’s sexual behavior to bestiality, and declaring emphatically that they would not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.
Liberal-minded folk, some Christians included, have been outraged at his homophobia, while conservative Christians of all races jumped to defend his right to free speech. Many of these Christians feel particularly threatened by what they call “censorship” of Robertson, because the belief that homosexuality is a sin, and the right to declare that belief freely without recourse, has become for many of these people a defining marker of their identity as Christians.
A reluctant evangelical, I reject conservative theological teachings on homosexuality; the violence that the Church does to gay people in the name of God is indeed one of the primary reasons for my reluctance. But I am also ambivalent about the Church because of its continued subjugation of women and its failure to be forthright about its continuing racism problem.
I grew up in a black baptist church, in a small town in North Central Louisiana, about 30 miles west of where “Duck Dynasty” is filmed. I made my first “profession of faith” in Jesus Christ while at a white baptist church I had visited with my childhood best friend, Amanda, when I was about 7 years old. I was baptized at the age of 13.
At 33 years of age, my disillusionment with the church — which has come to full bloom in the last five years or so — is the thing that perhaps most solidly marks me as a member of the Millennial generation. Though I am often ambivalent about that label, too, I still get why Millennials, fed up with the vile homophobia of the church — as particularly evidenced by the “Duck Dynasty” episode — are leaving the institution in droves. But in the fervor and closing of ranks over Robertson’s homophobia, many Christians, white and Black, old and young alike, have missed the racist remarks he made in that same interview. Millennials, it turns out, haven’t proven themselves to be fundamentally better on race, despite post-racial proclamations to the contrary.
Apparently, according to Robertson, 1950s and 60s Louisiana — the Louisiana of his childhood — was a happy heavenly place where Black people hoed cotton and eschewed the blues:
“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field. … They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’ — not a word! … Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”
I have several aunts and uncles and a grandparent who would beg to differ with Robertson’s account of events. In 1956, several hundred African Americans were purged from the voter registration rolls in Monroe, and spent years struggling to be re-enfranchised.
I’m reminded of these words from James Baldwin’s essay “A Fly in Buttermilk”:
“Segregation has worked brilliantly in the South, and in fact, in the nation to this extent: It has allowed white people with scarcely any pangs of conscience whatever, to create, in every generation only the Negro they wished to see.”
But racism and colonization have also allowed white people, like Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, to create the Jesus they wish to see, too: a blonde, blue-eyed white man with long hair. Now my Bible says that Jesus was a Jew with Egyptian (Read: African) ancestry (Matthew 1). But many white people are decidedly uncomfortable worshipping a God that doesn’t look like them.
As Evangelicalism goes, racism, homophobia, and sexism go hand in hand. Black evangelicals like to tell themselves that they can reject Christianity’s racist past, while embracing homophobic and sexist ideas about the position of gay people and women, in the world and the church. I have come to say: It just isn’t so.
God is not a racist. I know that despite a Bible that sanctions enslavement and implores slaves to obey and be kind to their masters.
God is not a sexist. I know that despite a Bible that tells me that women are to be quiet in church, that women are not to teach men, that women are to submit.
God is not a homophobe. I know that despite a Bible that declares sex between men to be an abomination.
God is love. That is a truth I learned first and foremost from the Bible. And it holds moral and political weight for me because of the life that Jesus Christ lived, from birth to death and back again.
I love the Church, despite myself. But I won’t love it uncritically. This is what hermeneutic consistency requires. And worshipping alongside white folks who are more moved to stand with a homophobe than to stand against racism gives me great pause.
The Church can no longer afford to be disingenuous about its racism problem. Easy unity is not what we need. Time has run out for an African American Church that continues to tack hard to the right — uncritically imbibing the agenda of the (white) Evangelical Right, without acknowledging that this position, predicated as it is on the belief that Christian = Republican, is fundamentally averse to, and in some ways responsible for, the declining social and political condition of African Americans, gay and straight alike.
Ironically enough, the progressive Christians who inspire me the most these days are white. Rachel Held Evans, Jay Bakker, Brian McLaren and theologian Peter Enns are fighting the good fight of faith. But I won’t let any of them off the hook for their failure to be more forthright in addressing racism. Evans, Bakker and McLaren are great on questions of homophobia, poverty and sexism; but racism, when it is addressed at all, is largely addressed as a problem of individual attitudes rather than systemic disfranchisement. What Robertson’s statements point to, however, is that individual prejudices, and the amelioration of them, are bound up with the structures that support them. After all, it wasn’t his racist statements that got him suspended.
This is the season of hope. And I am hopeful. Because even though Phil Robertson said gay people would not inherit the kingdom of God, Jesus did say that the Kingdom of God is within us. Phil Robertson and his ilk don’t possess the keys to the kingdom. We do.
By: Brittany Cooper, Contributing Writer, Salon, December 24, 2013
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