“Fostering Public Ignorance”: Health Care Reform Drives Republicans Stark Raving Mad
If insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, it’s tempting to observe that congressional Republicans have gone stark, raving mad. My own GOP congressman, Rep. Tim Griffin, recently delivered himself of an opinion column boasting about having “voted more than 30 times to repeal all or parts of Obamacare.”
Only in politics does somebody expect praise for sheer futility.
Characteristically, Griffin’s column began by misrepresenting Senator Max Baucus. No, the retiring Montana Democrat didn’t call Obamacare a “train wreck.” In context, Baucus was complaining about Congress’s refusal to adequately fund programs helping people understand the law. With so much disinformation out there, he feared that public ignorance would lead to citizens initially missing out on its benefits.
But then fostering public ignorance is the whole GOP game plan at this point. Having been defeated in the House and Senate, failing to have Obamacare declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, and being rejected by voters in the 2012 presidential election, disinformation and sabotage are all they’ve got left.
In that spirit, Griffin quoted The Washington Examiner, one of those tycoon-funded right-wing propaganda publications reporting that “cost estimates from 17 of the nation’s largest insurance companies indicate that health insurance premiums will grow an average of 100 percent under Obamacare, and that some will soar more than 400 percent.”
Yeah, well the results are starting to come in. In California and New York, the nation’s two most populous states that have set up health care exchanges, premiums have dropped sharply below Congressional Budget Office projections.
According to the New York Times, “State insurance regulators say they have approved rates for 2014 that are at least 50 percent lower on average than those currently available in New York. Beginning in October, individuals in New York City who now pay $1,000 a month or more for coverage will be able to shop for health insurance for as little as $308 monthly. With federal subsidies, the cost will be even lower.”
Similar savings have been achieved in California. They can be expected anywhere that large numbers of Americans can be persuaded to buy into the program and quit playing health care roulette.
But then that’s how insurance works—auto insurance, life insurance homeowners’ insurance, all insurance. By spreading the risk, you lower the cost to individual customers.
That’s the basic insight that led Benjamin Franklin to found the Philadelphia Contribution for Insurance Against Loss by Fire back in 1752. The more people purchase private health insurance through Obamacare, the lower their premiums and the lower the eventual cost to taxpayers.
Not to mention the enormous gain in personal freedom to individuals who can no longer be denied coverage due to “pre-existing conditions,” bankrupted by unexpected medical conditions, or forced to keep a job they dislike for fear of losing health insurance. Under Obamacare they can take it with them.
A certain kind of Republican, however, still doesn’t get it. Here’s GOP patriarch Ronald Reagan in 1961 inveighing against the dangers of “socialized medicine.” Unless Americans rejected it, he predicted, “one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.”
And what was Reagan talking about? Medicare. Should it be enacted, he warned, the plan to provide for Grandma’s medical bills would lead to government seizure of all doctors’ offices and hospitals. An all-powerful state would dictate where Americans would live and what their jobs would be.
Of course the Gipper was only an actor, reading a tycoon-approved script. After he became president he vowed to protect Medicare, already one of the most popular and successful government programs in U.S. history—along with Social Security, another threat to freedom as the scripted Reagan saw it.
Some still do. A local Republican politician of my acquaintance once suggested that if I liked Obamacare so much I should leave the country. I responded that as the losing party, maybe he should emigrate.
And good luck finding a country without universal health insurance and with indoor plumbing.
It’s true that with Red State politicians dragging their feet and Republican congressmen whose offices routinely assist constituents to work out Medicare and Social Security problems telling reporters they’ll refuse to help with Obamacare, the short-term rollout could be bumpy.
Over time, however, the Republican right is setting itself up for epic failure. Partisan passions aside, people want and need reliable health insurance. Doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies need it as well.
This too: never mind the politicians. Health insurance companies are going to market Obamacare bigtime. Since the law mandates that 80 percent of premiums must be spent on benefits, the only way the insurance industry can enhance profits is by finding more customers.
It’s the American way.
By: Gene Lyons, The National Memo, July 24, 2013
“Political Skullduggery”: Indiana Fudges Truth On Health Exchange Rates To Make Obamacare Look Bad
Sometimes, the political urge simply overwhelms anything resembling common sense and appropriate behavior.
Witness the latest example of political skullduggery playing out in the great State of Indiana where GOP Governor Mike Pence has found it necessary to take extreme liberties with the reporting of the state’s healthcare exchange data—all to justify his anti-Obamacare political positioning.
Anyone paying attention to data projecting what a health insurance policy will likely cost on the newly formed individual policy insurance exchanges could hardly miss the headlines late last week announcing that premiums for health insurance policies stood to rise to an average monthly price of $570—a 72 percent increase over current rates in Indiana.
Of course, if this data is correct, it would be quite a blow to Indiana residents at the hand of the dreaded Obamacare.
At first glance—the only glance the Indiana officials intend for you to see—this is certainly disturbing news. Even those willing to accept the projections and claims made by the President during last week’s health care address—where he referred to the ‘good news’ in California, Oregon, Washington and, particularly, New York—would have to come to the understanding that there may, indeed, be states where the law is going to badly hurt consumers.
Fortunately, there are those whose job it is to dig below the surface of that ‘first glance’ to discover the truth of any situation—and, in this situation, we learn that Indiana has sought to play cute in its efforts to present a grim picture of the healthcare reform law, even when the data reveals otherwise.
You see, while the states that have already released their projections have based their price expectations on what insurance company filings suggest will be the cost of a ‘Silver’ plan (the second least expensive option to be offered on the exchanges), Indiana decided to publish their projections based on a calculation that took all the levels of plans to be offered—ranging from the less expensive Bronze and Silver plan to the most expensive Gold and Platinum plans—and averaged them all together to come up with their projected rates.
As Sy Mukherjee points out, “That’s like saying the average cost of a car in an Indiana dealership is $100,000 because it sells $20,000 Fords, $60,000 BMWs, and $220,000 Lamborghinis — technically true, but highly misleading.”
Exactly.
What possible benefit can there be to taking an average of costs ranging from most expensive to least expensive when we know full well that the overwhelming majority of those living in Indiana—and, for that matter, everywhere else—will purchase the policies in the lower cost ranges?
How do we know this?
We know this because we have the evidence of buying patterns provided by the State of Massachusetts, a state that has been utilizing this system for quite some time now.
As Sarah Kliff at the Washington Post reports—
“In Massachusetts, 8 percent of enrollees bought a gold plan. Eighty-four percent chose bronze or silver. At least one carrier in Indiana seems to agree with this distribution. In state rate filings, Physicians Health Plan of Indiana estimates that 45 percent of its enrollees will pick bronze and 38 percent take up silver. It is expected that the average mix of Individual Market will be more toward less rich benefit plans and credit should be given for the associated reduction in induced utilization,” the company wrote in its filing. In other words, the average plan cost isn’t a great estimation of what the average person will pay.”
Ms. Kliff also did a little digging to discover that the actual prices for Bronze and Silver plans in Indiana are going to be far below the $512 a month estimate provided by the state’s government.
“Anthem’s rate filing includes projections for health insurance costs in their bronze plans. A 47-year-old male who does not smoke would be charged, on average, $307 per month. Sample plans from another plan, MDWise, predict a 47-year-old man will be charged $294 and $391 for a bronze and silver plan, respectively.”
While you may find the actual rates of the policies to be made available on the Indiana individual exchange to be good news or bad— depending on what you currently pay for health coverage—one would at least hope that the state would want to put out an honest analysis.
“No Unchecked Corporate Power”: If Republicans Love Competition, Why Do They Still Hate Obamacare?
When asked what makes the world work, any self-respecting right-wing Republican knows the politically correct answer: competition! (With at least one exclamation point.) It is the paramount principle and universal solvent perennially touted by the right to cure whatever ails us – in the abstract.
What they don’t seem to like so much, in reality, is the competitive impact of the Affordable Care Act, which is forcing health insurance companies into a contested marketplace – and seems to be driving down rates, state by state. The latest data arrived this week from New York, where insurance regulators announced that the new rates approved for 2014 will be 50 percent lower, on average, than current rates.
That stunning report follows similar news from California, where rates may drop by as much as 29 percent, as well as Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and several other states where the early indications show rates declining. Based on data compiled from 10 states and the District of Columbia, the Department of Health and Human Services says that 2014 premiums for mid-range (or “silver”) health care plans in those states will be nearly 20 percent lower on average than its own earlier estimates.
The reason is simple, as anyone familiar with the American health care marketplace knows. Most states until now have had no meaningful competition among insurance companies — and certainly nothing like the health insurance “exchanges” created by Obamacare to guide consumer choices.
In states that have actively promoted the exchanges, real competition is arising thanks to a marketplace that allows consumers to examine and understand choices, plans, and prices with ease. “That’s a very different dynamic for these companies, and it’s prodding them to be more aggressive and competitive in their pricing,” explains Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reform.
For those of us who preferred (and still favor) a single-payer system providing Medicare to everyone, the compromises of Obamacare always provoked doubts about efficiency and fairness. Many liberals supported the Affordable Care Act reluctantly as a bad deal that was acceptable only in lieu of no deal.
But why do self-styled conservatives continue to hate health care reform with such ferocity? They may not care that it is truly “pro-life” and “pro-family,” with the clear promise of saving thousands of lives annually among families that were previously uninsured. Yet they should surely appreciate a statute that promotes competition where there was none, improving services and reducing prices through freer enterprise.
Solving that conundrum exposes one of the ugly little secrets of the Republican right today – and one of many reasons why that movement no longer merits the honorable title of “conservative.” For what we can now observe in practice is that the Republicans perversely prefer a corporate marketplace without competition over a marketplace with competition overseen by government. While European conservatives have long accepted the need for strictly regulated markets, especially in health care, their American counterparts would rather allow corporate power to run unchecked at whatever cost.
It is an ideological preference that damages public health, ruins finances both public and private, and actually kills people every day, but it also swells corporate profits – which seems to be the primary value cherished by Obamacare’s partisan opponents. Such destructive irrationality is what passes for “conservatism” in our time.
So the congressional Republicans persistently attack and undermine reform, as they did by passing a resolution this week to delay the law’s individual mandate. Rather than do anything productive, they proceeded with that meaningless action. And they did so despite warnings from the insurance industry that a delay would only increase rates for everyone.
Supporters of the Affordable Care Act have long reassured each other that the law would gain popularity someday. But if present trends continue, the public may come to realize as early as next year that the benefits of Obamacare greatly outweigh the flaws – and that the law’s opponents offer nothing to most Americans except higher rates, less coverage, and a sicker, sadder, harder life.
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, July 19, 2013
“Lower Premiums Is A Big Effing Deal”: The House GOP’s Futile Poorly Timed Efforts To Gut Obamacare
Guess whose heath care premiums are poised to drop considerably?
House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) timing could be better. Hoping to capitalize on the bad press surrounding delay in the implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate provision (even though the move was substantively meaningless), House Republicans are set to move on their latest idea: a vote on delaying the individual mandate, too.
Politically, the move arguably makes some sense. Even though Republicans came up with the idea of the individual mandate, they’ve since turned it into one of the least popular provisions in “Obamacare.” By singling it out for a delay, GOP lawmakers bring attention to a controversial health care policy and put Democrats on the spot for defending it. Their bill won’t become law, of course — Republicans love symbolic, post-policy governing — but they might get a few attack ads out of this.
But substantively, there’s a problem. In fact, there’s more than one.
First, by going after the individual mandate, House Republicans are taking a bold stand in support of leaving 13.7 million Americans without any health care coverage at all.
Second, GOP lawmakers are also simultaneously (and admittedly) positioning themselves in support of a policy that leads to higher premiums and gaps for Americans with pre-existing conditions.
And third, Republican lawmakers are, for purely political reasons, obsessed with gutting federal health care law at the same time as new-but-inconvenient evidence emerges that the law is working extremely well.
Individuals buying health insurance on their own will see their premiums tumble next year in New York State as changes under the federal health care law take effect, state officials are to announce on Wednesday.
State insurance regulators say they have approved rates for 2014 that are at least 50 percent lower on average than those currently available in New York. Beginning in October, individuals in New York City who now pay $1,000 a month or more for coverage will be able to shop for health insurance for as little as $308 monthly. With federal subsidies, the cost will be even lower.
Supporters of the new health care law, the Affordable Care Act, credited the drop in rates to the online purchasing exchanges the law created, which they say are spurring competition among insurers that are anticipating an influx of new customers. The law requires that an exchange be started in every state.
If elected officials’ principal goal is to pursue policies that benefit the public, launching a crusade to sabotage the Affordable Care Act really doesn’t make any sense.
Skeptics have noted this morning that New York’s insurance market is uniquely messy, so the results aren’t representative of the impact we’ll see elsewhere. Perhaps. But Matt Yglesias argues persuasively that it’s “a big deal anyway.”
The first reason is that New York is a really big state. Its almost 20 million residents account for over 6 percent of the American population.[…]
But this is also important because there’s a lesson here. At various points, the Affordable Care Act’s critics in Congress have suggested that they might be interested in keeping the popular-sounding aspects of Obamacare — the community rating, the guaranteed issue — but just scrap all that unfortunate mandate talk and tax increases. The New York experience shows why that won’t work. That lesser plan is essentially what New York did some years back, and the consequences were enormous premium hikes as the state’s market was rocked by adverse selection. Affordable Care Act implementation, by adding the nasty elements back in, is fixing a huge problem that other states don’t suffer from but that would exist everywhere if Congress took the approach of just doing the easy parts.
In light of this, House Republicans are eager — desperate, even — to boast about their efforts to gut the law, no matter what it does to the uninsured and people with pre-existing conditions, and even though it does more of what we already know doesn’t work.
Before we move on, let’s also not forget that this isn’t limited to the Empire State. In California, exchanges are taking shape and premiums will be even lower than expected; insurers in Oregon are also lowering premiums; and health care expenditures overall are slowing, just as Obamacare was designed to accomplish.
Congressional Republicans and a few too many pundits want you to believe the implementation of the Affordable Care Act is a disaster. It’s not. They want you to believe gutting the law would make things better. It won’t.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 17, 2013
“Under Obamacare, Millions Will Die”: The Coming Campaign Against The Affordable Care Act
I have questions. For instance, are Charles and David Koch aliens from the planet Fnerzblax 6, come here to feast on the entrails of Earth humans to give them strength for their coming war with the barbarians of Fnerzblax 4? We don’t know, and that’s what has me so concerned.
I ask because Americans for Prosperity, the group through which the Kochs channel much of their political activism, is initiating a new television campaign to get people afraid of and angry about Obamacare, and this seems to be the method of the campaign. The first ad, called “Questions,” asks whether Obamacare is going to take money from a worried-looking young mother and deprive her sick child of the care he needs to survive. Not that it would truly do these things, but hey, she’s just asking: http://youtu.be/XOMAuo4C8kk
Beyond the just-asking format, there’s a preview here of something else we’ll be seeing as Obamacare gets implemented over the next couple of years. Every problem that anyone has with anything related to health care will be characterized as a consequence of Obamacare, which in some tortured sense might be almost true. The ad mentions not being able to choose your doctor, which would be bad. If you chose an insurance plan in an exchange established by Obamacare, that plan will probably have a network of doctors from which you have to choose if you want your care paid for, and if your doctor isn’t on it, then you’ve been prevented from choosing your own doctor.
Of course, that isn’t because of Obamacare, it’s because of the way insurance works in America; it’s how it worked before Obamacare, and it’s how it’ll work after Obamacare. But it’s a lot simpler to say, “Now that we’re under Obamacare, I didn’t get to choose my doctor!” And did you know that under Obamacare, medications could come with dangerous side effects? Or that under Obamacare, kids who get shots will cry? Not only that, under Obamacare, you could get cancer and die—even if your doctor wanted to save you. In fact, under Obamacare, we’re all going to die one day. Thanks for all the misery, pain, and death, Obama.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, July 8, 2013
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