“The Grand Case Against Obamacare”: The Republican Old, Stale, Non-Compeling, Non-Argument
You’d think with the resources he commands as de facto leader of the conservative movement at the Heritage Foundation, rightwing warhorse Jim DeMint would be able to come up with a fresh and compelling argument for why he wants to shut down the federal government and maybe risk a global economic meltdown in order to stop the implementation of a health reform law based largely on a blueprint first devised by his own think tank. But DeMint’s latest ukase on the subject for the Fox News site is as tired as an uninsured diabetic in South Carolina working two shifts at minimum wage.
I won’t quote DeMint directly, but his five big reasons for killing Obamacare are the usual woofers: it may force people in the individual market to change insurance policies (for better ones, with premium subsidies available for those of modest means); it may cause some consumers to choose between the policies and providers they want (just like private insurance policies today); the Medicaid expansion is a fraud because Medicaid’s worse than no insurance at all (tell that to the many millions receiving Medicaid now); Obamacare will slash and maybe kill Medicare (the usual confusion of cost reductions and provider cuts with benefit cuts); and of course, the whole thing will blow up budget deficits (not what the nonpartisan CBO says at all).
But what’s most remarkable is that DeMint doesn’t even mention the tens of millions of people with preexisting conditions who will obtain health insurance they just cannot get right now, and also cannot get under any GOP alternative (though DeMint doesn’t bother to mention any) known to mankind, at least since the GOP abandoned Stuart Butler’s plan hatched at Heritage.
I don’t know why DeMint and his wordsmiths even bother with such “persuasion” efforts, particularly for Fox News readers. Anyone buying his premises has already bought the conclusion.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington MOnthly Politica Animal, September 10, 2013
“Just Don’t Say It Out Loud”: Every Member Of Congress Who Gets Coverage Through An Exchange Will Be Participating In Obamacare
In the very near future, congressional Republicans have some important decisions to make when it comes to health care policy. Will they threaten a government shutdown over funding for the Affordable Care Act? Will they use the issue as the basis for a debt-ceiling crisis?
And perhaps more directly, will they personally sign up for subsidized insurance through an exchange created by the health care law?
As we discussed a couple of weeks ago, the right is heavily invested in the idea that members of Congress are “exempt” from “Obamacare.” The claim is plainly untrue — thanks to a scheme Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) stumbled into, lawmakers will give up their current health care coverage and get coverage through a marketplace where insurers compete for their business.
There are, however, some complications — these exchanges were designed for the uninsured and small-business owners looking to cover their employees, not wealthy federal lawmakers who already have perfectly good coverage. It’s why the Obama administration had to work out a fix for members of Congress and their aides a few weeks ago.
But for Republicans this creates yet another problem: if they sign up for coverage, doesn’t that mean they’re necessarily participating in the health care system they claim to hate? As far-right groups urge the uninsured to stay that way on purpose by staying out of the exchange, won’t those same lobbying efforts apply to lawmakers themselves?
If conservatives genuinely believe that Obamacare is a threat to the country they will extend their campaigns to convince people to skip Obamacare from nameless powerless young people to elected officials and their aides. And if those members and aides have the courage of their convictions they’ll follow suit.
To the extent that none of this happens — that conservative groups keep quiet, and conservative members and aides enroll in the exchanges — it’ll expose the right’s anti-Obamacare activism as a shallow enterprise undertaken by people who are happy to see millions go without insurance, so long as it’s not themselves or their families.
So, what are far-right lawmakers going to do? I’m glad you asked.
As Igor Volsky reported, so far, two current members are prepared to bypass the system on purpose.
[North Carolina Republican Robert Pittenger has] voluntarily withdrawn from health coverage altogether. [North Carolina Republican Mark Meadows] added that his staff has also voluntarily declined the subsidies. And while most members of Congress may be able to afford to forfeit the government contribution — Meadows has a net worth between $1,674,034 to $12,017,998 [and] Pittenger is worth between $18,615,005 to $48,551,997.
Two GOP members out of 233 in the House obviously isn’t a large number, but don’t be surprised if this number grows as right-wing lobbying becomes more intense.
Also note, a lot of these folks have convenient outs — if they have spouses with employer-based coverage of their own, members and staffers can get insurance anyway. For that matter, if you’re a multi-millionaire lawmaker, you can afford to get coverage without a subsidy anyway.
But the underlying point remains the same: every member of Congress, in both parties, who gets coverage in the coming months through an insurance exchange will be participating in “Obamacare,” even conservatives who will be reluctant to say so out loud.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 26, 2013
“A Dog’s Life Can Be Dizzying”: The Obamacare Opposition Has Finally Caught Its Own Tail
It’s time to pop the champagne and blow the kazoos: the war on Obamacare has officially reached its point of reductio ad absurdum. Two of the opposition’s favored fevered conspiracy theories about the law have clashed, like two asteroids headed for the planet that smash into each other before they can do any damage below.
First, there was the opposition’s demand that members of Congress and their staff be subjected to Obamacare—that they be forced to give up their coverage in the health plans for federal employees and join the new insurance exchanges on the theory that “if Congress was going to impose Obamacare upon the country, it should have to experience what it is imposing firsthand.” This never really made sense from the outset since the exchanges, at least for the foreseeable future, are meant only for people without employer coverage and for small businesses buying coverage for their workers. That is, most of “the country” is not going to have anything to do with the exchanges—they are just going to keep being covered by their employers.
Forcing the incongruous requirement that Hill employees enter the exchanges resulted, inevitably, in a snafu: the exchanges are not designed for employers and employees to share the cost of plans that are selected by workers, since the exchanges are meant for people buying coverage on their own. Congress, like most large employers, covers the lion’s share of their workers’ premiums, but wasn’t going to be able to do so as the law was written, leaving Hill workers with thousands more dollars a year in premium costs than they now pay. To fix this problem—which was never intended even by the members of Congress who wanted Hill staff to share in the burdens of Obamacare—the administration and Congress agreed on a tweak that would maintain the requirement for congressional staff to enter the exchanges, while allowing for the federal government to pick up its share of the costs. Conservatives decried this as an “exemption” from Obamacare, which was flatly untrue: in fact, the Hill is being included in Obamacare to an extent beyond what the law was built to allow for. For a pithy dismissal of the “exemption” trope, see the recent letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal by the gentleman from Verona.
Meanwhile, opponents of the law have since the early days of its drafting been busy fanning flames on another front as well: charging that the law would allow for federal funding of abortions, which has been barred for years. This line almost managed to stop the legislation in its tracks before supporters settled on a highly unwieldy compromise—plans on the exchanges can cover abortions (as many insurance plans now do) but the abortion coverage must be offered in a supplemental plan, purchased separately from the main coverage, and without the help of the federal subsidies many people will receive to help them buy the plans. This is such a messy arrangement that abortion rights supporters fear that precious few plans on the exchanges will even bother to include abortion coverage. And the law also allows states to pass laws banning abortion coverage, period, from plans in their exchanges, as many states have already done.
Do you see where this is headed? The law forces Congress and its staffers into the exchanges…the law, in theory, allows for plans with abortion coverage to be sold on the exchanges…and, voila, the crash in the skies above. Take it away, Associated Press:
The politics of the abortion debate are always tricky for lawmakers. They may soon get personal. An attempt to fix a problem with the national health care law has created a situation in which members of Congress and their staffers could gain access to abortion coverage. That’s a benefit currently denied to them and to all federal employees who get health insurance through the government’s plan…
Abortion opponents say the regulation would circumvent a longstanding law that bars the use of taxpayer funds for “administrative expenses in connection with any health plan under the federal employees health benefits program which provides any benefits or coverage for abortions.” Unlike many private corporate plans, federal employee plans only cover abortions in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother.
“Under this scheme, (the government) will be paying the administrative costs,” said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., author of the abortion funding ban for federal employee plans. “It’s a radical deviation and departure from current federal law, and it’s not for all federal employees, but for a subset: Congress. Us.” Smith is calling on the Obama administration to specify that lawmakers and staffers must choose a plan that does not cover abortions. The funding ban, in place since the 1980s, is known as the Smith amendment.
This framing is actually off the mark. It’s not “an attempt to fix a problem” with the law that has created this situation. It was the original demand by Republicans (Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley led the way) that members of Congress and their staff be forced into the exchanges. The administration is downplaying the whole matter, noting that, technically, Hill members and staffers who buy a plan on the exchanges that comes with the abortion coverage will be paying for that part of the coverage out of their own pocket. But yes, in theory, a member of Congress and his or her staff may now be able to have abortion coverage, which was not the case previously. The horror! After all, we know that some members of Congress have a messy track record with abortions—like, say, demanding that their mistresses get one.
So, tiger, how does that tail of yours taste?
By: Alec MacGillis, Senior Editor, The New Republic, August 20, 2013
“First Do No Harm”: It’s Time To Rethink The Oath Of Office For People We Vote To Represent Us
First do no harm. That’s a tenet of medical ethics that future doctors worldwide are taught in medical school.
If only the people we elect to represent us were required to take such an oath when they’re sworn into office.
Because they aren’t, folks in Florida are facing having to pay far more for health insurance over the next two years than necessary. And health insurance executives will be laughing all the way to the bank.
Florida state lawmakers, in their ongoing efforts to block the implementation of Obamacare in the Sunshine State, recently passed a law that will allow health insurance companies to gouge Floridians more than any corporate boss dreamed was possible.
And if that weren’t bad enough, insurers will actually be required by law to mislead their Florida customers about why they’re hiking their premiums.
Republicans, who control the governor’s office as well as both houses of the Florida legislature, were confident the U.S. Supreme Court would declare the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. Not only did they vote to prohibit the state from spending money to implement a law they just knew would be overturned by the high court, they refused to accept money from the federal government that would have enabled the state’s department of insurance to do a better job of regulating health insurers and enforcing new consumer protections in the law.
When the Supreme Court shocked Obamacare opponents last year by upholding the law, Florida lawmakers were in a pickle.
Their response? They passed a bill that prohibits the state’s Office of Insurance Regulation from protecting consumers from unreasonable rate increases for two years.
I learned about what is essentially a “first do as much harm as possible” bill in a letter the nine Democrats in the Florida congressional delegation sent to U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius earlier this month pleading with her to step in to protect Floridians by taking an active role in regulating rate increases in the state.
The lawmakers said intervention by HHS was urgently needed because of a law signed in May by Gov. Rick Scott that specifically prohibits Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty from doing his job of reviewing rate increases and rejecting those he and his staff determine are unjustifiably high.
Until the passage of SB 1842, McCarty had the power to do that. Florida state lawmakers who voted for the bill, including a few Democrats who seemed to think HHS has more authority than it does, took the position that since the federal government was requiring insurance companies to be more consumer friendly, the federal government should assume the responsibility of enforcing the new consumer protections in Obamacare. The problem is that Congress gave the federal government no such additional powers. As a consequence, HHS really can’t take over what is still a state responsibility. And since Florida turned down the federal money that McCarty would have used to do his job, Floridians appear to be out of luck.
Last month, McCarty’s office said insurance premiums for individuals in Florida would be significantly higher than they are now. In their letter to Sebelius, the state’s congressional Democrats wrote that those increases are “not a coincidence, but rather the product of a cynical and intentional effort by Gov. Scott and the Florida legislature to undermine the Affordable Care Act and make health insurance premiums on the Florida Health Insurance Marketplace more expensive by refusing to allow the insurance commissioner to negotiate lower rates with companies or refuse rates that are too high.”
As PolitiFact noted in a recent analysis of the charges made by the Democrats in their letter (which PolitiFact ruled are true), the states that have authority to approve or disapprove rates were “able to extract significant reductions.” PolitiFact cited a Palm Beach Post story which noted that Maryland’s insurance department had used its regulatory powers “to push rates for next year’s premiums down by as much as a third.”
As Florida CHAIN, a state advocacy group, pointed out when Scott signed SB 1842, the law not only blocks McCarty’s office from protecting consumers, a provision in the law actually requires insurers to send deceptive and misleading notices about rate increases to consumers — and to blame Obamacare for them.
“The only ’public education’ of any sort authorized by the Legislature related to the ACA (Affordable Care Act) is a requirement … that insurers send extremely biased and incomplete notices this fall about the ACA and its effect on policyholders’ rates,” Florida CHAIN said in a statement.
“The sole purpose of the requirement is to create ‘sticker shock’ that can be blamed on the ACA. There will be no mention of the many uncertainties or any other relevant factors, such as past rate increases or how actual rates will be reduced for many by the availability of premium tax credits (to low and middle income earners.)”
So not only will many Floridians be harmed by SB 1842, they will, by law, be misled about who caused the harm.
Maybe it’s time to rethink the oath of office for people we vote to represent us.
By: Wendell Potter, The Center for Public Integrity, August 19, 2013
“An Inconvenient Truth”: The Big Republican Lie That Congress Is Exempt From Obamacare
Many lies persist simply because they sound plausible, or because they appear to confirm details of a broader trend that may well, in fact, be true. Decades ago, an upstate New York black teenager named Tawana Brawley was found in a trash bag, smeared with feces and with racial epithets written on her. She said she had been raped by six white men, and the charges – while horrifying – had the ring of truth.
It appeared to be a racist attack; why else would she be in such a condition? A grand jury found otherwise, and a prosecutor who was among the accused successfully sued her for defamation.
When Anthony Weiner at first denied he had sent photos of himself in his underpants to women on the Internet, suggesting his Twitter account had been hacked, it seemed plausible. His very name invited junior high school-level jokes, and people’s email and Twitter accounts are getting hacked all the time (not counting anything done by the NSA). Also, it just seemed insane that a sitting member of Congress, someone who had made no secret of his plans to seek the office of New York City mayor, would do something so categorically stupid and reckless. And yet, he did, and now he’s paying the price for it in the polls.
Everybody, or almost everybody, hates Congress these days, and there’s a determined group which really hates President Obama. So when conservatives and media types and even actual members of Congress –who should know better – make a claim about Congress getting special treatment under the new health care law, it seems like it would make sense. Congress and the Obama administration? Sparing the government from rules and regulations the rest of us have to follow? Well, doesn’t that sound like just the sort of thing those entitled rascals would do!
Except that it’s untrue. The Obama administration indeed made a fix to the way congressional employees will get their health care, but it was a fix that brought the workers back into the mainstream, putting them in the same category as the rest of us.
When Obamacare was being debated, opponents did everything they could to peel away support by raising issues ranging from “death panels” (a lie) and abortion (an issue sure to aggravate people on all sides). One item that did pass was a provision that required Congress and its employees to use the health care exchanges created for people who are uninsured or individually insured.
The exchanges might save a lot of people money; they might not. We’ll see. But people who work for large employers don’t have to think about it, since their employers are required to provide health insurance to full-time workers under the law.
The federal government, being quite a big employer, falls into this category. But Obamacare opponents, either out of spite or a desperate effort to kill the overall bill once and for all, stuck in a provision that requires congressional workers to use the exchanges anyway. This, in effect, is a special exception – except that the special exception didn’t benefit Congress; it punished it. It would have created a situation under which every full-time employee of a large company in the country would get coverage through work except for Congress and its employees. Obama’s recent edict ensures that the federal government will continue to make payments towards congressional employees health care – just as big employers must do across the country.
The amendment was petty and absurd. It was meant to flip a couple of votes, and it didn’t work. The Obama administration directive doesn’t fit into the convenient lie that government big-wigs are “exempting” themselves from the law. But we should all expect the government to live by the same laws the rest of us do – and that’s what the directive does.
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, August 19, 2013
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