“Standing For What People Will Fall For”: Rick Scott Backs Off Medicaid Expansion Days After Announcing Re-Election Bid
Just after making his 2014 re-election campaign official, Florida governor Rick Scott (R) appears to be backtracking on Medicaid expansion, avoiding questions concerning his past support on the expansion of the program in his state.
During an appearance on Wednesday, reporters asked the governor if Florida would pursue federal funds available through the Affordable Care Act to expand the state’s Medicaid program.
Scott ignored the question and instead focused on criticizing the health care reform law, which he says will cause “300,000 people in our state” to lose their insurance before the new year.
The comments echoed those made just a day before, when Scott dodged another question about expanding Medicaid, saying that “the biggest issue we’re dealing with right now” is the health care cancelations he says people in his state are “concerned about.”
“On top of the fact you see the plans that have been proposed, they have high deductibles, so I’m concerned about cost, quality, and access to health care, that’s our biggest problem right now,” Scott said.
The comments hint that Scott is now retracting his support for Medicaid expansion – a stance he surprisingly took earlier this year when he said that he would accept Obamacare funding to expand the program for low-income Americans in his state.
Even though $51 billion in federal funds are available for Florida, the state’s GOP-controlled legislature refused to pass a budget that included funding for Medicaid expansion.
At the time, Scott declared that “while the federal government is committed to paying 100 percent of the costs, I cannot, in good conscience, deny Floridians who need access to healthcare.”
Scott’s most recent change of heart is not too surprising now that his re-election bid is official, but it does offer his Democratic challenger — and former Florida Republican governor — Charlie Crist a point of attack.
Considering that Florida has the second-highest uninsured rates in the nation, Medicaid is especially important to constituents, specifically the approximately 850,000 Floridians who do not qualify for subsidized insurance under the federal law, but also do not qualify for Medicaid.
Without an extension of the program, those 850,000 low-income Floridians will continue to go uninsured.
The entire state also stands to lose should Scott decide to reject federal funds to expand Medicaid; a report released by the Commonwealth Fund finds that not extending the program — which “generates a net loss of federal funds” — will cost Florida taxpayers a whopping $9.2 billion by 2022.
By: Elissa Gomez, the National Memo, December 12, 2013
“The Tea Party Is Pissed And That’s A Good Sign”: Here’s The Real Story, The GOP Has Surrendered On Repealing Obamacare
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) both referred to the budget deal they announced on Tuesday evening as “historic.” They were correct — but not because of any of the cuts or fees in the modest deficit-reduction plan.
What’s historic about Ryan and Murray’s bipartisan deal, which eases the automatic sequester cuts, is that it quietly funds Obamacare for the next two years, rejecting the Tea Party argument to defund/repeal the president’s signature legislative accomplishment until at least 2017.
Yes, Republicans are giving in and accepting the Affordable Care Act, right as the law and the president are near all-time popularity lows.
Two months of severe problems with the website compounded confusion and frustration with an already complex law. Most of the problems have been fixed, but the public perception of the law will take months to heal, if it ever does. But Republicans have figured out, after their failed attempt to dive-bomb the law with a shutdown in October, that they have no hope of getting rid of it — at least until President Obama is out of office.
The Ryan-Murray agreement isn’t the only sign that many Republicans are nearing the “acceptance” phase of mourning the existence of Obamacare.
Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), who repeatedly said that the president’s health reform was an abomination that compelled him to run for office, now says he can accept the law’s state insurance exchange system.
Five of the 25 Republican-led states that have rejected Medicaid expansion are edging toward accepting federal money to help insure millions who earn just a bit too much to qualify for Medicaid. Republican governors in the key swing states of Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania are already working toward implementing expansion.
Another sign that most Republicans understand that they’re going to have to live with Obamacare is that the Tea Party is pissed.
Red State‘s Erick Erickson — one of the leading voices for primarying just about every incumbent Republican senator — put it this way:
Last month Republicans bailed on the Obamacare fight and declared sequestration their line in the sand. Now they are saying they’ll bail on sequestration, but they’ll hold the line on unemployment benefits.
Why should we believe them anymore? Is it any wonder that poll after poll shows Republican voters hate their Republican congressmen and senators?
Bend over America, here it comes again.
Republicans had two months of unity as they celebrated the miserable rollout of HealthCare.gov. Now the GOP is back to where it was in October, stuck with a base that’s pretty much furious at its leadership for surrendering — again.
By: Jason Sattler, The National Memo, December 11, 2013
“A Sordid Approach To The Uninsured”: Republican’s Increasingly Appear Eager To Punish The Poor Because They’re Poor
Even if the Affordable Care Act is implemented perfectly, and the system works exactly as planned, millions of Americans will go without access to affordable health care. Is it due to a flaw in the law? Not exactly.
The problem is Republican opposition to Medicaid expansion at the state level. If your income is between 100% and 138% of the poverty line, you can qualify for Medicaid and get covered – unless you live in a “red” state where GOP officials have rejected Medicaid expansion. If so, you can (a) move; (b) figure out a way to make more money; or (c) go without.
Just in recent days, we’ve seen reports reinforcing how inexplicable these states’ policies really are. Refusing Medicaid expansion will not only cost states billions, but it will also severely undermine state hospitals, all while hurting struggling families.
Kevin Drum today called it “one of the most sordid acts in recent American history.”
The cost to the states is tiny, and the help it would bring to the poor is immense. It’s paid for by taxes that residents of these states are going to pay regardless of whether they receive any of the benefits. And yet, merely because it has Obama’s name attached to it, they’ve decided that immiserating millions of poor people is worth it. It is hard to imagine a decision more depraved.
Alternatively, Republicans in Congress could agree to fix this problem and allow people without access to Medicaid to qualify for exchange subsidies. But of course they won’t do that either for the same reason.
Conservatives hate it when you accuse them of simply not caring about the poor. Sometimes they have a point. This is not one of those times.
I strongly agree, though I’d just add that it’s amazing to hear Republican governors who reject Medicaid expansion try to present their approach as sensible.
Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead (R) recently said he refused the policy because he doesn’t like exchange marketplaces, which doesn’t make any sense. Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell (R) justified his opposition by saying the health care law is a “mess,” which is shallow even by GOP standards. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) appeared on MSNBC and said he rejected Medicaid expansion because, someday, federal officials may “renege on their promise” to reimburse states.
Has that ever happened? No. Is there any reason to believe it might happen? No. Could Wisconsin bring coverage to struggling families in the meantime, and then drop the policy in the event Washington refused to meet its obligations? Yes, but Walker doesn’t want to.
The larger takeaway here is that Republican officials increasingly appear eager to punish the poor because they’re poor. Indeed, it’s become a common theme in GOP policymaking just in recent weeks: no extension of unemployment benefits, no extension of the status quo on food stamps, no increase in the minimum wage, and wherever possible, no Medicaid expansion, either.
Republicans better hope low-income Americans vote in low numbers in the near future.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 9, 2013
“A Nightmare For John Boehner”: Why Obamacare Could Help The Democrats In 2014
If some Republicans are sounding just a little bit desperate right now, I think I know why. “Obamacare is not just a broken website,” House Speaker John Boehner sputtered the other day in retreat as it emerged that the website is now working well. “This bill is fundamentally flawed.” He sure hopes he’s right about that—and by the way, Mister, it’s a law, not a bill. But I bet late at night, when he’s having that last smoke and thinking back over his day, he fears that he’s wrong and that the central Republican…“idea,” if you want to call it that, of the last three years—get rid of Obamacare—is going to look awfully stupid to a majority of Americans eight or 10 months from now.
If you haven’t gone to HealthCare.gov just for kicks, I certainly recommend now that you do. Pretend that you’re from a state that didn’t create an exchange, if you aren’t, because if you’re from a state with its own exchange, you’ll just be kicked to the state website, and what you want to test here is the federal one. So just choose a yahoo state that didn’t play ball, where the law was mocked as just so much socialism.
I just did, for the first time in weeks, an hour before scribbling these sentences. I was amazed. It was lightning fast. Explanations were clear and straightforward. Instead of bureaucratese, I encountered something I didn’t expect at all: plain English!
And here’s the key thing. It gave me loads of choices. I pretended to be a 35-year-old man from Kansas with a spouse and child. Without even having to enter my fake income, the site delivered me in a split second to a page with loads of plan options.
Choice. That’s what America’s about. As I heard Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) say on Alex Wagner’s show a couple of weeks ago, we’re a nation of shoppers. It’s what we do best. Alas, he is correct. That’s what we want. From TVs to smartphones to flavors of potato chip that have been stretched to include ketchup and dill pickle (who eats those?), we believe that endless options are our right.
How many options? An amazing 42, to be precise. Forty-two plans! That might be more than the number of available potato-chip flavors in America. I would have to think it will shock people, in a highly positive way, to see they have so many choices. And most of all, it will feel…American. Something that offers a person 42 options ain’t socialism, as Americans know in their bones.
The plans ranged from $70 a month, which would have covered only me, to $742 a month for the Rolls-Royce family version, with $0 deductible and $6,500 out-of-pocket. It was an astonishing menu. And take it from a guy who just moved house and has been on the phone and online interminably with private-sector service-providers, mostly but hardly limited to the cable/Internet/phone company: This looked easy. The interface was great, really user-friendly, really clear.
Now, most of these plans weren’t cheap. Health insurance isn’t cheap. For example, a middle-of-the-pack silver plan looked like this: $472 a month; a $7,500 family deductible; a $12,700 out-of-pocket maximum. Those aren’t cheap. But a $10 copay for a doctor’s visit, $75 to see a specialist, and just $15 for a generic prescription. That’s not bad at all.
So yes, Mr. Speaker, it’s more than a website. It’s a chance for people who’ve eschewed insurance for years to buy it and take their kids to a doctor and even to a specialist when needed. Individuals will have to decide for themselves whether that buys them $5,664 in peace of mind (that’s $472 times 12), but I suspect a lot of people will decide that it sure does.
And this is where Republicans, if they’re looking around the corner, might be freaking out. They are going to emphasize the horror stories going forward, and those stories will exist. The Democrats will emphasize the violin stories, and they will exist, too.
But in between the decontextualized disasters and the stories with Hollywood endings will be millions of people to whom nothing particularly dramatic, but something very positive indeed, will have happened. They got insurance, or decent insurance, for the first time in their lives. They went and got their first physical in years. They had that bad back checked out finally. They took their child to an eye doctor and got her glasses. That’s not dramatic enough for a television ad, but any parent will understand that a child going from struggling with reading to being able to read easily at school is plenty dramatic.
I’ve known for a long time the Republicans were on the wrong side of history here. Forty-something million uninsured in this impossibly rich country, and they don’t want to do a thing about it. And don’t fall for their “plans.” They’re unworkable. They’re unworkable because the Republicans aren’t willing to spend the money that experts all say is required to make plans workable. And they aren’t willing to spend the money because spending money acknowledges the existence of a common purpose in this nation, and they certainly can’t acknowledge a common purpose, unless it’s war.
So while I’ve known they were on the wrong side of history, I have feared they were on the right side of the politics. Well, I’m starting to think otherwise. No American who has 42 choices is going to feel like the jackboot of the state is stomping on his neck. And sometime next year, the people in the states that didn’t take Medicaid money are going to start noticing something else: that in a lot of cases, they’re going to be paying more for the same plan that a person in a participating state is paying. How’s that going to go down, Rick Perry?
Mr. Speaker, light up another one. It’s going to be a long night.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, December 5, 2013
“Will The GOP Ever Be Happy?”: No Matter The Facts, They Just Don’t Care If Healthcare.Gov Works Or Not
Healthcare.gov is well on its way to full stability, but Republicans refuse to acknowledge it. No matter the facts, the GOP is committed to the message that Obamacare has failed.
It wasn’t that long ago when Republicans were deeply concerned over the quality of the president’s healthcare website.
In a letter to Kathleen Sebelius, head of the Department of Health and Human Services, Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Lamar Alexander demanded answers for the massive glitches that attended the rollout of Healthcare.gov. “We are concerned by recent comments to the media that the system suffers from architectural problems that need design changes,” wrote the two GOP lawmakers, “We seek information about these problems as well as whether you still expect individuals to suffer a tax penalty if they do no purchase government-approved health insurance.”
Likewise, in a statement, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said that “Obamacare is collapsing under its own weight.” This was echoed by the Senate Republican Policy Committee, which called the website an “inexcusable train wreck” and wondered “how President Obama can tax uninsured Americans for not having something that they can’t purchase.”
The administration responded to all of this criticism—and more—with a promise that Healthcare.gov would work for the majority of users by December 1st. And it does. According to the administration, a five week “tech surge” has doubled the capacity of the online interface to the health care exchanges that form the core of the Affordable Care Act. As of this month, the website can handle 50,000 simultaneous users, for a total limit of 800,000 users per day. The site is functional more than ninety percent of the time, up from fifty-five percent of the time in October.
There is still a whole host of work to finish, especially on the back-end, where critical communications are made to insurers with regards to subsidies and eligibility. Overall, however, the White House has achieved more than 400 of the 600 fixes on its “punchcard” of repairs. Healthcare.gov is on the fast track to full stability, which will be a significant boost to the law and its prospects.
Given the extent to which Republicans were so concerned with the status of the website, you’d think they would greet this as good news, even as they continue to oppose the law. The message doesn’t have to be extensive. Something as simple as, “We still oppose the law, but we’re glad Americans haven’t been left in the cold,” would suffice.
Even that, however, is too generous for Republicans, who can’t concede any goodwill to the president’s health care law. “[The] website is least of Obamacare’s problems,” tweeted Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. “This isn’t just about a broken website, it’s about a fundamentally-flawed law,” wrote Michael Steel, a spokesperson for Speaker of the House John Boehner. And on ABC’s This Week, Oklahoma Senator Tom Cole said that “You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and the first impression here was terrible.”
The Republican complaints of two months ago were purely opportunistic. For them, it just doesn’t matter if Healthcare.gov is working, since Obamacare is destined to fail, reality be damned! At most, the broken website was useful fodder for attacks on the administration. Now that it’s made progress, the GOP will revert to its usual declarations that the Affordable Care Act is a hopeless disaster. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Americans have gained access to health insurance thanks to the Medicaid expansion or the exchanges, and many more will join their ranks as the deadline for coverage approaches.
Republicans haven’t offered a response to this because, as of this moment, the party doesn’t have a response. Yes, there are conservative intellectuals with ideas for reform, but as an institution, the GOP has little to say about the constellation of problems in American health care. Even in their drive for repeal, Republicans failed to offer an alternative. At most, lawmakers like Bob Corker of Tennessee have tentatively called for “market-driven” reforms, like changes to the tax code, and allowing insurers to sell across state lines. Ironically, the Affordable Care Act allows for these changes, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the GOP.
It’s almost cliché to say that the Democratic Party is gambling its success on the Affordable Care Act. If it works, the party can point to a broad program that delivers needed benefits to millions of Americans. If it doesn’t, it’s hard to imagine how Democrats will re-earn the trust of a skeptical public, to say nothing of the fate of the uninsured and the broader consequences for liberalism.
In the same way, the Republican Party is gambling its fate on the failure of the law, with no attempt to grapple with the possibility of its success. What happens if Obamacare works as advertised? How do GOP leaders salvage a failed crusade? And more importantly, how do GOP voters react when the prospect of repeal is completely, unambiguously off the table?
By: Jamelle Bouie, The Daily Beast, December 2, 2013
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