Who is Sebelius?
The Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Although the administration also announced today that she’s stepping down. Since I didn’t post a link earlier, here’s confirmation of the 7.5 million announcement.
Given the problems with the website, and also the slew of passive aggressive sabotage efforts in certain states you’d have to be happy with those numbers.
Even if you have to discount by the (Republican) “wet dream” of 15% non payment, it’s still pretty damn impressive.
And it’s only going to get better as the year goes on - as more people now have access to better health care and start to actually feel the results. As the positive word of mouth of better insurance outcomes starts to overcome the concerted negative PR efforts from certain quarters you would have to wonder what sort of effect it will have come November.
We have seen that there is (was?) a trend towards red in the coming election - I wonder if this is the sort of news that will reverse that trend. I guess only time will tell.
I do find it interesting that, so far, there is silence from certain quarters about this news - I guess some people are trying to “crack their brains” for an appropriate talking point.
Didn’t feel the wind rushing thru your hair, I guess. 
Worth a read? Did you read the FAQ it alludes to that explains their methodology for gathering that number? I did. Asking just 3000 people and deliberately over-sampling in states most likely to offer expanded coverage doesn’t seem like the best way to determine how many people lost healthcare - you’d think that at least some of those who lost their health care would qualify for medicare, but that doesn’t mean their policies weren’t canceled if they say they have coverage.
Which FAQ? There are several studies/articles cited by Gaba.
I’ve always known you to be a well-informed guy, but at this stage I didn’t think I should assume.
Republicans need to just stop their outright pussyfooting around the broader issue with the ACA, which is that - aside from big-government, socialized Medicare (which protects their fucking base) - the GOP firmly believes that the government should NEVER endeavor to expand access to health care. That’s why they’ve run away so fast FROM THEIR OWN FUCKING PLAN - which the ACA, founded by the Heritage Foundation, quintessentially is - that was first implemented by a Republican governor in Massachusetts, upheld by a Republican Supreme Court, and written with hundreds of Republican amendments inserted into the final law. And after all of that, you’ve got folks like adaher who have the gall to insist that the ACA wasn’t thoroughly debated enough in Congress, as if the entire first two years of Obama’s presidency consisted of the Dems twittling their thumbs and shooting the ACA out of their asses. :dubious:
And for fuck sake, their true agenda here isn’t exactly hidden; no, it’s evident in every one of their stupid policy “alternatives” that they spout off every few months. ACA repeal, tort reform, insurance sales across state lines, health care “portability,” blah, blah, blah…policies that, if implemented, would eviscerate health insurance in this country and broadly damage the public welfare. But hey, wealthy folks would get a tax cut, so…profits? :smack:
But the thing is, the GOP can’t go out and reveal its true agenda writ large because the public is nowhere NEAR to where the Pubbies stand in terms of health care policy, and that’s why Americans still trust Democrats to handle health care as an issue far more than the lunatics on the right. But in the meantime, the GOP will shout, holler, cry, and bitch and moan about the ACA as if their own history in its origins never even took place, and those of us who know better will become increasingly agitated yet simultaneously amused. But let me get this off my chest:
The ACA will never - and I mean NEVER - be repealed. The Pubs need to kill that fantasy now, because its an abject impossibility. Their last chance to do that was in the 2012 election, wherein the ACA was a centerpiece of BOTH campaigns and Obama won by a certifiable landslide. Hoping that they can undo all of the progress that the ACA has facilitated via a Republican POTUS in 2017 is foolish, because the public would never tolerate such abject treachery.
How much do you want to bet that the GOP will ignore the [latest CBO report,](latest CBO report) which projects a big spike in the number of insured Americans - consisting of millions of individuals who would otherwise not be covered sans ACA - as well as a huge decline in the cost of ACA implementation to the government?
The Pubbies only care about the CBO, after all, when its findings are favorable to their asinine agenda.
They won’t ignore it. Instead, their claim will be what it always is when there are government-announced figures that undermine their agenda - to claim those numbers are impossible (since of course Obamacare is doomed to fail), therefore they’ve been cooked, and are evidence of Obama’s dishonesty and treachery etc.
This isn’t the Republican broader issue, though. In addition to what you pointed, out, the ACA is basically the Gingrich health care plan from last century, too, and Republicans have no trouble with its tenets if you call it ReaganCare. The only “broader issue” is that it was passed while Obama was president.
This is hurting them in other areas, too. Republicans absolutely hate being painted as racists with a broad brush, but when the exact same policies–their policies–suddenly become country-destroying only when an African-American President is supporting them, it’s a little hard to take the “we’re not racists, we have real moral issues” line seriously. Whether it’s true or not, it sends a mighty strong perception. Much like Benghazi, the Republicans believe that they’ve got a winning issue here if they just harp on it a little more, and don’t realize how much it’s hurting them with the broader base.
Again, depends on how you define repeal. The Republicans, if they win it all by 2016, can and will repeal ACA. But they will also pass a new bill keeping the parts of ACA they are okay with. Obviously, Democrats can claim Obamacare survived in another form if they want to, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned about Democrats, it’s that they are shameless. When the bill is up for a vote they’lll call it taking health care away from 12 million people, but when it’s replaced they’ll claim that ACA survived with a Republican stamp. Whatever saves face.
That is just a silly fantasy that belies Republican’s lack of intellectual honesty. How can they keep all the nice things people like, such as no pre-existing conditions, staying on parents policies until age 26, no benefit caps, and cost/benefit subsidies, without an individual mandate? They can’t. It is just a sop to try to steal support, then they will pull the rug out from under America if they are ever entrusted with governing again. Republicans have no intention of replacing Obamacare with anything but a big sack of Fuck You.
By the time the 2016 election gets here, Americans are going to be solidly against repeal, and the GOP with lose another election because the are on the wrong side of history, again.
That makes for interesting reading…
I like this part
Crap…it didn’t work…
Another part of the report gives insurance numbers…
Check out page three of the report - the increase in insurance coverage is rather impressive
Over the weekend, there was an AP story about Obamacare that got little exposure. Insurers are actively seeking out customers with diabetes to make sure they are following treatment regimens.
Imagine a pre-ACA insurer who expended extra effort to keep a patient healthy? It was far easier to just cancel the policy to preserve the bottom line.
Finally, health insurance that finally provides health care.
I don’t care about their motivations - but this is damn fucking awesome -
Helping people to stick to treatment regimes…talk about providing the proverbial fence at the top of the cliff
(although I guess in the case of diabetes this is more like a safety net just over the edge rather than an actual fence…but still)
Employer-paid HMO’s, who really have not had the ability to simply cancel individuals for convenience, have been doing that sort of thing all along.
It’s almost like you are a stage coach owner with a bunch of sick horses and you send someone out to make sure they are on the right feed so the vet doesn’t charge you more for treating them.
Saves money in the long run.
I’m not sure that all insurers would be that kind to horses. They shoot horses, don’t they?