Have to admit, addy does have something of a point on the whole “honesty” thing when it comes to taking away someone’s insurance. While that is questionable on the Obama side, there is no doubt at all about the Republican side.
While Obama’s premise that the insurance plans being lost are being lost due to their inadequacy and lack of true value, the Republicans are not vacillating or prevaricating in any way. They will repeal, they will pull the rug of health care out from under the poor and the powerless because freedom. In much the same way that Republican governors are determined to deny Medicaid expansion to the uninsured and uninsurable, presumably because sickness, suffering and possible death are good for you. Well, maybe not you, just a certain variety of person, a certain subset of persons would benefit from the character building effects of “tough love”.
True, such an attitude is savagely amoral and ought to bring a blush of shame to its proponents, especially those who have the towering chutzpah to style themselves as “Christians”.
Still, this sort of straight-forward candor and unflinching honesty is rare in American politics, as refreshing as a cool drink of iced vinegar. We might well applaud such unvarnished and direct truthiness, even as we recognize that such callous and amoral behavior would make the Baby Jesus puke His little guts out.
Oh, they’re not lying about “repeal”. They’ve told us, what, about 50 times by now? No, what they’re lying about is “replace”.
There still is no Republican bill, and it’s fair to say there never will be one, either, since it would be essentially a duplicate of Obamacare. The resulting derision would be beyond anything they’ve experienced yet, which should tell you something.
Oregon became the first state to announce today that it’s forfeiting control of its state-based marketplace in order to default to the federal website. Kind of a shame, obviously, but by all accounts that state royally fumbled the ball of the IT infrastructure behind Cover Oregon.
It was probably inevitable. Oregon has a strange political system. It has large area, low population, and requires a ballot measure to increase taxes (which effectively never happens). Although it’s a “blue” state, it has probably the greatest rural/urban divide I’ve ever seen in a state, and its government is perpetually underfunded and always under pressure to get “smaller,” which means cutting back on services (there have been times when only two highway patrolmen are on duty in the entire state). Despite being ranked 35th in tax burden in the US, the idea that Oregonians are “overtaxed” is a particularly strong meme there, and has resulted in lower and lower government levels over the last couple decades. The idea that they couldn’t build a working system with those resources isn’t particularly surprising. I love the state, and hope to retire there, but they can’t figure out rational government to save their life.
Forbes’ web site is misbehaving for me, so I can’t read the whole article. What’s stopping a state from “establishing” an exchange site that is the Federal site? Isn’t there another provision of PPACA where states that don’t set up exchanges have their citizens automatically covered under the Fed site? The fines were a watered down mechanism anyway, I have to wonder how much difference dropping the fines would make to sign ups under PPACA, since the vast majority of people want coverage, and will buy it when they can afford it.
Yeah, as I’ve indicated before, Halbig v. Sebelius is one of the dumbest lawsuits in the history of dumb lawsuits. Don’t forget that when the DC Court ruled in favor of the government, the judge basically laughed the entire challenge out of the courtroom.
I finally could read the Forbes article. It looks like RW wishful thinking to me. We’ll see what the court says, and whatever appellate courts are over that. This case could be a problem for PPACA, but by the time it gets adjudicated some years from now it may not matter politically.
In other news, more Democrats are touting their support for the ACA in their campaigns. Something which I’m sure we all agree is what they should be doing. Wafflers are wankers:
And geez louise, does the President think that after breaking his promise that it’s okay to keep on breaking it? There’s a certain type of low cost plan that his administration is trying to stamp out, which means more cancellations. Since these people have not yet lost their insurance, why not keep your promise and let them keep their insurance?
Well, the lawsuit has passed several hurdles already. Let’s see how it goes. Crossing fingers.