Republican Liars: ObamaCare Myths Debunked

Hey, if you've been paying attention to the Health Care debate, you may have heard more than one Republican mention that the need for immediate repeal and replacement is imminent - that all insurance companies are in a death spiral from participating in our current system. Well, we at The Policy Geek think that's a bunch of bunk. In an effort to weed through the misinformation, we repost here a piece by our good friend and writer Dr. Bear originally posted on Mad Mike's America. Enjoy!

Occasional Repost

Republicans are fond of discussing how Aetna Insurance Company’s withdrawal from exchanges is evidence that the Affordable Care Act of 2010 is “such a disaster,” or worse, how “Obamacare is in a death spiral.” This supposed “death spiral,” according to the current speaker, is the reason the Republican party is in the process of quickly repealing the law, and now trying to jam through the House and Senate their “replacement.”

Let’s not forget how it was Republicans who complained how the last bill was jammed through without giving the public a chance to review it, despite it taking over eighteen months to debate. However, what Republicans – like Speaker Ryan – tend to neglect telling the American people is precisely “why” Aetna withdrew from the exchanges, and understanding the why is just as tantamount to understanding the motivations behind the Republican party’s persistent failure to disclose the reason.

Interestingly, Aetna Insurance’s CEO is repeating the exact same story, that is, “ObamaCare is in a death spiral.” According to Bertolini who made his remarks back in February at the Wall Street Journal’s the Future of Health Care event, the insurance company’s Chief Executive believes the risk pool is deteriorating, the funding mechanism is awash, and the 'premium model' are all reasons for the supposed failure. However, according to PolitiFact, the Affordable Care Act is not in any “death spiral,” and they have rated both Ryan’s claim – and one can extrapolate also Bertolini’s statement - as false.

In fact, PolitiFact Wisconsin goes out of their way to explain precisely why this is not the case; more people have gained coverage under the law, fewer people in this nation are uninsured with a mere – but significant amount – 8.9% of Americans still not having insurance. The fact-checking organization proceeds to explain exactly how this has been accomplished. Key to those factors are the ability of children to remain on their parent’s insurance plan until they reach the age of twenty-six, and insurance companies are now mandated to no longer discriminate against those who have pre-existing conditions. It is noteworthy to point out that PolitiFact also admits that the law has not been popular and that several promises have not come to fruition. Instead of the elimination of deductibles, in some cases there has been an increase in deductibles, and so that part of the ACA missive was rated previously as a “broken promise.”

What the fact-checking organization did not provide however, is what reasons exist for those deductibles to be increasing versus decreasing as was the original plan. Was this problem really due to the individual mandate which just so happens to be the least popular part of the law? First of all, under ACA as it stands now the insurance companies are allowed to charge three times (the maximum amount allowed) of what they would originally charge as a means of mitigating for what they perceived as a pitfall - the losses incurred by insuring more sick people - despite the fact that before the ACA many healthy individuals were not signing up for coverage. Well, apparently, if you tell an insurance company that they are able to charge three times the amount of their original costs – and do so under the auspices of allowing them to do so after they get a better look at their risk pool – one can nearly be assured the insurance companies – out of greed – will take advantage of the established maximum allowed by law. And before one blames the former President for this aspect of the law, one need remember that prior to the implementation of the law, insurance companies had no cap whatsoever, that is, they could charge whatever it was they wished, all under the auspices of capitalism and free trade.

Yes, the ACA as it stands now is far from perfect, but at least it has several benefits to it while remaining a starting point which legislators can actually build upon. Did you know the currently proposed plan by the Republican Party would allow insurance companies to charge up to five times the amount they would have normally charged - all under the auspices of getting a glance at their risk pool - legally allowing them to sharply increase their rates, supposedly in accordance to the perceived changes in risk? However, how many of you believe the CEOs of these insurance companies are not taking advantage of consistently charging the maximum amount allowed by law?

In addition, the fact-checking organization Politifact doesn't seem to take into account how many people are simply against the word 'mandate' – originally a Republican idea promoted by the conservative think-tank “Heritage Foundation” – and so are refusing to purchase into the ACA, readily accepting the penalty for not doing so. Some corporations are doing so out of a supposed “religious conviction,” like Hobby Lobby, due to the law's provision allowing women to purchase contraceptives with their insurance coverage, while others accept the penalty over getting insured due to their faulty notion that should they participate they would be violating their “moral conscience.” Never mind that these same folks have no issue whatsoever paying for taxes which support their public schools, or annually purchasing automotive coverage in accordance with their State, because in their minds this is socialism par excellence. Make no mistake that these same folks have no issue whatsoever with Medicare, Social Security, and other programs which benefit THEM, but this is just Obamacare mandate is a bridge too far.

Any person following politics closely realizes this has been the Republican strategy since the Tea Party took over in 2010, disassemble as many government programs as possible, and honestly one can make an argument that it has been a staple for many years now. After all, who can ever forget Ronald Reagan’s blatant lie about the “Welfare Queen?” It does seem that Republicans have become more fond of this strategy in recent years due to their stepping up their efforts, doubling down on their projects to defund one successful and popular safety net institution after another. Remember the allegation and accompanying sound bite played across conservative media purporting that the former President told business owners that “they didn’t build their business?” Or, how about the oft repeated charge that when former Secretary of State Clinton testified to the investigatory committee on Benghazi that she said, “What difference does it make?” In every one of these examples, the entire story was not shared with the viewing or listening audience, providing a mere sound bite that satisfied the ideological preference of conservatives. But democracy cannot function properly when the very people who send people to Washington do not have accurate information, can they? Which leads us right back to Aetna’s and Paul Ryan’s claim that “Obamacare is in a death spiral,” because this is not the rest of the story as Paul Harvey used to say.

So what is the rest of this story? To know that, you first have to know the part were Aetna's CEO shared how Humana Insurance Company and Aetna had a proposed merger. The problem was the Justice Department back in 2016 was filing suit against Aetna because according to Reuters, the merger would have been a violation of our antitrust laws. Interestingly, Humana was not the only insurer that Aetna had its eyes on, as there was also an attempt by Aetna to merge with Cigna. According to the federal government – rightfully – these mergers would have restricted competition in the marketplace, so the proposed mergers necessarily were being reviewed. 

So how did Aetna respond to the looming lawsuit? Simply put, they threatened the federal government by telling them they would pull out of the exchanges they were participating in - and those they had planned to expand into - if the federal government did not drop the lawsuit. And then when they proposed deals were shut down, they screamed "death spiral." However, this is not what the corporation has been telling Americans now, is it? No! They said the reason they were pulling out was due to the hardship and loss of business and cost issues, hardly true, and when one looks at the matter objectively, one readily sees that Aetna tried to “extort” the federal government. In fact, according to the Los Angeles Times, a United States District Judge ruled in open court that, “Aetna tried to leverage its participation in the exchanges for favorable treatment from the Department of Justice regarding the proposed merger.” So it is a matter of public record what Aetna's real motive for pulling out of the exchanges really was....revenge.

THIS is why Paul Ryan, Aetna’s CEO, conservative lawmakers, and the conservative media entertainment complex should NOT be telling Americans that Aetna is an example of how “Obamacare is in a death spiral.” It simply is not true, and it misleads the American people which  - while it fits their ideological narrative - does NOT fit the facts. We thought you should you know The Rest of The Story.

Trump, while running for office, stated how he would be certain to provide insurance to everyone, how important it was that no one be left behind, that it was the least we could do, and now the Republican party has crafted legislation which already is predicted to leave the poorest and the oldest of us behind with no insurance, all the while providing CEOs and the wealthiest a mighty tax break. In fact, under Ryan's Trumpcare plan, if you let your insurance lapse for more than two months, you'll be subject to a 30% spike on your insurance premiums payable directly to your insurance company. Older people, the poor, and the sick alike will pay dearly should this bill become law, and again, the Affordable Care Act is far from being in a death spiral. But don’t tell that to the Republican Party! They're on a mission.

You can follow our pal Mark Bear on Facebook or Twitter @DrProgressive

Occasional Repost: The GOP Invited Dems to a Red Wedding, the Dems Obliged

We occasionally repost amazing articles from friends who hit the mark, perfectly. Here is David Phillips take on The Great Democalypse that was the 2014 midterms.

Red Wedding In The Capitol

A Red Wedding.

In Game of Thrones speak, this refers to a scene in the HBO series where the King of the North, his wife, and his mother--along with everyone else in their camp--is led into a trap based around a wedding meant to draw the two warring sides together in peace. The king and his crew let their guard down. They relax and believe that everything will turn out just fine. What follows is a massive bloodletting orchestrated by Lord Walder Frey where no one is spared--not even the honorable king's unborn child. It is a gruesome bit of television that has already taken its place in tube lore. It couldn't compare to what happened Tuesday night in the 2014 Midterms. The Senate flipped, the House got housed, and the guvnas got guvna'd.

Still, to spring this trap on unsuspecting Democrats, Lords McConnell, Boehner, Priebus, and Christie needed the unwitting compliance of two groups of people. Democratic voters and pols. They could not have asked for more.

If showing up is 80% of life, as it has often been attributed to Woody Allen, the Democratic voter was well short of that. Somehow, this happens nearly every midterm election and yet the left seems to never learn that the progress often made in presidential election years must be consecrated two years later. It's a common refrain that Democratic voters are lazy. Nothing about last night will make that refrain less common anytime soon. As usual, the electorate in this off-year election was paler, maler, and staler than in presidential years and again, Democrats paid the cost of too many of their flock only being interested in the big show every four years.

As well, we Democrats are an easily dispirited bunch. Susceptible to disappointment and wanting to punish our party for not doing enough while not recognizing the alternative to our way of thinking is more reliable and therefore more than willing to fill the void during our off-year siestas. This lurching back and forth from election to election is made possible not just by the Right's efforts to disenfranchise minorities and young people--although that's certainly a factor--but by our own occasional lack of interest. And if you think voter ID laws are making it harder to get the base to the polls now, just consider the contests for Governor we lost last night. Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts Florida, Maine, Wisconsin and perhaps Colorado are either flipping and going R or are staying that way. All in states that should be either slam dunks (IL, MD, MA) or at least competitive (the rest). Does anyone think it's going to get any easier to access the ballot box in any of these states now?

PAUSE: If any Democratic leader ever lets Martha Coakley (two time loser in sky blue Massachusetts) or Charlie Crist (who has now lost as a Republican, an Independent, and a Democrat) run for office under their banner again, please push them into traffic. RESUME.

As well, many on the left are feeling less than inspired by our current President. We buy into the fears over ISIS and Ebola, even though not a single American has died from either on domestic soil. We are displeased with the rate of economic growth even though we are outpacing every other first world nation post Bush II's Crash of 2008. We don't think he's done enough on immigration, disentangling us from overseas conflicts, and too much on privacy invasion and national security in general. There are reasonable arguments to be made in each of these cases. They are not won by not voting. Even if you think Obama's merely the lesser of two evils, when presented with the two, what idiot would not take that which would harm you the least?

Not to mention, all the state and local issues we failed to represent for Tuesday night. Even if your congressional vote was hopeless (as mine was), would you not at least want to mitigate the damage by at minimum, keeping your own backyard short of insanity? Don't get me wrong, the average voter in even the red states on election night was pretty strange. By and large voting 'yea' on liberal issues such as the legalization of marijuana and raising the minimum wage, while also voting for candidates who oppose both, but we already know these types vote against their own interests. At least they can be bothered to turn out, no matter how much head scratching ensues by us thinking types afterwards.

As irresponsible as the left leaning non-voter was last night, it's quite possible our candidates were even worse. Nearly all of them ran away from any sort of accomplishment Democrats may have won over the last six years. An improving, if fitful economy. A health care law that is literally addressing the needs of millions of people while also bringing down costs, and a country that is embroiled in fewer major conflicts and has not had one terror attack take place in this country from anyone outside of the occasional lone wolf. That's a story one could tell...if one were willing to tell it. See, when you act embarrassed by that which you have achieved, not only does it show, but your avoidance of those successes allows your foe to define those achievements as anything but. Therefore, you had a lot of politicians with a (D) by their name running on...what the fuck I don't know.

A perfect example is Mark Warner of Virginia. A former very popular Governor of Virginia who won his Senate seat in 2008 with more than 60% of the popular vote. This year, he had to scrape by former Bushie, Ed Gillespie, whom the Republicans (thankfully) barely bothered to fund. Warner was once a short lister for VP and even, in some circles, discussed as a future top of the ticket possibility. Tell me this though, what the fuck does anyone know about Mark Warner? What significant piece of legislation has he ever been attached to? Did anyone in Virginia even know what Warner was running on? Much like Indiana's former nondescript Democratic Governor and Senator, Evan Bayh, the only thing I know about Warner is he wins elections--if this year, only just.

Too many Democratic candidates ran this sort of safe race about nothing last night. Some were even worse. Many of those up for a vote on election day pretended we didn't even have a two-time electoral landslide winning Democratic President of the United States until they were asked directly about him. Then they turned into "See and Says." Only instead of pulling the string and having them--like the toy--say "the cow goes moo" or "the rooster goes cockadoodledoo," the candidate went "I disagree with the president" with every jerk of the chain.

Even worse, Senate candidate in Kentucky, Alison Lundergan Grimes, when asked whether she voted for the president she served as a state delegate for in 2012, fell only one denial short of a Peter/Jesus relationship with her party's standard-bearer. This was the norm for the Democratic candidate in 2014. Take credit for nothing, run on nothing, and when asked about your relationship with a guy who knows how to win elections, speak as if that guy was nothing too. The funny thing is, you know who that guy was more popular than? Both chambers of congress.

This sort of weak-kneed campaigning led to Republicans overachieving everywhere. Even in the few places Dems pulled out a win. Take New Hampshire, where the relatively popular former Governor and current Senator, Jeanne Shaheen, barely outpaced the carpetbagging former Senator from Massachusetts, Scott Brown. A candidate so committed to his new state, he could hardly admit to any interest in staying in it should he lose. I don't know what all Mid-Atlantic states have Dems up for the Senate in 2016, but I do suggest they start their opposition research on Brownie now, just in case.

To these short sighted pols, I would like to ask, what did this "safe" strategy net you? Dems lost to a turtle in Kentucky, a man afraid of a circular fan in Florida, and a proud castrator of hogs in Iowa. I'll now share with you my favorite gallows-humored tweet of the night from former Daily Show correspondent, Wyatt Cenac: "For all the Democratic candidates that campaigned by distancing themselves from the President... it worked. They will be nowhere near him."

I will say this for Democratic non-voters and candidates, you did accomplish something unexpected last night. You made a lame duck President more relevant than anyone could have anticipated. Now he's all that stands between you and the policies you despise. I'm sure that's what you had in mind while watching the electoral map run red like the floor of Walder Frey's banquet room.

David Phillips

GOP Being Careful About Obamacare

Surprisingly, Republicans Are Liking It Now.

About a year ago, Georgia Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens bragged to a crowd of fellow Republicans: “Let me tell you what we’re doing [about ObamaCare]: Everything in our power to be an obstructionist.”

Now as a rule Republican policymakers at least pretend to care about working constructively, blaming the President for not being willing to compromise on their proposals. Yet here was a state official boasting about his deliberate embrace of obstructionism. Not that we didn’t know, but this one said it on camera

Karma’s a bitch, and this week, Hudgens said he didn’t really mean it. Really.

Hudgens said, “I spoke to a Republican group in Rome, Ga., and I said I was going to be an obstructionist, but I can’t be. I mean, I was talking to a Republican group and I was throwing them some red meat.” Oh, really? What a surprise. Another honest statement. Could this obstructionist really be the only honest official in Georgia? Hudgens added yesterday that the number of private insurers competing for Georgia consumers’ business has nearly doubled – these companies “took a wait and see attitude and now they’ve come in” – which may expand the public’s choices and possibly lower prices.

In other news, The Oklahoman reported yesterday that Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, a far-right Republican and fierce ACA critic, “applied to participate in an Affordable Care Act program designed to help states develop innovative models for delivering care and reducing costs for participants in Medicaid, Medicare and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.”

It would seem over this last week we’ve seen a sea change in the politics of health care. As anyone following beltway politics knows, the narrative established earlier this year was that the Affordable Care Act is a political disaster for Democrats, and that will help create a GOP “wave” in 2014 – but this two-step is nevertheless hard to miss for those who care to look.

Rachel Maddow reports, “Republican campaigns are even moving away from anti-ACA advertising; Republican candidates are increasingly reluctant to say whether they intend to take ACA benefits away from constituents; other Republican candidates are grudgingly conceding that there’s “no doubt” the ACA has helped people; and we now see Republican officials embracing key elements of the ACA they used to reject.”

Sahil Kapur, Talking Points Memo senior congressional reporter, reports, the fact that “Obamacare is working largely as intended” has created a new political framework.

In Kentucky, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) has been tripped up by the fact that Obamacare has cut his state’s uninsured rate by more than 40 percent. In Connecticut, early warnings of a 12.5 percent premium hike by one insurer turned out to be wrong; the insurer actually revealed it will lower its average premiums in 2015, albeit very slightly.

In short, Obamacare is working largely as intended. Tee hee. More than 10 million Americans have gained coverage and the national uninsured rate is falling, with better results obviously in states that embraced it. Not surprisingly, many of the horror stories touted by opponents have turned out to be exaggerated or false.

As a result, Republicans have tamed their attacks on Obamacare, and national Democratic strategists are less worried about it hurting their candidates. It looks like the GOP is going to have to pick a different fight leading into November.

Maddow adds, since its inception, “Republicans and much of the conservative political establishment was convinced that the Affordable Care Act was Katrina and Watergate combined. This was a catastrophic disaster, we were told, that would destroy Obama’s presidency and quite possibly ruin the very idea of progressive governance.”

Now that the ACA is succeeding and the political winds have changed direction, it seems health care isn’t going to be a driving factor leading to the polls. Of course, the man on the street may have already been programmed with Limbaugh, Ted Cruz, and FOX’s 24/7 abuse of even the term “Obamacare,” so only time will tell how the balance of Congress will work itself out this fall.