Please stop telling me how bad Obamacare or more accurately the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is. First, all evidence suggests that it exceeded the Administration’s and the Congressional Budget Office’s expectations by a significant margin.
The report found that coverage is likely to cost less thanks to premiums being lower than expected through the exchange marketplaces. In other words, take pretty much everything you’ve heard from congressional Republicans lately and believe the opposite.
And as part of the same review, of course, the CBO added that the Affordable Care Act will also continue to reduce the federal budget deficit, which is also the opposite of critics’ claims. […]
So, taken together, what have we learned of late?
* ACA enrollment through exchanges reached 7.1 million, ahead of early estimates.
* The ACA is quickly reducing the uninsured rate.
* Thanks in part to the ACA, health care spending has slowed dramatically and health care inflation is at its lowest point in 50 years.
* According to the Department of Commerce, the ACA is also having a positive effect on personal incomes.
* And according to the CBO, the system is even more affordable than perviously projected.
Second, most of the issues with the rollout of the ACA is a direct result of obstruction by Republicans in states which refused to expand Medicaid, thus dramatically putting the health of millions of Americans (including ones covered by health care insurance) at risk.
The Lower Oconee Community Hospital, a so-called “critical access” hospital in southeastern Georgia with 25 beds, will close down and possibly re-open as an urgent care center that provides services that aren’t quite serious enough to necessitate an emergency room visit. Patients in the Wheeler County region who need more extensive medical care after the hospital closes will need to travel upwards of thirty miles in order to receive it.
“We just did not have sufficient volume to support the expenses,” said CEO Karen O’Neal in an interview with local CBS affiliate WMAZ. “It’s a terrible situation, and it’s tragic, the loss of jobs and the economic impact.”
Finally, until you Conservatives and Republicans can come up with a better plan, you have no legs to stand on regarding criticizing the ACA. To date all the talk by Republicans about how they will do much better by repealing the ACA and providing an alternative health care reform program has all been a bunch of “sound and fury signifying nothing,” since you people have not provided any viable alternative to the ACA, much less one that would work better.
Four years after Obamacare was enacted, and more than 50 House votes to undo it, Republicans remain dedicated to destroying the law. But they’re still lost on what they’d put in its place if given the chance.[…]
Simply repealing Obamacare would, at this juncture, take away coverage from upwards of 10 million Americans who are benefiting from the law’s insurance subsidies, Medicaid expansion or the provision that permits children to stay on their parents’ policies.
And their own ideas would have sweeping impacts, too. Health policy experts say allowing insurers to sell plans across state lines, for example, would upend the system by motivating insurers to cancel policies and relocate to states with the fewest consumer protections. Any such bill would be scored by the Congressional Budget Office, and that would force Republicans to answer for the downsides.
In short, the ACA is the most conservative option to improve our health care system, as acknowledged by the GOP’s own policy analysts.
“If you want to say the further and further this gets down the road, the harder and harder it gets to repeal, that’s absolutely true,” the aide said. “As far as repeal and replace goes, the problem with replace is that if you really want people to have these new benefits, it looks a hell of a lot like the Affordable Care Act. … To make something like that work, you have to move in the direction of the ACA. You have to have a participating mechanism, you have to have a mechanism to fund it, you have to have a mechanism to fix parts of the market.”
In short, shut up until you come up with a replacement that has any chance of improving the current health care reform law. Your lies aren’t being believed, not even by your supporters.
According to new polling by Public Policy Poling conducted for MoveOn, in voters support Medicaid expansion in key states by wide margins: 52 to 35 percent in Kansas, 58 to 33 percent in Florida, 59 to 30 percent in Pennsylvania, 54 to 38 percent in Georgia. All are states where Medicaid expansion has been blocked by Republican politicians.
People are seeing your true colors and they aren’t liking what they see.
