Democrats Triumph: GOP Health Care Bill Collapses, Obamacare Remains

Things are not going well for Republicans. Last week started with a 37% favorability rating for a president who loves to win, who thinks of himself as a winner and pronounces that he has won even when he lost. 

Donald Trump has bragged forever and a day about his ability to make a deal and about the book he wrote on the subject. But as Timothy O'Brien, author of  TrumpNation: the Art of Being the Donald pointed out on CNN, Trump was never any good at complex business deals. In fact, those were the deals that failed the most spectacularly. And The Art of the Deal was written by a ghost writer, who subsequently spoke of his remorse at promulgating a lie, saying "I put lipstick on a pig".  

The Trump Administration has seen nothing but failure since January 20.  Trump began with low popularity and his ratings are now the worst in history for a new president.  

The first Muslim travel ban was blocked, and so was the second. Trump's promises to build the wall on the Mexican border, and make Mexico pay, fell flat. His relationship with Russia is going south.  Mike Flynn was forced to resign and Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from a core investigation. The Trump campaign and possibly even Donald Trump himself are under Congressional and FBI investigations for suspected collusion with Russia regarding the 2016 election. Collusion that could lead to criminal prosecution and jail time for treason.

Then Trump's ludicrous and potentially libellous wiretapping accusations were exposed as pure fiction and he was scorned internationally. Now his first piece of legislation, Trumpcare, has failed to make it out of the gate. Speaking to Dana Bash of CNN, Jake Tapper called it an "ignominious defeat". 

It's been a tension-filled two days. After a lot of posturing from Paul Ryan, threatening from Donald Trump, spinning from Sean Spicer and categorical assertions that there was no plan B because plan A would definitely pass, the vote was postponed. Thursday was spent in frantic attempts by Paul Ryan and the president to convince House Republicans to vote yes for this Republican health care bill that nobody liked. As the day  wore on, opinion that the vote was close shifted from cautious predictions of failure, to certainty of it.

The idea of the bill being pulled a second time started circulating. Within an hour CNN broke the news that Trump had told Paul Ryan to do the deed.  Later it was reported that Ryan had had to talk Trump off the ledge, so keen was he to name and shame Republicans who wanted to vote against him. He's not likely to forget their names.  

Repealing Obamacare was the major, fundamental campaign issue that won the House for Republicans in 2010 and won Congress and the Presidency in 2016. Republicans have been obsessed with it for seven years, making more than 50 repeal attempts, hankering after the power to get rid of it. In that time, nobody ever came up with anything that remotely resembled a replacement. As Politico reported, ex Speaker of the House Jim Boehner said in February that he laughed when 'Republicans started talking about moving lightning fast on repeal and then coming up with an alternative.'

"In the 25 years that I served in the United States Congress, Republicans never, ever, one time agreed on what a health care proposal should look like. Not once. And all this happy talk that went on in November and December and January about repeal, repeal, repeal—yeah, we'll do replace, replace—I started laughing, because if you pass repeal without replace, first, anything that happens is your fault. You broke it.”

They tried to break it but failed even at that. On camera, House Republicans are praising the president and Paul Ryan, and it’s a love fest between the two of them. But Trump is clearly furious, Ryan is visibly taking strain, and off camera the blame game is in full swing.

Who needs cameras these days when there are so many aides in the Trump camp willing to talk? Republicans who wanted to vote yes are pointing fingers at the Freedom Caucus, who refused to budge on their no vote position. This is the group who shut down the government in an attempt to repeal Obamacare during President Obama's second term. They thought they could blackmail the President. Their ruse failed. He played hardball and they had to back down. Rep Devin Nunes, a Jim Boehner ally, called them "lemmings with suicide vests".

The Freedom Caucus were heavily criticized by more moderate Republicans at the time. “You’re not going to repeal Obamacare while a guy named Obama is President of the United States,” said Rep Tom Cole.

It seems they're not going to repeal Obamacare while a guy named Trump is president, even though the GOP has complete control of Congress. Long ago they labeled the ACA Obamacare in derision. Then, out of pure spite, they chose the anniversary of Obama signing it into law for their original date to vote on Trumpcare. Their mean-spiritedness has succeeded only in highlighting their abysmal failure. Now for the foreseeable future Obamacare will be a constant reminder of it. The very real and powerful presence of former President Barack Obama and his tremendous success will haunt them.

Kudos to Democrats for the fight they put up and to voters who voiced their objections with their representatives and at town hall meetings, putting the fear of God into moderate Republicans.

This is another triumph of good over evil and a reminder that winning an election by colluding with a foreign power and gaining total control of government is not a free ticket in a strong democracy. Especially when that government does not have the interests of the majority of the people at heart.

Today was a victory for all Americans. pic.twitter.com/LX6lzQXtBR

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 24, 2017

From #7millionandcounting To #8millionandcounting and More

Well, #7millionandcounting is now #8millionandcounting. 35% of those 8 million who have signed up for private health insurance under the ACA are 35 or younger, so the age spread is looking good for the future well-being of the ACA. The Congressional Budget Office has reported that the law could cost as much as $100 billion less than originally estimated and will considerably shrink the deficit over the next ten years.

It’s not only ordinary Americans who are benefitting from Obamacare. In 2010 Congress appropriated $5 billion for the temporary reinsurance program (under the ACA) which provided subsidies to employers for workers who retired before they’re eligible for Medicare. 

According to Huffpost, companies, the bulk of whose political donations go to Republicans, but who received subsidies are UPS ($37m), Union Pacific Railroad, ($9.7m), Altria Client Services Inc. (nearly $11m), AT&T ($213m), Pfizer Inc. ($23m), GlaxoSmithKline ($14 m), Southern Company Services ($7m) Lockheed Martin Corp. ($4 m), CSX Corp. ($2.2m), KPMG LLP ($1.4m), Deloitte LLP, ($1.2m). 

Koch Industries received $1.4 m. Ironic, given that Charles and David Koch fund AFP, which has sunk over $30 million into ads against the ACA or Democratic politicians who have backed it.

More ironic is that FreedomPartners, also funded by the Koch brothers, is spending more than $1m on ads against politicians in Senate races. Senator Mark Udall of Colorado and Rep. Bruce Braley of Iowa are being targeted for receiving campaign donations from health companies that benefit from the ACA. They aren’t the only ones, though. The US has been flooded with these ads and it’s been estimated that somewhere in the region of $500m has been spent so far. 

But it’s a losing battle and always has been, and once again Republicans have gambled their all on something and lost. They didn’t have much to gamble with in the first place. The Congressional Budget Office, in a letter to the Honorable John Boehner providing an estimate for H.R. 6079, the “Repeal of Obamacare Act” estimated that “H.R. 6079 would reduce direct spending by $890 billion and reduce revenues by $1 trillion between 2013 and 2022, thus adding $109 billion to federal budget deficits over that period.”

That was the 31^st attempt to either limit or repeal the ACA. It was opposed by US Representative Mike Doyle, who said “House Republicans are holding their 31st vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act with the full knowledge that repeal won’t become law – and without offering up a plan to replace it. We’ve wasted this week on a political stunt when we could – and should – have been spending it working on legislation to create jobs. 

“I hope that now, after 31 votes, House Republicans have gotten this out of their system and we can finally put it behind us, give the new law a chance to work, and move on to the challenge of creating more new jobs.”

Nothing daunted, the GOP carried on the war, certain they could win. The House has tried and failed to limit or repeal the ACA 51 times. You have to hand it to them. They’re not long on wisdom and intelligent strategy, but they sure are persistent in their foolishness. For all the money they’ve spent, they’ve achieved little success though, and now GOP candidates for the House are pinning everything on repealing the law. But as time passes, the law’s success increases so they’re swimming upstream against a current that just keeps getting stronger and stronger.

A New York Times/Kaiser Family Foundation Poll conducted in four Southern States of Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana and North Carolina found that although there was a lot of disapproval of President Obama and the ACA, the majority didn’t want the law repealed. 

Most of us believe that money talks in politics and if it’s spent with intelligent strategy then it does.  Given how much resistance there is to Obama, especially in the Southern States, which many argue have never shed their racial prejudice, it should have been easy for Republicans and their backers to turn the majority against the ACA. But when money is spent on untruths that can easily be exposed, and on destroying something that really does benefit everybody, it’s a mission impossible.

One of the side effects of the Republican ads, has been to make Democrat candidates afraid of openly backing the ACA and Obama. But even that is changing. 

As Obama said, “this thing works.” And it’s working beautifully in spite of a troubled roll-out, in spite of all the money thrown at trying to destroy it. At some point Republicans are going to have to acknowledge that they backed the wrong horse. Again. That moment might not be so far away.  

Obamacare Victory Despite All Odds

Some time ago somebody wrote that when we feel passionate about something that's under siege we want to fight for it, so we instinctively look for the news or for blogs or videos that criticize it, because then we’ve got something to fight about!

Well it takes all types. I don’t ever go looking for the bad news about Democrats, or President Obama. I’m constantly on the lookout for articles that illustrate to me something positive. The problem is that I can’t find much of it and haven’t been able to since President Obama first took office. This has always puzzled me, because it’s not as if his achievements aren’t monumental. Even when there’s a great victory – like 7.1 million people signing up for health care under Obamacare and targets set were met despite all the difficulties of the roll-out – everybody, including the liberal media, can’t even have one day’s worth of clean celebration without sullying their articles with gloom and doom predictions about the future.

It absolutely drives me crazy. Sometimes I think the liberal media is almost as harmful as the right wing media, because who ever reports on the good news without also slipping in a gloom and doom opinion perspective, under the guise of news, that is actually pure speculation and opinion on the part of the writer?

Take the New York Times’ coverage of President Obama and his administration’s Obamacare triumph.  The article was a pleasure to read. It’s news, and unbiased reporting. Then I clicked on Times a Minute, a video, half way down the page. It starts with President Obama quipping about Armageddon and Death Panels, which is pretty appropriate.

Then you cut to a reporter with a very serious and almost sad expression on her face, talking about how many obstacles there are ahead.

It’s not fact, though; it’s speculation. The reporter had three options: to do gloom and doom and give us a sense that things probably won’t work out. Or predict that the incredible success of Obamacare so far despite the rollout hitches indicates that this is a President who who takes problems seriously, apologizes for them and fixes them immediately and effectively. She could also have predicted that law will ultimately be a resounding success and back up her opinion with facts and figures about how unpopular Medicare was at first. Or she could have done both, acknowledged that it’s all speculation and shown us how truly unbiased Times a Minute is.

But the choice was the most depressing option; speculation about what could happen with nothing to counterbalance it. The heading for Times a Minute was: “Times Minute | A Health Care Milestone: Today on the Minute, how yesterday’s health care milestone will affect the debate on health care and the expansion of medicaid.” But that didn’t represent the content at all. In fact the only conclusion one could draw, if one believed Times a Minute was representing truth, was that the President didn’t take the real problems seriously and deliberately withheld the real information about them from the public.

Grrr. Well, on the bright side, I guess they got most of it right. As for me, I’m not one of the readers who wants to read what the opposite camp writes about President Obama and Democrats, especially given what a lot of lies are spewed out. I want to read acknowledgement of the truth.

When Americans for Prosperity puts out ads that have no factual base, I want to read the media that exposes it, and it’s available. When Justice John G. Roberts Jr. rules for big money to have the freedom to openly buy politicians I want to read the media outrage. And that’s available too.

So why doesn’t the liberal media get behind this President uncompromisingly in the way that, for example, the right wing media gets behind their politicians, no matter what they’ve done? When President Obama triumphs in the way that he has with Obamacare, it’s exciting, it’s thrilling, because achievement of this kind is an honorable, noble thing. I'm uplifted, inspired and real grateful that I live in an era when such a man as Barack Obama is President. I'm in awe that he's surmounted all obstacles. I’m happy that all the GOP skulduggery hasn’t been able to make the ACA fail.

I want to read articles written by journalists who know enough and are honest enough to see the triumph for what it is - an unprecedented moment in American history achieved by a President that Americans have not seen the like of for a very long time.

Thank God for Paul Krugman, a New York Times op-ed columnist and brilliant economist with a phenomenal understanding of social dynamics, whose opening words on this even were “Holy seven million, Batman!” He always calls it like it is. Funny thing is, when he does, especially on Obamacare, a lot of readers don’t want to hear it. Well, it’s their loss. I’m breaking out the champagne.

AFP (Koch Funded?) Invests in Blatant Anti-Obamacare Propaganda

Last month Americans For Prosperity, funded who knows to what extent by the billionaire conservative Koch brothers, released an ad calling on voters to speak out to Senator Mary Landrieu about how much Obamacare is hurting Louisiana families. 

The ad starts with a middle class Mom on the porch and two gorgeous middle class kids running out to the post box, laughing. A very sad, kind voice over says “Dear Mrs. Kelly; your family plan is no longer available under the Affordable Care Act.” as the kids pull the letter out the box. Cut to a young middle class African American woman coming into her apartment, opening up her letter box. The same voice says “Dear Ms. Davis, we can no longer offer you the same policy; your doctor is no long in the network due the Affordable Care Act.” She looks devastated.

Cut to a father and his daughter on a farm standing at the letter box. She’s adorable. He’s the poster boy for responsible, down to earth Dad. The same voice says “Your monthly premium has increased…” at which point Dad looks at adorable daughter with great distress, “…no longer covered due to the Affordable Care Act”. One more shot of a woman opening her letter box and the final message is “send Senator Landrieu a message. Obamacare is hurting Louisiana families.”

When Americans for Prosperity was pinned down on the veracity of the ad a spokesperson admitted the characters were all actors. There wasn’t any truth in even a second of that footage.

In February the AFP made another ad and they used a real person for this one: a Julie Boonstra who was diagnosed with leukemia 5 years ago. Ms. Boonstra speaks directly to the camera,  looks sincere and her words are heart stopping. 

“I was diagnosed with leukemia. I found out I only have a 20 percent chance of surviving. I found this wonderful doctor and a great health care plan. I was doing fairly well fighting the cancer, fighting the leukemia, and then I received a letter. My insurance was canceled because of Obamacare. Now, the out-of-pocket costs are so high, it’s unaffordable. If I do not receive my medication, I will die... This is serious. It’s not a game…”

The Washington Post runs a fact checker blog written by journalist Glen Kessler which grants a Pinocchio rating from one to four. One is a few errors, four is a whopping lie. When Kessler first reviewed this ad he had been told by the AFP that Ms. Boonstra had a Silver individual plan through Blue Cross Blue Shield but they didn’t give details of the actual plan. Still, Kessler was able to expose ‘contradictions’ so he gave Ms. Boonstra two Pinocchios. 

Why? Because Ms. Boonstra not only has a plan that saves her $571 a month, but she keeps that wonderful doctor she found. Kessler discovered also that the Silver plan doesn’t cover out of pocket (OOP) expenses, as her previous plan did, but it puts a cap on them of $6,350. The money she saves comes to $6,852.  Until they reach the cap those OOP expenses are unpredictable; they may be more than $571 a month, they may be less. When the lie that she’s lost her lovely doctor and that she’s going to die was exposed, Ms. Boonstra was forced to resort to saying, in another ad, that the unpredictability is the real problem and it’s making her life a nightmare. It didn’t have as much punch.

But that isn’t the end of the story. The Detroit News subsequently discovered that Ms. Boonstra has a Premier Gold Plan which has an OOP cap of $5,100. So in fact Ms. Boonstra saves $1,200 because of Obamacare. The lovely Ms. Boonstra’s reaction was to say “I don’t believe it”. Blue Cross Shield’s reaction was to say that they are available to help their clients understand policies; clients just have to pick up the phone. 

Kessler reviewed his first rating of the ad and now gives three Pinocchios. The end to this sad tale is that in fact Ms. Boonstra isn’t going to die or to lose her doctor, or lose anything at all  because of Obamacare. In fact she’s going to gain. Is she grateful? Nope. And millions of previously uninsured people are going to gain healthcare, perhaps for the first time in their lives. Many who are as sick or worse than Ms. Boonstra now have a chance at treatment and survival. Many who have previously been bankrupted or whose children have never been able to see a doctor now have medical care.

Not if Ms. Boonstra has anything to say about it, though. The AFP spent $30 million on ads attacking Democrats and Obamacare for the Senate races. The first ad has had over 400 000 views on YouTube and the second has had over 98,000 views.  

The constant Republican warcry that the ACA is unpopular and destroying people’s lives is believed by many because of ads like these. The frightening part of it all is that these believers don’t ask themselves why, if so many people’s lives have been destroyed, doesn’t the AFP show footage of them, and instead chooses to resort to actors and people whose stories can so easily be exposed as lies. The truth is clearly that nobody cares about the truth. 

Republican politicians and their backers and supporters know by now that as soon as they put out anything masquerading as information about Obamacare/ACA it’s going to be rigorously checked. They don't care. They know that they're exploiting an unreasoning, atavistic fear of an African American president. This kind of propaganda works on Republican voters. Last year a Public Policy Polling found that 29% of [polled] Republican primary voters in Louisiana blamed President Obama for the disaster in relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina struck and levees broke. 

Katrina happened in August 2005. Barack Obama took office in 2009.

Republican Ruse to Destroy the ACA Failing Sadly

Last Sunday NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday, House Budget Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senate Budget Chair Patty Murray (D-WA) discussed the bipartisan budget deal which will ensure that Republicans won’t shut down the government for the next 2 years. Naturally the subject turned to the ACA. Senator Murray said that as Americans experience the benefits of the ACA, and as the dust settles, it will become more and more popular. She cited the story of a mother with disabled 29 year old son who, for the first time in his life, can get proper medical attention. For the first time in her life she can sleep at night. 

Paul Ryan, on the other hand, had this to say: “...We also don’t want to have shutdown drama so we can focus on replacing Obamacare, so we can focus on showing better ideas and what this is coming in. Cause we don’t think people like this law and we don’t think it’s gonna get any more popular.” Interesting reason for not wanting to shut down the government.

He should know what Americans want. He was the unsuccessful 2012 presidential candidate. I wonder how a private conversation would go between him and House Speaker John Boehner, who signed up and has a great policy. Despite his support of the Tea Party’s blackmail that led to the government shut down. “We fought the good fight” he said, then promptly signed up, using the HealthCare.gov website. He was hoping to prove that he couldn't get a policy. Unfortunately - or fortunately, for him - his hopes were dashed.

The latest CBS News /New York Times Poll shows just how wrong Paul Ryan and his cohorts are.

• Obamacare disapproval has dropped from 61% in November to 50% now;
• Approval has risen from 31% in November to 39% now. 
• President Obama’s job approval rating has risen from 37% in November to 42% now;
• Disapproval has dropped from 57% in November to 50% now. 

That’s in one month. One wonders if Republicans will ever read the polls or take reality into account. They’ve made 40 attempts to repeal Obamacare and have failed every time. This isn’t a new fight for them either. They opposed Medicare, predicting that it would turn America into a socialized state. They said Americans didn’t want it. 

In 1961 Ronald Reagan released an LP calling for resistance to Medicare. His final words were: “If you don’t [do something about stopping Medicare], this program, I promise you, will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow and behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country until one day as Normal Thomas said we will wake to find that we have socialism, and if you don’t do this and I don’t do this, one of these days we are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.”

Republicans had a good run of scare-mongering and they managed to fool some of the people but not all of the people.President Lyndon Johnson signed the Social Security Act, which included Medicare, into law in 1965 and Americans came to understand that it was a good thing. It has had 48 years of success. The dire predictions of Reagan et al about America becoming a socialist state haven’t come to pass. 

The HealthCare.gov glitches have been mostly fixed. And Americans are showing just how much they don’t want Obamacare by visiting the site by the millions. The US government recently released the following figures for November. SBM’s are State Based Marketplaces and FFM is Federally-faciliated Marketplace.

• 258,497 enrolled in November. The figure for October was 106,185.  
• From 1 October to 30 November, 39.1 million people visited SBMs and FFM websites and there were 5.2 million calls to the call centers. 
• 1.8 million completed applications were submitted to SBMs and FFM and those applications represented 3.7 million people applying for Coverage. 
• 2.3 million people were determined eligible to enroll in a Marketplace plan by the SBMs and FFM. 
• 365,000 individuals have selected a plan through the SBMs and FFM. 
• 1.9 million eligible people have not yet selected a Marketplace plan through the SBMs and FFM. 
• 1.2 million people have selected a Marketplace plan or had a Medicaid/CHIP Determination or Assessment. 
• 803,000 individuals have been determined or assessed to be eligible for Medicaid/CHIP by the SBMs and FFM.

The last word on this belongs to Senator Harry Reid who has carried around a newspaper clipping showing Republican scaremongering against Medicare. He tweeted it in October, saying this: “Been carrying this in my wallet a long time. It shows you how long Republicans have been wrong about health care.” It's had 2072 retweets. If you can’t read the print in the image, these are the quotes:

"I was there, fighting the fight, one of twelve, voting against Medicare, because we knew it wouldn't work in 1965." - Sen. Bob Dole. [This was in 1996. What didn’t work was Dole’s run for Presidency.]

"Now we didn't get rid of it in round one because we didn't think it politically smart ... But we believe (Medicare) is going to wither on the vine." - House Speaker Newt Gingrich. [Yeah. Gingrich also lost in 2012.]

"Medicare has no place in a free world.  Social Security is a rotten trick ... I think we're going to have to bite the bullet on Social Security and phase it out over time." - House Majority Leader Dick Armey. [It's been going strong for 48 years now.]