…and it’s on life support:
…let’s recap. Obamacare has depressed job growth, costs are escalating at a higher rate, barely a dent has been made in the numbers of uninsured, and insurers are either exiting the markets or failing altogether. Under any other circumstances, a program that failed on its promises so badly would have all sides moving quickly to repeal it and work on a replacement. Don’t bet on that outcome from this White House and its dwindling number of Democratic supporters on Capitol Hill. They will surely try to sell us the illusion of competence and success.
Because they’re as delusional about it as they are about the war.
We eagerly await Baghdad Jim with the party line rebuttal and the Argumentum ad Misericordia.
“Because they’re as delusional about it as they are about the war.”
Or they aren’t delusional and wanted this exact outcome to push us towards single payer
C’mon people, I put out our “talking point.” The ACA is working great, so when Bernie is talking Single Payer, he is talking into his hat? The ACA is working, isn’t it? We need Single Payer? So then, there is some problem with the ACA?
An article that includes the claim
Obamacare didn’t make much of a dent in the uninsured rate
does not need to be refuted in detail.
He provides the numbers to back it up.
Jim didn’t. But then Jim didn’t really provide an argument either. I guess he doesn’t have an argument to defend Obamacare.
That’s because there isn’t one.
Goddammit, Obamacare has added six hundred billion people to the insurance rolls. Take that, conservative troglodyte!
If you want to go into the weeds of exactly how the author is misleading you with those numbers, see this.
The uninsured rate has dropped from 18% to 11.6%. That is a huge “dent”.
The uninsured rate has dropped from 18% to 11.6%. That is a huge “dent”.
It also dropped from 13.9% to 11.1% over a seven year period from 2007 to 2014. Since that isn’t distorted by a recession, that looks like a better start number to me.
But rather than continue arguing over a two year difference in start date, which by itself explains almost two thirds of Obamacare’s supposed success in insuring the uninsured, let us consider what’s going to happen. We have significant portions of the Obamacare system collapsing. We have significant parts of the Obamacare system which haven’t been implemented yet and are likely to fail to some degree when they are implemented. We have significant federal incentives for taking on uninsured which will expire shortly and/or are underfunded. The world will rumble on past 2014.
But rather than continue arguing over a two year difference in start date
Hey Karl, that’s the bases of most arguments Jim makes. Everything prior to 2009 is Bush’s fault, despite the Democrat Congress coming in 2007. You can be sure later, he will blame the failure of Obamacare on the Republican Congress.
does notcannot be refuted in detail.So the “wingnuts” are wrong, the ACA is working, and we don’t need Bernie Sanders’ Single Payer plan?
Bernie would solve the whole cost problem by just dictating what the government will pay for services and if the companies can’t survive it is because they are unpatriotic wreckers. Of course, some companies will get some extra money from the government to help keep them afloat as long as they remain enthusiastic supporters.
Yes, but does Jim “feel the Bern” or is he in the Hillary camp? And isn’t supporting Single Payer admitting that the ACA isn’t doing the job?
The tragedy is ACA is so badly broken that Bernie’s single payer play is likely an improvement. But what we really need is some free market.
ACA reduced the number of uninsured from 14% to 9%
ACA did change who the uninsured were….
People that had marginal policies at work in low paying positions lost their coverage and the free shit crowd got coverage….
Given the current population and the cost of ACA its currently at about $78,000 per new insured…. The governemnt quotes lower numbers because they cost against thoose who got insurance throught ACA rather than costing the difference in number of uninusred before and after… a better number IMHO.
Reminder: Obamacare is Hurting Real People
Guy benson Townhall
A quote fro the end of the article:
“Obamacare is hurting more people than it helps”……
Obama: “Government is another name for the things we choose to do together.”
More form the article:
“[Obamacare is…] actively hurting real people. Working and middle-class families have to grapple with the fears and financial instability associated with increasing, unaffordable costs. “Access shock” prevents individuals from securing the care they need. Rising cost curves impact the government’s budget, which affects taxpayers. Millions of people have been stripped of their existing healthcare arrangements, including hundreds of thousands as a result of the law’s collapsing co-ops, in violation of a solemn presidential promise.”
Here’s a fact of life the Jim’s of the world prefer to ignore:
“California’s high taxes and deep blue politics have created a fiscal wasteland;……..the country is once again discovering that money doesn’t magically appear, that resources are discrete and limited, and that soaking the rich isn’t a long-term solution” to anything. When huge new expenditures are undertaken, other priorities get crowded out. Tough luck, developmentally disabled kids, your government chose to expand an already-overextended system to cover many more able-bodied childless adults. ”
“Obamacare remains unpopular because it’s failing to live up to the “Affordable” Care Act misnomer. It’s least popular among the still-uninsured Americans who can’t afford it. And it’s hurting more people than it helps, including the victims of big government mentioned above. “
From Hot Air:
The Associated Press reminds us that story of collapsing co-ops in ObamaCare is far from over. Only one co-op in the country showed a profit before Congress restricted funding for risk-corridor payments to the revenues received from insurance companies — Maine’s Community Health Options, which made almost $11 million in the second year of ObamaCare operations. They’re now deeply in the red, thanks mainly to the rapid increase in health-care costs that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) admit is being driven by the Affordable Care Act itself:
The lone health insurance cooperative to make money last year on the Affordable Care Act’s public insurance exchanges is now losing millions and suspending individual enrollment for 2016.
Maine’s Community Health Options lost more than $17 million in the first nine months of this year, after making $10.9 million in the same period last year. A spokesman said higher-than-expected medical costs have hurt the cooperative.
The announcement casts further doubt on the future of the cooperatives, small nonprofit insurers devised during the ACA’s creation to inject competition in insurance markets. These co-ops immediately struggled to build their businesses. A dozen of the 23 created have already folded.
A number of Obamacare’s most partisan advocates have claimed that the law has “bent down the cost curve,” because the growth rate in U.S. health spending has been slowing since 2003. Two obvious facts eluded these advocates: first, that in 2003, George W. Bush was president, and Barack Obama was a state senator in Illinois; and second, that the bulk of Obamacare only went into effect in 2014, and until last week, we didn’t have data on health spending in 2014.
It’s not just the co-ops that got blindsided by this, either. Traditional insurers have had to increase costs by as much as 50% in some states for 2016 over 2015 premium rates just to keep up (Minnesota being one of those states). Others have dropped out of some state exchanges to cut their losses. United Healthcare warned last month that they will exit the individual-plan business altogether after 2016, thanks to an ocean of red ink.
this would be the same CBO that Jim is beside himself to point out is the knower of all things:
“A little-noticed report released Friday afternoon by the Congressional Budget Office shows that the Senate bill to repeal most of ObamaCare would cut the deficit by as much as $474 billion, while boosting GDP, investment and capital stock. The findings stand in sharp contrast to promises by President Obama and other Democrats that ObamaCare would accelerate economic growth and lower federal deficits. “