Tag Archives: Affordable Care Act

Professional Journalists Cover the Shutdown

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Journalist Dan Froomkin, who has worked for the Washington Post and the Huffington Post, makes an excellent point about the responsibility of the press in situations like the government shutdown. The article is called “Shutdown Coverage Fails Americans”:

The political media’s aversion to doing anything that might be seen as taking sides — combined with its obsession with process — led them to actively obscure the truth in their coverage of the votes [in Congress]. If you did not already know what this was all about, reading the news would not help you understand.

Trying to be fair and balanced by splitting the difference between Democrats and Republicans when one side is doing something truly extreme is neither fair nor balanced.

Mr. Froomkin’s opinion piece is available at the link below and is definitely worth reading. It’s Al Jazeera America’s website. Al Jazeera, based in Qatar, recently started a news channel on American cable TV. It’s available in our area, but we would have to pay extra to watch it, even though CNN and Fox News are included in the package we already have. Based on the straightforward way they deliver news on their website, I’d rather get information from Al Jazeera America than CNN or Fox.

Note: At the end of his article, Mr. Froomkin puts in a plug for a new website he’s starting called “Fearless Media”, but that’s o.k. Self-promotion is an honorable American tradition.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/10/1/reporting-governmentshutdowndemocracy.html

It Should Be Unbelievable, But Isn’t

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As reported this afternoon on the NY Times website:

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, called House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio on Wednesday to commit to negotiations on a long-term deficit reduction deal, but only after the House passes the Senate’s bill to reopen the federal government without policy strings attached.

[Reid called Boehner on the phone and also sent this in a letter:]

“Before the House you have the Senate-passed measure to reopen the government, funded at the level that the House chose in its own legislation. I propose that you allow this joint resolution to pass, reopening the government,” Mr. Reid wrote. “And I commit to name conferees to a budget conference, as soon as the government reopens.”

The speaker’s office dismissed it as a surrender demand.

“The entire government is shut down right now because Washington Democrats refuse to even talk about fairness for all Americans under Obamacare,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for Mr. Boehner. “Offering to negotiate only after Democrats get everything they want is not much of an offer.”

Wait a minute. “After the Democrats get everything they want”? It’s what the Democrats and the rest of us already have! Except for the federal government being on life support, and presumably most Republicans want that little problem to be fixed too.

The Affordable Care Act has gone into effect. It’s not going away. It’s not something that has to be renegotiated. There was an election. The Supreme Court approved it. People are already signing up (although there is so much interest, the new websites are having trouble keeping up with the demand). 

Get over it, Boehner spokesman, and move on to the next crisis!

Earlier today I read a comment from a Republican at the Boston Herald site. She said that delaying the entire ACA for one year was “reasonable”, since some parts of it have already been delayed. She also said it was o.k. to delay it because the thing doesn’t work anyway (the evidence being that thousands of people who visited the websites yesterday had trouble getting through, because thousands of people were trying to get through).

This is the problem we’re having in this country. There are many among us who live in a different reality and use words like “reasonable” in a different way. “Extortion” becomes “negotiation”. As a result, communication becomes terribly difficult. Ideology can certainly cloud your perception of the world. 

http://www.nytimes.com/news/fiscal-crisis/2013/10/02/reid-says-hell-negotiate-once-house-drops-demands/

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/us_politics/the_lone_republican/2013/10/
day_2_in_obama_holding_federal_government

PS — Someone just left a comment on the previous post asking why it’s bad for the Republicans to want to delay the ACA. That’s their right, of course. The question is how they try to achieve that goal. See the comments on the post below if you’re interested, including a link to another opinion piece.

In the meantime, I’m going to watch some soccer.

Nuts to You, Creep!

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John Boehner represents the 8th congressional district of Ohio. It’s made up of suburbs and farmland and sits along the border with Indiana. The biggest city in the 8th district is Hamilton, with a population of 62,000. Republicans have represented Boehner’s district since 1939. He got elected in 1990 after he challenged the incumbent congressman, who had been convicted of paying a 16-year old girl $40 for sex. Boehner has been elected without significant opposition since then, twice with no opposition at all. 

This creep, who is now Speaker of the House, has decided to shut down much of the federal government in a vain attempt to interfere with implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Senate Democrats have been asking for negotiations on the 2014 budget for six months, but Boehner and his Republican colleagues decided it would make more sense to become extortionists. Go back and renegotiate Obamacare, you Democrats, or else we’ll send 800,000 Federal workers home, force another million to work without pay, close various government facilities and suspend programs like the Special Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children!

There’s common agreement that there are some relatively moderate Republicans who would join Democrats in voting to keep the government open, if Boehner allowed that simple vote to take place. But he hasn’t done that yet. He’s apparently terrified that he’s going to lose the support of the craziest Republicans and not be Speaker of the House anymore. He might even lose his seat in Congress to some Tea Party clown next time the Republicans in the 8th district go to the polls.

If Republicans who don’t represent places like the 8th district of Ohio were allowed to “vote their conscience” (something members of the House might want to do sometimes), this stupid shutdown wouldn’t be happening.

There are two good things about it, however. The Republicans look bad and might even lose some seats next year. And the Democrats are holding firm. If I were Senator Harry Reid or President Obama, my answer to Boehner would be a simple “Fuck you!”, or, a bit more politely, what General McAuliffe told the Germans when they demanded our surrender at the Battle of the Bulge: “Nuts!”

P.S. — For some history regarding the Republican concept of “negotiation”:

The Republican position has been clear for three years: they will refuse to negotiate if negotiation could mean having to give something up. But they will loudly demand a negotiation over something that is not open to compromise, namely a settled law from 2009…

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/01/the-g-o-p-definition-of-negotiation/?hp

Patience and the Affordable Care Act

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It’s always bothered me that the Obama administration didn’t come up with a catchy name for the health insurance provisions of the Affordable Care Act. We’ve got “Social Security”, “Medicare” and “Medicaid”, so why couldn’t the administration come up with an equally helpful name for this thing, instead of leaving an opening for it to be called “Obamacare”?

I bet if Saint Ronald was still President, one of the first things on his agenda would have been to give his pet program a great name that would help sell it to the American people. But Obama apparently thinks he’s above such things.

Nevertheless, the important thing is that this landmark legislation is going into effect two days from now, regardless of what any misguided, foolish, cowardly and/or evil House Republicans do in the meantime.

I know people (including myself) who will probably be taking advantage of the ACA in the relatively near future, so I’ve been wondering how much it’s going to cost. Unfortunately, there are reports in the media that suggest what “average” premiums will be. There was one such unhelpful article in the New York Times today: “‘Affordable Care’ or a Rip-Off?”.

The problem is that you can’t know what a person’s or a family’s costs will be until you factor in where they live, how old they are and, especially, what their income is. Many or most people in this country, not just the poorest among us, will be eligible for subsidies from the government. In fact, if you’re eligible for a subsidy, you won’t even have to wait for the IRS to send you a check. The subsidy will be applied right up front when you pay your insurance premium (which means that some people won’t have to pay anything at all).

There is good news here. The health insurance premiums being discussed so far are generally cheaper than what people would pay for private health insurance today, and the premiums are going to be lower, often much lower, for many of us after the subsidies are applied.

So maybe everyone who’s interested should wait a couple days and then go to https://www.healthcare.gov/ to see the real numbers (and also see the pretty young woman with a big smile on her face). I’m sure we can all wait a couple more days.

Here’s today’s New York Times editorial on the importance of the ACA and the subsidies:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/opinion/sunday/dawn-of-a-revolution-in-health-care.html?

If you’re in the mood for even more good news, take a look at this column from Nicholas Kristof. Here’s his conclusion, supported by statistics from the World Bank, the Gates Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development:

So let’s acknowledge that there’s plenty of work remaining — and that cycles of poverty in America must be a top priority at home — yet also celebrate a triumph for humanity. The world of extreme poverty and disease that characterized life for most people throughout history may now finally be on its way out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/opinion/sunday/kristof-a-way-of-life-is-ending-thank-goodness.html?