Is A New Great Depression And A Political Transformation Coming?

The GOP approach to the poor and unemployed.

Many red states are rushing to "reopen" after shutdowns for the coronavirus in part to try to jump start their economies but perhaps also to avoid citizens from realizing that failed GOP policies starting at the White House and spreading downward made America so unprepared for the pandemic and left so many Americans vulnerable to a financial disaster as soon as they missed their first paycheck.  The GOP's reverse Robin Hood agenda that has sought to establish a new Gilded Age even as the social safety net was eroded could result in not only a depression but also calls for dramatic change in America's economies/social system that throws too many to the gutter while the wealthy hoard an ever growing portion of the nation's total wealth. The pandemic has also put on display the problem with America's private health insurance system that relies far too heavily on employer based insurance.  With 30 million Americans now unemployed, the ranks of the uninsured have skyrocketed with employees with no ability to extend coverage under COBRA for the simple reason that they have no income.  A column in the New York Times looks at the ongoing financial catastrophe for so many and speculates on what the political repercussions might be.  Here are excerpts:

After more than a month of coronavirus lockdowns, [Andrew] Yang’s prediction [of America's need for a universal basic income] looks quaintly optimistic. “That obviously happened not in four years, it happened in four weeks,” he told me. “And it wasn’t 30 percent, it was virtually 100 percent.”

Many of those stores will come back — some have already — but analysts predict that thousands won’t. Jobs lost to automation during this time — in warehouses and supermarkets, among other places — are especially unlikely to return. Americans, increasingly desperate in lockdown, are going to emerge from this period into a transformed and blighted world.

Yang used to believe that we were five or 10 years away from seeing some version of his signature policy enacted. “Now I believe this is very immediate and could happen this year,” he said. Representative Justin Amash, who’s exploring running for president as a libertarian, is calling for a U.B.I. for the next three months. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, recently said a guaranteed minimum income is “perhaps” worthy of attention. Last month Pope Francis spoke warmly of the idea.

Several candidates campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination on what Senator Elizabeth Warren called “big structural change,” and lost. Yet in a hideous historical irony, the end of the primaries has coincided with a calamity that necessitates an enormous federal response.

Covid-19 has killed more Americans than died in the Vietnam War and led to unemployment numbers that are likely worse than those during the Great Depression. Implicit in Joe Biden’s campaign was a promise of a return to normalcy. That may have always been illusory, but now it’s been revealed as an impossibility.

As we approach this year’s election, we’re looking at an abyss. The question is what will fill it. Societal disaster can have horrific political consequences: Around the world, despots are using the pandemic as an excuse to grab ever more power. But the need to rebuild the country comes with opportunities.

At this point, even many Republicans acknowledge that the era of small government is over. (“Big-Government Conservatives Mount Takeover of G.O.P.,” said a recent Politico headline.) In such an environment, ambitious progressive ideas that once seemed implausible, at least in the short term, start to become more imaginable.

“I do think there’s an F.D.R. moment,” said Senator Edward Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts and co-author of the Green New Deal resolution, which calls for a huge new public works program to build environmentally sustainable infrastructure. “Like 1933 — which would be 2021 — we can see that it is now time to discuss universal child care, universal sick leave and a guaranteed income for everyone in our society.”

Unsurprisingly, mass unemployment — a particular catastrophe in a system in which most people’s health insurance is tied to their jobs — seems to have made Americans more supportive of New Deal-like policies. Figures from the left-leaning polling firm Data for Progress show that support for a Green New Deal has risen from 48 percent last May to 59 percent this spring. Backing for “Medicare for all” went from 47 percent in November to 53 percent in March, when coronavirus layoffs were just starting.

“People who were doing well at small businesses who have either lost their jobs or faced extraordinary hardship, and suddenly they are now having to confront the difficulties of being uninsured. They’re having to confront the challenges of the private health system.” Khanna sees a much broader awareness “of how uncertain economic life can be,” he said, which creates a bigger coalition for progressive ideas to improve the social safety net.

[Elizabeth] Warren and Khanna recently released a proposal for what they’re calling an “Essential Workers Bill of Rights,” which folds many longtime progressive labor priorities into a plan to address our current emergency. The proposal includes a mandate for free adequate personal protective equipment, hazard pay, universal paid sick leave and paid family leave, a crackdown on employers that misclassify full-time employees as independent contractors, and protections for union organizing.

That last part is important, because Warren believes we’re on the cusp of a new wave of labor mobilization. There have already been strikes, walkouts and other demonstrations across the country by workers forced to expose themselves to potential infection, including bus drivers, Amazon warehouse workers and employees at fast-food restaurants.

If so, it will echo what happened during the Great Depression. “This is what shocked everyone,” Warren said. “All of the economists thought the Great Depression in the 1930s would be the end of unions because so many people were unemployed and there was such a large labor supply, and unionization was going down during the 1920s. But that’s not what happened. In a time of great stress, more workers decided their only chance of survival was to come together and exercise their power through a union.”

Mass unemployment also makes some version of a Green New Deal seem like more of a near-term possibility, at least if Biden wins the presidency. During the primaries, Biden’s environmental proposals were generally more modest than his rivals’, but with the pandemic ravaging the economy he’s called for a trillion-dollar infrastructure program focused on green jobs.

The economy was always more fragile than the top-line numbers suggested; in some surveys a majority of Americans said they were living paycheck to paycheck before the coronavirus hit. But now the economy’s weakness is no longer a matter of debate.

Now, with so many of our assumptions about the way our country works collapsing around us, it’s progressives stepping forward with a set of answers they’ve been refining for years.

“We are going to be faced with a national rebuilding project at a scale that has never existed in our lifetimes,” said Yang. The biggest battle in politics now is over who will control that project, and whom it will prioritize.

If Republicans retain control of the U.S. Senate, it's a safe bet they will prioritize the wealthy as they have for the last quarter century.  If Democrats can win the White House and the Senate while holding the House of Representatives, then there is a chance that America;s broken economic system may see much needed improvements.

Israel - The Reason Two Wealthy Gays Feted Ted Cruz

As Ian Reisner and Mati Weiderpass continue to reap a whirlwind over their recent soirée for Ted Cruz - they have now hired a PR firm in an attempt to do damage control - one cannot wonder WTF were they thinking.  As a piece in The Daily Beast explains, the reason for the ill-conceived move was Israel.  Both Reisner and Weiderpass support Cruz's extremist position on Israel which many - yours truly included - view as detrimental to America's best interests.  They conveniently ignore the fact that Cruz is wrong on all the other issues.  Here are column excerpts:

If you’ve ever been to Fire Island Pines, one of the leading gay utopias on the planet, you know that there isn’t much to do. There’s only one commercial center with a couple of stores, a bar, and a hotel.
And yet, in less than 24 hours, over 4,000 people have said they’re going to boycott it. The reason?

It’s owned by Ian Reisner and Mati Weiderpass, the self-described “prominent NYC hotel owners” who recently hosted a “fireside chat” with Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz.

As if that weren’t enough, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS went one step further, canceling their popular “Broadway Bares” benefit. It had been scheduled for May 10 at the Out Hotel, which Reisner and Weiderpass own. “I have never considered that all of our many supporters would ever vote monolithically,” executive director Tom Moran wrote on his Facebook page. “But when any politician publicly holds so many of us in contempt… we cannot be misunderstood as standing with him/her.”

This is Ted Cruz, after all, one of 19 members of Congress on the Human Rights Campaign’s “Hall of Shame”, the man who authored the 2014 “State Marriage Defense Act,” which would ensure that gay people get no federal protections, ever. And who recently penned a letter sent to tens of thousands of Christian pastors, asking them to pray, preach, and presumably vote for him to support “biblical marriage.”

The first question many people must be asking themselves is, what the hell were Reisner and Weiderpass thinking? In the words of gay performer and humorist Justin Sayre, who is supporting the boycott, “Of all the people in the world to invite to a gay party, Ted Cruz? What was it? His sparkling wit? His fair and balanced repartee? Do you have a thing for Canadians? Does he make a mean gin rickey?”

[T]his was about Israel. Notice who the moderator was: Ted Cruz’s Jewish/Israel point man, himself a gay Jewish man and longtime Republican consultant.


Nor was this the first time Ian Reisner has hosted a Republican benefit at his home for that reason. Earlier this month, his Central Park South penthouse—where, incidentally, a 23 year old gay man was found dead of a drug overdose just a few months ago—hosted a fundraiser for Republican Senator Ron Johnson.

Shamelessly invoking the Holocaust, Reisner said at the time that his great aunt “was murdered in Auschwitz” and that “we are not too far from history to be wary of politicians who make bad decisions that threaten our lives.

This is what’s known as pinkwashing, the highlighting of Israel’s excellent record on LGBT equality as a way of defending its totally unrelated policies regarding Palestine or Iran. Israel is pro-gay, therefore support Israel in all ways.

Likewise, conservatives like Cruz, who write laws preventing my partner from visiting me in the hospital, suddenly wave the rainbow flag when it comes to Iran.

In other words, what happened in that penthouse was part of a much larger pattern of gay Jewish Republicans putting LGBT civil rights aside, and putting Israel First.

Reisner added that he’d just hosted a “Ready for Hillary” benefit at the Out Hotel. So, should LGBT folks cut Reisner some slack?   No.

It’s no coincidence that Reisner and Weiderpass are rich, white, cisgender men cozying up to another rich, white, cisgender man. They may be gay, but they profoundly don’t get it—the “it” being that the same privilege that oppresses gays is the privilege that oppresses people of color, immigrants, women, and the poor—precisely the groups that Cruz’s policies would hurt the most.

It’s not a coincidence that Cruz is anti-gay and also anti-social-safety net, anti-reproductive-justice, and anti-affirmative-action. What extremely fortunate white gay men like Reisner and Weiderpass don’t understand is that it’s all one big package: the classism, the religious conservatism, the social conservatism—these all go together.

Reisner and Weiderpass don’t deserve a pass. Supporting Ted Cruz isn’t a matter of weighing his hawkish Iran views against his backward anti-gay views, because they are but two aspects of a consistent, conservative ideology that also includes climate denial, allowing the wealth gap to increase, and dismantling the social safety net. You can’t pull the one thread you like out of the tapestry; the whole thing unravels.

Well said! Let the boycotts continue.

The Down Side for the GOP if Obamacare if SCOTUS Wipes out Obamacare Tax Credits

The Congressional Republicans have been obsessed with repealing Obamacare, but of course, they have had no meaningful replacement for it beyond throwing millions of Americans off of health coverage and returning to them to the rapacious private insurance market that most cannot afford.  Now, with the U.S. Supreme Court soon to decide the legality of the tax credits for the federal exchange that many in GOP controlled states have been forced to rely upon, these Obama haters might get their wish - or at least part of it.  Some Republicans, however, realize that getting what they have wished for might have a very negative down side that could carry over into next years presidential and federal elections.  Talking Points Memo looks at what could happen.  Here are highlights:

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) articulated the GOP's biggest fear if the Supreme Court wipes out Obamacare tax credits for millions of Americans who buy insurance from the federal HealthCare.gov exchange.

The fear: President Barack Obama and Democrats will be ready with a one-page bill to restore the subsidies, as well as a slew of attack ads telling horror stories about "individuals that have benefited from Obamacare on the backs of the American taxpayer" and lost their coverage, the Republican said.

Here's the transcript from the April 14 interview radio interview, in which Johnson is asked a question by host Jay Weber about King v. Burwell.

JOHNSON: Unfortunately, President Obama's response to an adverse decision — in other words one that actually follows the law — would be really simple. Just a one-sentence bill allowing people’s subsidies to flow to federal exchanges and/or offer the governors, 'Hey, we know you got those federal exchanges. Just sign the bottom line. We’ll make those established by the state.' And of course, he'll have the ads all racked up with the individuals that have benefited from Obamacare on the backs of the American taxpayer. He'll have all those examples as well so...

WEBER: And the sad sack stories about who's dying from what and why they can’t get their coverage.

JOHNSON: Right.

Johnson's point was that Republicans must be ready with an effective response if the Court sides with their interpretation of the law and restricts the subsidies to state-run exchanges. So far, GOP leaders have sketched out ideas to mitigate the damage in such a scenario but appear short of a legislative solution that could unite the party.

"What will happen next is predictable: A deluge of attacks on Republicans for supposedly having caused this, . . . . "Daily White House emergency briefings. Liberal interest-group ads of wheelchairs going over cliffs. President Obama’s cheerleaders in the media screaming that ideologues are killing patients."

As I said, sometimes you need to be careful what you wish for.  Frankly, if things play out this way, it would be perhaps divine justice.

SCOTUS - How Obamacare’s fate will really be decided

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in King v. Burwell, a suit brought by far right elements seeking yet again to sabotage the Affordable Health Care Act ("AHCA") and leave millions of Americans, including children, uninsured.  Naturally the opponents of AHCA have no proposed alternative plan and seemingly want those they see as "takers" left to die.  It's after all, the "Christian" thing to do if one is a far right Christofascist/Tea Party adherent. With the votes of Scalia, Thomas and Alito in the camp to destroy AHCA, the focus turns to Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy who will cast the deciding votes.  A piece in Salon looks at their dilemma.  Here are excerpts:

Oral arguments in King v. Burwell began and ended yesterday, and the Supreme Court will determine over the next few days whether the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance tax credits can be legally distributed in states that relied on the federal government to set up their insurance exchanges. The plaintiffs in this case argued vigorously that a hyper-literal interpretation of one short clause in the ACA should prevent those subsidies from going out, even though such an interpretation would put the law at war with itself and defeat its stated intention of making insurance affordable for all Americans.

The plaintiffs had sympathetic ears in at least two of the conservative justices: Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito. (Clarence Thomas, as is his custom, remained silent during the oral arguments, but his opinion of the ACA is no secret.) Scalia in particular was enthusiastic to see the law blown up from within, regardless of what Congress intended or what the rest of the law says.

The liberal justices did an effective job of tearing down the plaintiff’s arguments – Elana Kagan offered a great deconstruction of the petitioners’ case that put the plaintiff’s lawyer, Michael Carvin, in such an awkward spot that Alito had to come to his rescue. But what mattered most were the comments from the two justices broadly viewed as the “swing” votes in this case: Chief Justice John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy. Roberts didn’t say a whole lot and left people guessing as to what he’s thinking, but Kennedy was quite voluble, and what he said left liberals feeling confident and conservatives noticeably deflated.

For Kennedy, one the biggest issues confronting the justices in this case is state sovereignty. King v. Burwell does not pose a constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act, it simply seeks to have the text of the statue interpreted in a very narrow and outlandish way. Kennedy raised the possibility that interpreting the statute in accordance with the plaintiff’s argument would actually serve to create a constitutional crisis by coercing the states into acting to set up their own insurance exchanges.

Trying to figure out how the justices will rule based on their remarks during oral arguments is a dangerous pursuit, but if you’re looking for a basic lay of the land, it feels safe to say that there are three obvious votes against the Affordable Care Act (Scalia, Thomas, Alito), four obvious votes in favor (Kagan, Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor), and two question marks in Kennedy and Roberts. Bloomberg View columnist Noah Feldman made the interesting argument that Kennedy, in pursuing the federalism angle so enthusiastically, was actually pressuring Roberts to be the one to vote to in favor of the ACA. It was Roberts who used the coercion argument to defang the ACA’s Medicaid expansion back in 2012, and Kennedy may have been unsubtly reminding him that this is his principle to stand on.

That, of course, assumes that the conservative justices will care about principle more than they do about destroying the Affordable Care Act. Either way, we’re in the thoroughly depressing situation in which the health insurance of millions of Americans depends on whether Anthony Kennedy and John Roberts can work out amongst themselves who will be the one to “betray” conservatives by adhering to principle and common sense and voting to protect the Affordable Care Act.

Chaos Would Follow If the GOP Actually Repealed Obamacare

Today the GOP controlled House of Representatives will again vote to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act, a/k/a Obamacare.  Of course, the Congressional Republicans have no proposed alternative to Obamacare and no plan how to deal with the millions of Americans who would lose healthcare coverage.  Of course, they seemingly don't care about these individuals and families since they most likely view them as part of the 47% who are "takers."  Added to this indifference is the fact that in the minds of many in the GOP, these Americans are minorities, so they truly do not matter.  So much for adherence to the message of Christ.  Mother Jones looks at the chaos that would ensue if the GOP did succeed in its repeal efforts.  Here are article highlights:

On Tuesday, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives plans to vote once again to repeal the Affordable Care Act. It will be the 55th time House GOPers have voted to eliminate or impede the health care reform law, but the very first opportunity for freshman Republicans to register their opposition to Obamacare in the congressional record.

But with each repeal vote, the politics of rolling back the Affordable Care Act become more fraught. After all, the law is now enmeshed with the US health care system. "Talk of repealing the Affordable Care Act is like talk of repealing the interstate highway system," says Timothy Jost, a health care law expert at the Washington and Lee University School of Law. "I mean in theory you could do it. Nobody would want to live with it."

Since President Barack Obama will never sign legislation repealing his signature accomplishment, a vote to strike down the law is largely symbolic. But what if, in some parallel universe perhaps, repeal passed?

"If you with a stroke of a pen took the Affordable Care Act away and there was no transition period, there would essentially be havoc in the markets," says Linda Blumburg, a health care policy analyst.

[H]ealth care experts have been crunching the numbers to figure out what would happen if the Supreme Court dismantles Obamacare in states that rely on the federal government to run their healthcare marketplaces. Though the Supreme Court scenario, which would halt the subsidies to people purchasing insurance in the federally-run marketplaces, is not the same as full repeal, it helps paint the picture of what would happen. And the picture is not pretty. If the Supreme Court stopped subsidies from flowing to the 34 states that did not establish their own exchanges, 8.2 million fewer people would have coverage by 2016. . . Next year, the number of people insured through purchasing private plans would drop by 69 percent.

Jost says. "Basically, you would have a lot of people die because they couldn't get health care."

This is just the tip of the iceberg. A roll back of the Medicaid expansion would cause millions more Americans to lose their coverage and create mayhem for state governments. Without the ACA to plug the so-called "donut-hole" for prescription drugs, seniors would see their drug bills go up.

A Supreme Court decision against Obamacare would cost millions of Americans their coverage, but full repeal by Congress would be even more devastating. Health care experts describe a state of complete chaos were the ACA to simply disappear from the books.

Repeal would be bad for insurers as well as customers by causing at least short-term turmoil for insurance companies. Without an individual mandate and without subsidies to make insurance affordable, younger, healthier people would likely drop their coverage, leaving insurers to cover older, sicker people with more health-care needs.

Republicans are starting to realize that—even for a symbolic vote of protest against Obamacare—the reality is that repeal alone is not an option.

And for the first time, the bill the House plans to vote on this week requires that the relevant House committees draft replacement legislation for the law. And, though not currently in the text of the bill, its sponsor, Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.), plans to introduce an amendment to the bill that would delay repeal for 180 days to give Republicans time to craft a replacement, according to a Byrne aide.

Why Republicans Have Stopped Talking About Obamacare

At the beginning of the year, the GOP campaign strategy was to talk about Obamacare and condemn it on a 24/7 basis.  It was seen, in short, as the campaign silver bullet.  Now, a funny thing has happened.  Outside of certain conservative outlets - and behind closed door meetings barring the press (think Ed Gillespie meetings with extremists here in Virginia), the mention of Obamacare in Republican campaign ads is plummeting.  Why?  Think Progress looks at what is happening.  Here are highlights:

Republicans in competitive Congressional races are spending less on political ads attacking the Affordable Care Act and are shifting their attention to other, more pressing economic issues, Bloomberg News reports. 

In North Carolina, for instance, anti-Obamacare ads accounted for 54 percent of all spots in April, but fell to 27 percent by July, as budget, government spending, and other concerns dominated political ads. Similar patterns bear out in Louisiana and Arkansas . .

Pollsters attribute the shift to a multitude of factors: the emergence of other local or national concerns, voter indifference to the law, or the sense that repeal is highly improbable. But as more people gain and use their Obamacare coverage, the anti-Obamacare ads may soon give way to another reality: the law is working and benefiting the very constituents Republicans are trying to court in the 2014 election cycle. Though the effectiveness of Obamacare implementation varies across the country, a quick snapshot of the law’s progress in the aforementioned states — areas where Senate Democrats are locked in tight re-election bids — shows that the law is delivering identifiable benefits:

North Carolina

357,584 signed up for coverage the the federal exchange; 73,898 were determined to be eligible for Medicaid coverage. According to WalletHub, North Carolina’s uninsurance rate dropped by 2.96 percent from 19.64 percent to 16.68 percent.

In June, UnitedHealthcare announced that it will become the third major health insurer to sell policies in the exchange, potentially increasing choice and competition for 2015. A study of preliminary rate filings predicts an average premium increase of 10.8 percent for 2015.

Arkansas
43,446 signed up for coverage through the federal exchange; 63,465 were determined to be eligible for Medicaid coverage. According to Gallup, “the rate of people without health insurance fell from 22.5 percent in 2013 to 12.4 percent in mid-2014.”

Louisiana
101,778 Louisiana residents signed up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, but most of those enrollees already had coverage. According to one survey, “the percentage of uninsured in Louisiana dropped from 22.41 percent to 20.91 percent. That still leaves more than one of every five residents in the state with no insurance.”

Anti-Obamacare ads may make a comeback as more states release premiums for 2015, though the initial filings have fallen short of opponents’ doomsday predictions, with some states even reporting average decreases in premiums. Should that pattern continue, health care reform may finally subside as a top political campaign issue. 

Bad News for Anti-Obamacare Republicans

The delusional obsession of Republicans towards the Affordable Health Care Act ("AHCA"), a/k/a Obamacare, continues without pause.  Even as more news comes out that cuts against the horror stories that the GOP is so breathless to promote - even if they don't hold up to scrutiny.  Now, a new Congressional Budget Office report brings more bad news for the GOP: the cost of the AHCA is projected to be lower than previously anticipated.  Hence, there is one less reason to believe the Chicken Little routine of Republicans who are engaged in a frenzy to bring back the worst aspects of the Gilded Age.  A piece in Think Progress looks at the new report's findings.  Here are excerpts:

Premiums for health care insurance in the Affordable Care Act are lower than the federal government had anticipated, the Congressional Budget Office reported on Monday when it revised its cost estimate for the health care law. The nonpartisan office now believes that the ACA will cost the government $5 billion less than projected in 2014 and $104 billion less for the 2015-2024 period. It also found “no clear evidence” that premiums will surge in 2015, noting that “enrollees in the future will be healthier, on average, than the smaller number of people who are obtaining such coverage in 2014.” The agency estimated that the national average premium for individual silver policy plans would increase by $100 that year.

The CBO attributes the additional savings to government, relative to the CBO’s last assessment from February 2014, to lower-than expected premiums, which in turn lowered the cost for exchange subsidies, and higher-than expected revenues from the excise tax on high-premium insurance plans.

CBO and JCT project that costs for exchange subsidies and related spending will be $164 billion (or 14 percent) below the previous projection, mainly because of the downward revision to expected exchange premiums.

The office also concluded that the law’s so-called shock absorbers — reinsurance payments that are distributed to insurers that attract high-cost enrollees — “reduced exchange premiums this year by approximately 10 percent” and will “reduce premiums by smaller amounts in 2015 and 2016.” CBO found additional savings in Medicaid, revising downward government spending per adult enrolled in the program.

Ultimately, 12 million more nonelderly people will have health insurance in 2014 as a result of the law. Twenty-six million more “will be insured each year from 2017 through 2024 than would have been the case without the ACA,” the CBO concluded. 

Facts and objective reality continue to be the biggest threat to the GOP.  No doubt Fox News will either distort the findings or not report on them at all.   

The GOP's Continued War on Health Care Reform and Poor Americans

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With enrollments up under the Affordable Health Care Act, a/k/a Obamacare, and the number of uninsured Americans dropping, the GOP nonetheless continues its war on the program and under Paul Ryan's "steal from the poor and give to the rich" budget plan - which all of Virginia's GOP Congressman supported, including Scott Rigell - the number of uninsured Americans would skyrocket.  As for any alternative plan, the GOP doesn't have one other than to maintain a highly costly and inefficient system where the uninsured use hospital emergency rooms as their source of health care, thus driving up the write offs of non-profit hospitals and increasing the charges billed to everyone else.  A column in the New York Times looks at the GOP's failed approach to health care.  Here are excerpts:

When it comes to health reform, Republicans suffer from delusions of disaster. They know, just know, that the Affordable Care Act is doomed to utter failure, so failure is what they see, never mind the facts on the ground.

Thus, on Tuesday, Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, dismissed the push for pay equity as an attempt to “change the subject from the nightmare of Obamacare”; on the same day, the nonpartisan RAND Corporation released a study estimating “a net gain of 9.3 million in the number of American adults with health insurance coverage from September 2013 to mid-March 2014.” Some nightmare.

It will be months before we have a full picture, but it’s clear that the number of uninsured Americans has already dropped significantly — not least in Mr. McConnell’s home state. It appears that around 40 percent of Kentucky’s uninsured population has already gained coverage, and we can expect a lot more people to sign up next year.

Republicans clearly have no idea how to respond to these developments. They can’t offer any real alternative to Obamacare, because you can’t achieve the good stuff in the Affordable Care Act, like coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions, without also including the stuff they hate . . . Their political strategy has been to talk vaguely about replacing reform while waiting for its inevitable collapse. And what if reform doesn’t collapse? They have no idea what to do.

At the state level, however, Republican governors and legislators are still in a position to block the act’s expansion of Medicaid, denying health care to millions of vulnerable Americans. And they have seized that opportunity with gusto . . .

What’s amazing about this wave of rejection is that it appears to be motivated by pure spite. The federal government is prepared to pay for Medicaid expansion, so it would cost the states nothing, and would, in fact, provide an inflow of dollars.  . . . . . The Medicaid-rejection states “are willing to sacrifice billions of dollars of injections into their economy in order to punish poor people. It really is just almost awesome in its evilness.” 

And while supposed Obamacare horror stories keep on turning out to be false, it’s already quite easy to find examples of people who died because their states refused to expand Medicaid. According to one recent study, the death toll from Medicaid rejection is likely to run between 7,000 and 17,000 Americans each year.

But nobody expects to see a lot of prominent Republicans declaring that rejecting Medicaid expansion is wrong, that caring for Americans in need is more important than scoring political points against the Obama administration. As I said, there’s an extraordinary ugliness of spirit abroad in today’s America, which health reform has brought out into the open.

7,000 to 17,000 needless deaths - today's GOP is a truly ugly phenomenon.  The GOP likes to talk about "death panels," but the real death panels are Republican legislators blocking Medicaid expansion.  They truly want the poor to simply die and go away.

 

Washington Post: Medicaid Expansion is Right for Virginia

Both at the state and federal level the Republican Party is waging a relentless war on the poor and unemployed through efforts to slash spending on food stamps, end unemployment benefits and reduce other social safety net programs for the less fortunate.  All the while, of course, the hypocrites in the GOP claim to honor "Christian values" even as they shred the Gospel message and flush it down the proverbial toilet.  Here in Virginia, the Virginia GOP seeks to wage war on the poor by not expanding Medicaid which would benefit several hundred thousand Virginians, provide an economic benefit to the economy and be a boon to hospitals and medical providers.  In it main editorial, the Washington Post makes the case as to why Virginia needs to move forward with Medicaid expansion.  Here are excerpts:

VIRGINIA IS one of the richest states in the nation but one of the stingiest in providing health coverage for the poor. Owing to its restrictive eligibility standards, it ranks 48th among states in per capita spending for Medicaid, the federally subsidized health program for the poor and disabled, according to the Virginia Health Care Foundation. About a million people — almost one in eight adult Virginians — lack health insurance.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) won election in November on a promise to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which would extend coverage to as many as 400,000 uninsured Virginians. The state’s Chamber of Commerce supports the expansion, which it sees as providing a major economic lift; hospitals, hurting from the loss of federal funds for treating the uninsured, are desperate for it. 

Elsewhere around the country, about half the states, including eight with Republican governors, have opted to accept Medicaid expansion, whose cost would be borne entirely by the federal government for the first three years. States then would assume a small share of the cost, gradually rising to a maximum of 10 percent in 2021.

Republicans who control the House of Delegates in Richmond are opposed, but they are not offering a viable alternative. 

It is fair to worry about the federal government’s ability to shoulder the cost of any major entitlement program. However, the same could be said of virtually any federal program that assists the states; some future Congress could always change the law. Weighed against the benefits of Medicaid expansion for Virginia, the worries are unpersuasive.

In addition to better health care for the uninsured, those benefits include $14.6 billion in federal Medicaid funds between now and 2022. That money would go to hospitals and others in the health-care industry, an infusion of cash that could generate an estimated 30,000 jobs. Since Virginians will be paying into the system that supports Medicaid expansion, they should reap the benefits. By blocking the expansion, Republicans would be shortchanging their constituents.

[T]he facts do not support Republicans’ dire warnings. Over the nine years ending in 2022, the expansion would cause Virginia’s spending on Medicaid to rise by 2.6 percent, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Factor in savings to the state over the same period (from not having to pay emergency health costs for the uninsured), and the increase is only 1.8 percent. Weighed against Virginia’s overall general-fund budget, the net impact of Medicaid expansion would nudge up state spending by just 0.4 percent over the period ending in 2022.

That’s not nothing, but it’s a bargain considering the upside — extending health coverage to hundreds of thousands of poor and disabled Virginians. Republicans in Richmond, who have advanced no competing plan to provide quality health care for those people, should consider whether leaving available federal funds on the table really advances the interests of Virginians.