A perpetual cycle

This morning Joe Scarborough brought on a lot a conservative’s to agree with him that this whole defund Obamacare fiasco is Ted Cruz’s fault. I don’t like Ted Cruz either, but I can see through that smoke screen. This is being portrayed as Ted Cruz’s suicidal pact but if that is so, then the legislators who passed the recent congressional resolution bill, supplied the gun, ammunition and a bottle of liquor for him to complete his mission. All the GOP senators like the bill the House sent but they realize it will only take 51 votes to strip the defunding Obamacare out of the bill and send it back to the John Boehner.

Ted Cruz had to negotiate a deal with Harry Reid to allow him to appear to be filibustering a bill that hasn’t come up for vote. In essence he’s really filibustering the GOP bill. Unless Ted Cruz can garner 41 votes, he won’t be able to stop Harry Reid and the Democrats from voting for a clean bill without defunding Obamacare. Let’s not forget the other obstacle; the president’s signature.

The perpetual cycle goes all the way back to Bill Clinton but the tea party is still living on the results of the 2010 election. They are using the results of that election to convince themselves that America is on their side. Never mind the fact that the 2008 Democrat’s number one issue was healthcare reform. The Democrats won both chambers and the executive branch in 2008 and in 2012 they gain seats in the Senate and retained the presidency against the opposing candidate saying that he was going to repeal Obamacare… on day one. Joe Scarborough said those people did not like big government but the panel corrected him by saying that they seem to love Social Security and Medicare. Cokie Roberts surprise me by saying that the tea party dismisses President Obama and she sees a lot of racism in their rhetoric.

We’re only re-litigating the healthcare law because conservatives have never accepted it. A lot of Republicans have never accepted the legitimacy of the current president. Republicans have this tendency to ignore polls, results, or laws they don’t like. There are still some old school Republicans who accepted the results of the 2012 elections and said “ Obamacare is now the law of the land.” Of course he wants to retain his speakership, so today he singing a different tune.

Let’s talk a little reality. The Affordable Care Act is unique because the rules are set up as a compromise between government and private insurance companies. Republicans could never repeal ACA and replace it with a plan of their own because insurance companies would not cooperate with them. Think about that, pharmaceutical companies made a pact with the government before there were ever any serious talks about a healthcare plan. The insurance companies agreed to insure the uninsurable but only after being offered millions of new customers (many being the less risky young employees) and moving more people to Medicaid. If this were to go down in flames, why would private companies ever agree to make another deal with government? The reality is that they wouldn’t and we would see health care premiums go out the roof again and then we would only be left with a single- payer universal health care system.

Senator Claire McCaskill Said the Democrats would not deal on delaying the individual mandate because it would mess up the funding mechanism of the program. The senator also corrected Joe Scarborough, when he tried to spread the myth that Congress was exempt from Obamacare. She said that Congress and their staff will continue to purchase insurance off the exchanges but the GOP is trying to take away the employer contribution (taxpayer funded portion) but that would be unfair; if it didn’t apply to all federal employees.

A lot of misconceptions are fueled by ignorance and unwillingness to research. For example, our local newspaper had a story about a bipolar person finally getting some help and they were called out by Matt Maples. He said he had 23 years of experience and he had not heard of spouses not being allowed on their husband’s VA policy.

According to The VA’s website:
Family Members of Veterans
Under certain circumstances, family members of Veterans are eligible for health benefits. Some of the programs offered include the Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Department of Veterans Affairs (CHAMPVA), Spina Bifida (SB), Children of Women Vietnam Veterans (CWVV), Foreign Medical Program (FMP) and Caregiver.  Using these programs may reduce or eliminate your cost for medical supplies, office visits or prescriptions.
CHAMPVA
A health care benefits program that provides coverage to the spouse or widow(er) and to the dependent children of a qualifying sponsor who:

• is rated permanently and totally disabled due to a service-connected disability, or
• was rated permanently and totally disabled due to a service-connected condition at the time of death, or
• died of a service-connected disability, or
• died on active duty, and
• The dependents are not otherwise eligible for Department of Defense TRICARE benefits.

Under CHAMPVA, VA shares the cost of covered health care services and supplies with eligible beneficiaries.

A lot room for interpretation…If  I were in that situation I would call the VA for my unique situation and not depend on someone who thinks they know.

What Did We Learn (if anything) Yesterday?

The Sunday talk shows have become a testing ground for new talking points. Republicans are now trying to switch the blame of a government shutdown on Senate Democrats and the president because they won’t negotiate the repeal of Obamacare. Senator Ted Cruz is trying to say Harry Reid will use every trick in the book to strip out the repeal of Obamacare portion of the bill. That’s not a trick, Mr. Cruz, that’s normal procedure. He said that Harry Reid should not pass a partisan bill. Hello, that’s what the House of Representatives did.

Here’s the deal, as long as the president of the United States is named Obama, the Affordable Health Care Act will stay intact.

The GOP has won the continuing resolution battle so far, because the sequester spending cuts are part of this bill. That’s something that the house Democrats wants to look at when the bill comes back to them.

Yesterday, Chris Wallace put up his partisan bullet points on how terrible Obamacare was, but he never mentioned that the law was doing quite well in states that have accepted the transition. Senator Claire McCaskill was ready when he mentioned that Walgreens was no longer covering their part-time employees. She explained that Walgreen's is issuing vouchers to their part-time employees, so they can purchase much cheaper health insurance. Chris Wallace tried to say that the vouchers might not be enough, but that is just an assumption. The president has always said that if you can come up with something better; than by all means do it. Chris Wallace then mentioned that the president promised that if you liked your current healthcare policy with your company, you would be able to keep it. The president did not envision the steps companies would take to deny health care benefits. I guess you could choose to blame the president if you like, but it’s a weak argument if you ask me.

 I advise reading J.R. Ortega, of the Victoria Advocate, column about the health care issue in today’s newspaper or you can read the on line version here.

I’m one who believes in polls but I never thought that we would use the results to try and repeal a law. Social Security and Medicare would not get 100% likeability in a poll. I’m surprised that we used the poll to decide whether we should bomb the Syria or not. It’s funny; the poll that states that 90% of Americans favor background checks continues to be ignored.

I don’t know why “Meet the Press” continues to invite Wayne La Pierre of the NRA to be their guest after another gun mass murder. All they have to do is replay what he said the last time and double down on it. Now he’s said that there weren’t enough good guys with guns. He was calling for those in a military to be armed on a base where civilians are the majority. When I was in the service, our rifles were locked up for a reason. We had the military police for security. Mr. La Pierre’s statements have become weirder and weirder. David Gregory asked the chief lobbyist for the gun manufacturers, why it is in reasonable to require a background check for gun sales between strangers. Mr. La Pierre said “ just down the road(Washington, DC) 13-year-old girls were being trafficked, illegal drug deals were being made, and now you want two hunters to be under the thumb of the government when they purchase a hunting rifle from each other.” We should stop fooling ourselves. Congress will not do anything except maybe make some small changes that are cleared beforehand with the NRA. The changes will have to come from communities, where the real power is. Only 35% of household own guns, so a community is not beholding to the NRA. When those communities get sick and tired of all the violence, steps will be taken as they were in New York.

A War of Messaging

Two minutes into the segment of “Morning Joe” I could tell that the words of President Obama angered Joe Scarborough. President Obama told George Stephanopoulos that the beltway media is about style points, and that he was more interested in the right policy. That message was for Joe Scarborough, Maureen Dowd, Andrea Mitchell and Peggy Noonan because they form the world’s perception through their own eyes. I can’t imagine any country not fearing the military might of United States; those five warships in the Mediterranean influence policy just by being there. Tom Friedman stunned the panel of “Meet the Press” when he reminded them that the United States did not have a thing to do with the successful turnover of government in South Africa; Nelson Mandela did. Barney Frank said that some of those on the panel were talking as if Syria was the 51^st state.

Joe Scarborough thought he was going to win the Obamacare argument after reading some polls where 44% of Americans think that the Affordable Care Act is a bad thing. I believe the numbers because that same poll said that only 30% of Americans understand the healthcare law. Since 70% of the population doesn’t understand what the new healthcare law is all about and all they hear is mainly negative things supported by billions of dollars of pessimistic ads, the results are self-evident. The GOP knows once those subsidies  start kicking in January, the game is over and the Affordable Care Act will be as popular as Medicare. It's funny how the questions get different results. A question about Obamacare will automatically poll badly while a question about the Affordable Care Act will get a lot of "I don't know."

The more Obamacare obsessed wing of the Republican Party thinks they have a winning hand. Their latest proposal is to delay the implementation of the individual mandate portion of the law until 2015 and attach it to the continuing resolution bill to fund the government until mid-December. Why would the Democrats agree to that? It’s the same rationale that the Republicans used by filibustering Social Security in 1936.

There’s no question that the Affordable Care Act will be difficult to implement because besides the Republicans, there’s the hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, private insurance companies and some doctors who love the status quo. For example, hospitals hate the penalties that will be imposed for their high rate of infection and patient readmission rates.

Obamacare is the new bogeyman for the right; it’s what keeps them up at night ,as they continue to try and come up with new gimmicks to get rid of the law. They think that healthcare is a privilege for those who work hard, and it’s not for those lazy poor people who failed to make it in a free-market economy. They are convinced that the government cannot do anything right, so a new entitlement is doomed to fail. They will not be convinced with evidence of bending the cost curve, or the efficiency of Medicare, Social Security and the VA.

Shutting down the government for a few days, by not passing a continuing resolution won’t hurt the economy as much as it would if we decided not to raise the debt limit. Not raising the debt limit would have a downward spiral effect on the world economy. A government shutdown will hurt the GOP in the 2014 elections; even though a lot of people think that we shouldn’t raise the debt limit without agreeing to more spending cuts. President Obama is adamant about not negotiating the debt limit because of the message it sends to our creditors. How would your creditors like it if they were on the list of the bills that might not be paid?

I think we’re slowly hitting reset button by moving away from the thinking that led to the policies of President Ronald Reagan. It’s a slow messy process, and you got to give credit to the Republicans and Frank Lutz for doing everything they can to win the messaging war at the expense of any pretense of governing.

The GOP Has A Plan

This morning, the Heritage Action for America, Jim DeMint and Senator Ted Cruz started their nine city town hall meeting tour in their quest to repeal Obamacare. Ted Cruz said if Obamacare is still intact on January 1, 2014, it will never be repealed. This might be the only time that I agree with Ted Cruz.

Rand Paul has a wobbly position, because he’s not in favor of shutting down the government if Obamacare is defunded. Senator Paul is giving the House of Representatives a little hope that’s not based on reality. The senator thinks the House could come with a bill to stall the individual mandate or defund a small part of Obamacare, pass it and send over to the Senate for them to markup it up, knowing they will strike out the Obamacare provisions but then the bill would go to committee. Rand Paul thinks a part of Obamacare could be used as a bargaining chip for continuing resolution or in a month after that; to raise the debt limit.

One, the Democrats have enough votes in the Senate to ignore any proposal that has to do with Obamacare.

Second, the president has told the Republicans that he will not negotiate a debt limit increase. He’s tired of playing that game, so he won’t make a deal just to get the Republicans approval to pay for what debts we have incurred.

The GOP are badly misreading President Obama, he will let them shut down the government before he gives on his signature legislation.

Republicans are having internal fights over control of their party but the one thing that unites them is the hatred of Obamacare. There are several reasons for that:

1. If Obamacare is successful, it will be revered like Medicare and people will remember the party that passed the legislation.
2. Since 85% of us have insurance, they don’t feel like getting worked up over the 15% that don’t have health insurance.
3. Once the subsidies kick in for the poor people, it will make them look even more unsympathetic when they suggest cuts to Medicaid.
4. It’s another form of rejection to those who favor individualism without a safety net.
5. It’s Obama’s signature legislation, therefore they are adamantly against it.

Last night, Avik Roy, Mitt Romney’s health care adviser explained why the base of the Republican Party hates Obamacare. He said they hate it because to them, it’s a government takeover and more intrusion into their lives. They blame President Obama, but we’ve had government health care for 48 years called Medicare. Many of those people will never see any changes because they already have health insurance.

The rising cost of premiums will be in those states that have rejected taking part in the exchanges. The states that are helping with the exchanges are seeing lower premiums because of the availability of free market choices in developing a plan that fits the family budget.

I’m not sure why the Republicans won’t let health care law go through as planned because if it’s that bad, the president and the Democrats would pay dearly for that. It’s not as if they have a better plan for the 30,000,000 who don’t have insurance. I remember that the price of insurance premiums was rising before March of 2010 but I don’t remember the GOP worrying about it at all..

It's a Hiccup Not a Catastrophic Disease

Recently, the Obama Administration decided to put off making small businesses of 50 or more employees provide health care or pay penalties until the year 2015.  That decision made the GOP jubilant. They said  that it just proved that Obamacare is a train wreck about to happen.  Nothing could be further from the truth because this only affects about 6% of the companies in that category or to be more precise, 250,000 of them.

I agree with Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, making small companies of 50 employees or more provide health insurance will just cause the company to layoff  employees or cut their hours back so they don’t reach that magic number.  The larger companies already provide 100% health insurance to their employees and those companies that hire less than 50 employees were never affected by law.  It probably should be based on the company's revenues. I believe the 50 or employee mandate idea was provided by former Senator Olympia Snowe and it was one of many ideas from the GOP that was implemented in the new healthcare law.

Whether the White House admits it or not; it takes the issue off the table in the midterm elections.  The Republicans can't say that small businesses will definitely be hurt because the administration has another year to come up with a better plan.  You would think that this would be an opportune time for the Republicans to come up with an alternative plan for small businesses, but they don't have one.

The GOP has two main goals: wait until the midterms when they gain control of the house and senate and don't give Obama any victories.  That's the reason they won't come up with a plan to fix what's wrong with health care or vote on an infrastructure project that will bolster the 195,000 jobs that were created in June. The House immigration reform bill will only include border enforcements measures in piecemeal fashion and it WILL NEVER include a path to citizenship.

The Republican governors know that it's ludicrous to pass up Medicaid funding where the Federal government picks up most of the  tab for the first three years ,knowing that if they lose the midterms, they will only hurt their taxpayers for that short period.  They don't care if  hundreds of thousands of people will be hurt for their political decision because it’s not their constituents besides those states are enacting laws to keep them from voting in high numbers anyway. They haven’t figured out that the state  and taxpayers will still pick up the tab for the use of the emergency rooms.

Kathleen Sebelius,Secretary of Health and Human Service, recently wrote letters to the commissioners of professional sports, asking them to help explain to people how to sign up for the health care exchanges and  to point out other parts of the new health care law. Mitch McConnell immediately wrote the NFL Commissioner and advised him against it and the commissioner declined the offer of the secretary. I've seen professional sports make public health announcements all the time but now it's political.

I understood from the very beginning that it would be difficult to persuade the 90% of the people who had health insurance, that we needed to insure many more in order to bring down costs.  It would be especially hard to convince those who were very skeptical and didn't trust government to get anything right.  Some thought they were going to lose some what they had to distribute it to others who had none.  I didn't expect the exaggerations such as death panels, or as much obstructions as I've seen ,on the right.  The speaker said it was a law of the land; yet he allowed votes to repeal the law knowing  it would be the dead-on arrival in the Senate.

I used to think good jobs numbers were  what the Americans wanted to hear, but not according to one source at Politico. The writer said the decent jobs figures was a bitter pill to swallow for Democrats because that meant that the fed chairman would stop trying to stimulate the economy.  It used to be that good job numbers meant  our economy was improving; not a political win for one party and a defeat for the other. 

If You Don't Stand for Something Then You Will Fall For Anything

 Allen J. Novosad of the great city of Edna reminds me of the wind -up kid toy where the child picks a farm animal and then pulls the string to hear the sound of his choice. The first paragraph of Allen's recent letter- to- the editor is devoted to heading of his letter " Obama will not say Affordable Care Act is faulty" and the rest of his letter is about our government's economic policies. 

I read Mr. Novosad's letter three times to make sure I understood his message because he left out the major cause of our current financial doldrums.. He conveniently left out the 2007-08 Wall Street monetary crash. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) did not have anything to do with the melt -down ,besides the reason for passing ACA was that the costs had been skyrocketing for a least a decade. Did Mr. Novosad ever mention jobs? The right has been wishing for inflation for 4 years but if they knew anything about economics ,they would understand why inflation is low.

I'm going to stick with health care,because it's people like Mr. Novosad  who keeps this issue widely misunderstood. Recent polls revealed that 42% of Americans don't know that ACA is the law of the land. I don't know what government study indicated that the program was going to cost trillions but CBO estimated that it would cost $5-$10 billion over ten years. I do know that the GOP has only funded a third off the cost it took  to fund their Medicare Part D prescription-drug bill. I also know that the  GOP leaders in both houses will not send a representative to the ACA Advisory Board.  Next week,the House  will again waste taxpayer money by voting to repeal the ACA for the 37th time. When a reporter asked John Boehner why he was allowing another repeal,he said " some freshman members of Congress have not been given the opportunity to vote for repeal." So it amounts to ritual.

On October 1st,30,0 million people will start applying to get health insurance for the first time  and there's no doubt it will be problematic because of  confusion,reluctance of GOP governors to participate and lack of congressional funding. Democrats lost 46 seats when they passed Medicare,and now it's a savior for many seniors. Republicans forgot all the problems that came with the Medicare Part D prescription drug bill they passed. I bet Allen Novosad doesn't know that Part D 

was put on the credit card.

It is a confusing piece of legislation because according to polls only 37% fully approve of the ACA;probably because it's known as Obamacare

Yet:

1. 88% approve of the small business credits

2. 80% approve of the health care exchanges

3. 76% approve of the subsides for private insurance

4. 71% approve of Medicaid expansion

 5. 66% approve of guarantee coverage

The Affordable Care Act will be culprit for everything that's wrong with our health care system because it's a big available target much like Social Security,Medicare Part D, and Medicare was. People forget that insurance companies have always raised their rates and people have always lost their jobs along with their health insurance. I'm willing to bet companies are using ACA for laying off people or not hiring new ones as an excuse. Some major companies have taken the heat for using ACA as their excuse for cutting employees or their hours.   

Unlike Mr. Novosad,who didn't offer any solutions,I will continue to try to separate myth from facts. The Affordable Care Act will need a lot of young healthy  people to participate in order to offset the costs of  new more sickly enrollees. The young people will probably opt to pay the $95 fine rather than get a bare bones catastrophe plan. We need the advisory board before we can start to reform Medicare because it's time  to let our seniors know that we can no longer pay for some procedures and as cruel as it may sound,we have to educate families about Hospice.