Tuesday, March 18, 2014

A couple of comments on Obamacare and politics

Some found thoughts to ponder.

Obamacare might make 6 million enrollees

What the Obamacare enrollment numbers mean
"By one analysis, 5.2 million Americans who could have gotten Medicaid if their states had accepted the expansion will remain uninsured. And if you asked those people in a poll whether Obamacare had helped them, they’d quite reasonably say no. For all its complications and the difficulty of implementation, the ACA has already done an extraordinary amount of good for those millions of people. 
If Republicans took their newfound concern for (some) people’s access to health care and used it to actually work to make the law work as well as possible, millions more might be helped as well. If only." 

Democrats should play offense on Obamacare in the midterms 

Today’s Republican Party is not “conservative” by any reasonable definition of the word. It is a radical party seeking to dramatically alter the social compact by which we have lived for decades. Republicans, if they could, would slash Social Security benefits and turn Medicare into a voucher program. They, not Democrats, are the ones who threaten the safety net for seniors.  
Republicans refuse to invest in our decaying infrastructure. They want to do away with government regulation that has given us cleaner air, healthier food, safer workplaces. They seek ultimate control over women’s reproductive rights and have already made it oppressively difficult to terminate a pregnancy in many states. Instead of comprehensive immigration reform, they propose “self-deportation.” 

Why taking over the Senate may not do the Republicans much good

"See the difference? The senators accept that the ACA is law and are thinking about how they’d like to change it. The House members are coming up with another way to make a futile, symbolic shaking of their fists in the general direction of the White House. And this may offer a clue to how legislating would proceed in a Republican Congress. The House, still dominated by extremely conservative Republicans for whom any hint of compromise is considered the highest treason, could continue to pass one doomed bill after another, while the Senate tries to write bills that have at least some chance of ever becoming law."

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