The new conservative nasty-gasm, post revival tent cries of “Benghazi!”, is mocking ObamaCare. This has only gotten worse after Republicans charged us 24 billion dollars so that they could make global fools of themselves. They are so lost in their blind rage that they are now unwittingly making arguments for single payer.
Conservatives are screaming that ObamaCare is costing more money for individuals and sneering that the website is a total fail. They are even selling 404 error stickers, because if there is one thing the GOP knows, it’s errors.
An alternative to insurance costing more money individually is single payer, a point I’ve been making on Twitter for a few days now. The more Republicans complain about individual costs and the failure of the website for the exchanges, the more they are making the argument for Medicare for everyone.
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John Nolte at Breitbart is now making some odd argument that we could have just expanded Medicaid without touching the insured:
@samsteinhp @jbarro wasn't either/or — could've expanded Medicaid without touching the insured.
— John Nolte (@NolteNC) October 28, 2013
I guess that’s a “no” to funding the expansion then, and isn’t this Single Payer? If we are going to expand Medicaid so that everyone has insurance and the lucky can keep their private insurance, then we would basically be offering Medicare for all. I’d have thought conservatives would have issues with this since they worry so much about the deficit when they aren’t in charge, but whatever.
Conservatives even believe that the “disastrous rollout” was a deliberate effort so that we would move to Single Payer. They don’t seem to get the idea that they are the ones who perpetrated the narratives that ObamaCare is such a disaster because it costs money for some individuals and that the website is such a disaster maybe we should leave off exchanges all together, because the Medicaid expansion is going much more smoothly. DERP.
Conservatives are claiming to be upset that individuals have to pay more now. While this overall claim is based on a widely debunked Hertiage study, it’s true for some people. Some of this is due to the Republican legislators in some states, like Scott Walker in Wisconsin, whose ideology is going to raise the cost of insurance by up to 99%.
CNN explained how some states that allowed discrimination in the past would now be paying more (those states against regulation, a Republican position):
“In some states, insurance markets were already regulated to not allow insurers to discriminate against the sick. In those states, premiums will fall, like in New York, where premiums will fall by as much as 50%,” said MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, who helped design the law. “In other states insurers were freely allowed to discriminate against the sick. In those states, by ending the discrimination, we’re going to raise premiums in states like Wisconsin, or some of the Southern states.”
Heritage’s conservative study failed to factor in the tax rebates as well. Dylan Scott at Talking Points Memo broke that down, concluding, “That leaves only 10 percent of uninsured Americans who make above 400 percent of the poverty level and, as the law was conceived, would be paying the premiums that Heritage highlights in its analysis.”
All of the wailing you’re hearing from conservatives about paying more actually only applies to 10% of the population. But it’s reliable that the very poor Republican base always imagines themselves to be millionaire “makers” in these scenarios.
But for that 10% who are paying more, it’s called paying as you go — something Republicans know little about when they are in power (Medicare Part D was unfunded, unlike ObamaCare). Yes, funding things does cost money and it has to come from somewhere other than Dick Cheney’s feverish belief that deficits don’t matter (apparently he meant this to apply only when a Republican is in office).
Republicans claim ObamaCare is unfair because it makes the “makers” pay for the poor, but people with private insurance were already paying for the uninsured.
Amanda Carpenter, Ted Cruz’s speechwriter and communications advisor, spent days wailing about losing her socialist government insurance and having to go on the exchanges. She was very upset about the lack of stability, not knowing who her doctor would be. It was all too much to ask a working person to bear.
She even retweeted a Krugman article this morning, writing “Shorter Krugman: single-payer would be so much easier “. I’m sure she meant this ironically but given the loss of any recognizable conservative principle behind Republicans screaming about ObamaCare, it failed.
Shorter Krugman: single-payer would be so much easier http://t.co/2LhSNU7Qw0
— Amanda Carpenter (@amandacarpenter) October 28, 2013
Yes Republicans, citizens having to pay more for healthcare insurance sucks and it is totally the tend of the world that some people experience glitches when trying to sign up on Healthcare.Gov! We can fix all of that by passing Medicare for all.
Thanks for this chat, it’s been great.
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