Last Sunday NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday, House
Budget Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senate Budget Chair Patty Murray (D-WA)
discussed the bipartisan budget deal which will ensure that Republicans won’t
shut down the government for the next 2 years. Naturally the subject turned to
the ACA. Senator Murray said that as Americans experience the
benefits of the ACA, and as the dust settles, it will become more and more
popular. She cited the story of a mother with disabled 29 year old son who, for
the first time in his life, can get proper medical attention. For the first
time in her life she can sleep at night.
Paul Ryan, on the other hand, had this to say: “...We also
don’t want to have shutdown drama so we can focus on replacing Obamacare, so we
can focus on showing better ideas and what this is coming in. Cause we don’t
think people like this law and we don’t think it’s gonna get any more popular.” Interesting reason for not wanting to shut down the government.
He should know what
Americans want. He was the unsuccessful 2012 presidential candidate. I wonder
how a private conversation would go between him and House Speaker John Boehner,
who signed up and has a great policy. Despite his support of the Tea Party’s blackmail
that led to the government shut down. “We fought the good fight” he said, then
promptly signed up, using the HealthCare.gov website. He was hoping to prove that he couldn't get a policy. Unfortunately - or fortunately, for him - his hopes were dashed.
The latest CBS News /New York Times Poll shows just how wrong Paul Ryan and his cohorts are.
- Obamacare disapproval has dropped from 61% in November to 50% now;
- Approval has risen from 31% in November to 39% now.
- President Obama’s job approval rating has risen from 37% in November to 42% now;
- Disapproval has dropped from 57% in November to 50% now.
In 1961
Ronald Reagan released an LP calling for resistance to Medicare. His final
words were: “If you don’t [do something
about stopping Medicare], this program, I promise you, will pass just as surely
as the sun will come up tomorrow and behind it will come other federal programs
that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country
until one day as Normal Thomas said we will wake to find that we have
socialism, and if you don’t do this and I don’t do this, one of these days we
are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s
children, what it once was like in America when men were free.”
Republicans had a
good run of scare-mongering and they managed to fool some of the people but not
all of the people.President Lyndon Johnson signed the Social Security Act,
which included Medicare, into law in 1965 and Americans came to understand that
it was a good thing. It has had 48 years of success. The dire predictions of Reagan et al about
America becoming a socialist state haven’t come to pass.
The HealthCare.gov glitches
have been mostly fixed. And Americans are showing just how much they don’t want
Obamacare by visiting the site by the millions. The US government recently released the following figures
for November. SBM’s are State Based Marketplaces and FFM is
Federally-faciliated Marketplace.
- 258,497 enrolled in November. The figure for October was 106,185.
- From 1 October to 30 November, 39.1 million people visited SBMs and FFM websites and there were 5.2 million calls to the call centers.
- 1.8 million completed applications were submitted to SBMs and FFM and those applications represented 3.7 million people applying for Coverage.
- 2.3 million people were determined eligible to enroll in a Marketplace plan by the SBMs and FFM.
- 365,000 individuals have selected a plan through the SBMs and FFM.
- 1.9 million eligible people have not yet selected a Marketplace plan through the SBMs and FFM.
- 1.2 million people have selected a Marketplace plan or had a Medicaid/CHIP Determination or Assessment.
- 803,000 individuals have been determined or assessed to be eligible for Medicaid/CHIP by the SBMs and FFM.
The last
word on this belongs to Senator Harry Reid who has carried around a newspaper
clipping showing Republican scaremongering against Medicare. He tweeted it in
October, saying this: “Been carrying this in my wallet a long time. It
shows you how long Republicans have been wrong about health care.” It's had 2072 retweets. If you can’t read the print in the
image, these are the quotes:
"I was there, fighting the fight, one of twelve, voting against Medicare, because we knew it wouldn't work in 1965." - Sen. Bob Dole. [This was in 1996. What didn’t work was Dole’s run for Presidency.]
"Now we didn't get rid of it in round one because we didn't think it politically smart ... But we believe (Medicare) is going to wither on the vine." - House Speaker Newt Gingrich. [Yeah. Gingrich also lost in 2012.]
"Medicare has no place in a free world. Social Security is a rotten trick ... I think we're going to have to bite the bullet on Social Security and phase it out over time." - House Majority Leader Dick Armey. [It's been going strong for 48 years now.]
