COVID-19 & Healthcare

(Update) ‘ObamaCare’ rate shock talking point debunked

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ObamacareEarlier this month I posted about the recent studies in which ‘ObamaCare’ rate shock talking point debunked.

The insurance exchanges have been up and operating since Saturday, with a new anonymous “window shopping” feature that lets consumers comparison shop plans for price and coverage features without first having to submit an application questionnaire.

The news continues to be good. Margo Sanger Katz writes at The Upshot for the New York Times, First Look at Health Insurance Rates for Next Year Is Encouraging:

Early evidence suggests that competition in the new Affordable Care Act marketplaces is working, at least in some areas. Health insurance premiums in major cities around the country are barely rising.

That’s the conclusion of two studies of data about newly public insurance rates. One, from the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health research group, looked at 49 cities and found that prices for a popular type of plan are actually going down, on average. A second, from the actuarial firm Wakely Consulting Group, looked at the largest county in each of the 34 states with marketplaces run by the federal government and found an average rate decrease of one percent.

Decreases in the price of health insurance are basically unheard-of. The individual insurance market that these new marketplaces replaced experienced annual increases of 10 percent in recent years. In the employer market, premiums went up by a record-low rate of 3 percent this year, but even that increase can’t compare with what’s happening in many exchange markets.

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Apparently, I blog about reproductive rights too much.

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I announced a while back that I would delete anti-choice comments or those dismissive of the idea that women’s reproductive rights are important and/or denying that those rights under constant attack by right wing politicians and “pro-life” bullies in the face of overwhelming evidence that that is exactly what is happening. I got one such comment yesterday and did delete it, as promised, and of course whining ensued by the commenter but fuck him because, as I said, I don’t have time to teach Pro-Choice 101 to people who clearly aren’t interested in understanding it.

I’m going to print part of his comment, though, because it is illustrative of a curious disparity in the response to my posting, which is admittedly (and proudly) focused on reproductive rights much of the time:

I have a hunch this issue took over your life a long time ago and it has now become, if not your life, then a major part of it. That’s sad. Especially when it leaves you so angry and bitter…

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I’d like to think that Doug MacEachern was just trolling me with this.

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

maceachern

Doug MacEacern, who inexplicably maintains employment as an Arizona Republic editor, has weighed in on the recent report that the Arizona NARAL Executive Director was contacted by the Arizona Department of Health Services on a tip that she was providing health care services (read: ABORTIONS!) in her home:

You can guess how any homeowner who just lives in her home would react to that. She’d be outraged. And she’d be right to be outraged. Sabine herself said it was “bullying” to have been sent such a letter.

She went to the ACLU, whose lawyers sent a 5-page letter to ADHS, demanding they stop bullying Sabine. The director of the local chapter of the ACLU said the agency’s letter to Sabine constituted borderline harassment.

And, assuming all she did was live in her home, some outrage may have been in order.

But despite Sabine’s whining protests to the media – the “bullying,” the borderline harassment caused by the horror of having received a government letter in the mail — her home isn’t just her home. Or, at least, wasn’t. And the evidence that it’s not comes from none other than Sabine herself.

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The U.S. Supreme Court’s ‘naked power grab’ in King v. Burwell

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ObamacareSince the U.S. Supreme Court improvidently granted review in King v. Burwell, in my opinion — there currently is no conflict among the circuit courts —  the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decided on Wednesday to cancel its December en banc hearing in Halbig v. Burwell. In a brief order, the en banc appeals court granted the request of the challengers to hold the case “in abeyance” until the Justices rule.

I believe it would have been better for the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which is secondary in influence only to the U.S. Supreme Court, to hear the en banc appeal and to issue an opinion designed to serve as a template for how the U.S. Supreme Court should rule in King v. Burwell. Put pressure on the Supreme Court’s conservative activist justices who granted this review for purely political motivations. Of course, it is fair to argue that the conservative activist justices of the U.S. Supreme Court at this point no longer care what anyone else thinks.

The New York Times legal columnist Linda Greenhouse rips the U.S. Supreme Court’s naked power grab in her column today. Law in The Raw:

Nearly a week has gone by since the Supreme Court’s unexpected decision to enlist in the latest effort to destroy the Affordable Care Act, and the shock remains unabated. “This is Bush v. Gore all over again,” one friend said as we struggled to absorb the news last Friday afternoon. “No,” I replied. “It’s worse.”

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In Arizona, low voter turnout leads to a status quo election

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ArizonaThe 2014 election is almost over. The vote totals still need to be certified, and there is the matter of the first-ever recount of a congressional general election in CD 2.

In Arizona, voter turnout was 47.43% (unofficial 11/13/14), the lowest voter turnout since the election of 1998 (45.82%). Arizona’s low voter turnout election resulted in preservation of the status quo. (For all of you who did not vote, your passive non-participation in this election is also a vote to preserve the status quo).

Oh sure, some of the names and faces have changed, largely due to term limits, but who controls the levers of power and the margins by which Tea-Publicans control the state legislature remain exactly the same: Senate 17-13, House 36-24.

Appointed state representative Demion Clinco (D) failed to win election to his seat in LD 2, and the mythical moderate Republican Ethan Orr, despite massive financial assistance from Governor Brewer’s PAC, lost his seat to Dr. Randall Friese (D) in LD 9. So it was a wash.

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