COVID-19 & Healthcare

The TanMan’s PR stunt does not go as planned

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The TanMan, Weeper of The House John Boehner, decided to engage in a PR stunt on Thursday attacking problems with the federal "ObamaCare" Marketplace web site, because media messaging PR is all he can do — he can't pass any substantive legislation or even routine budgets. The TanMan's PR stunt didn't quite go as planned.

Steve Benen reports, Boehner proves the wrong point:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) wrote a blog post Thursday, highlighting his own personal experience when he “sat down to try and enroll in the DC exchange.”

Screenshot-6Like many Americans, my experience was pretty frustrating. After putting in my personal information, I received an error message. I was able to work past that, but when I went to actually sign up for coverage, I got this “internal server error” screen. […]

Despite multiple attempts, I was unable to get past that point and sign up for a health plan. We’ve got a call into the help desk. Guess I’ll just have to keep trying…

As it turns out, his willingness to “keep trying” was a good idea. Boehner, who is not yet eligible for Medicare, “called the DC Health Link help line,” and a “few hours later,” the process was complete. He’d signed up for health insurance.

Doh!

The one group denied health care in Arizona: poor children

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Arizona's Tea-Publican controlled legislature is unique: it is the only legislature heartless enough to deny health care coverage to poor children eligible for the S-CHIP ("Kidscare") program. This is a notch group of children whose parent(s) do not qualify for Medicaid (AHCCCS) health insurance, but otherwise would qualify for Kidscare. Enrollment in the KidsCare program has been frozen since January 1, 2010 due to lack of funding for the program. Our Tea-Publican controlled legislature has shown no interst in restoring funding to the Kidscare program.

Arizona is one of the poorest states in the country, and among the worst states for uninsured children:

Nationally the number of children without health insurance dropped between 2009 and 2011, but not in Arizona, a new study says.

Arizona has one of the worst rates of uninsured children in the country, says the report, released Tuesday by Georgetown University's Center for Children and Families.

Nearly 210,000 children in Arizona do not have health insurance, which amounts to 13 percent of the state's children – only Texas and Nevada had worse rates, the researchers found.  And unlike most of the country, the rate here got worse between 2009 and 2011, the study shows.

Fact Check: AFP’s ‘Pants on Fire’ ad about ‘ObamaCare’

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Liar-LiarThe "Kochtopus" organization Americans For Prosperity is running ads in Southern Arizona against Rep. Ron Barber that begins with some innocuous blonde speaking in a concerned voice about how Americans don't like political ads (it is a political ad!) and saying "health care isn't about politics, it's about people." Ahhh, isn't that special.

Remember, this is from the "Kochtopus" organization Americans For Prosperity — far-right radical politics is all they do, and the "Kochtopus" doesn't give a damn about you or your health care.

In fact, AFP wants to repeal "ObamaCare" which would kick millions of Americans off of health insurance that they did not have before "ObamaCare," and millions of seniors would lose new benefits they received under Medicare. Millions more working poor would be kicked off expanded Medicaid in states like Arizona without the federal funds.

The ad makes three specific claims:

>> "Millions of people have lost their health insurance": This is objectively FALSE. The ad is conflating the recent cancellation notices for substandard insurance policies with "losing insurance," but these policy holders are being offered other plans, or can purchase a plan from the Marketplace health insurance exchange. The key provision of "ObamaCare" is that individuals cannot be denied insurance because of pre-existing conditions, or hitting an annual cap or lifetime cap on benefits.

Abortion politics in the U.S. Supreme Court

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

A couple of weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed as “improvidently granted” the case of Cline  v. Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice (docket 12-1094), an appeal from the state of Oklahoma to  revive a law that restricts doctors’ use of drugs rather than surgery to perform an abortion with the medication RU-486 and others, struck down by the federal courts.

Uterus-stateAround the same time, Planned Parenthood of Texas applied for an order setting aside the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals order permitting the Texas law requiring abortion practitioners to have admitting privilieges at a nearby hospital before they may perform abortions at a clinic or in a doctor’s office. Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas Surgical Health Services v. Abbott (13A452).

In a 5-4 decision along ideological lines, the Court declined on Tuesday to set aside the Fifth Circuit Court order. Lyle Denniston at Scotusblog.com reports, Texas abortion law left in effect:

Splitting five to four, the Supreme Court late Tuesday afternoon refused to block a Texas abortion law that critics say is forcing the closing of one-third of all clinics in the state.  The Court had been studying the issue for the past week.  The majority said that the challengers had not met the requirement for setting aside a federal appeals court’s order permitting the law to take effect on October 31.

The majority specifically included Justices Antonin Scalia, who wrote separately in a concurring opinion joined by Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr., and Clarence Thomas.  But Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy presumably voted with those three, because it would have taken five votes to act definitively on the plea by doctors and clinics when there were four Justices who wanted to block the law.

The specific order denying the application (13A452) was unsigned.  Both Justice Scalia’s opinion and that of the dissenters referred to the result as the action of “the Court.”

(Update) Hey, hysterical media villagers! ‘ObamaCare’ is working where the GOP is not sabotaging it

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

ChickenLittleIn all the media hysteria over the rollout of "ObamaCare," the feckless media villagers always leave out three predicate facts: Chief Justice John Roberts created the Medicaid opt-out with his poorly considered legal opinion upholding the constitutionality of "ObamaCare," opening the door to partisan mischief; second, said partisan mischief did occur with Red State Tea-Publicans refusing to expand Medicaid and denying more than 5 million desperate Americans access to health care; and third, Red State Tea-Publicans refused to set up their own state-run Marketplace insurance exchanges, creating the need for a complex federal system not contemplated. GOP sabotage should be included in every report.

As for all the unhinged media hysteria, Paul Begala at CNN writes Chill: Obamacare snafus are fixable:

[D]espite the bed-wetting from Beltway Chicken Littles, the President's problems are eminently fixable. The Affordable Care Act isn't collapsing. The Obama presidency isn't imploding.

Similarly, Ed Kilgore at the Democratic Strategist looks at the polling that media villagers are so enamored with, and writes in Polling Panic:

What does it all mean? Probably that most people aren't breathlessly following events in Washington other than to register their heat and noise.

Democrats didn't win the 2014 elections in October and they aren't losing them in November. It's time to chill a bit.

So chill out, media villagers. The sky is not falling despite your best efforts to recklessly and irresponsibly panic the public.