COVID-19 & Healthcare

By Karl Reiner

Political polarization is making America ungovernable.  Congress has become so deadlocked that a large part of the federal government has been shut down.  It has been unable to reach an agreement on the
federal budget or on raising the debt ceiling.  THe U.S. now faces a danger of default.  Because the dollar is the world's reserve currency, the consequences would be unpredictable and quickly spread worldwide.

The U.S. has the world's most expensive healthcare system.  Healthcare is a $2.7 trillion part of the economy.  While America spends 18% of its GDP on healthcare, nearly 50 million people remain uninsured.  While the U.S. struggles to contain costs, other countries spending far less per capita on healthcare achieve better results.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Updates comprised from stakeholder organization communications:

We are continuing to experience tremendous demand at HealthCare.gov during
the first week of Open Enrollment. We know some of you are having
trouble getting to the application and we are sorry for any
delays. Thanks for your patience, and please keep trying!

Here’s what we’re doing to make things better:

• Extra space for more users to get onto the system

• More technicians working around the clock to find problems and fix them

• More trained representatives ready to take your calls at our Marketplace toll-free number

• New pathways to get you to the application faster

These
improvements and others have cut the wait times by one-third, and more
people are successfully applying and shopping in the Marketplace.

If you need help with your Marketplace application, you can contact the 24/7 call center, use the live chat function, or go to LocalHelp.HealthCare.gov to find an in-person assister in your community.

——

We always knew that there would be some glitches and kinks in the
system as it gets up and running. The important thing is that those
problems are being identified quickly, solutions are being devised, and
we are sharing those solutions with enrollment experts across the
country.

This is not a sprint but a marathon, and we're in it for the long haul.

If people you know are looking for health insurance, ask them to visit our new and improved Get Covered America site
so they can learn more about their new health insurance options. We’re
featuring plain-language answers to the most common consumer questions,
personal stories about why getting covered is so crucial, and a portal
to take visitors straight to their state’s Health Insurance Marketplace.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The brand new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll Read
the full poll here (.pdf) is a jaw-dropping disaster for the GOP. First Read: NBC/WSJ poll: Shutdown debate damages GOP:

By a 22-point margin (53 percent to 31 percent), the public
blames the Republican Party more for the shutdown than President Barack
Obama – a wider margin of blame for the GOP than the party received
during the poll during the last shutdown in 1995-96.

Just 24 percent of respondents have a favorable opinion about the
GOP, and only 21 percent have a favorable view of the Tea Party, which
are both at all-time lows in the history of poll. […]

Yet what is perhaps even more worrisome for the GOP is the
“boomerang” effect: As the party has used the shutdown and fiscal fight
to campaign against the nation’s health-care law and for limited
government, the poll shows those efforts have backfired.

For one thing, the health-care law has become more popular since the
shutdown began. Thirty-eight percent see the Affordable Care Act (or
“Obamacare”) as a good idea, versus 43 percent who see it as a bad idea –
up from 31 percent good idea, 44 percent bad idea last month.

In addition, 50 percent say they oppose totally eliminating funding
for the law, even if it that means a partial shutdown of the government.
That’s up from 46 percent who said they opposed that move in a Sept.
2013 CNBC poll.

Seventy-eight percent of the country, according to this poll, says the
country is moving in the wrong direction and pretty much all of them
blame it on the Republicans.

These are the kind of poll numbers that if this was October 2014 instead of October 2013, we would be looking at a Democratic "wave" election next month. Princeton’s Sam Wang examines the possibility of a Democratic “wave” in House elections next year given the shutdown backlash.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Remember the Dick Armey of FreedomWorks' gray-haired geezers living on social security and Medicare (some of them double-dipping into Medicaid and the purely "socialist" Veterans Administration health care system) carrying signs during the debate over "ObamaCare," saying in various forms "Keep your government hands off my Medicare"?

These same deeply delusional and misinformed individuals, who reside in the alternate reality of the conservative media entertainment complex feedback loop, are the minority of supporters for the Tea Party economic terrorists taking America hostage and shutting down the government, and threatening to default on the U.S. debt if they do not get their ransom demand: the repeal or defunding of "ObamaCare." Only Tea Party approves shutdown, poll shows.

But "ObamaCare" has never been the real object of Tea-Publicans in Congress. Just last week the TanMan, Weeper of the House John Boehner, suddenly revived talk of a "grand bargain" again — code words for cuts to social security and Medicare.

On Wednesday, the GOP's alleged boy genius, Ayn Rand fanboy Paul Ryan (R-WI), penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal laying out yet another iteration of his GOP "Roadmap to America's Ruin" budget focusing on cuts to "entitlements," i.e., social security and Medicare.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Carl Bernstein was the guest on The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on Wednesday night for a segment on media false equivalency — the "both sides are to blame" default setting of media reporting (especially the Associated Press). So pay attention media villagers, Bernstein wants a word with you. (Video below the fold).

O'Donnell began the segment by referencing a piece by James Poniewozik at Time magazine, Not “Both Sides,” Now: Why False Equivalence Matters in the Shutdown Showdown:

This month’s fiscal crisis is one such situation. One party (in fact,
essentially one wing of the Republican party), seeking the elimination
or delay of Obamacare,
precipitated a government shutdown and threatened to force a default on
U.S. debt. Period. There was no corresponding threat or demand on the
Democratic or White House side; having gotten the Affordable Care Act
into law three years ago, they are not in the situation of saying, “Pass
Obamacare or we shut ‘er down.”

That’s the situation. To accurately describe it, as news coverage
should, is not to endorse an ideology. It’s not to say that Obamacare is
good or bad. It’s not to say that Republicans do or don’t have good
reasons to oppose it. It’s not to say that Democrats have or haven’t
sought political benefit in the aftermath. But it correctly places the
impetus where it belongs.

Much of the big-picture news coverage has been clear on this.
But as the crisis dragged on, more news stories framed the story as
old-fashioned bipartisan gridlock between two equally culpable,
stubborn, useless sides. It becomes “Boehner, White House Harden
Stances” (Washington Post); “Congress Plays Chicken” (a CNN chyron this morning); “each side trying to blame the other” (Politico).

“Both sides are to blame; the truth is somewhere in between”–that has always been the political media’s happy, safe place . . .

* * *

But in a case like the fiscal crisis, false equivalence matters. It’s
the difference between reporting an extraordinary event and an ordinary
one, which in this case is crucial to how the story plays out
politically. It’s a matter of whether “not changing current law” becomes
redefined as “getting 100% of what you want.” If this is just one more
case of those knuckleheads in Washington “digging in their heels,”
“playing the blame game,” and so on, it normalizes the situation for the
news audience: it sends the tacit message that it is entirely ordinary,
every so often, to have a forced debt crisis that reasonable people
resolve through “compromise” by renegotiating major pieces of U.S. law.