COVID-19 & Healthcare

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Senator Ted "Calgary" Cruz and his 'Tortilla Coast Tea-Publicans', with an assist from the "Demented" Jim DeMint at the Heritage Fund (Heritage Action) and his Leadership PAC, the Senate Conservatives Fund, neutered the House GOP leadership last night and prevented any bill from coming to the floor.

The headlines this morning were deservedly unkind to the "Worst. Speaker. Ever.", the TanMan, Weeper of the House John Boehner:

New York Times: With
G.O.P. Badly Divided, Boehner Is Left ‘Herding Cats’

Washington Post: Who
controls the House GOP? No one.

Washington Post: The
Republican Party: A collection of tribes with no leader

Washington Post: Where
does John Boehner go from here?

There are lots more headlines like this elsewhere in the media today. It reminds me of that Charles Krauthammer opinion at the end of 2011 regarding The GOP's payroll tax debacle – Washington Post:

The GOP’s performance nicely reprises that scene in “Animal House” where
the marching band turns into a blind alley and row after row of plumed
morons plows into a brick wall, crumbling to the ground in an
unceremonious heap.

It's déjà vu all over again. "Boehner's Bunglers" led the Tea Party Animal House into the blind alley of complete failure.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

In an earlier post, I posed the question:

Will the TanMan waive the so-called "Hastert Rule" and allow a vote
on the Senate bill in the House to fund the government and to raise the
federal debt ceiling to prevent an economic disaster and to do "what's
in the best interest of our country"?

Or will the TanMan continue to side with the Tea Party economic terrorists holding him hostage in a classic case of Stockholm syndrome?
Will "Tania" give the Tea Party economic terrorists what they want —
the destruction of the federal government and the U.S. and world
economy?

The question has now been answered by "Tania," who is siding with the radical Tea Party economic terrorists. Ed Kilgore reports at the Political Animal blog, House Wants More Obamacare Concessions:

Early reports on what House Republicans might offer as a “new volley”
of demands as the debt limit breach approaches centered on a
reiteration of the very short-term debt limit and appropriations
extensions that were sent to the White House over the weekend only to be
rejected. But now it seems clear that a determination to obtain more
Obamacare concessions is the main difference between House and Senate GOP conferences, according to WaPo’s Montgomery and Helderman:

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif,) said the new House plan was
designed to be attractive to Democrats, because it would follow key
timelines that have been established in the Senate negotiations —
funding government agencies until Jan. 15, for example, and raising the
debt ceiling until Feb. 7.

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.