Tag Archives: CBO Report on the ACA

Obamacare “Failure” Is Looking More And More Like A Success.

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On Thursday, April 17, 2014 President Obama announced that more than 8 million people have signed up for Obamacare through the federal exchange. Another 1.9 million have signed up through state-run exchanges. Those numbers don’t even include the 3 million young adults who were able to stay on their parents’ plans and the 3 million additional people who have been able to enroll in the expanded Medicaid program.

All of this means that more than 16 million people have been able to take advantage of Obamacare.

Further, states that embraced the bill have seen their uninsured rates decline 3 times faster than states that didn’t. For example, New York’s enrollment has exceeded projections by 60 percent and its insurance premiums have been cut in half! Imagine how many more people would have access to insurance if Teapublican governors and Teapublican legislatures had voted to expand Medicaid in their states and operate their own state health care exchanges. If every state would have embraced the law, we would be well on our way to joining the rest of the industrialized world with near universal access to health care.

It has also been proven that the Affordable Care Act has lowered the cost of health care. Yet Teapublicans refuse to admit that the program has been a success. They call it a “massive failure.” They falsely claim that it is costing jobs. They claim that it is unaffordable, despite studies by the Congressional Budget Office that show it is saving money. Nevertheless, most Teapublican candidates are basing their 2014 election campaigns on their opposition to the ACA. They are promising to repeal the ACA. And, backed by billions of Koch brothers’ money, shadowy front groups are running commercials that repeat lies and attack incumbent Democrats. Yet, according to polls by Gallup, even the resistance to the bill by rank and file Republicans is rapidly disappearing. In February, 72 percent of Republicans said the bill would make them worse off. In April, that number has dropped to just 51 percent!

So go ahead, Teapublicans, base all of your election campaigns on promising to repeal Obamacare. Let the approximately 16 million additional Americans who have gained access to health care know that you want to take that away from them.

Has Our Education System Failed Teapublicans?

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Over the last several years, it has become obvious that Republicans and their Tea Party Parasites lack basic comprehension skills. For example, when the President made a speech talking about the role of government, he said, “…look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.”

“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”

It was obvious that President Obama was referring to the fact that businesses benefit from government-provided infrastructure. But Teapublicans couldn’t grasp that. All they heard was “you didn’t build that.”

Likewise, during a lengthy Senate hearing on Benghazi, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had tired of answering the same loaded questions over what led to the attack on the consulate, she finally said, “With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest? Or was it because of guys out for a walk one night and decided they would go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator. Now, honestly I will do my best to answer your questions about this, but the fact is that people were trying in real time to get to the best information.”

Teapublicans failed to comprehend the content of her testimony. All they heard was “what difference does it make?”

More recently, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report that, among other things, noted the impact of the Affordable Care Act (for you Teapublicans, that’s “Obamacare”) on the labor market. The CBO report stated that the ACA would result in as many as 2.5 million people voluntarily leaving their full-time jobs because they would no longer be bound to those jobs for employer-based health insurance. The impact, according to the CBO, is that up to 2.5 million jobs openings would be created by 2024.

Teapublicans, of course, failed to comprehend the report. They believed that 2.5 million jobs would be lost…not created…and immediately labeled the ACA a “job killer.”

No wonder theTeapublicans are so angry all the time. They seem to lack the basic hearing and reading skills to comprehend the spoken word and written reports. Obviously, our education system has failed them.