Despite a rocky roll out, Wonk Wire notes the White House may soon hit its Obamacare enrollment targets.
Republicans Are Done Trying to Kill Obamacare
The Week: “House Republicans have voted to repeal Obamacare 47 times. They probably won’t take a 48th crack at it.”
Republicans Voted to Fund Obamacare
National Journal: “Congress approved its first regular spending bill in years this past week, in a move hailed by many as a return to fiscal sanity. But there’s a potential danger for Republicans lurking in the depths of the $1.1 trillion omnibus appropriation package that sailed through both houses: Obamacare.”
“While the GOP managed to win some concessions on the Affordable Care Act, conservatives see the spending bill as ‘funding Obamacare,’ as RedState wrote. It’s basically the same thing that Ted Cruz and other conservatives blocked a few months ago, forcing a government shutdown, and Cruz tried again to rally support for blocking the spending bill.”
How Democrats Are Fighting Back on Obamacare
Greg Sargent notes Democrats “are increasingly alarmed by the huge money that the Koch brothers are spending on ads battering many vulnerable Senate and House candidates over the health law. Those ads telegraph the broader message against Dems in 2014: Obama lied about keeping your coverage; your premiums are skyrocketing; you can’t keep your doctor; etc.”
“Here’s how Democrats are fighting back on Obamacare. The template for the Dem response to such attacks over the law can be seen in this new ad that the Dem-allied House Majority PAC is running on behalf of Dem Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona, a top target of Koch ads…. Democratic operatives tell me that this basic message is, broadly
speaking, how Dems will respond (where appropriate) to attacks over the
law.”
Wonk Wire: Obamacare isn’t going to collapse.
Angle Seeks to Outlaw Health Insurance Exchanges
Failed U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle (R) filed an initiative petition to outlaw health insurance exchanges in Nevada, the AP reports.
“Angle, a crusader of conservative causes, filed the petition with the secretary of state’s office in Carson City. The proposed constitutional amendment would prohibit state or local government entities from creating or maintaining a health exchange allowed for by the federal health care reform law.”
GOP Ad Blitz Amounts to Just One Ad
The RNC announced “a fresh round in an expected torrent of campaign ads targeting Sen. Mark Begich and other Democrats” over Obamacare but the ad blast “turned out to be more of a sprinkle,” the Anchorage Daily News reports.
“In Anchorage, a single radio ad aimed at Begich was set to air on a single station… The total cost to the Republican National Committee for the Anchorage radio airtime? $30.”
The Best Health Care System in the World?
Wonk Wire: Life expectancy lags in the United States
A Successful Obamacare Rollout
The Los Anglees Times talks to Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear (D) about his successful rollout of Obamacare in his state.
“Leading one of the nation’s poorest, sickest states, Beshear has improbably overseen one of the most successful rollouts of Obama’s troubled healthcare overhaul and become, deep in his long public career, a hero to Democrats grasping to find a redeeming figure amid the political wreckage. He’s an unlikely champion, not least because Kentucky’s two U.S. senators are both implacable opponents of the program.”
Said Beshear: “I think we’ve started something here that a generation from now you’ll see a very different Kentucky than what you see today.”
New Point Man on Obamacare
Time looks at the return of Phil Schiliro to the White House.
“Schiliro’s hiring was a tacit acknowledgement by the White House that congressional Democrats needed more from the Administration than the technical fixes to Obamacare — as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is popularly known — like extensions, delays and exemptions, that the Administration had been offering. They needed a politically savvy friend, Democratic aides say, someone they knew and could trust who would listen to their concerns and, most important, help resolve them.”
House Will Vote Again to Limit Obamacare
“House Republicans will kick off the second session of the 113th Congress next week by voting on another bill to undercut the president’s health care law,” Roll Call reports.
The Red State Coverage Gap
Wonk Wire notes that 5 million Americans will have no health care insurance next year simply because they live in a state that declined expanded Medicaid coverage.
Bonus Quote of the Day
“It’s no longer just a piece of paper that you can repeal and it goes away. There’s something there. We have to recognize that reality. We have to deal with the people that are currently covered under Obamacare.”
— Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), quoted by the New York Times, on the increased difficulty Republicans will have ending Obamacare.
Support for Obamacare Drops to New Low
A new CNN/ORC poll finds support for the country’s new health care law has dropped to a record low.
Key finding: “Only 35% of those questioned in the poll say they support the health care law, a 5-point drop in less than a month. 62% say they oppose the law, up four points from November.”
Said pollster Keating Holland: “Opposition to Obamacare rose six points among women, from 54% in November to 60% now, while opinion of the new law remained virtually unchanged among men.”
Majority of Uninsured Skeptical of Obamacare
A new New York Times/CBS News poll finds that “Americans who lack medical coverage disapprove of President Obama’s health care law at roughly the same rate as the insured, even though most say they struggle to pay for basic care.”
Key findings: “53% of the uninsured disapprove of the law, the poll found, compared with 51% of those who have health coverage. A third of the uninsured say the law will help them personally, but about the same number think it will hurt them, with cost a leading concern.”
Health Care Polling Has Been Consistent for Years
Greg Sargent: “Seriously, go look at the trends over times.
The current split is roughly where opinion was in August of 2009
(45-50), when the Post first polled on this. It’s marginally better now
for the law than it was after the 2010 midterm drubbing to Dems (43-52).
It’s almost exactly where it was in the summer of 2012, before Obama
won reelection decisively (47-47). Then it dropped, and now it’s back to
where it was before the rollout.”
Americans Fear Obamacare Erodes Their Health Coverage
A new Associated Press-GfK poll finds “a striking level of unease” about the health care law “among people who have health insurance and aren’t looking for any more government help.”
“In the survey, nearly half of those with job-based or other private coverage say their policies will be changing next year — mostly for the worse. Nearly 4 in 5 (77%) blame the changes on the Affordable Care Act, even though the trend toward leaner coverage predates the law’s passage. Sixty-nine percent say their premiums will be going up, while 59 percent say annual deductibles or copayments are increasing.”
Lying About Health Care
The Fix: “Health care has been a subject ripe for misleading claims from both political parties over the years… PolitiFact has been giving out the award since 2009. Four in five times, it has opted for a claim related to health care. In some cases, a Republican claim has taken the award. In others, Democrats’ words came
under scrutiny.”
Lie of the Year
“If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”
— President Obama, as selected by Politifact.
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