I guess the State of the Union is tonight, huh? I will be doing something else, but y’all are welcome to comment on it here if you like.
Pete Seeger, 1919-2014
A “New” Republican “Health Care Plan”
The usually rightie mouthpieces are all excited by a NEW Republican plan to REPLACE OBAMACARE. What did they come up with that’s NEW?
Um, not much. It’s all tweaks of old plans. But let’s look anyway.
It would allow more age rating of insurance. Under Obamacare insurers cannot charge older and sicker people more than three times what the young folks pay. The NEW plan would allow older folks to be charged five times what the young folks pay.
It would not require insurance companies to insure people with pre-existing conditions. They would be required to offer a plan to someone who has had continuo8us coverage — in other words, if they currently have or just lost insurance — but we’re not told what “must offer” might mean. It could be a plan nobody could afford, for all we know.
Everyone the private insurance companies won’t touch would auto-enrolled in high-risk pools, which have been tried before but turned out to be hideously expensive to the point of being unworkable. The GOP plan appears to be a bit fuzzy about how that will be paid for without bankrupting the participants. But, hey, it sounds like a plan.
They’re especially proud of a plan to cap tax exclusion for employee benefit plans and use the difference in revenue to provide subsidies for the very poor. Medicaid would be changed to something like a block grant to states plan, although not exactly.
Basically, it’s a milder form of the same old screw job they’ve been proposing for years. It’s basically a scheme to dig more money out of everyone’s pocket for the benefit of the insurance industry. See Joan McCarter for more.
Update: See GOP offers Obamacare replacement — and it’s a mess
Are They Really This Clueless?
Regarding Mike Huckabee’s recent “libido” remarks, I’m with BooMan — what Huckabee is saying makes no discernible sense. Whether you agree with him or not.
“I think it’s time Republicans no longer accept listening to the Democrats talk about a ‘war on women,’†Huckabee said. “Because the fact is, the Republicans don’t have a war on women. They have a war for women.â€
He said Democrats convinced women they were victims, but Republicans wanted to empower them.
“Women I know are outraged that Democrats think that women are nothing more than helpless or hopeless creatures whose only goal in life is to have a government provide for them birth control medication,†Huckabee said. “Women I know are smart, educated, intelligent, capable of doing anything anyone else can do.†…
…“If Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing them for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government, then so be it,†Huckabee said.
Is he saying that smart, educated, and intelligent women can control their reproductive system without birth control? And what does controlling libido have to do with anything? Does he think that only nymphomaniacs need birth control? And, of course, “government” isn’t supplying birth control except to Medicaid patients. The real issue has to do with mandating that private insurance companies cover birth control, which can be expensive if you have to pay the whole cost yourself.
Considering that about 99 percent of American women use birth control at some point in their lives, I’m not sure which women he thinks he is not insulting.
As with Rush Limbaugh’s infamous Sandra Fluke rampage, Huckabee doesn’t seem to understand how birth control works. Are they really that clueless? Paul Waldman writes,
These kinds of statements tend to come from older conservative men who have no idea how ladyparts work, and really don’t want to know. That extends to contraception, which as far as they’re concerned is something that is women’s responsibility and therefore there’s no need to understand it. That accounts for the bizarrely widespread belief that all forms of contraception work like condoms: a one-use kind of thing that is employed whenever sex is desired. Which is why Rush Limbaugh said that Sandra Fluke was obviously a “slut” if she wanted contraception to be covered by the insurance she was paying for, because “She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception.” And Huckabee believes that you only need birth control every month if you have a rampaging libido, while if you were more chaste, it would be something that would sit at the back of the cabinet, seldom brought out but there if necessary, like that little container of tumeric you once bought for a particularly exotic recipe and might some day use again.
Since Mike Huckabee doesn’t have 18 kids, I’m guessing his wife has used contraception throughout their marriage. But a Baptist minister and his wife have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” arrangement when it comes to that sort of thing, just like millions of other couples, which enables him to continue believing that only a fallen woman would need to take a contraceptive pill every doggone day like she was some kind of insatiable sex machine who barely had time to cook his food and do his laundry in between all that rutting.
Seriously, can they really be that clueless? Do they actually not know how birth control pills work? They certainly sound as if they don’t understand it, but it’s mind boggling. Even after all these years of watching wingnuts’ wacky ways, this is out there.
Criminal Justice Updates
Dinesh D’Souza Indicted for Campaign Finance Fraud
Also,
Federal prosecutors in New Jersey have issued grand jury subpoenas to Gov. Chris Christie’s re-election campaign and to the state Republican Party as part of a preliminary inquiry into accusations that aides to Mr. Christie shut down access lanes to the George Washington Bridge as political retribution, the lawyer for the campaign and the party said Thursday.
Pass the popcorn
When Anti-Choicers Choose
It appears today is the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. Here’s an eye-opening page of accounts of what happens when an abortion clinic picketer encounters an unwanted pregnancy. They want an abortion, of course, but they think their case is “different.”
Many anti-choice women are convinced that their need for abortion is unique — not like those “other” women — even though they have abortions for the same sorts of reasons. Anti-choice women often expect special treatment from clinic staff. Some demand an abortion immediately, wanting to skip important preliminaries such as taking a history or waiting for blood test results. Frequently, anti-abortion women will refuse counseling (such women are generally turned away or referred to an outside counselor because counseling at clinics is mandatory). Some women insist on sneaking in the back door and hiding in a room away from other patients. Others refuse to sit in the waiting room with women they call “sluts” and “trash.” Or if they do, they get angry when other patients in the waiting room talk or laugh, because it proves to them that women get abortions casually, for “convenience”.
I remember reading about an abortion provider who said that whenever a woman came to her for abortion and said, “I’m not one of those women who gets abortions,” the doctor said “Oh, OK, I don’t guess you need me then.” And the woman would be refused treatment. That sounds harsh, but on the page linked it says that anti-choice women who get abortions will sometimes turn around and sue the clinic for some trumped up reason.
Thin Skins
The Right has the collective vapors because NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo said,
“Who are they? Are they these extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that’s who they are and if they are the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.â€
I take it that in context he was talking about Republican politicians intending to run for statewide office, not all wingnuts. But Sean Hannity says he is moving out of New York, to which I say, don’t let the door hit your butt on the way out.
They can all whine and hold their breath all they like, but it’s pretty much true that an anti-choice, NRA-friendly homophobe is not going to win a statewide office in New York. That’s a plain fact.
Fickle Fingers of Fate
I’ve passed the 15,000 words mark in the ebook, and I think it’s going to take me another 10,000 words to say everything I want to say, although probably not more than that. So it’s cooking.
Meanwhile, here are a couple of things to read together. Charles Pierce quotes a Romney fundraiser who is still angry about “the hug” between Chris Christie and President Obama after Hurricane Sandy. The fundraiser thinks “the hug” gave the election to Obama. Pierce writes,
Part of me wants to point out that, apparently, the utterly self-centered cluelessness of the candidate spread pretty widely throughout all levels of the Romney campaign. (Christie was supposed to let his constituents fight each other for bottled water rather than accept help from the federal government? People on the Jersey Shore were supposed to live in lean-to’s until Willard closed on that new place in D.C.?) Part of me wants to point out that this is yet another indication that the prion disease afflicting the collective brain of the Republican party rages unabated. But a much bigger part of me wants to laugh and laugh until I fall down.
The point being that the clueless wonders who supported Romney never understood that elections are about governing. The whole governing thing seems to elude them.
At Salon, Elias Isquith argues that Christie’s tendency to stoop to governing now and then, or at least talking about it, is what’s behind the Tea Party’s intense dislike of him.
The difference in framing between how Christie’s describing his job and how, say, Sen. Rand Paul or Sen. Ted Cruz or Rep. Paul Ryan or even Gov. Scott Walker would describe their job is subtle but important. If Paul or Cruz or Ryan or Walker were bragging about their accomplishments in a victory speech — the moment above all others when a politician can “campaign in poetry,†as Gov. Mario Cuomo once said — they wouldn’t wax rhapsodic about their own management of the state. They wouldn’t make the point, as Christie did, that government is there to “give†and “work with†and “work for†its citizens.
On the contrary, they’d say something about “Getting government out of the way†or “Removing government’s barriers to liberty†or “Liberating the American spirit from big government’s red tape.†At most, theirs would be a grudging acknowledgement of the necessity of government, a recognition that much as they’d like to live in a world without an activist state, they’re willing to accept one, reduced to a minimum, all the same. Similarly, while Christie as governor has come to accept Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, and was too smart —and too pragmatic — to continue mounting a doomed bid to stop same-sex marriage from becoming a reality in his state, other top-tier Republicans, the ones the Tea Party actually likes, would more likely flaunt their ideological rigidity and relish the chance to fight a losing battle in the name of true conservative principles.
The rhetoric difference is also the difference between New Jersey and, say, Mississippi. You can’t win a statewide election in New Jersey by promising to shut down abortion clinics or promoting concealed or open carry laws or spouting homophobic nonsense. There’s a strong fiscal conservative streak in New Jersey, however, so yelling about the teacher’s union can get you some votes.
Nevertheless, if Christie hadn’t responded to Hurricane Sandy as he did, the state would have been done with him. He knew that. Everybody in New Jersey knew that. The fact that baggers nationwide can’t even fathom that tells me that Romney supporters aren’t the only ones who are clueless.
Silver Linings
Among other things I’m still messing around trying to get a cheaper health insurance policy through the New York exchange. In December I gave up and paid my old premium for January. (I did finally get a notice from New York about my eligibility, dated December 26, advising me to be sure and sign up by December 23.)
Since I do qualify for a subsidy, there are four or five plans that would save me considerable money on premiums, and I’ve calculated I would still come out ahead even if I end up paying all of the deductible. And if I don’t need much medical care this year I could come out way ahead. Only one of them lists my doctor as a provider, though, and I just need to get hold of someone at my doctor’s office to confirm they are in that network. And no one’s ever there when I call. It’s always something. I’ve got to sign up by tomorrow, I understand, to be covered in February.
There’s still a lot of bitching and moaning about Obamacare in the headlines. Jonathan Cohn writes that the actual enrollment data isn’t that bad.
The long-awaited breakdown on the age of young enrollees (defined as under 34) came in at 24%, not catastrophic but well below the target of 40%. But as Cohn points out, the Massachusetts precedent showed that young-uns tend to enroll in this kind of scheme quite late, so let’s wait a while before panicking over the age mix.
Cohn also notes that about 79% of enrollees are qualifying for premium tax credits, a.k.a. purchasing subsidies, which is very much in line with CBO predictions.
The real news to me in his post is which of the coverage levels is proving to be most popular. For 60% of enrollees, it’s the “silver plans,†which are distinguished by protection from really large out-of-pocket costs. Health reforms of all varieties should take notice of that (particularly conservatives who think shifting more health purchasing from insurance to self-payment is the key to controlling costs).
The silver plans are the ones you can get with a subsidy, so that’s probably accounts for a lot of their popularity.