Tag: death spiral
Debunked: 5 GOP Obamacare Talking Points That Have Bitten The Dust

Debunked: 5 GOP Obamacare Talking Points That Have Bitten The Dust

Obama

The New York Times reported Wednesday that a large majority of people who signed up for Obamacare have paid their premiums on time. While these numbers vary based on the state and the type of plan, The Times says around 80 percent of those who signed up are paying, which is required for insurance coverage to start.

And, just like that, another Republican talking point about the Affordable Care Act has been debunked.

This idea that Obamacare beneficiaries would not pay their premiums, effectively dooming the young law, is in good company. A number of Republican talking points about Obamacare have bitten the dust recently. From the completely outlandish — death panels, government-funded abortions, etc. — to the notion that the Obama administration would never hit its enrollment target, they’ve ranged in viability, but have all nonetheless evaporated.

Here’s a look back at five anti-Obamacare talking points that have inevitably been disproved.

AFP Photo/Saul Loeb

No One Will Sign Up 

Ted Cruz Tea Party

The line was repeated ad nauseam by Republican detractors of the president. But — not surprisingly — saying it over and over didn’t make it come true.

There was the time House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said: “Above all, this report is a symbol of the failure of the president’s health care law… It is a rolling calamity that must be scrapped,” after the initial low enrollment numbers were released. Or when Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) tweeted: “106,185 people enrolled in Obamacare. 108,713 attended the 2010 NBA All-Star Game in Cowboys Stadium. .”

At the end of March, the White House released enrollment numbers that exceeded its initial goal of seven million. By the end of the first open enrollment period, signups were skyrocketing, eventually closing at above eight million.

Still, this hasn’t stopped some conservative pundits from questioning the success of the law. Charles Krauthammer, for example, now subscribes to the conspiracy theory that the numbers were fabricated by the administration.

“These guys go six months without any idea what the numbers are, and all of a sudden it’s to a decimal point,” Krauthammer actually said on television.

AFP Photo/Andrew Burton

A Lack Of Young People Will Cause A ‘Death Spiral’ 

This one had all the ingredients of a good GOP talking point: plausibility, an appeal to business thinkers, and a snappy catchphrase like “death spiral.” But these elements didn’t make it a reality.

Obamacare’s death spiral would occur, conservatives posited, because the number of old and sick people who signed up for coverage would not be offset by young, healthy people also signing up through the exchanges, causing premiums to rise and the entire program to spiral down the drain. But, thanks to the way the law was written, the so-called death spiral was never likely. And now it’s clear that health premiums are on pace to increase at the same rate as they were prior to the law being passed.

Furthermore, the final enrollment numbers show that 28 percent of those who enrolled via the federal exchange were between the ages of 18 and 34. While this number of “young invincibles” fell short of the administration’s initial target, it should be more than sufficient to prevent the law from collapsing.

Millions Will Lose Their Health Insurance

Henry Waxman

This talking point, which perhaps reached its pinnacle when Newsmaxreported that 100 million people could lose insurance under Obamacare, was largely disproved by a paper prepared for Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

The paper concluded that a grand total of 10,000 individuals, in just one state, would lose coverage and not have a viable option to replace their health care plan.

“The assertion that the law will cause five million individuals who currently have coverage in the individual market to go without coverage in 2014 is baseless,” the report read. “Of the reported 4.7 million people who receive cancellation notices, 2.35 million should have the option to renew their 2013 coverage. An additional 1.4 million should be eligible for tax credits through the marketplaces or Medicaid, which will provide them more comprehensive coverage at lower rates. Of the remaining individuals, only 10,000 individuals in 18 counties in a single state would be unable to access a catastrophic plan, and many of these individuals may sign up for coverage through their state exchange.”

Furthermore, under the new law, the uninsured rate in the United States has dropped, according to a recent Gallup poll. According to the poll, the April 2014 uninsured rate is down 1.6 percent from March and currently sits at 13.4 percent. That is also the lowest number Gallup has ever found since they began tracking the rate in 2008.

 Photo: Charlie Kaijo via Flickr


Death Panels 

This one, advanced by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, was certainly a whopper. So much so, in fact, that it was granted the title of “Lie of the Year” by PolitFact in 2009.

The death panel idea originated from a provision in the initial Affordable Care Act that would allow Medicare to pay for doctors and patients to discuss living wills and end-of-life treatment. To Palin, this was tantamount to the government holding a death panel to decide whether or not senior citizens are allowed to live.

Palin’s campaign, while ridiculous, did have important political ramifications: In 2011, the Obama administration deleted all references to “end-of-life” care from the provision in the bill.

Premium Prices Will Soar 

Health Care Premium

The final talking point is somewhat connected to the previously discussed “death spiral,” but deserves its own recognition. This one, offered again and again by Republican pundits like Sean Hannity, holds that insurance premiums for businesses and individuals will rise at an exponential rate because of the health care overhaul. Double-digit increases in health care premiums were expected by the right. It was going to be a disaster, they assured.

Well, disaster averted.

According to the USA Today, insurance rates are slated to rise by about 7 percent next year — similar to the rise expected without the Affordable Care Act.

“The double-rate increases we’ve been hearing are probably exaggerated,” Dave Axene, a fellow with the Society of Actuaries, toldUSA Today. “That’s not what we’re seeing from the actuarial organizations — I guess we’re being a little bit more optimistic.”  

Image via The Kaiser Family Foundation

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LOL Of The Week: The GOP Is Closer To A ‘Death Spiral’ Than Obamacare Ever Was

LOL Of The Week: The GOP Is Closer To A ‘Death Spiral’ Than Obamacare Ever Was

While Republicans have been plotting about what to do with control of the U.S. Senate, they’re trying to ignore how the debate over Obamacare has now shifted to whether the law has “won” or is simply “winning.”

Some Republicans want to dull its sudden veneer of success by delaying any verdict about the law until 2023.

Though it will always be October of 2013 and HealthCare.gov will always be crashing in the heart of Senator Ted Crux (R-TX) and his followers, the prognosis for President Obama’s key legislative accomplishment has seen a remarkable reversal from six months ago, when the words “death spiral” were taken seriously.

A “death spiral” occurs in the insurance industry when low enrollment or adverse selection leads to skyrocketing prices. Thanks to how the law was written, such a spiral was never likely for Obamacare, even when it seemed like HealthCare.gov might never be fixed. And now it’s pretty much impossible.

Obamacare has nearly matched Romneycare’s signups in its share of young people who enrolled. It has exceeded the predictions of the Congressional Budget Office by a million signups with 8 million. At least 5 million more Americans now have Medicaid through expansion, which will continue to accept people all year long. And millions more Americans have gained coverage off the exchanges or through employers, as the individual mandate seems to be proven more effective than predicted. It’s not all we need to do to fix our bloated, absurd and cruel health care system — but it’s a valiant start.

The effects of the law will vary wildly state by state, with the states that are not trying sabotage it — shockingly! — doing a much better job of insuring their residents. But the only way Obamacare is going away is if a Republican president wins a landslide and decides his first act is to take health insurance away from the 22 million Americans expected to be covered by the exchanges in 2016 and tens of millions more on Medicaid and their parents’ plans.

Meanwhile, dust settling around the rollout of Obamacare is revealing a Republican Party that is terrifying Republican donors.

With the Republican Governors Association slowly morphing into a legal defense fund, funders look at the GOP’s 2016 field and see one candidate with a father promoting 9/11 truthers and another whose father defends “ex-gay therapy” because he thinks sexual orientation, unlike bigotry, is a choice.

No wonder these donors are drooling over someone whose father—especially when compared to his brother—was a pretty good president. Jeb Bush’s “optimism” and the fact that the GOP hasn’t won without a Bush on the ticket since 1972 make him the favorite of most of the people who spent millions to (not) elect Mitt Romney.

Jeb even says the right things about immigration reform. He thinks it’s an “act of love” but didn’t actually suggest that House Republicans vote on the bipartisan Senate bill that they’ve been ignoring for the better part of a year.

And for this dusting of bravery, he was mocked by Donald Trump and booed by a crowd of conservatives in the state where the first 2016 GOP primary will be held, New Hampshire.

LOL.

Donald Trump has been pretending to run for president for decades. But no mainstream political party took him seriously until he embraced the “birther” issue and briefly became a frontrunner in the 2012 GOP presidential primary. Now he’s updating his act by demanding that 11 million undocumented people show him their papers.

Even some Republicans get that Trump is a clown in search of a circus. But The Donald’s wealth, fame and willingness to attack the president over nonsense keep earning him invites to Republican events.

How do you come up with an immigration policy for a party that takes Donald Trump seriously?

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Minority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) keep pretending that they want to do reform but they can’t because Obama’s mean, or they don’t trust him, or #OBUMMER, as The Washington Post‘s Greg Sargent keeps pointing out. No one buys these arguments, especially because the GOP couldn’t get its base to support reform when George W. Bush was president.

But the GOP’s inaction will likely force the president to act to stem deportations that break up families later this year. Then the party that ran on self-deportation in 2012 will be running on actual deportations in 2016.

The GOP’s problem is that not doing anything on immigration this year is the safest bet to keep its base motivated and possibly even take over the Senate. Likewise, not proposing an Obamacare alternative or expanding Medicaid to the 5 million people spitefully being denied coverage in red states is safe, in the short term.

Just say #fullrepeal and screw the consequences.

Meanwhile, voting for the Ryan Budget charges up Republicans who would vote anyway, while making it clear that this GOP, if ever given the power, will cut Medicare benefits immediately and then more and more and more.

The costs for these actions are low in 2014, as Republicans try to win Senate seats in six states Mitt Romney carried. Though the chances of them winning the upper house of Congress seem to be decreasing every day. And after 2016 demographic time bombs begin to detonate that could cost the party Georgia, North Carolina and eventually Texas.

Perhaps a Jeb Bush can swoop in, mend fences with the immigrant community and appeal to voters that have voted for a presidential ticket with a Bush on it five times — even though he has his own skeletons in his closet, is hated by many Tea Partiers and most Americans still blame his brother for the slow economy.

Or maybe the GOP’s death spiral has already begun.

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr