Obamacare is working. Shh, don't tell the Republicans, it will just make their heads explode.

Courtesy of The New Republic:

Republicans made a lot of arguments against the Affordable Care Act. But perhaps none were as effective, or as seemingly plausible, as their contention that their new law would cripple Medicare Advantage. 

New evidence suggests -- surprise! -- that the argument was wrong.

Medicare Advantage is the program that gives seniors the option of enrolling in private insurance rather than the traditional, government-run program. The government pays the insurers a flat fee, per enrollee; in return, the insurers provide coverage, sometimes including benefits that traditional Medicare does not. Overall, about one in four seniors belongs to such plans. 

The policy rationale for Medicare Advantage is two-fold: To give seniors more options and to introduce some private-sector competition. The idea is that private insurers might be able to be more innovative or offer certain combinations of services that some seniors would prefer. But, for much of its history, the program (formerly known as Medicare-plus-choice) was also a form of corporate welfare.

Non-partisan studies, by the likes of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, suggested that the government was paying the insurers too much. 

The architects of the Affordable Care Act decided, quite sensibly, to reduce those extra subsidies and use the money to offset part of the law’s cost. That’s when the Republicans, and their allies, pounced. Taking money away from the insurers, they claimed, would force insurers to charge more, limit their offerings, or pull out of the market altogether. 

It was a reasonable proposition; that’s more or less what happened back in the late 1990s, the first time government reduced the overpayments. (I argued, and still believe, such a trade-off would be worthwhile.) But new information, just released from the administration, suggests those predictions haven’t come true. 

On the contrary, the Department of Health and Human Services announced on Thursday that premiums for the plans are down and enrollment is up, well above the official projections. As the Kaiser Family Foundation has reported, this is actually the second year in a row premiums have declined. (According to HHS, premiums in 2012 will be 11.5 percent below what they were in 2010.) Meanwhile, all Medicare beneficiaries can now get preventative care without co-payments. And their exposure to prescription drug bills have declined, because the new health law is closing the infamous “donut hole” in coverage. 

So, in short, Medicare Advantage plans are becoming cheaper, slightly more people are enrolling in them, and everybody on Medicare -- even seniors in the traditional government-run program -- has better coverage than they did before.

And don't forget that the many of the most important, and positive changes, have not even taken place yet.

For instance check out what is in store in 2014:

NEW CONSUMER PROTECTIONS 

Prohibiting Discrimination Due to Pre-Existing Conditions or Gender. The law implements strong reforms that prohibit insurance companies from refusing to sell coverage or renew policies because of an individual’s pre-existing conditions. Also, in the individual and small group market, the law eliminates the ability of insurance companies to charge higher rates due to gender or health status. Effective January 1, 2014. Learn more about protecting Americans with pre-existing conditions. 

Eliminating Annual Limits on Insurance Coverage. The law prohibits new plans and existing group plans from imposing annual dollar limits on the amount of coverage an individual may receive. Effective January 1, 2014. Learn how the law will phase out annual limits by 2014. 

Ensuring Coverage for Individuals Participating in Clinical Trials. Insurers will be prohibited from dropping or limiting coverage because an individual chooses to participate in a clinical trial. Applies to all clinical trials that treat cancer or other life-threatening diseases. Effective January 1, 2014. 

You keep this in mind at all times. The Republicans do not attack "Obamacare" because it will NOT work.  They attack it because they are terrified that it WILL work.

If you always remember that it will give you the tools you will need to out argue any neo-con piece of garbage that tries to convince you that your President is not working to BETTER the lives of Americans.

And if you are unconvinced of that yourself then perhaps you need to read about this Des Moines couple's experience.

Before I close this post let me leave with a portion lifted from the last eye opening paragraph from the article cited above:

But by the time the next president is sworn in, enough people will have experienced the protections and benefits it offers that no elected official would risk his or her standing by rescinding it.

President Obama's Weekly Address: Putting Country ahead of Party.

This was definitely a message to Americans about who is REALLY gumming up the works and keeping solutions from being implemented to solve our financial problems.

Too bad the teabagging Republicans are too myopic to understand that their obstructionism is hurting their constituents and causing the very problems that they were sent to Congress to solve.

However I really do believe that the American voters are beginning to see through deceptive tactics used by those who are trying to lay the blame solely at the President's feet, and that that will be confirmed in the next election cycle.

The American Civil Rights Movement and how it may explain our President's pathway to success.

Courtesy of W.E.E. See You:

The predominately white progressive intelligentsia don’t see Obama clearly because of our racial blind spot. We don’t see the role of race in how he seems to understand himself and how others perceive him.

First of all, we think that he understands himself as one of us. A progressive activist, heir to the radical and New Left movements most of us were raised in. He is not; I think that he understands himself (and certainly his real base understands him) as the first African American President. We’re thinking Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. We should be thinking about Harold Washington, the first African American mayor of Chicago. Washington was elected and immediately faced a solid wall of opposition from most white aldermen in the city. Washington understood his role as breaking down that wall of opposition and assembling a governing majority, which he finally did after his re-election. Unfortunately, he died shortly thereafter. By the way, one of Washington’s political strategists was David Axelrod. 

How does Obama break the iron unity of the GOP opposition to assemble a governing majority in the US Congress? 

If we progressives were not blinded by our own assumption that our history is the only history, we might see how Obama may be seeing his situation. 

White progressives often think that African American elected officials are politically naive. We will give far more credit to Cornel West, who has never been elected to anything, than to an elected state senator, or even the President of the United States. We think that Obama does not understand the nature of John Boehner, Mitch McConnell or Eric Cantor, as though he has not sat across the table from them. He doesn’t understand how mean they are, we think. 

Obama acts entirely within the tradition of mainstream African American political strategy and tactics. The epitome of that tradition was the non-violence of the Civil Rights Movement, but goes back much further in time. It recognizes the inequality of power between whites and blacks. Number one: maintain your dignity. Number two: call your adversaries to the highest principles they hold. Number three: Seize the moral high ground and Number four: Win by winning over your adversaries, by revealing the contradiction between their own ideals and their actions. It is one way that a oppressed people struggle. 

Obama has taken a seat at the negotiating table and said “There is no reason why we cannot work out solutions to our problems by acting like responsible adults. That is what people expect us to do and that is why we have entered into public service.” That is the moral high ground. 

Honestly, I have been reminded more than once in the last few months of those brave college students sitting in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter, back in the day. Obama sits at that table, like they did at the counter. Boehner and McConnell and Cantor clown around, mugging for the camera, competing to ritually humiliate Obama, to dump ketchup on his head. 

I don’t think those students got their sandwiches the first day, but they won in the end. 

Obama is winning. Democrats are uniting behind him, although some white progressives think that they could do the job better. Independents are flocking to him. Even some Republicans are getting disgusted with their Washington leaders. Obama is not telling us about lack of seriousness of the Congressional GOP; he is showing us the vivid contrast between what we expect of our leaders and their behavior. The last two and half years have been a revelation of the essential conflicts in our society and politics. 

If white progressives understood much about the politics of the African American struggle in the United States, we would see Obama in the context of that struggle and understand him better. And you don’t have to be African American to know something about the history of the African American struggle. The books and the testimony is there. It’s not all freedom songs. But you have to be convinced that it is something that can teach you something you don’t already know.

Like many progressives I have often felt frustration that President Obama does not stand up to the Republicans and shout in their faces that they are tearing this country apart in the service of future political gain. Or that he does not shout from the rooftops that THEY are the problem, and that the media is simply not reporting on the kinds of sabotage which is happening behind the scenes.

But every time I stop to think how that would look splashed across our television screens I know exactly why he does not do that.

Number one it is not part of his character to act in that way, but it would also redefine him as the angry black man, which would be the box that he would live in for the remainder of his first term.  And let's be honest, after that there would be NO second term.

President Obama is blazing a trail, that even ten years ago would have seemed impossible.  He literally IS sitting at that Woolworth's lunch counter stoically maintaining his dignity, while suffering the taunts from those who believe only THEY should have the right to sit there.

And sometimes I fear that he is sitting there all alone. That he is waiting for all of us to see him there and take our place next to him.  NOT to tell him to stand up and push back against the bullies, but to rest our hands an his shoulders and say that we understand his struggle, and that we have his back.

(H/T to Andrew Sullivan.)

John Boehner takes his lack of balls and goes home, essentially ending any talk of raising the debt ceiling.

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Politics is all about the negotiation, and the ability to compromise.

Hoiwever compromise requires BOTH sides be willing to give up a little something.

As far as I can tell the Teabaggers simply do NOT understand this process, and are holding the Republican party and the American people hostage until they get their way. Which by the way happens to be fundamentally impossible under the constraints they have placed on negotiations.

This is what happens when people are directed to vote by their latent racist urges and hate, instead of by their brains.

Remember many of these are the same people who believe that Sarah Palin, or Michele Bachmann, have the "common sense" necessary to rescue this country from one of the very few individuals with the ability to actually solve the problems facing us today.  Which, by the way, is all we need to know about their ability to reason.