The Washington State House Republican Caucus is upset that we’re going to get exchanges soon. They’re so upset that they have a whiny press release.
Though many of us have grave concerns and opposition to the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, Congress has not repealed it and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld nearly all of it. Washington state is moving forward.
Yes, it is. It’s legal and it’s going forward. And yay, because you know what, it’s somewhat better than the status quo. If the GOP had a better idea, or better than vague platitudes about the market or something something health savings accounts without any specifics, they forgot to mention it in the last few years. Anyway, let’s see what some of the House Republican problems are.
Health care exchange lacks enough choices, variety of plans
Hey, you know what would be another choice that the legislature could add? Yeah. If the GOP wanted more variety, they could get behind adding a government plan along with the corporate and a cooperative plan that already exist in Washington. You know more choice.
The Insurance Commissioner initially denied five of the nine health insurers plans from being sold in The Exchange; however, three of the insurers successfully appealed and the Insurance Commissioner has now approved seven insurance companies to offer 43 plans for individuals in the exchange. At its Sept. 4 meeting, the Exchange Board certified 35 plans. The federal Office of Personnel Management had previously approved the other eight plans which are classified as multi-state plans. There is one additional insurer that could be approved in the near future.
This is the part where they’re complaining that there won’t be any choices.
Meanwhile, just one company, Kaiser Permanente, says it will offer insurance plans for small businesses in the exchange. This is not the competitive marketplace we were promised as Obamacare was being debated in Congress. Washington House Republicans have long believed our state’s health insurance laws and regulatory processes have limited choice and competition. Those challenges are being more exposed as we implement federal health care reform. Read more about these problems in the articles to the right.
This claim feels pretty dubious to me. I work for a small business in Washington, and don’t have Kaiser Permanente, and there’s no discussion of changing plans. So there seems to be more choice than they’re letting on. In any event, a state level public option would certainly go a long way toward providing more choice. In fact, it would double it for small businesses if their dubious claims are to be believed.
An argument for universal coverage
Universal single payer would be pretty awesomesauce. That’s what you’re talking about, right? Right?
Avik Roy, a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a health care writer at Forbes Magazine, argued that the status quo is no longer working, however. We must reduce the costs our federal government is currently spending on health care.
The status quo isn’t working and we need more than the unfortunately small 43 plans and growing. But not a public option. Hey, let’s quote that guy.
“The U.S. government spends more per capita on health care than the governments in many socialist states. However, the countries that achieve some form of universal coverage at the very lowest cost are not the highly socialist systems but the market-oriented systems, countries like Switzerland and Singapore.”
The Swiss System where they have a mandate stronger than our mandate? This is just trolling, right? I’m being trolled by a press release from the State House GOP? Anyway, that’s the whole section. I agree we need a health care mandate if we’re not going to have universal single payer. The good news is we got one, press release complaining about Obamacare. It’s part of Obamacare. For what it’s worth, I care more about health outcomes than if some asshole is going to call it socialism. There are some vague platitudes about health savings accounts without any discussion of how they would work in the state, but it’s still nice out, so I’m going for a jog.
And the conspiracy theorist lunatics are already calling for defunding the VA over some imaginary gun confiscation program funded and enforced through it.
Are these people capable of even brushing by some semblance of facts when they’re spouting their psychopathic bullshit? No wonder the world thinks the TeaBagger Fascists are fucking insane.
I’m sure glad I didn’t have to get my pulse checked today under a Republican health plan.
If its so damn great, why did Owebamma, Congress, the Senate and now most unions get waivers from it so they can keep their Cadillac care. It’s crap and they all know it. Wake up idiots, you soon may get to go to the vet for coronary care.
If Obummercare is so wonderful why did Obummer delay bidnesses from having to goosestep to ObummerCare until afta the 2014 erections?
If Obummercare is so wonderful how cum the leaders of three major unions say that unless changes are made ObummerCare will harm “destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class”?
If Obummercare is so wonderful how cum the leaders of three major unions say it will “destroy the very health and wellbeing of our members along with millions of other hardworking Americans”?
If Obummercare is so wonderful why did Congress reject it for it’s own workers?
If Obummercare is so wonderful why did 40,000 Longshoremen Quit the AFL-CIO Union over it?
If Obummercare is so wonderful why did the United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers called for “repeal or complete reform of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA)”?
If Obummercare is so wonderful why did the IRS employees just say NO?
If Obummercare is so wonderful why did vaulted (in the minds of HA DUMMOCRAPT loons) lefty Ezra Klein write “A lot of unions are going to end up hating Obamacare”?
Of course all these facts don’t matter to Goldy’s Division of NorthWest Lunatic JackASSes; they are all for it. Mind numbed robots, jackboot goosestepping to the beat. There is nothing this moronic bunch of DUMMOCRAPT loons would ever reject coming from the goons in the DUMMOCRAPT whitey house!
Puddly, couldn’t have said it better. Not to mention millions of retired people are now being told by their companies they are dropping their retirement healthcare. See IBM…..
This POS has got to be stopped, and defended, for good.
Carl …might want to take a poll on this turd, it will never get off the seat. It is THEE biggest JOB KILLER ever launched. The Turd won’t flush.
@4 Who ever said Romneycare (its proper label) is “wonderful”? After all, it was invented by the Heritage Foundation, so you’ve gotta have limited expectations. I would’ve preferred single payer, but we couldn’t get that from the DINO in the White House. (This guy enacts your legislative program and you call him a socialist? I get a government check every month because the VA thinks I’m nuts. If you were ever in the service you should apply for that benefit, too, because you’re a lot crazier than I am.)
Deflection… If Obummercare is so wonderful how cum why did Obummer pattern it after “RomneyCare”? From NBC News
Apparently Obummer did ol SENILE DUMBASS and LUNATIC Wabbit! Butt don’t let facts get in the way of another of your insipid cumbacks!
If Obummercare is so wonderful how cum Dr Howard Dean, a real hero of HA loony libtards agrees with Sarah Palin, hated by HA loony libtards; over the creation Obummercare death panels? As Puddy noted, HA leader loons and their jackboot goosestepping minions attacked Sarah Palin over that comment which is now proven TRUE!
If Obummercare is so wonderful how cum The IRS will now be in charge of confirming whether your health insurance plan is sufficient and will require information on your current insurance policy. The IRS peeps said NO!
If Obummercare is so wonderful how cum their shiny new ObummerCare care doesn’t guarantee any doctor will see you?
If Obummercare is so wonderful how cum many people in America with no insurance will not have insurance.
If Obummercare is so wonderful how cum Obummercare DOES NOT cover pre-existing conditions in children
If Obummercare is so wonderful how cum Kathleen Sebelius of Human Hemorrhoid Services said on their web site in July 2013…
Butt butt let’s review another Obummerism…
Then remember this Obummerism…
If Obummercare is so wonderful how cum we had to pass the bill to actually learn all it’s faults and shortcummings?
Ding ding ding ding… Attention HA readers… Apparently Carl and the HA loony leadership gang haven’t performed their “reality check”? Have they ever?
Off the Rails @5,
You do know there is a difference between the PRIVATE EXCHANGE that IBM wants to use and Obama’s PUBLIC EXCHANGE?
Yeah, we know.
GOATBOY is such a dumb shit.
You are aware that millions of Americans ill now for the first time in years and in some cases decades will be able to get insurance, aren’t you?
@11 s/ill/will/
You forgot to mention “It’s associated with a black Muslim socialist.” Because, honestly, when it was proposed by a Republican think tank and implemented by a Republican governor, they loved it just fine.
And considering that most of the people affected by it – since it doesn’t impact existing coverage – are people on the individual market who could not, in their previous, glorious “free market,” get any coverage, 35 or 40 options sounds pretty remarkable to me. Oh, yeah, and it’s cheaper than under their supposedly free market, too. Which explains why Republican politicians hate it – big insurance companies are paying them to – but it doesn’t explain mouth-breathers like the above who are high on their own bullshit.
But, you know, Kenya, or FREEEEEEEDDDDDDDDDDUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMM, or something.
Proven true because….Howard Dean said it?
You really are quite gullible, puddybigot.
Howard Dean, alas, seems to have become a K street creature…
From New York magazine…
I think we’re going to be subjected to a great deal of puddybigot’s reposting the bullshit from the fever swamp in the lead-up to October 1.
It’s going to get ugly.
@ 15
Who cares? It’s all bullshit and easily recognizable as such. That paradigm is fading. That whole obsequious mindset is developing into being a mere subset of that original pattern of thought that changed the Southern Democrats’ minds about which party really represented their “conservative” value system back in the mid 1960s.
For a political movement to claim such high regard to “freedom” and yet be so openly servile to the demands of the top .1% of income earners still amazes me in that there are large numbers of people that openly state that those wealthy individuals would not have to pay any taxes at all, nor be subject to any rule of law whatsoever.
Corporations are openly committing massacres of union organizers, are sponsoring death squads, are hiring private Armies to conquer whole nations and enforce their will upon the local population, and robbing the indigenous people of absolutely everything literally at gunpoint. That is what the TeaBaggers are all about: robbing the poor to feed the rich.
When one has nothing, and someone comes along to steal whatever scraps they let one have after taking everything else, people tend to become unruly. Thats what is going on in Egypt, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria and Myanmar. People are tired of having everything forcibly stripped from them and then being told that they just aren’t working hard enough.
The only thing SCHMUCKO can “discuss” is Howard Dean? A K Street creature? Always on PMSNBC! So they must approve of him.
Just from HA dumbASS SCHMUCKO
Or this one…
OR this one…
Or this one…
Or this one…
Or this one
Chronological order… Got tired Google searching SCHMUCKO… Wanted to use pertinent HA leftist “thought”. Skipped over HA’s juvenile unemployed maggot infested ASSHole moron asschloch’s post. Wasn’t worth using…
Bwaaaaaaaaaa haaaaaaaaaaaa haaaaaaaaaaa haaaaaaaaaaaa haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa haaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Such an ignoramous!
Let’s see SCHMUCKO…
– Preznit Obummer… first proposed the bidness delay to 2015… yes that’s a lot of swamp gas right there…
– Politifact… swamp gas, used many times by HA libtards…
– Ezra Klein… yes he’s swamp gas… known that for years…
– WikiPedia… leftist to the core… more swamp gas…
– Longshoreman’s Union… swamp gassers all of them…
– Obummer’s IRS rejects it… swamp gas…
– DUMMOCRAPTS in the Senate who first pushed for Congress not to abide with ObummerCare… yes they are all swamp gas…
– Kathleen Sebelius of Human Hemorrhoid Services… yes she’s an old bag of swamp gas…
– United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers… swamp gassers all of them…
– Laborers International Union of North America… swamp gassers all of them…
– International Brotherhood of Teamsters… swamp gassers all of them…
– Unite Here… swamp gassers all of them…
– International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers… swamp gassers all of them…
– United Food and Commercial Workers… swamp gassers all of them…
SCHMUCKO, just an ignoramous with his pal OWS Racist Fraggy who can’t deal with Obummercare facts! Thanks for the continual comedy here you two. A damn laugh a minute!
Did you notice ekimgoatlover didn’t refute any of the Obummercare facts presented… instead another ad hominem attack on Puddy. We know why. His adventures into animal husbandry destroyed what little mind he was originally given!
Sad so sad!
GOATBOY presented a fact?
Must be buried in all his mindless drivel.
Kind of like one hay seed buried in 40 lb. of goat droppings.
@15 & 16
What they don’t seem to realize is that the law is going to happen soon. Then none of their spin will matter. If they’re still pointing to theoretical death panels in 5 months, we can ask them to point to them. Sure, there will be some problems, but the people they’re talking to will be dealing with reality. I think that’s part of the reason the WA House GOP Caucus arguments are so muddled.
Choice, my ass, if you like your doctor or your current healthcare plan you can keep it. Ask IBM (and other companies) retired employees how all that Owebamma BS is working for them
Off the Rails @22
1) For millions of Americans their “current healthcare plan” is either do without or the local ER if it will accept them.
2) IBM is using a PRIVATE EXCHANGE as apposed to Obamacare. A private health insurance exchange is an exchange run by a private sector company or nonprofit.
Other than that you are right, IBM and other corporations are again screwing American citizens. The 1%ers just don’t care about the rest of us.