Below the Beltway: a Mockumentary of the Anatomy of a Political Scandal 2

by • Humor, Media, Politics • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I saw this movie the other morning on Showtimes Movie Channel. It is the perfect movie to see this political season, it not only brings on the big belly laughs but the story has a edge of the “real”  and as a viewer I became pretty convinced this could easily happen to any politician.

Below the Beltway is an indie film, from 21st Street Films. 21st Street Films seems to do micro-budget films, $20,000 – $500,000. It might have a micro-budget but it isn’t low quality by any means. The films story moves quickly and the story is as hilarious as it is real.

This is the story of Paul Gibson (Tate Donovan), a disgraced former beltway lobbyist. He is disgraced because there was a viral YouTube video of him speaking to a gathering of reporters and black citizens, he uses the word “niggardly” in reference to social welfare.  A hilarious and ironic scene takes place between describing what happened to Gibson, they laugh about it, and indicate they don’t give a shit whether is was deserved or not, in fact is it funnier that what Gibson said wasn’t offensive in that he used the term correctly, but it was funny cause no one seemed to understand that! But these staffers they just accept the circumstances, where truth doesn’t matter and go on, hoping like hell it doesn’t happen to them. At the beginning of the film  Gibson has one client left, the National Rendering Association, (NRA) heh, showing just how far he’s fallen. They drop him too, he’d become toxic, not jail time toxic of course, where he might get a book deal, but toxic enough that no one really wanted to be associated with him.

Gibson is trying to make his way back into politics. He finds out a salacious and scandalous story about a U.S. senator’s affair with a high school intern.  What is interesting about the film is that its foci is not just how this information is manipulated on its own, but it is also about lobbyists’, politicians’, and reporters’ manipulation of each other in their attempts exploit the impending scandal. And it makes you laugh hard throughout. It’s a wild romp with a twist at the end that is screamingly funny. It’s a fun film, I do recommend it.

*Full disclosure, I went to boarding school the Spencer Garrett, he plays the disgraced senator and produces the film. But I still y’all should see it if you get a chance, you’ll see  Spence  is funny as hell, and you will catch a glimpse of why he made boarding school a much more tolerable place.

Crossposted @DAGblog

Misrepresenting Liberty: Private Property Rights, Oppression and Ron Paul 2

by • Politics, Presidential Politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Try to leave this place a little better than when you got here.

I can’t remember if it was the debate this morning or last nights debate when Ron Paul blurted out; “I’m for Liberty!” I hate it when politicians deliberately talk in slogans and sound bites. But leave it to Ron Paul to have that as his slogan, and it was certainly different than every other Republican at their 38th debate.

Let’s face it Ron Paul is an old style demagogue who covers his demagoguery in a pseudo-legal analysis of our Constitution. Now I am no legal scholar, but neither is Dr. Ron Paul, and I am pretty sick of that guy, because I think as a civilization we have moved beyond the glib analysis that all rights stem from property rights. Let me just say, even John Locke himself, if he were living, would have moved beyond such a limiting anti-progressive view of how humans organize and distribute power, seriously! He was a bigger thinker than that, as evidenced in his writing. We most certainly have evolved past 1787, and that is a good thing. You can see from Paul’s beliefs he doesn’t believe we should have evolved past that time.

I have some serious questions for Ron Paul supporters, how is it you can tolerate a guy who makes claims like: “Lincoln shouldn’t have fought the Civil War, he should have simply purchased those slaves from slave owners”. Does anyone else see how fucked up that is, in that it indicates he believes people can legitimately be owned by others, and you must purchase them to set them free.  To a person who has lived in the 20th and now 21st century, that line of reasoning makes no sense. It also occurs to me how little sense it makes to continually second guess past events, and make specious claims about what should have been done at that time. Pretty easy to talk shit like that, when it’s irrelevant since the Tardis isn’t available and even that Hitler thing kind of backfired on the good Doctor. Seriously, Ron Paul does the same thing when he talks about WWII, but here is the deal, who cares, he didn’t get to make that decision, this kind of half-assed I could have done it better, BS should be unacceptable to  a sentient being. How anyone can take that seriously leaves me incredulous. If Barack Obama said shit like that, he would  be living next door to Alvin Green in South Carolina. Sorry, but it’s a fact.

It isn’t just that he hangs with the likes of Alex Jones either, but that certainly doesn’t make him more appealing to a woman, a minority or a normal person who doesn’t revel in hatred.

Unfortunately, Ron Paul’s own beliefs and statements make me believe if Ron Paul could he would return us to an era where oppression was wrapped in the guise of  the catch-all phrase “property rights”. I don’t think that should be acceptable once again.

Ron Paul is wrong morally and probably legally when it comes to his glib pronouncement that the Civil Rights Act destroyed privacy.  What on earth does Ron Paul mean by that? He is basically saying business owners have the ultimate right to discriminate, because only they have the right to make decisions about what happens on their property? Answer this please Paululons,  can a civil society exist if we all were to simply shrug our shoulders and say; “oh well, if that cafe owner refuses to allow black people into that restaurant, no biggie we will just move on to the next restaurant” “Or oh well, too bad you can’t use that bathroom or that hospital or go to that school”. Come on, we all know those are dog whistle statements which are used to attract a certain kind of voter.

Ron Paul also said this: “[T]he forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty.” But we need to critically unpack that statement.Is he really sure about that? He is saying of course integration wasn’t worth it, but let’s look around us people, I’d say it was totally worth it, we  have many many gains in the past 40+ years, and many things have changed in the attitudes of the majority of Americans. These things are good, and I think it was totally a worthwhile cause, just as it was worth it to integrate aka mainstream all kinds of students, as exposure to difference leads to tolerance and the ability to live together, more peacefully. Ron Paul is wrong, things are better, how on earth can he not see that?

It kind of bugs me though that so many people are willing to throw women and minorities under the bus for that kind of dude. Seriously, this guy is at best a relic, at worst he believes as women, we continue not to be full members of society and we are unable to make decisions for and about our own bodies. He is not a civil libertarian in the truest form as he favors government legislation that limits our access to health care. What right does he or anyone else have to intervene in a conversation we might be having with our personal physician?  I don’t necessarily want to have the abortion argument, but my opinion is this, it simply isn’t your business what goes on between a woman and her physician. You don’t have to like it, you can believe it is against god or whatever, but since we are not a theocracy then you don’t get a say in our bodies.

Ron Paul isn’t just against abortion he is also against birth control.  He made the claim that “Greater Access to birth control makes a mockery of Christianity”. Is this really a guy who should be getting 20% of any electorate anywhere? How is this possible?

So officially Ron Paul was once the sponsor of a bill to outlaw Roe V Wade, in his eyes we simply don’t have the same rights as men to make decisions about our lives. He makes the excuse of course that states should get to determine what individual rights a woman has over her body and essentially allows a state to determine what kind of medical discussions a woman is allowed to have with her physician.   It rubs me the wrong way though, I just don’t get how this guy has so many hard core followers?

Some people seem to think that Ron Paul is entirely different than your run of the mill Bircher, but he isn’t. Don’t ever forget that. Ron Paul doesn’t know what liberty is and if you vote for him, you are voting for that.

Glenn Greenwald – now worse than ever! Reply

by • Uncategorized

Salon’s pet Libertarian, Glenn Greenwald, has made even more of an ass of himself than before.

I know, I know, it hardly seems possible.   Facts have a nasty way of trashing suppositions, though, and this time he did.

Greenwald went so far as to claim that supporters of President Obama would literally excuse him for committing forcible rape, even against a nun.

Yes, you read that right.

Let’s leave aside for the moment that this first requires us to believe that President Obama would do something so heinous.  The suspension of disbelief that alone requires, straining credulity as it does, has to be left alone for the moment to carry Greenwald’s latest burst of insanity just a bit further.

I can safely presume everyone reading this had a mother.  I know I did.  I have a sister, and there is a woman in my life I love very deeply.

To presume that I can leave those aside and rationalize a hypothetical crime of violence even against an abstracted nun in order to continue to support President Obama is a contortion of imagination that defies…well, imagination.

Greenwald’s loathsome nonsense has been annoying and offensive before.  This, though, is an affront to every norm of civilized discourse, and it’s time for him to go.

I’ve written Salon’s management insisting they publicly fire him.  I know it won’t happen, they like the page views his libertarian fanbois bring them far too much to let something so inconvenient as using images of forcible rape as discussion fodder dissuade them from publishing his repellent screeds.

I have only one more message for Greenwald:

Ron Paul and those Unconstitutional Gold Medals 3

by • Politics, Presidential Politics • Tags: , , , , , ,

There are so many reasons not to vote for Ron Paul. His most ardent followers, (men on the interwebz)

Ron Paul doesn’t care about Civil liberties as evidenced by his medieval view of women and the rights they do not have over their uterine killing fields.

Ron Paul cares about what all teen boys care about, being allowed to smoke a spliff anywhere whenever they feel like it,  instead of just the basement of their parents houses, and the right to do anything you damn well please.

Ron Paul’s is:

  • anti-labor rights,
  • he opposes a minimum wage,
  • he opposes access to education for all, he opposes student loans, (No higher ed for the poors! Suck it up and go back to your profession of waiting tables and assisting the rich in other ways.)
  • he opposes environmental protection legislation,
  • he opposes our National Park system, Sell it all!
  • he opposes Medicare,
  • he opposes Medicaid,
  • he opposes Social Security,
  • he opposes FEMA,
  • in 2006, Paul joined 32 other members of Congress in opposing the renewal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act,
  • Opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964:

    “not only violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty; it also failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting racial harmony and a color-blind society. Federal bureaucrats and judges cannot read minds to see if actions are motivated by racism. Therefore, the only way the federal government could ensure an employer was not violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was to ensure that the racial composition of a business’s workforce matched the racial composition of a bureaucrat or judge’s defined body of potential employees. Thus, bureaucrats began forcing employers to hire by racial quota. Racial quotas have not contributed to racial harmony or advanced the goal of a color-blind society. Instead, these quotas encouraged racial balkanization, and fostered racial strife” (obviously what he has written here makes no sense what-so-ever, is he saying the Jim Crow was A-OK, oppression was just fine, that businesses should be able to discriminate, that states could allow discrimination until the end of time, water fountains, bathrooms, busses, schools, hospitals etc and so on would always be segregated?)

  • Wants to Repeal the 17th Amendment (which seems utterly strange why shouldn’t Senators be directly elected by the people they purport to represent, how can it be more democratic to allow state legislatures to select Senators) and yet he opposed the electoral college, how very bizarre to believe the electoral college should be eliminated but to also believe the 17th amendment should be eliminated… ironies
  • he would dismantle the system of VA hospitals
  • He voted against 2004 and 2005 provisions that would shield makers from liability for MTBE, a possibly cancer-causing gasoline additive that seeped into New England groundwater. The proposal included $1.8 billion to fund cleanup and another $2 billion to fund companies’ phaseout programs

Ron Paul is a 19th century dude, in that he basically opposes America in her current form. Face it Ron Paul wants to return the county the what it was under the Articles of Confederation.  Ron Paul is nothing more than a felony free Lyndon LaRouche, he is a crank, a nut, and he isn’t a lefty and can never be considered one, not ever.

But let’s get to the issue of the Congressional Gold Medals, Ron Paul voted against many citing the Constitution and the $30,000 expense, but then he went a flip-flopped on his principles except I’ve been told by the Paululon hordes that he never dumps his principles.

Ron Paul has voted for these gold medals for other people:

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2009-595

To authorize the President, in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of the historic and first lunar landing by humans in 1969, to award gold medals on behalf of the United States Congress to Neil A. Armstrong, the first human to walk on the moon; Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr., the pilot of the lunar module and second person to walk on the moon; Michael Collins, the pilot of their Apollo 11 mission’s command module; and, the first American to orbit the Earth, John Herschel Glenn, Jr.

That’s his pure voting record for the awarding of a Congressional Gold Medal to four people.  OMG at $30K *each* somehow was suddenly a good thing I guess.  One medal in 1999 to a very famous African-American civil rights pioneer which would naturally be publicized heavily, would also be very controversial if one were to vote against it, and the press would jump on it.  You know he used his tried and true excuse,  “authorizing $30,000 of taxpayer money is [not] constitutional.”  Yet a few years later, Paul voted in the affirmative to spend not just 30,000 but $120,000 on unconstitutional Medals. Hmm, I am not getting this at all.

Oh, and here’s another one, still less than two years after Paul cited his “continuing and uncompromising opposition.”  This one’s specific to the 110th IB, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, To grant the congressional gold medal, collectively, to the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, United States Army, in recognition of their dedicated service during World War II.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2009-266

Huh? Where is the purity on “cost of medals” to taxpayers?

Well then it is surprising to see that in April 2006, Congressman Paul voted…in favor of a Congressional Gold Medal – the same medal that he refused to award Rosa Parks on the basis of taxpayer cost and Constitutionality three years later, citing his “continuing and uncompromising opposition to appropriations not authorized within the enumerated powers of the Constitution,” to…The Tuskegee Airmen

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h109-1259

That isn’t controversial though, so it was an easy vote, it indicates a very murky record on his purity on the issue of “cost to taxpayers” & “constitutional” especially since George Washington himself received one! What??? The Horror!

And now I get it too, when he plays the “be scared of the black man” card he isn’t so much being a racist he is using racism to scare certain kind of people into voting for him and his issues. Most of his no votes against those of medals took place between 1998-99, and they were very controversial at the time.

The question has to be asked, was voting against those other medals for publicity? I think the Libertarian philosopher queen Ayn would be so proud of his ability to fool some of the people all of the time!  In light of this, it indicates to me Dr. Paul is little more than a cheap “all publicity is good publicity” famewhore!

Don’t Google The Santorum Surge 1

by • Politics, Presidential Politics • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

And so it goes, it is time for the Santorum Surge in the GOP Primary as each of the not-Mitt former front-runners flame out like candles in a typhoon. We should review what has happened in this season of Republican’s vying for the Presidency.

The Rise and Fall of Pre-Perry was great wasn’t it? Before Perry actually got into the primary race he was the greatest thing since moonshine and mason jars. But then the Rickster opened his mouth, and all that fell apart. His debate performances left people wondering if he was drunk and his refusal to prepare even for a debate sealed his fate as a a guy who will never-be-President.  He doesn’t seem to realize it though, but he should formally withdraw soon, he is just wasting his money now. And Pre-Perry was over with lightning bug speed.

Then there was the Christy Co-opt, which happened after Perry’s plummet. Chris Christy became a dream of the Republicans and he told them to stuff it. Wow, that ended before it began.

Then we had the Cain Mutiny! Oh it was grand, but then as quickly as he rose, his legs were cut out from under him, as women came out of the woodwork to end his campaign of selling books.

Then we had the longer lasting Newt Reformed, which had powered up the not-Mitt machine for what seemed like a lengthy political period of time, but then everyone remembered why the hell they hated Newt Gingrich in the first place!

The Paul Rocket has been building for quite sometime, I don’t know why. He is just another flash in the pan, because there is just too much negative information out there for him to be taken seriously as a candidate for President of the United States. Sorry Libertarians that is simply the truth. Google it.

So the next not-Mitt candidate is Rick “no one can have an abortion for any reason unless they are married to me” Santorum, he is moving up in Iowa like a dead fish floats to the top of the water. My prediction is, he too will be gone quickly. However, my advice to you all is to not google his name, and for that you can thank Dan Savage. Hah!

And that just leaves Mitt doesn’t it, my god, how is he going to be able to turn himself into the next not-Mitt candidate? I don’t know, but we are going to find out I am quite sure!

CrossPosted @ DAGBlog

A Newt Burns White Hot And Crashes with Silence 1

by • Media, Politics, Presidential Politics • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

The White Hot rise of Newt Gingrich in the polls was unexpected for sure. Who’d thunk it, the biggest demagogue to inhabit a congressional seat since Sen. Joe (no relation to me) McCarthy, but  Newt the master manipulator has burned out quickly and without a major mistake! Who’d a thunk that? Not me for sure, having witnessed his man flame outs in the past.  What hurts Newt the most, is himself!

Newt Gingrich, that vile, contemptible, loathsome, odious man, a cynical hypocrite who never met a principle he couldn’t abandon or an ethical precept he couldn’t trample upon is a man with a big ugly history. What kind of man signs a no adultery pledge, after committing adultery at least twice! Only an egotistical narcissist, and that guy is Newt Gingrich.    How loathsome is it to have enlisted your own daughter to refute her mother’s tale of divorce, to make him appear to be a nice guy, a good guy. But what kind of man enlists his own daughter to do that anyway?   Newt loves the preemptive personal attack, he has mastered the art of the personal attack in fact, he seems so exciting.  As Joe Scarborough put it ” (Newt) has mastered the dark art of dehumanizing political opponents.” Newt certainly has very few political friends, perhaps that is the result of him burning every bridge that got in his way.

There isn’t a soul our there who doesn’t see what kind of man Newt Gingrich has become. His life story is well established even though it seems for the moment people have forgotten his many transgressions. If by some chance he were to win the nomination, that would be a disaster for the Republican party, and they know it too. When people remember everything there is to remember about Newt, it should finish any chance he had to become the nominee, if he somehow holds on and wins this thing, OMG, we will know for certain TBaggies are in tight control of the party.

A partial list of Newts many Epic Fails:

  • While he was Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich suggested solving some of the country’s welfare problems by taking dependent children from their parents and putting them in orphanages, certainly this was an old idea and one that went away with poor houses. But Newt he is always thinking ahead, and like people said, he has ideas lots and lots of ideas. Thing about Newt, he rarely comes up with a good idea.
  • His newest idea about children of the poor, well that we fire their parents from their jobs and give them to the kids! Kids from poor families should be working in the schools, cleaning the toilets, and the kids from middle class and rich families should never raise a finger as this is why we have ‘the poors” to do our dirty work.
  • Fined as Speaker of the House. The House voted overwhelmingly  to reprimand House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). They also ordered him to pay an unprecedented $300,000 penalty, the first time in the House’s 208-year history it has disciplined a speaker for ethical wrongdoing.
  • Even Steve Chapman a writer for Reason Magazine says Newt Gingrich will stop at nothing to demonize political opponents.
  • His newest EPIC FAIL came just a day ago when he said, “just vote for Obama then gay man!”
  • The Freddie – Fannie Historian Debacle

If I were to attempt list the many EPIC FAILS of Newt, this blog would be too long to read.

At this point I am amazed his 15 minutes isn’t over. How long ’til the next not-Mitt candidate takes his place?

Crossposted at DAGBlog

Republicans Cave Under the Weight of their Own Glorified Ego’s 2

by • Politics, Presidential Politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Poor Orange Boehner, he must have whiplash by now! First House Republicans say fine we will pass the payroll tax holiday. But once that word came down from the leadership, TBags and other Rockwell/Rothbard Libertarian goofballs then quickly took The Orange Boehner to the shower and sprayed off his newest tan.

“Oh no you didn’t”, they screamed from their perches as they watched for the 10,000 black helicopters that would be taking over the country for the UN, Mao and Kenya, in that order.

But they painted themselves into a corner from which they are unable to gracefully extract themselves, and now they have to capitulate, something quite foreign to these yahoos.

When Even their titular propaganda leader Karl Rove and the Republican stenographers at the WSJ tell you to suck it up, you’ve lost, wow, you’ve really lost.

Payroll tax cut has been extended for now, but expect Republicans to continue their attacks on Americans. It is how they roll.

The Evolution of Liberalism 2

by • Blogging, History, Philosophy, Politics, Presidential Politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ultimately as liberals and progressives I think we get stuck in our definition of words. There are some people who define liberalism as a static rather than dynamic concept. But I would put out there that liberalism as a concept is dynamic and does nothing more than reflect the milieu of any given era in civilization.

Let’s take the oft talked about Greatest Liberal of all time FDR. FDR was a great liberal, but he interred Japanese Americans, which isn’t liberal at all. Social Security was a liberal policy, but just for white men when it began. Just saying.

Let’s look at R.M. Nixon for a minute, an arch conservative with fascist tendencies, who committed a political crime, that dude created the EPA and his signed into law NEPA thanks to  Scoop Jackson, another flawed liberal in Washington State politics, he supported Vietnam but was a great environmentalist. They usher in an era of deep research into ecological restoration. Nixon reflected his era,because of the pressures around him. That era  demanded some action on the environment, which was considered a liberal cause.

Let’s look at t Jimmy Carter for a minute, you define him as a liberal, but under his administration the airlines were deregulated, this is not what we would consider today to be a liberal policy position. Indeed he was reflecting his era, his time. And many of the Carter policies were liberal.

We all know that under Clinton, Welfare was effectively gutted, and that was an indication of what was to come, the deregulation of financial services. People love Clinton now, b/c the economy was so great back in the 90′s and everyone wants to go back to that, but at the time, Clinton’s policies were just reflecting the era, sometime his policies could be considered quite liberal, The Federal Acquisition and Streamlining Act of 1994, a very liberal policy that expanded the numbers of minority businesses competing for Federal Government contracts. It was a very important micro-economic policy.

Barack Obama is no different from those Presidents, he reflects this era. This returns us to my original statement, but what I am describing is our dynamic  concept of liberalism which has changed over time.  His agenda is mostly liberal. But not everything his administration proposes or accomplishes is liberal. I think that is because as people we too are more complex than that, we are not one dimensional and we are not static beings. We evolve and change as do our expectations of civilization. This is just another step up in our continuing growth as humans. As we continue to evolve as people, our government will evolve with us.

Crossposted at DAGBlog

Helping the Working Poor — A Practical Defense of PPACA 3

by • Politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Health Care Bill, more often than not, raises the ire of both conservatives and progressives. They’ve teamed up to spread as much misinformation about the bill as possible. Why? I am not sure, because this bill goes a long way to get more people access to health care.

I think it all began with a guy named Howard Dean and some comments he made In December of 2009.  Dean was very angry that the public option was eliminated from the Senate bill. The target of Dean’s rant was Joe Lieberman, ( I)CT, he was pretty pissed at Lieberman and he seemed to feel no bill would be better than this bill now. He was angry at the process. And his anger is not unfounded. This Senate has become a branch of our government that is immovable, ideologically entrenched, almost completely unable to pass any worthwhile legislation. Dr. Dean was pretty pissed about that, as we all should be. However, instead of directing his anger at the improbable 60 vote requirement to pass any legislation of substance, he decided it would be time to just let Republicans win by killing the bill. That didn’t happen of course, but that was an extreme reaction, one Republicans were relying upon, this is where they were able to begin to sow the seeds of discontent among voters, they have filled the air with misinformation, with the help of people who are otherwise quite progressive. All that discontent, and the Executive Branches unbelievable inability to fight back against the propaganda has left people with a sour taste in their mouths when it comes to their thoughts about PPACA.

A number of people jumped on Dr. Dean’s bandwagon, Keith Olbermann went on the air to loudly proclaim why the Senate Bill should not be passed. Two days after Dean’s rant against the bill, a number of left leaning organizations and people banded together to help kill the bill:

Dave Linderhoff of The Public Record
Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake
Markos Moulitsas; Daily Kos Founder
Darcy Bruner; a past candidate for Congress

Lying about ACA has become something of a cottage industry. But don’t believe the hype, the reforms already implemented have brought down insurance costs, added more people to insurance rolls, new benefits for senior citizens, implemented necessary regulations regarding pre-existing conditions and an 80% requirement that premiums be spend on the consumers health care costs, with 20 mandated for administrative costs.

People who will benefit most from the bill:

  1. Those without any insurance.
  2. Those who have paid for expensive individual policies on their own.
  3. Employees of small businesses that have trouble affording the cost of joining a group plan.
  4. Low income Medicare participants who are left paying for whatever is not covered by Medicare for their medical bills and prescriptions.

Who is without access to health insurance? Some of those people are the working poor. It has been a long struggle to get federal legislation dealing with this problem, the estimates are there are some 45 million people without access to basic heath care.  In the past, some states attempted to solve this problem on their own by setting up their own state run “group” for people who didn’t qualify for Medicaid. When the boom of the 1990’s ran its course, those programs began to be cut severely because of the expense of running the programs and because states don’t have as much revenue since the economic downturn and they are having to make tough choices.  Many states of course never attempted such things. Washington State has such a program, but its funding has been cut in the past few years so although people may qualify by their income, there are no slots open to take them as customers, in fact the plan has had to disenroll people because of a lack of funding, in total 17,000 members were disenrolled.

However the results of PPACA have been positive.

  • More young adults have coverage
  • Requires beginning this year, insurers must spend 80% – 85% of premiums in actually delivering care
  • Premiums decreasing even for state employees.
  • Our health insurance plans now have to justify their premium rate increases to the State and pass an approval process before they can raise prices.
  • Because of the ACA, young adults can now stay on their parents’ insurance until the age of 26.
  • New York has something called “community rating,” which means that health insurers can’t charge you higher rates simply because of your age, gender, or health history.
  • Because of the ACA, we no longer have to pay co-pays for many preventative care services.
  • Because of the ACA, people with pre-existing conditions now have choices for coverage, one example the NY Bridge Plan.
  • Because of the ACA, seniors who hit the Medicare “donut hole” are now getting help with their prescription drug costs.
  • States like New York have a law in place called “guaranteed issue,” which means that insurers have to offer health insurance to everyone, even if they have a pre-existing condition (even though they have waiting periods for coverage related to that condition.  But thanks to the ACA - those waiting periods will soon be a thing of the past!). 
  • More changes to Pre-existing condition plans by states, here is a preview, premiums have decreased.
  • Premium and Cost sharing subsidies to individuals: the mechanism provides refundable and advanceable premium credits to eligible individuals and families who fall between 133% and 400% of FPL (Federal Poverty Level) to purchase insurance through state created health exchanges.
  • Provide Costsharing subsidies to eligible individuals and families. Cost-sharing credits reduce the cost sharing amounts and annual cost-sharing limits and have the effect of increasing the actuarial value of basic benefit plan to the following percentages of the full value of the plan:
    • 100 – 150% FPL  94%
    • 150 – 200% FPL  87%
    • 200 – 250% FPL  73%
    • 250 – 400% FPL  70%

Health Exchanges: a few examples

  • Vermont : passed legislation to build a single payer plan for the state of Vermont and in October  of this year, (2011) that plan got one step closer to implementation.

These new federal policies are working. I think this is good. There seems to be a small, but loud coalition of people on both sides of the ideological aisle who would have you believe PPACA is a complete failure, but the evidence says otherwise. Let’s stop letting them get away with their propaganda war against delivering health care to those who would not otherwise have access. Let’s fight back with the facts at hand, because the facts indicate the legislation is working.

Crossposted at DAGBlog