Yet another time Billy Jeff was right

Ripped from the headlines (Politico). Spin, spin, spin.

“President Clinton said as, Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine believe, there’s so much good the Affordable Care Act has done in terms of making insurance available to 25 million people,” Palmieri told reporters in the spin room here ahead of the lone vice presidential debate. “There’s still a lot of work to do … that’s what President Clinton’s referring to. And while we’ve there’s a lot of good the legislation has done, there’s more work to be done to fix it to make it better for people.”

Or maybe, what the big dog actually said:

Speaking at a Democratic rally in Flint, Michigan, the former president ripped into the Affordable Care Act (ACA) for flooding the health care insurance market and causing premiums to rise for middle-class Americans who do not qualify for subsidies.

"So you've got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It's the craziest thing in the world," Clinton said.

On Tuesday, they tried to clean up his criticism.

I can't begin to tell you how much I hate them....

Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

double for half the coverage, either. And I doubt that happened. Plus, is he saying the middle class works for employers who don't offer group health insurance ? Sounds to me like typical Bubba. For someone who brags about "arithmetic"...

up
0 users have voted.
Lily O Lady's picture

what it was the year before. We are paying it and decided to let him to go "naked" as most of his mental health care is not covered anyway.

It was a nice dream, but sadly, now we are awake and facing grim reality.

up
0 users have voted.

"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

I am by no means defending ACA. I have always been for single payer. However, when Obama promised a strong public option, saying it was the only way to control costs, I thought he got it and I was content with a strong public option because I knew it would drive private insurers to either be competitive or give up. But then...well, we all know the rest. I got fooled again.

My point was only about the accuracy of Bubba's specific statement, including his numbers. I am guessing that your son's premiums did not actually double for half the coverage vs. what he had before ACA.

http://caucus99percent.com/comment/187543#comment-187543

up
0 users have voted.
EdMass's picture

It happens.

Would suggest you might do some research. Yes, premiums have more than doubled for half the coverage. No, not employer coverage per se. Under 50 employees they've cut most to part time (30 hrs per wk) where they don't have to provide insurance and throw the employees into the exchange. Where, if you have not noticed Insurers are leaving, cutting people off and leaving them with no insurance.

My son is in Vermont on the State Exchange. You know how many insurers are participating in this wonderful competitive environment that drives down prices for the common man? Ummm. ONE. BCBS. Has my son's premiums gone down? No. Has his premiums gone up? Yes. Has his coverage increased? No. It's decreased. Has the state been able to help him sort through this garbage? No. They are overwhelmed because as Bubba says, "it's crazy". The best they can suggest he goes on Medicaid so they can pass it onto the Fg Feds. What crap.

Vermont btw was the State that voted to implement their own state-level Single Payer. After nearly 2 years of study and many of millions of $ for same, The GUV came out and canceled the whole thing. Why? Because to make it happen the State would have to tax it's citizens into the stone age to support it. Even Blue Vermont couldn't justify it.

Gee, maybe Bernie had it right and didn't have the cojones to call HRC out for her duplicitous Wall Street Corporatist BS?

There is no typical Bubba. There is only the lying sob Bubba.

up
0 users have voted.

Prof: Nancy! I’m going to Greece!
Nancy: And swim the English Channel?
Prof: No. No. To ancient Greece where burning Sapho stood beside the wine dark sea. Wa de do da! Nancy, I’ve invented a time machine!

Firesign Theater

Stop the War!

But, I'll break it down, anyway. In general, the only issues your reply to me addressed were things my post did not say.

You said Bill was right. Links are below. Not a one of them shows that what Bill said was true.

Bill's claim was very specific because he used numbers and numbers are specific. He did not even fudge (as I often do) with a weasel word like "seems" or "about." He claimed a 100% increase increase in premiums under Obamacare for 50% of the coverage. My claim was that what Bill said, namely, a 100% increase for 50% of the coverage was bs. (My post even happened to mention "arithmetic," which is specific numbers, 50% and 100%, for example .)

My claim was not that premiums have not increased at all. Or that ACA was great, which is what your reply suggests you may have read into my post. If so, I am not sure why you did.

As far as employer insurance, my post said, "Plus, is he saying the middle class works for employers who don't offer group health insurance?" I am not sure why a question would confuse anyone. However, the point of my question was that Bill did not mention employer insurance at all, as though it did not exist and therefore the entire middle class was paying twice as much for half their health insurance coverage. Again, my post did not say every worker in the middle class has employer provided coverage.

First, the "middle class" of the USA is fuzzy concept, defined in many ways. However, the vast majority of Americans believe they are somewhere in the middle class, even if they are poorer or richer than any definition of the middle class. That is why bsing politicians use the term all the time now. They used to talk about helping the poor, but they don't say that anymore, because (a) they are no longer interested in helping the poor; and (b) a lot of poor people incorrectly believe they are middle class. So, many poor people incorrectly believe that a politician who is promising to help the middle class is promising to help them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_middle_class Which makes it very convenient for a politician to seem very concerned about the middle class.

As far as not having to provide benefits if an employer cuts hours, first, not all employers of the middle class have done that and, if they have, state law and/or ACA may have something to say about it. https://www.paychex.com/articles/employee-benefits/5-things-about-offeri... It's not a blanket matter one way or the other, so I am not going to get more specific than that.

Do I believe Bill knew all the above and chose what he said in a calculated manner? Yes, but that doesn't matter: point is, what he said, in the specific way that he said it, with those specific numbers, was either a mistake or a lie.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/oct/25/donald-tr...

http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2014/sep/29/republican-part...

http://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/slower-premium-growth-under-obama/

http://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/slower-premium-growth-under-obama/

Yep, Bubba's specific claim was bs.

up
0 users have voted.

You have to have some extra money to be willing to give it away to the poor or anybody else. I have no quibble with what Clinton said. Obama is twice the liar that Bill Clinton is.

ACA was nothing more than an expansion of Medicaid and corporate welfare paid for on the backs of the 99%.

ACA.jpg

up
0 users have voted.

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

defense of Obama or Obamacare, as my other posts have stated. And he was deceptive, in addition to lying about the numbers. If you think that Obama is the only one Bill's lies can hurt, I disagree. Besides, I have a general preference for truth.

Bill is dissing Obamacare for, among other things, covering more people than we covered before. A good part of the expansion is that more poor people are covered. I don't think giving more poor people more access to health care is a good reason to diss a program.

Bottom line: I don't like New Democrats at all and I see no reason to try to elevate one above the other with deception.

up
0 users have voted.

if they have insurance and bills or health care. I am sure that all new Democrats are alike - they suck.

up
0 users have voted.

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

" Because to make it happen the State would have to tax it's citizens into the stone age to support it. Even Blue Vermont couldn't justify it." So why aren't we "taxed into the stone age" for Medicare? Yes, not everyone is on it, but the people who are on it are either disabled or old or both. That's a very expensive cohort.

And why aren't Brits and Germans taxed into the stone age? Because hospitals can't charge $40 to let you hold your baby maybe? GP's can't charge $329 for a 20 minute routine exam? Pharma can't charge $500 for a pill they charged $40 for last year?

Of course, any system that guarantees payment for whatever the seller wants to charge is going to skyrocket costs.

up
0 users have voted.

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

1. What would have been the average tax to implement Vermont's single payer system compared to the premiums that the average Vermont citizen or his employer was actually paying? As a corollary, what percentage of the average medical bill is directly caused by the insurance companies?
2. How many people live in Vermont but work in another state, and therefore would have to pay the Vermont tax while also having to accept lower take home pay from their employer, who will still have higher employee costs because of the insurance premiums of its non Vermont employees?

up
0 users have voted.

On to Biden since 1973

implement what was hoped for. Other analyses pick and choose facts to further an agenda arguing that we can't improve on the growing health care mess we have.

Lessons from Vermont:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/01/vermont-single-payer/

Here's a relevant excerpt, but I recommend the entire article for a fuller picture if this subject interests you:

Additionally, though “Green Mountain Care” could’ve been an improvement, it didn’t go nearly far enough: indeed, as has been noted for some years, the term “single-payer” itself was ultimately omitted from the final legislation. “Vermont’s public failure,” as Sarah Weaton recently put it in Politico, “is especially frustrating to single-payer advocates because, they note, the Shumlin framework… wasn’t really a true single-payer plan.”

Its shortcomings speak, in part, to the constraints imposed by our political structure, as well as the complexities of several federal laws. The potential “roadblocks” to state single-payer-like systems, as outlined in a 2013 report by Public Citizen, can briefly be summarized.

First, the ACA prevents single-payer experimentation on the state level, at least until 2017, when states may apply for waivers from the law (which might be used for good or evil). Similarly, Medicaid requires a waiver from a cooperative administration to be incorporated into a state single-payer system. Medicare, on the other hand, is not authorized to issue such grants, though several alternative approaches might permit some degree of incorporation into a state system.

Finally, the report discusses the difficulty of integrating federal health programs (like TRICARE for military families) into a state program, as well as the somewhat uncertain legal ramifications of the 1974 federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), which limits the ability of states to regulate health insurance offered by businesses.

Why does any of this matter? The Shumlin plan, for instance, didn’t integrate either Medicare or TRICARE into its “Green Mountain Care” plan, and was set to allow “ERISA employers” (big businesses that self-employ their workers) to continue providing private health insurance (albeit while still having to pay taxes for the public system, which they didn’t seem to like).

As a result, Vermont would have still had multiple insurers, or “payers,” and hence, it wouldn’t have “single-payer”; the plan would have additionally accommodated other private plans, like Medicare Advantage and “Part D” drug plans.

Unfortunately, this is a profound problem, for the administrative simplicity of single-payer plans is the crucial source of the large savings these systems can achieve. The Harvard School of Public Health study that put forth the original “public-private single-payer” reform proposal for Vermont, for instance, estimated some $580 million in savings from a Vermont single-payer-like system for 2015, savings which the Shumlin administration now asserts are not “practical to achieve.”

up
0 users have voted.

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." --Jiddu Krishnamurti

discussions of the Affordable Care Act:

"So you've got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care...." -Bill Clinton

No, Bill. Maybe something like 25 million more people have health insurance--insurance they're forced to buy or face financial penalty--because of federal subsidies paid to the health insurance industry. That insurance in no way guarantees those people access to health care.

A very significant number of the people who turn to our local free health clinic have health insurance. They can't afford deductibles, co-pays, or meds, so functionally, the insurance is useless to them.

The difference between health insurance premiums paid to a price-gouging for-profit company and health care delivered to a patient is everything that's wrong with our predatory medical system. And often literally the difference between life and death.

up
0 users have voted.

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." --Jiddu Krishnamurti

CS in AZ's picture

It makes me crazy when people talk about insurance and say it is "healthcare" when these are not the same thing at all, as you said so very well. We need universal access to actual health care and services -- not "insurance" that is all about making money for the insurance company. The democrats are infamous for blurring this distinction, and I won't forgive them for that.

up
0 users have voted.

Indeed, he is one of best wordsmiths I've heard speak in my life. He also has an incredible memory for facts and figures. The combination makes him the best extemporaneous speaker and "Q and A" person I've heard in my life. If he muddies something, he wants it muddied. If he uses specific, but incorrect, numbers, he does so deliberately.

While many on the left are far from content with Obamacare, many on the right have been apoplectic about it all along. IMO, Bubba was muddying and outright lying about numbers to pander to the right because they want rightist votes just in case the Green and Libertarian Party vote jeopardizes Her Hillaryness's coronation.

up
0 users have voted.
Shockwave's picture


Single Payer

But Obama and Dems at the state level in California and Vermont screwed it up. I hope the Colorado measure goes through.

up
0 users have voted.

The political revolution continues

Meteor Man's picture

I canvassed for Universal Healthcare 91-93 and Hillary did a pivot and ran the ball in the other direction.

up
0 users have voted.

"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn