Discussion for article #237244
A congress in the general sense of the term could easily fix it. The idea that this particular Congress or any Congress could do it easily is another matter entirely.
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I wish I had half the confidence he says he has.
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"A recent Washington Post-ABC poll found that a majority of Americans continue to oppose the law. "
WHAT?? WTF is WRONG with people? I imagine this number includes a not insignificant number of people who will settle for nothing short of single-payer universal healthcare, which is fine, but I am astonished that in 5 years, the idiotic public remains o backwards!
I wish President Obama had simply said, “If the Supreme Court decides to wreck the ACA, the entire system will collapse in 18 months, but don’t worry. I will walk away with free healthcare for life! It simply isn’t my problem anymore!”
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I actually think the fact he is making these statements is an indication that he doesn’t have much confidence in SCOTUS. He is, for example,completely correct in saying this case should not even have been considered by the Court. The fact that they did, and went to such lengths to hear it, lends itself strongly that there are 4 on the Court hell bent on gutting the law before he leaves office.
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Totally agree. Which is why I said “he says he has” and not simply “has”. And why I continue to be very nervous about this case.
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They likely oppose the name of the law, while being for anything and everything included in the law*.
*this likely excludes the individual mandate, which is the thing that pays for the law. That’s no different than people being all for public roads and bridges, but being “against” taxes that pay for them.
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What is wrong is the belief that polls have any more meaning than the Paul the octopus world cup predictions.
If you believe polls then Obama is at fault for the poor Katrina response!
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The statement at the top is probably responsible for a good bit of the fix we are in.
IF we had a reasonable non-totally-in-the-hands-of oligarchs Fourth Estate, the statement would have been framed in a way that would state that the OPPOSITION to the government having anything to do with health insurance was only a PART of the feelings against the ACA–that a significant number/% of people believe that the plan does not go far enough.
“Lies”
“Damn Lies”
“Statistics”
That’s our MSM…
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The last time saw the details of one of those polls, something like 15 percentage posts of the “oppose” group was the “Congress should have enacted public option/single payer.”
Heck, I’m “opposed” to Hillary Clinton running for president, with the tiny little minor caveat that I would vote for her or any other plausible democrat long before voting for anyone with “republican” in their party affiliation.
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The President was correct to say he has no Plan B if the SS strikes down healthcare.gov subsidies.
This will be ALL on Republican legislators and the Republicans that initiated the lawsuit, and it’s their feet that should be held to the fire if 6 million lose affordable coverage.
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Consider for a minute if the court decides against him…
Millions are thrown off of their insurance policies.
They can’t go back to 2010 coverage because their employer canceled the in-house health care plan.
The Republicans can’t agree on a plan to fix it so they do nothing.
The republicans OWN the problem.
People get sicker and sicker. Every tear jerking case becomes fodder for the reality TV segment of the local TV news.
Emergency rooms implode.
Medical bankruptcy becomes epidemic.
Hospitals deal with the massive red ink by raising the charges for everyone else.
Insurance companies pass these higher rates along to their remaining policy holders
The individual policy holders get hit first.
More and more people go off the insurance rolls.
In the next cycle the insurance companies go after the group policies. It becomes a race to the bottom.
Hospitals are forced to close.
Did I mention??? The Republicans OWN this problem.
The Republicans lose the Senate in 2016 and Hillary is elected.
They lose even more seats in 2018.
(from here… fantasy kicks in…)
In 2019 there is an unexpected SCOTUS vacancy (from the conservative side of the isle)… . Hillary nominates Obama (pulls a Taft) to fill the opening.
Roger Ailes hears the news and unfortunately has a massive stroke but the local trauma center had to close 18 months before.
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The Republicans will be at fault, and should own it, but I’m a little less confident that the American populace as a whole will see it that way. All it takes for about half the country these days to believe anything is for Hannity to scream it on Tuesday and Rush to repeat it on Wednesday. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve had a full-bore spin strategy for this ruling for months now to somehow pin it all on Obama/Democrats if the subsidies go. Something this potentially catastrophic though, who knows. Maybe I’m too cynical.
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No, I don’t see the Republicans dodging the blame on this one, especially when an adverse ruling would not hit Democratic-led states that did the right thing and set up their own exchanges.
Also, I hope it will be noted that in the House version of the ACA, which was passed in 2009, the Democrats favored a single, nationwide consumer health exchange; the Republicans in the Senate, however, inserted an amendment calling for 50 state exchanges, arguing in their best Jeffersonian gobblydygook, about the government that governs best is the local one, we know more about our constituents’ needs than the big bad Washington bureaucrats and their one size fits all etc.
And then – surprise! – the Republican-led states refused to establish their own exchanges, thereby setting up the grounds for this battle.
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One need look no further than the front page of this website where Josh posts Senator Thune’s hilarious lament to know that will be the strategy indeed.
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The Court is painstakingly balancing . . . no, not balancing evidence . . . no, not balancing public policy considerations . . . the Court is painstakingly balancing the political benefits of fucking up the President’s legislative achievement with the political burdens of a backlash.
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My friend, I sincerely hope and trust you are correct…
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Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
If the SCOTUS shoots down Obamacare, the Pubbies have the ball and have to deliver on something because the healthcare system has about a year and a half to collapse before the 2016 elections. I really don’t think Obama would sign a Pubbie bill to somehow extend subsidies to individuals to get past the 2016 elections if the subsidies are shot down. He only has a year and a half and he is out of office no matter what and getting rid of the subsidies is what the Pubbies wanted, anyway. Obama would be dumb to bail out the Pubbies after all the crap the Pubbies have given him on Obamacare.
The Republicans don’t “own” this problem; they’re going to place this entirely on the POTUS.
Here’s how it will likely go down if the SCOTUS throws the ACA out:
People in red states lose their subsidies.
Those people will be angry.
Their Republican elected representatives to government remind them that the bill that just got thrown out is called “Obamacare”, and the problem is therefore Obama’s fault.
Their constituents, who voted for them and largely opposed the ACA in the first place, believe them.
They promise to “fix” this problem, provided that they’re re-elected, of course.
They get re-elected.
To me, this seems every bit as much of a sure thing as the sun rising in the East tomorrow.
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