gr33d wrote:

holfresh wrote:

gr33d wrote:

smackeddog wrote:

nixluva wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

nixluva wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/thom-hartmann-how-republicans-quietly-sabotaged-obamacare-long-trump-came-office

Thom Hartmann: How Republicans Quietly Sabotaged Obamacare Long Before Trump Came into Office

Donald Trump suggested that the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) was a clever ruse by our first Black president and his Democratic friends to have a successful health-care system in place for his own presidency, but one that was set up to fail in the first year of the next president's term.

Trump said (on 3/10/2017) that this year "would be a disaster for Obamacare. That's the year it was meant to explode, because Obama won't be here. That's when it was supposed to be, get even worse. As bad as it is now, it'll get even worse."

While most people are rolling their eyes - why would Obama do that, particularly when everybody expected the next president to be Hillary? - there's actually a substantial grain of truth to Trump's assertion. He has identified, however, the wrong culprit as the person who poison-pilled Obamacare for 2017.

That distinction would go to Marco Rubio (and his Republican helpers in the Senate). Let's step back to 2015 for the entire story, which is bizarre and fascinating.

When the ACA was rolled out, telling insurance companies that they had to insure anybody who signed up, regardless of previous conditions or sickness, everybody realized that the insurance companies would probably lose money in the first decade or so, until previously-uninsured-but-sick people got into the system, got better, and things evened out.

To get the insurance companies to go along with this danger of losing money, the ACA promised to make them whole for any losses in any of the first decade's years. At the end of each fiscal year, the insurance companies merely had to document their losses, and the government would reimburse them out of ACA funds provided for by the law.

The possibility of their losing money was referred to as the "risk corridor," and the ACA explicitly filled those risk corridors with a guarantee of making the insurance companies, at the very least, whole.

And then something happened. As The New York Times noted on December 9, 2015, "A little-noticed health care provision slipped into a giant spending law last year has tangled up the Obama administration, sent tremors through health insurance markets and rattled confidence in the durability of President Obama’s signature health law."

Rubio and a number of other Republicans had succeeded in gutting the risk corridors. The result was that, just in 2015, end-of-fiscal-year risk corridor payments to insurance companies that were supposed to total around $2.9 billion were only reimbursed, according to Rubio himself quoted in the Times, to the tune of around $400 million. Rubio bragged that he'd "saved taxpayers $2.5 billion."

And, indeed, he had. But the insurance companies were thrown into a crisis. And, with Republicans in Congress absolutely refusing to re-fund the risk corridors, that crisis would get worse as time went on, at least over a period of a few years.

So the insurance companies did the only things they could. In (mostly red) states with low incomes and thus poorer health, they simply pulled out of the marketplace altogether. This has left some states with only one single insurer left. In others, they jacked up their prices to make up their losses.

As Robert Pear in the Times noted, Rubio's "plan limiting how much the government can spend to protect insurance companies against financial losses has shown the effectiveness of quiet legislative sabotage."

To add to the political psychodrama, the first hack by Rubio was maintained by Republicans into the 2016 budget, meaning that things got even worse in October, 2016 – the first month of the federal fiscal year when these cuts hit the worse, and, no coincidence, the month before the presidential election.

Rubio's October Surprise was extraordinarily effective. October 2016 saw an explosion of stories in the news about how health insurance companies were either pulling out of ACA exchanges, or jacking their prices up wildly.

Time magazine wrote "8 States Where Obamacare Rates Are Rising by at Least 30%" without mentioning Rubio's role in why. Ditto for NPR's "22 Percent Hike in Obamacare Rates…" and CNN's "Obamacare Premiums Soar By 22%." If you date-limit just to October of 2016 - the month before the election - you can find hundreds of similar articles. It was a huge story, but somehow Little Marco's role in it all - along with his friends in the GOP - never made it into any of the stories.

Only the Times, back the previous year, had really given much coverage to the story, noting, "[B]ecause of Mr. Rubio’s efforts, the administration says it will pay only 13 percent of what insurance companies were expecting to receive this year. The payments were supposed to help insurers cope with the risks they assumed when they decided to participate in the law’s new insurance marketplaces."

Meanwhile, federal judge Thomas Wheeler of the US Court of Federal Claims, ruled recently (as reported last month by Forbes) that the feds actually have to pay back - to the tune of about $8 billion – the moneys lost by health insurance companies operationg in good faith.

But it's way too late; dozens of nonprofits started to provide health insurance through the exchanges have already gone bankrupt, and the health insurance giants are both subsuming their smaller competitors and merging like there's no tomorrow. Additionally, Wheeler's ruling is certain to be appealed – meaning it's in limbo for the moment.

So, yes, Donald Trump is right that Obamacare had been sabotaged, in a way that would virtually guarantee at least some level of crisis by 2017. Where he's sadly, paranoiacly wrong is in attributing that sabotage to President Obama.

Democrats should have been screaming bloody murder for the past 2 years. Maybe they can start now, every time a reporter or Republican says, "Obamacare is failing…"

WOW! I didn't know this. Than you for posting this!!! This is yet another proof of how craven Republicans are and how terrible the Dems are in defending themselves from Republican Tricks and Lies. They were so focused on stopping Bernie that they failed to tell the American Voters what was really going on. Bad job by the Dems to just let this happen without exposing it and screaming from the rooftops that Republicans had been SABOTAGING the ACA since day one!!!

What would be the point? It's not like they have claimed to support Obamacare. In fact they said they would do everything possible to make it fail. They are true to what they said they would do and their base sees it that way. The problem isn't that they weren't "exposed" - it's that their policies end up costing mainstream Americans. But as long as that cost falls disproportionately on non whites their base is absolutely fine with it.

Well Trump Country is about to get hit HARD by his and the Republicans Policies!!! Trump lied to all those people and now they're about to lose a LOT. They're already hurting and the Republicans don't care and have NEVER cared. In Georgia where I live there are nearly a half million people who have no healthcare because of the Republicans refusal to accept Medicaid Expansion. These rural hospitals are closing. They've cut all of the Social programs.

The Republicans were able to blame everything on Obama for years but now the truth will come out. They can't blame it all on Dems anymore.

Those Trump voters will probably blame Obama, immigrants and muslims rather than look in the mirror and admit they made a mistake voting for trump. We are now in the age of stupid- probably as long as he builds that stupid wall (with money and resources that could have been sent on schools, houses, hospitals, industries) and keeps up his attack on muslims and immigrants, they will be happy. For much of this century people have been happy to be screwed over in the pursuit of their own bigotry.

Illegal immigrants in particular, are always going to be part of the problem. Not just in terms of healthcare, but education costs as well.

Nevermind the facts...

The avg cost in the US for education is $12k per/year and it's illegal to deny these kids public education.
The avg cost of delivering the child of an illegal immigrant is about $5k-10k before the hospital stay... Covered by medicaid.
After this, we provide free formula, diapers and healthcare until that child is 18.

Over 300k anchor babies are born here each year... You do the math.

Trump's travel to Mayo-Largo is on pace to equal $360 million in his first term, do you see a problem with that given the immigration data you are concerned about??

Another pivot.

Why not also discuss the 100m spent on Obamas travel; these costs are absurd and should be capped for all administrations. Why not discuss the cost of FBI investigations into the nonsense Hillary Clinton pulled with her servers? Almost 20m dollars for her stupidity, then another 7-8m for Benghazi.

If Trump continues to spend taxpayer dollars at that rate, which are just estimates btw... He should be forced to pay it back, no question. I've also seen estimates around 1/3 that total, so we'll have to let it play out.

Back to healthcare:

In 2007, the estimated hospital costs were nearly 6 BILLION dollars for deliveries alone... Add 10 years of inflation... Add emergency rooms visits, that are used as primary care physicians.

Obama cost tax payers 85 mil over 8 years in travel expenses...Trump is on pace for 360 mil to Maya-Largo alone in just 4 years...Let's not count the cost of protecting Trump Tower in NY and other properties...He also charges the Secret Service for space in Trump Tower to protect him...Republicans made Hillary and Benghazi and issue to investigate...It was all political and nonsense, a complete waste of taxpayer monies...

Healthcare:




Birth rates are lowering and cost are skyrocketing..None of which is the point...Just to show the concern is politically manufactured...More to the point should be cost of healthcare in this country which the ACA slowed the inflation of healthcare...But we saw the Republicans tried and succeeded in sabotaging that effort...You can't possible care about healthcare cost and not be outraged that the Republicans gutted ACA which directly added to cost inflation for political gain...

gr33d wrote:

smackeddog wrote:

nixluva wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

nixluva wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/thom-hartmann-how-republicans-quietly-sabotaged-obamacare-long-trump-came-office

Thom Hartmann: How Republicans Quietly Sabotaged Obamacare Long Before Trump Came into Office

Donald Trump suggested that the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) was a clever ruse by our first Black president and his Democratic friends to have a successful health-care system in place for his own presidency, but one that was set up to fail in the first year of the next president's term.

Trump said (on 3/10/2017) that this year "would be a disaster for Obamacare. That's the year it was meant to explode, because Obama won't be here. That's when it was supposed to be, get even worse. As bad as it is now, it'll get even worse."

While most people are rolling their eyes - why would Obama do that, particularly when everybody expected the next president to be Hillary? - there's actually a substantial grain of truth to Trump's assertion. He has identified, however, the wrong culprit as the person who poison-pilled Obamacare for 2017.

That distinction would go to Marco Rubio (and his Republican helpers in the Senate). Let's step back to 2015 for the entire story, which is bizarre and fascinating.

When the ACA was rolled out, telling insurance companies that they had to insure anybody who signed up, regardless of previous conditions or sickness, everybody realized that the insurance companies would probably lose money in the first decade or so, until previously-uninsured-but-sick people got into the system, got better, and things evened out.

To get the insurance companies to go along with this danger of losing money, the ACA promised to make them whole for any losses in any of the first decade's years. At the end of each fiscal year, the insurance companies merely had to document their losses, and the government would reimburse them out of ACA funds provided for by the law.

The possibility of their losing money was referred to as the "risk corridor," and the ACA explicitly filled those risk corridors with a guarantee of making the insurance companies, at the very least, whole.

And then something happened. As The New York Times noted on December 9, 2015, "A little-noticed health care provision slipped into a giant spending law last year has tangled up the Obama administration, sent tremors through health insurance markets and rattled confidence in the durability of President Obama’s signature health law."

Rubio and a number of other Republicans had succeeded in gutting the risk corridors. The result was that, just in 2015, end-of-fiscal-year risk corridor payments to insurance companies that were supposed to total around $2.9 billion were only reimbursed, according to Rubio himself quoted in the Times, to the tune of around $400 million. Rubio bragged that he'd "saved taxpayers $2.5 billion."

And, indeed, he had. But the insurance companies were thrown into a crisis. And, with Republicans in Congress absolutely refusing to re-fund the risk corridors, that crisis would get worse as time went on, at least over a period of a few years.

So the insurance companies did the only things they could. In (mostly red) states with low incomes and thus poorer health, they simply pulled out of the marketplace altogether. This has left some states with only one single insurer left. In others, they jacked up their prices to make up their losses.

As Robert Pear in the Times noted, Rubio's "plan limiting how much the government can spend to protect insurance companies against financial losses has shown the effectiveness of quiet legislative sabotage."

To add to the political psychodrama, the first hack by Rubio was maintained by Republicans into the 2016 budget, meaning that things got even worse in October, 2016 – the first month of the federal fiscal year when these cuts hit the worse, and, no coincidence, the month before the presidential election.

Rubio's October Surprise was extraordinarily effective. October 2016 saw an explosion of stories in the news about how health insurance companies were either pulling out of ACA exchanges, or jacking their prices up wildly.

Time magazine wrote "8 States Where Obamacare Rates Are Rising by at Least 30%" without mentioning Rubio's role in why. Ditto for NPR's "22 Percent Hike in Obamacare Rates…" and CNN's "Obamacare Premiums Soar By 22%." If you date-limit just to October of 2016 - the month before the election - you can find hundreds of similar articles. It was a huge story, but somehow Little Marco's role in it all - along with his friends in the GOP - never made it into any of the stories.

Only the Times, back the previous year, had really given much coverage to the story, noting, "[B]ecause of Mr. Rubio’s efforts, the administration says it will pay only 13 percent of what insurance companies were expecting to receive this year. The payments were supposed to help insurers cope with the risks they assumed when they decided to participate in the law’s new insurance marketplaces."

Meanwhile, federal judge Thomas Wheeler of the US Court of Federal Claims, ruled recently (as reported last month by Forbes) that the feds actually have to pay back - to the tune of about $8 billion – the moneys lost by health insurance companies operationg in good faith.

But it's way too late; dozens of nonprofits started to provide health insurance through the exchanges have already gone bankrupt, and the health insurance giants are both subsuming their smaller competitors and merging like there's no tomorrow. Additionally, Wheeler's ruling is certain to be appealed – meaning it's in limbo for the moment.

So, yes, Donald Trump is right that Obamacare had been sabotaged, in a way that would virtually guarantee at least some level of crisis by 2017. Where he's sadly, paranoiacly wrong is in attributing that sabotage to President Obama.

Democrats should have been screaming bloody murder for the past 2 years. Maybe they can start now, every time a reporter or Republican says, "Obamacare is failing…"

WOW! I didn't know this. Than you for posting this!!! This is yet another proof of how craven Republicans are and how terrible the Dems are in defending themselves from Republican Tricks and Lies. They were so focused on stopping Bernie that they failed to tell the American Voters what was really going on. Bad job by the Dems to just let this happen without exposing it and screaming from the rooftops that Republicans had been SABOTAGING the ACA since day one!!!

What would be the point? It's not like they have claimed to support Obamacare. In fact they said they would do everything possible to make it fail. They are true to what they said they would do and their base sees it that way. The problem isn't that they weren't "exposed" - it's that their policies end up costing mainstream Americans. But as long as that cost falls disproportionately on non whites their base is absolutely fine with it.

Well Trump Country is about to get hit HARD by his and the Republicans Policies!!! Trump lied to all those people and now they're about to lose a LOT. They're already hurting and the Republicans don't care and have NEVER cared. In Georgia where I live there are nearly a half million people who have no healthcare because of the Republicans refusal to accept Medicaid Expansion. These rural hospitals are closing. They've cut all of the Social programs.

The Republicans were able to blame everything on Obama for years but now the truth will come out. They can't blame it all on Dems anymore.

Those Trump voters will probably blame Obama, immigrants and muslims rather than look in the mirror and admit they made a mistake voting for trump. We are now in the age of stupid- probably as long as he builds that stupid wall (with money and resources that could have been sent on schools, houses, hospitals, industries) and keeps up his attack on muslims and immigrants, they will be happy. For much of this century people have been happy to be screwed over in the pursuit of their own bigotry.

Illegal immigrants in particular, are always going to be part of the problem. Not just in terms of healthcare, but education costs as well.

Nevermind the facts...

The avg cost in the US for education is $12k per/year and it's illegal to deny these kids public education.
The avg cost of delivering the child of an illegal immigrant is about $5k-10k before the hospital stay... Covered by medicaid.
After this, we provide free formula, diapers and healthcare until that child is 18.

Over 300k anchor babies are born here each year... You do the math.

You're assuming those children will then fail to contribute in any way to the economy, which is actually very difficult to do. Once they start paying taxes they more than pay what they cost (and thats assuming they don't go on to do anything special). Go look at all the major contributions that children of immigrants have contributed to the country.

smackeddog wrote:

gr33d wrote:

smackeddog wrote:

nixluva wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

nixluva wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/thom-hartmann-how-republicans-quietly-sabotaged-obamacare-long-trump-came-office

Thom Hartmann: How Republicans Quietly Sabotaged Obamacare Long Before Trump Came into Office

Donald Trump suggested that the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) was a clever ruse by our first Black president and his Democratic friends to have a successful health-care system in place for his own presidency, but one that was set up to fail in the first year of the next president's term.

Trump said (on 3/10/2017) that this year "would be a disaster for Obamacare. That's the year it was meant to explode, because Obama won't be here. That's when it was supposed to be, get even worse. As bad as it is now, it'll get even worse."

While most people are rolling their eyes - why would Obama do that, particularly when everybody expected the next president to be Hillary? - there's actually a substantial grain of truth to Trump's assertion. He has identified, however, the wrong culprit as the person who poison-pilled Obamacare for 2017.

That distinction would go to Marco Rubio (and his Republican helpers in the Senate). Let's step back to 2015 for the entire story, which is bizarre and fascinating.

When the ACA was rolled out, telling insurance companies that they had to insure anybody who signed up, regardless of previous conditions or sickness, everybody realized that the insurance companies would probably lose money in the first decade or so, until previously-uninsured-but-sick people got into the system, got better, and things evened out.

To get the insurance companies to go along with this danger of losing money, the ACA promised to make them whole for any losses in any of the first decade's years. At the end of each fiscal year, the insurance companies merely had to document their losses, and the government would reimburse them out of ACA funds provided for by the law.

The possibility of their losing money was referred to as the "risk corridor," and the ACA explicitly filled those risk corridors with a guarantee of making the insurance companies, at the very least, whole.

And then something happened. As The New York Times noted on December 9, 2015, "A little-noticed health care provision slipped into a giant spending law last year has tangled up the Obama administration, sent tremors through health insurance markets and rattled confidence in the durability of President Obama’s signature health law."

Rubio and a number of other Republicans had succeeded in gutting the risk corridors. The result was that, just in 2015, end-of-fiscal-year risk corridor payments to insurance companies that were supposed to total around $2.9 billion were only reimbursed, according to Rubio himself quoted in the Times, to the tune of around $400 million. Rubio bragged that he'd "saved taxpayers $2.5 billion."

And, indeed, he had. But the insurance companies were thrown into a crisis. And, with Republicans in Congress absolutely refusing to re-fund the risk corridors, that crisis would get worse as time went on, at least over a period of a few years.

So the insurance companies did the only things they could. In (mostly red) states with low incomes and thus poorer health, they simply pulled out of the marketplace altogether. This has left some states with only one single insurer left. In others, they jacked up their prices to make up their losses.

As Robert Pear in the Times noted, Rubio's "plan limiting how much the government can spend to protect insurance companies against financial losses has shown the effectiveness of quiet legislative sabotage."

To add to the political psychodrama, the first hack by Rubio was maintained by Republicans into the 2016 budget, meaning that things got even worse in October, 2016 – the first month of the federal fiscal year when these cuts hit the worse, and, no coincidence, the month before the presidential election.

Rubio's October Surprise was extraordinarily effective. October 2016 saw an explosion of stories in the news about how health insurance companies were either pulling out of ACA exchanges, or jacking their prices up wildly.

Time magazine wrote "8 States Where Obamacare Rates Are Rising by at Least 30%" without mentioning Rubio's role in why. Ditto for NPR's "22 Percent Hike in Obamacare Rates…" and CNN's "Obamacare Premiums Soar By 22%." If you date-limit just to October of 2016 - the month before the election - you can find hundreds of similar articles. It was a huge story, but somehow Little Marco's role in it all - along with his friends in the GOP - never made it into any of the stories.

Only the Times, back the previous year, had really given much coverage to the story, noting, "[B]ecause of Mr. Rubio’s efforts, the administration says it will pay only 13 percent of what insurance companies were expecting to receive this year. The payments were supposed to help insurers cope with the risks they assumed when they decided to participate in the law’s new insurance marketplaces."

Meanwhile, federal judge Thomas Wheeler of the US Court of Federal Claims, ruled recently (as reported last month by Forbes) that the feds actually have to pay back - to the tune of about $8 billion – the moneys lost by health insurance companies operationg in good faith.

But it's way too late; dozens of nonprofits started to provide health insurance through the exchanges have already gone bankrupt, and the health insurance giants are both subsuming their smaller competitors and merging like there's no tomorrow. Additionally, Wheeler's ruling is certain to be appealed – meaning it's in limbo for the moment.

So, yes, Donald Trump is right that Obamacare had been sabotaged, in a way that would virtually guarantee at least some level of crisis by 2017. Where he's sadly, paranoiacly wrong is in attributing that sabotage to President Obama.

Democrats should have been screaming bloody murder for the past 2 years. Maybe they can start now, every time a reporter or Republican says, "Obamacare is failing…"

WOW! I didn't know this. Than you for posting this!!! This is yet another proof of how craven Republicans are and how terrible the Dems are in defending themselves from Republican Tricks and Lies. They were so focused on stopping Bernie that they failed to tell the American Voters what was really going on. Bad job by the Dems to just let this happen without exposing it and screaming from the rooftops that Republicans had been SABOTAGING the ACA since day one!!!

What would be the point? It's not like they have claimed to support Obamacare. In fact they said they would do everything possible to make it fail. They are true to what they said they would do and their base sees it that way. The problem isn't that they weren't "exposed" - it's that their policies end up costing mainstream Americans. But as long as that cost falls disproportionately on non whites their base is absolutely fine with it.

Well Trump Country is about to get hit HARD by his and the Republicans Policies!!! Trump lied to all those people and now they're about to lose a LOT. They're already hurting and the Republicans don't care and have NEVER cared. In Georgia where I live there are nearly a half million people who have no healthcare because of the Republicans refusal to accept Medicaid Expansion. These rural hospitals are closing. They've cut all of the Social programs.

The Republicans were able to blame everything on Obama for years but now the truth will come out. They can't blame it all on Dems anymore.

Those Trump voters will probably blame Obama, immigrants and muslims rather than look in the mirror and admit they made a mistake voting for trump. We are now in the age of stupid- probably as long as he builds that stupid wall (with money and resources that could have been sent on schools, houses, hospitals, industries) and keeps up his attack on muslims and immigrants, they will be happy. For much of this century people have been happy to be screwed over in the pursuit of their own bigotry.

Illegal immigrants in particular, are always going to be part of the problem. Not just in terms of healthcare, but education costs as well.

Nevermind the facts...

The avg cost in the US for education is $12k per/year and it's illegal to deny these kids public education.
The avg cost of delivering the child of an illegal immigrant is about $5k-10k before the hospital stay... Covered by medicaid.
After this, we provide free formula, diapers and healthcare until that child is 18.

Over 300k anchor babies are born here each year... You do the math.

You're assuming those children will then fail to contribute in any way to the economy, which is actually very difficult to do. Once they start paying taxes they more than pay what they cost (and thats assuming they don't go on to do anything special). Go look at all the major contributions that children of immigrants have contributed to the country.

How is that even possible?

They're paying back the cost of delivery, 18-20 years worth of healthcare, schooling, afterschool programs, etc?

And where do I apply for the same benefit?

holfresh wrote:

gr33d wrote:

holfresh wrote:

gr33d wrote:

smackeddog wrote:

nixluva wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

nixluva wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/thom-hartmann-how-republicans-quietly-sabotaged-obamacare-long-trump-came-office

Thom Hartmann: How Republicans Quietly Sabotaged Obamacare Long Before Trump Came into Office

Donald Trump suggested that the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) was a clever ruse by our first Black president and his Democratic friends to have a successful health-care system in place for his own presidency, but one that was set up to fail in the first year of the next president's term.

Trump said (on 3/10/2017) that this year "would be a disaster for Obamacare. That's the year it was meant to explode, because Obama won't be here. That's when it was supposed to be, get even worse. As bad as it is now, it'll get even worse."

While most people are rolling their eyes - why would Obama do that, particularly when everybody expected the next president to be Hillary? - there's actually a substantial grain of truth to Trump's assertion. He has identified, however, the wrong culprit as the person who poison-pilled Obamacare for 2017.

That distinction would go to Marco Rubio (and his Republican helpers in the Senate). Let's step back to 2015 for the entire story, which is bizarre and fascinating.

When the ACA was rolled out, telling insurance companies that they had to insure anybody who signed up, regardless of previous conditions or sickness, everybody realized that the insurance companies would probably lose money in the first decade or so, until previously-uninsured-but-sick people got into the system, got better, and things evened out.

To get the insurance companies to go along with this danger of losing money, the ACA promised to make them whole for any losses in any of the first decade's years. At the end of each fiscal year, the insurance companies merely had to document their losses, and the government would reimburse them out of ACA funds provided for by the law.

The possibility of their losing money was referred to as the "risk corridor," and the ACA explicitly filled those risk corridors with a guarantee of making the insurance companies, at the very least, whole.

And then something happened. As The New York Times noted on December 9, 2015, "A little-noticed health care provision slipped into a giant spending law last year has tangled up the Obama administration, sent tremors through health insurance markets and rattled confidence in the durability of President Obama’s signature health law."

Rubio and a number of other Republicans had succeeded in gutting the risk corridors. The result was that, just in 2015, end-of-fiscal-year risk corridor payments to insurance companies that were supposed to total around $2.9 billion were only reimbursed, according to Rubio himself quoted in the Times, to the tune of around $400 million. Rubio bragged that he'd "saved taxpayers $2.5 billion."

And, indeed, he had. But the insurance companies were thrown into a crisis. And, with Republicans in Congress absolutely refusing to re-fund the risk corridors, that crisis would get worse as time went on, at least over a period of a few years.

So the insurance companies did the only things they could. In (mostly red) states with low incomes and thus poorer health, they simply pulled out of the marketplace altogether. This has left some states with only one single insurer left. In others, they jacked up their prices to make up their losses.

As Robert Pear in the Times noted, Rubio's "plan limiting how much the government can spend to protect insurance companies against financial losses has shown the effectiveness of quiet legislative sabotage."

To add to the political psychodrama, the first hack by Rubio was maintained by Republicans into the 2016 budget, meaning that things got even worse in October, 2016 – the first month of the federal fiscal year when these cuts hit the worse, and, no coincidence, the month before the presidential election.

Rubio's October Surprise was extraordinarily effective. October 2016 saw an explosion of stories in the news about how health insurance companies were either pulling out of ACA exchanges, or jacking their prices up wildly.

Time magazine wrote "8 States Where Obamacare Rates Are Rising by at Least 30%" without mentioning Rubio's role in why. Ditto for NPR's "22 Percent Hike in Obamacare Rates…" and CNN's "Obamacare Premiums Soar By 22%." If you date-limit just to October of 2016 - the month before the election - you can find hundreds of similar articles. It was a huge story, but somehow Little Marco's role in it all - along with his friends in the GOP - never made it into any of the stories.

Only the Times, back the previous year, had really given much coverage to the story, noting, "[B]ecause of Mr. Rubio’s efforts, the administration says it will pay only 13 percent of what insurance companies were expecting to receive this year. The payments were supposed to help insurers cope with the risks they assumed when they decided to participate in the law’s new insurance marketplaces."

Meanwhile, federal judge Thomas Wheeler of the US Court of Federal Claims, ruled recently (as reported last month by Forbes) that the feds actually have to pay back - to the tune of about $8 billion – the moneys lost by health insurance companies operationg in good faith.

But it's way too late; dozens of nonprofits started to provide health insurance through the exchanges have already gone bankrupt, and the health insurance giants are both subsuming their smaller competitors and merging like there's no tomorrow. Additionally, Wheeler's ruling is certain to be appealed – meaning it's in limbo for the moment.

So, yes, Donald Trump is right that Obamacare had been sabotaged, in a way that would virtually guarantee at least some level of crisis by 2017. Where he's sadly, paranoiacly wrong is in attributing that sabotage to President Obama.

Democrats should have been screaming bloody murder for the past 2 years. Maybe they can start now, every time a reporter or Republican says, "Obamacare is failing…"

WOW! I didn't know this. Than you for posting this!!! This is yet another proof of how craven Republicans are and how terrible the Dems are in defending themselves from Republican Tricks and Lies. They were so focused on stopping Bernie that they failed to tell the American Voters what was really going on. Bad job by the Dems to just let this happen without exposing it and screaming from the rooftops that Republicans had been SABOTAGING the ACA since day one!!!

What would be the point? It's not like they have claimed to support Obamacare. In fact they said they would do everything possible to make it fail. They are true to what they said they would do and their base sees it that way. The problem isn't that they weren't "exposed" - it's that their policies end up costing mainstream Americans. But as long as that cost falls disproportionately on non whites their base is absolutely fine with it.

Well Trump Country is about to get hit HARD by his and the Republicans Policies!!! Trump lied to all those people and now they're about to lose a LOT. They're already hurting and the Republicans don't care and have NEVER cared. In Georgia where I live there are nearly a half million people who have no healthcare because of the Republicans refusal to accept Medicaid Expansion. These rural hospitals are closing. They've cut all of the Social programs.

The Republicans were able to blame everything on Obama for years but now the truth will come out. They can't blame it all on Dems anymore.

Those Trump voters will probably blame Obama, immigrants and muslims rather than look in the mirror and admit they made a mistake voting for trump. We are now in the age of stupid- probably as long as he builds that stupid wall (with money and resources that could have been sent on schools, houses, hospitals, industries) and keeps up his attack on muslims and immigrants, they will be happy. For much of this century people have been happy to be screwed over in the pursuit of their own bigotry.

Illegal immigrants in particular, are always going to be part of the problem. Not just in terms of healthcare, but education costs as well.

Nevermind the facts...

The avg cost in the US for education is $12k per/year and it's illegal to deny these kids public education.
The avg cost of delivering the child of an illegal immigrant is about $5k-10k before the hospital stay... Covered by medicaid.
After this, we provide free formula, diapers and healthcare until that child is 18.

Over 300k anchor babies are born here each year... You do the math.

Trump's travel to Mayo-Largo is on pace to equal $360 million in his first term, do you see a problem with that given the immigration data you are concerned about??

Another pivot.

Why not also discuss the 100m spent on Obamas travel; these costs are absurd and should be capped for all administrations. Why not discuss the cost of FBI investigations into the nonsense Hillary Clinton pulled with her servers? Almost 20m dollars for her stupidity, then another 7-8m for Benghazi.

If Trump continues to spend taxpayer dollars at that rate, which are just estimates btw... He should be forced to pay it back, no question. I've also seen estimates around 1/3 that total, so we'll have to let it play out.

Back to healthcare:

In 2007, the estimated hospital costs were nearly 6 BILLION dollars for deliveries alone... Add 10 years of inflation... Add emergency rooms visits, that are used as primary care physicians.

Obama cost tax payers 85 mil over 8 years in travel expenses...Trump is on pace for 360 mil to Maya-Largo alone in just 4 years...Let's not count the cost of protecting Trump Tower in NY and other properties...He also charges the Secret Service for space in Trump Tower to protect him...Republicans made Hillary and Benghazi and issue to investigate...It was all political and nonsense, a complete waste of taxpayer monies...

Healthcare:




Birth rates are lowering and cost are skyrocketing..None of which is the point...Just to show the concern is politically manufactured...More to the point should be cost of healthcare in this country which the ACA slowed the inflation of healthcare...But we saw the Republicans tried and succeeded in sabotaging that effort...You can't possible care about healthcare cost and not be outraged that the Republicans gutted ACA which directly added to cost inflation for political gain...

Birthrates are critically low and it might someday soon be a problem.

STOP giving away free healthcare... It's billions of dollars per year, that lower and middle class people can no longer offset.

Obamacare was a joke... Middle and lower class either paid the penalty or bitched that the coverage was worthless.

gr33d wrote:

holfresh wrote:

gr33d wrote:

holfresh wrote:

gr33d wrote:

smackeddog wrote:

nixluva wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

nixluva wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/thom-hartmann-how-republicans-quietly-sabotaged-obamacare-long-trump-came-office

Thom Hartmann: How Republicans Quietly Sabotaged Obamacare Long Before Trump Came into Office

Donald Trump suggested that the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) was a clever ruse by our first Black president and his Democratic friends to have a successful health-care system in place for his own presidency, but one that was set up to fail in the first year of the next president's term.

Trump said (on 3/10/2017) that this year "would be a disaster for Obamacare. That's the year it was meant to explode, because Obama won't be here. That's when it was supposed to be, get even worse. As bad as it is now, it'll get even worse."

While most people are rolling their eyes - why would Obama do that, particularly when everybody expected the next president to be Hillary? - there's actually a substantial grain of truth to Trump's assertion. He has identified, however, the wrong culprit as the person who poison-pilled Obamacare for 2017.

That distinction would go to Marco Rubio (and his Republican helpers in the Senate). Let's step back to 2015 for the entire story, which is bizarre and fascinating.

When the ACA was rolled out, telling insurance companies that they had to insure anybody who signed up, regardless of previous conditions or sickness, everybody realized that the insurance companies would probably lose money in the first decade or so, until previously-uninsured-but-sick people got into the system, got better, and things evened out.

To get the insurance companies to go along with this danger of losing money, the ACA promised to make them whole for any losses in any of the first decade's years. At the end of each fiscal year, the insurance companies merely had to document their losses, and the government would reimburse them out of ACA funds provided for by the law.

The possibility of their losing money was referred to as the "risk corridor," and the ACA explicitly filled those risk corridors with a guarantee of making the insurance companies, at the very least, whole.

And then something happened. As The New York Times noted on December 9, 2015, "A little-noticed health care provision slipped into a giant spending law last year has tangled up the Obama administration, sent tremors through health insurance markets and rattled confidence in the durability of President Obama’s signature health law."

Rubio and a number of other Republicans had succeeded in gutting the risk corridors. The result was that, just in 2015, end-of-fiscal-year risk corridor payments to insurance companies that were supposed to total around $2.9 billion were only reimbursed, according to Rubio himself quoted in the Times, to the tune of around $400 million. Rubio bragged that he'd "saved taxpayers $2.5 billion."

And, indeed, he had. But the insurance companies were thrown into a crisis. And, with Republicans in Congress absolutely refusing to re-fund the risk corridors, that crisis would get worse as time went on, at least over a period of a few years.

So the insurance companies did the only things they could. In (mostly red) states with low incomes and thus poorer health, they simply pulled out of the marketplace altogether. This has left some states with only one single insurer left. In others, they jacked up their prices to make up their losses.

As Robert Pear in the Times noted, Rubio's "plan limiting how much the government can spend to protect insurance companies against financial losses has shown the effectiveness of quiet legislative sabotage."

To add to the political psychodrama, the first hack by Rubio was maintained by Republicans into the 2016 budget, meaning that things got even worse in October, 2016 – the first month of the federal fiscal year when these cuts hit the worse, and, no coincidence, the month before the presidential election.

Rubio's October Surprise was extraordinarily effective. October 2016 saw an explosion of stories in the news about how health insurance companies were either pulling out of ACA exchanges, or jacking their prices up wildly.

Time magazine wrote "8 States Where Obamacare Rates Are Rising by at Least 30%" without mentioning Rubio's role in why. Ditto for NPR's "22 Percent Hike in Obamacare Rates…" and CNN's "Obamacare Premiums Soar By 22%." If you date-limit just to October of 2016 - the month before the election - you can find hundreds of similar articles. It was a huge story, but somehow Little Marco's role in it all - along with his friends in the GOP - never made it into any of the stories.

Only the Times, back the previous year, had really given much coverage to the story, noting, "[B]ecause of Mr. Rubio’s efforts, the administration says it will pay only 13 percent of what insurance companies were expecting to receive this year. The payments were supposed to help insurers cope with the risks they assumed when they decided to participate in the law’s new insurance marketplaces."

Meanwhile, federal judge Thomas Wheeler of the US Court of Federal Claims, ruled recently (as reported last month by Forbes) that the feds actually have to pay back - to the tune of about $8 billion – the moneys lost by health insurance companies operationg in good faith.

But it's way too late; dozens of nonprofits started to provide health insurance through the exchanges have already gone bankrupt, and the health insurance giants are both subsuming their smaller competitors and merging like there's no tomorrow. Additionally, Wheeler's ruling is certain to be appealed – meaning it's in limbo for the moment.

So, yes, Donald Trump is right that Obamacare had been sabotaged, in a way that would virtually guarantee at least some level of crisis by 2017. Where he's sadly, paranoiacly wrong is in attributing that sabotage to President Obama.

Democrats should have been screaming bloody murder for the past 2 years. Maybe they can start now, every time a reporter or Republican says, "Obamacare is failing…"

WOW! I didn't know this. Than you for posting this!!! This is yet another proof of how craven Republicans are and how terrible the Dems are in defending themselves from Republican Tricks and Lies. They were so focused on stopping Bernie that they failed to tell the American Voters what was really going on. Bad job by the Dems to just let this happen without exposing it and screaming from the rooftops that Republicans had been SABOTAGING the ACA since day one!!!

What would be the point? It's not like they have claimed to support Obamacare. In fact they said they would do everything possible to make it fail. They are true to what they said they would do and their base sees it that way. The problem isn't that they weren't "exposed" - it's that their policies end up costing mainstream Americans. But as long as that cost falls disproportionately on non whites their base is absolutely fine with it.

Well Trump Country is about to get hit HARD by his and the Republicans Policies!!! Trump lied to all those people and now they're about to lose a LOT. They're already hurting and the Republicans don't care and have NEVER cared. In Georgia where I live there are nearly a half million people who have no healthcare because of the Republicans refusal to accept Medicaid Expansion. These rural hospitals are closing. They've cut all of the Social programs.

The Republicans were able to blame everything on Obama for years but now the truth will come out. They can't blame it all on Dems anymore.

Those Trump voters will probably blame Obama, immigrants and muslims rather than look in the mirror and admit they made a mistake voting for trump. We are now in the age of stupid- probably as long as he builds that stupid wall (with money and resources that could have been sent on schools, houses, hospitals, industries) and keeps up his attack on muslims and immigrants, they will be happy. For much of this century people have been happy to be screwed over in the pursuit of their own bigotry.

Illegal immigrants in particular, are always going to be part of the problem. Not just in terms of healthcare, but education costs as well.

Nevermind the facts...

The avg cost in the US for education is $12k per/year and it's illegal to deny these kids public education.
The avg cost of delivering the child of an illegal immigrant is about $5k-10k before the hospital stay... Covered by medicaid.
After this, we provide free formula, diapers and healthcare until that child is 18.

Over 300k anchor babies are born here each year... You do the math.

Trump's travel to Mayo-Largo is on pace to equal $360 million in his first term, do you see a problem with that given the immigration data you are concerned about??

Another pivot.

Why not also discuss the 100m spent on Obamas travel; these costs are absurd and should be capped for all administrations. Why not discuss the cost of FBI investigations into the nonsense Hillary Clinton pulled with her servers? Almost 20m dollars for her stupidity, then another 7-8m for Benghazi.

If Trump continues to spend taxpayer dollars at that rate, which are just estimates btw... He should be forced to pay it back, no question. I've also seen estimates around 1/3 that total, so we'll have to let it play out.

Back to healthcare:

In 2007, the estimated hospital costs were nearly 6 BILLION dollars for deliveries alone... Add 10 years of inflation... Add emergency rooms visits, that are used as primary care physicians.

Obama cost tax payers 85 mil over 8 years in travel expenses...Trump is on pace for 360 mil to Maya-Largo alone in just 4 years...Let's not count the cost of protecting Trump Tower in NY and other properties...He also charges the Secret Service for space in Trump Tower to protect him...Republicans made Hillary and Benghazi and issue to investigate...It was all political and nonsense, a complete waste of taxpayer monies...

Healthcare:




Birth rates are lowering and cost are skyrocketing..None of which is the point...Just to show the concern is politically manufactured...More to the point should be cost of healthcare in this country which the ACA slowed the inflation of healthcare...But we saw the Republicans tried and succeeded in sabotaging that effort...You can't possible care about healthcare cost and not be outraged that the Republicans gutted ACA which directly added to cost inflation for political gain...

Birthrates are critically low and it might someday soon be a problem.

STOP giving away free healthcare... It's billions of dollars per year, that lower and middle class people can no longer offset.

Obamacare was a joke... Middle and lower class either paid the penalty or bitched that the coverage was worthless.

So could you then explain please why public, mandatory (and NOT free as you write) health care works in basically every other western country?
It that basic american fear to get ripped off by somebody in your society that tricks the system and is lazy and you gotta pay for jim that makes you blind for the benefits to all society!!!
Ironically this American fear is so NON-christian (and non-islamic brw as well) its crazy!!!

Btw you wanna know how most FMCG companies reacted to th influx of refugees into Europe?!
They asked the big data companies for estimates on the buying power by this consumer group...
At the end refugees are soooo much more than a liability to any society!!!

holfresh wrote:Only good to come of today, is that Trump and his campaign is being investigated by the FBI...

That was huge!!! There will be more bombshells to come from all of this. Just to get the go ahead for disclosing the investigation means there's meat on the bones.

gunsnewing wrote:Not talking about here but I'm getting pretty sick and tired of the keyboard social justice warriors. Do they actually believe they are going to get this President impeached? He won deal with it. The whinning isn't going to accomplish anything. If they are so outraged then get off there asses and do something about it!

Stop being snowflsked and go physically remove him from the god damn white house. Stop whining and do something. I could care less. Stop protesting and getting on social media. Get out there and do something. Don't make a stupid sign and march up and down some street disrupting those trying to get to work. Get off your asses and do something real!SOMETHING REAL! LOL Go for it if you feel so so passionate.

Do you really think there will be no consequences for Trump and the Republicans based on this debacle??? Trump is an embarrassment and a fraud and he's proving to have been a huge mistake by his voters. 2018 and 2020 will be a massive response from the voters to all this nonsense and the Republican policies.