Replies to post #215503 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[F6]

SilverSurfer -- yep, that's a balanced look at things (and as if you'd agree with much of what that author wants to see in any event) -- all those things (to the extent they're real/accurately portrayed), every last bit, are solely and entirely Obama's fault, solely and entirely his doing, no other considerations or actors involved, and they all unambiguously show his evil

and bad on Obama that he hasn't somehow made himself an absolute dictator and forced everything to be made just right (where he has in fact wanted and continues to want to do a number of things that would have made/would make significant positive differences in at least pretty much all such things)

(. . .)

[fuagf]

F6, covered it in his first reply ..
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=95210733

[arizona1]

In fact, his approval rating is lower than Bush’s was in his fifth year in office.

Uh oh!!

Boing! POTUS Approval Rating Jumps 5 Points in 1 Week Thanks to ACA Signups

From Gallup, President Obama's Job Approval Rating:

% APPROVE % DISAPPROVE
12/27-29/2013. 44% 49%
12/26-28/2013 44%. 49%
12/23-27/2013 42% 52%
12/22-26/2013 40% 53%
12/21-23/2013 39% 54%

http://www.gallup.com/...

A bit more on the bounce, from politicususa.com:

President Obama is beginning 2014 on the upswing as millions are signing up for the ACA, and his approval rating has increased by 5 points according to Gallup.

The Gallup Obama approval daily tracking poll reveals that the president’s approval rating has jumped five points since the days before Christmas from 39%-44%. Disapproval of the president has fallen from 54%-49%. President Obama’s approval numbers shift wildly based on the tone of the media coverage that he is receiving, but media’s negativity was hiding a convergence of positive things.

Now that the ACA website is repaired, and millions of Americans are signing up, the media’s endless drumbeat of negativity has temporarily stopped. Without the Republican fueled Obama bashing from the corporate media, the president’s approval rating has gone up, and his disapproval rating has gone down.
http://www.politicususa.com/...

w0000000000t! Though I'd like to see President Obama's approval rating climb even more, maybe to over 50%, FSM (and MSM) willing.

Yesterday, on New Years's Eve, the Department of Health and Human Services released this statement:

...We are encouraged that over 6 million people have been enrolled in Marketplace or Medicaid coverage since October 1, and will work to give millions more Americans the peace of mind that comes with health security in the months ahead.
http://www.hhs.gov/...

And guess what - all that coverage started TODAY!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/01/1266500/-Boing-POTUS-Approval-Rating-Jumps-5-Points-in-1-Week-Thanks-to-ACA-Signups

[fuagf]

7 predicted Obamacare disasters that never happened

Updated by Sarah Kliff on July 15, 2014, 2:00 p.m. ET @sarahkliff [e-mail]



Back in the fall of 2013, it wasn't exactly a bold move to predict Obamacare would turn out to be a complete disaster. Americans are "not interested" in signing up, talk radio host Rush Limbaugh declared on his radio show in late October.

House Speaker John Boehner was a bit more pointed. "When you step back and look at the totality of this," he said at a November press conference, "I don't think it's ever going to work."

These days, Obamacare seems to be working reasonably well. More Americans .. http://www.vox.com/2014/7/10/5888409/obamacare-cuts-uninsured-rate .. have health insurance now than did a year ago. People who bought Obamacare say .. http://www.vox.com/2014/7/10/5887105/for-millions-who-signed-up-obamacare-is-working?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=mattyglesias&utm_content=thursday .. they're generally pretty happy with their health insurance plans and that they can mostly get a doctor appointment within two weeks.

Looking back at expectations set last fall and this spring shows how terribly pundits and politicians expected Obamacare to go — and how much of the predicted disaster never actually happened.

1) The website will never work



(Joe Raedle / Getty News Images)

"Obama's healthcare.gov will never work as specified," Forbes contributor Bill Frezza argued on October 28 .. http://www.forbes.com/sites/billfrezza/2013/10/28/why-obamas-healthcare-gov-will-never-work-as-specified/. He made the case there was no way that the Obama administration could fix the Helathcare.gov mess legally.

"It can only be fixed by breaking the law-the 'settled law' Democrats seem so fond of these days," he writes there. "Someone has to decide which rules and regulations to ignore and which to enforce, which to enact and which to delay, who is to be exempted and who is to be railroaded."

Frezza's warning was among a chorus of the first wave of failure predictions .. http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/when-will-the-aca-exchanges-be-working/: that Healthcare.gov wouldn't be fixed any time soon — if ever.

Healthcare.gov was definitely a disaster during its first two months; only six people managed to sign up on its first day. But it was essentially fixed by the end of November, when most people were able to use the website to purchase health insurance coverage. As recounted in Steve Brill's Time magazine .. http://time.com/10228/obamas-trauma-team/ .. cover, the story behind Healthcare.gov'sn around was a bunch of tech geeks getting into a room and figuring out how to make a website work. It wasn't about throwing rules overboard.

2) Even if the website works, nobody wants to buy Obamacare



(William Thomas Cain / Getty Images News)

Rush Limbaugh predicted on his October 24 .. http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/10/24/america_isn_t_signing_up_for_obamacare .. that Americans would never sign up for the insurance expansion, regardless of whether Healthcare.gov got fixed. He pointed to states like New York that had functional websites yet, in the first month of open enrollment, few sign-ups.

---
"Limbaugh predicted, even if Healthcare.gov worked, shoppers wouldn't buy."
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"There are states out there that are not having any troubles whatsoever on their websites for people to get health insurance," Limbaugh says in the same show. "The thing remarkable about those states is nobody's signing up. New York state, nobody has gone to that website to sign up."

About 8 million people signed up for private insurance coverage. This likely had to do with the fact the law has lots of strong incentives to purchase insurance, from government subsidies to a mandate that most Americans need to carry coverage.

It was hard to sign up for Obamacare. But what too many insured pundits forgot is it's much worse to be uninsured, or underinsured. And that's true, too, for the people who saw their plans canceled by Obamacare and then needed to decide whether to sign up for a new one.

3) Obamacare definitely won't meet its enrollment goal

"At this pace, the Obama administration will never be able to meet their enrollment goals," Sen. Orrin Hatch's office declared in (R-Utah) a November 13 press release. The senator described the 106,000 enrollees as "a far cry from the hundreds of thousands of Americans the Administration said would sign-up for ObamaCare by the end of the month.

---
"people who couldn't buy in october seemed to come back in march"
---

The disparity between the Obama administration's projected sign-ups — and the actual people enrolling in coverage — persisted through the end of 2013, as did predictions that the 7 million enrollees goal was unattainable. As my then-colleague at the Washington Post (and now colleague here at Vox) Ezra Klein wrote .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/11/26/obamacare-wont-get-7-million-enrollees-in-2014-and-thats-okay/ .. in November, "Obamacare won't get 7 million enrollees in 2014 — and that's okay."

Those predictions ultimately missed the surge in sign-ups that would happen in late March. When it came down to March 31 the deadline to purchase insurance coverage, lots of shoppers rushed to buy coverage.



It wasn't that Obamacare missed its sign-up targets. Forecasters, instead, seemed to have missed how strongly the final deadline would motivate enrollment. People who couldn't get the website to work in October or November seem to have returned to shop in February and March.

4) Only people who already had coverage are signing up

This was a three-pronged argument .. http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/mar/26/rich-lowry/were-most-obamacare-sign-ups-people-who-had-insura/ .. that showed up in late 2013. Even if Healthcare.gov were fixed and people signed up for insurance, it would just be the people replacing old insurance plans. Nobody new would actually gain private insurance.

"What you have basically done is a churn where you've knocked people off their old insurance and then gotten them on the exchanges," the National Review's Rich Lowry argued on Meet the Press. "There's not much upside to that."

Much of this prediction was fueled by an early report from the consulting firm McKinsey, which showed only one in ten Obamacare enrollees were newly insured.

Subsequent data, from McKinsey and other groups suggests that a larger chunk of exchange enrollees were gaining new insurance coverage.



The estimates range between different surveys for reasons explained here .. http://www.vox.com/2014/6/19/5821662/survey-57-percent-of-obamacare-enrollees-were-previously-uninsured. There is definitely a sizable population of exchange enrollees lacked insurance coverage prior to signing up through Healthcare.gov or a state exchange.

5) Obamacare would cause a net-loss of insurance

House Speaker John Boehner argued in March that it was possible fewer people had health insurance after the health law's insurance expansion than prior to it.

He said there that the most recently available data would indicate "indicate to me a net loss of people with health insurance. And I actually do believe that to be the case."'

The math behind his statement: Obamacare had, at that point, 4.2 million enrollees in the the exchanges. An estimated 6 million people had received cancellation notices from the plans they used to — ergo, there were more people receiving cancellation notices than signing up for Obamacare.

What that misses, however, are the people who were purchasing insurance outside of the marketplace. Shoppers who didn't qualify for subsidies could access the exact same insurance plans with fewer technical glitches by going to an insurance broker.

It also completely ignores Medicaid, which has expanded by 6.7 million enrollees since September. All available data very strongly suggests that Obamacare has led to a significant net decrease in the number of Americans who lack insurance coverage.



6) Premiums will skyrocket

About this time last year, there were lots of predictions that some people who buy their own health insurance would see their rates more than double .. http://www.forbes.com/special-report/2014/obamacare_map/index.html# .. under Obamacare. Then these predictions showed up again for 2015 rates, with headlines like "O-Care Premiums to Skyrocket .. http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/201136-obamacare-premiums-are-about-to-skyrocket.";

What actually happened with health insurance premiums was much more modest. Prices on the exchange for this year actually came in 18 percent .. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/18/us-usa-healthcare-costs-idUSBRE96H0UM20130718 .. lower than budget forecasters had initially expected.

Prices for people who were already buying insurance did go up this year, by an estimated 14 to 28 percent .. http://www.vox.com/2014/6/18/5818988/obamacares-sticker-shock-is-real-but-its-not-as-bad-as-advertised. That figure doesn't include any subsidies that some low and middle-income shoppers are getting to help offset the costs.

As for 2015, consulting firm Avalere Health has found insurers to submit "modest" rate increases that range significantly by state.



Insurance premiums will go up in most places in 2015, just like they did before Obamacare. But state regulators say the increases they see now are pretty similar (or sometimes lower) .. http://www.vox.com/2014/6/15/5807826/obamacare-in-washington%20 .. than the ones that happened before the Affordable Care Act took effect.

7) Obamacare just can't work



(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images News)

"When you step back and look at the totality of this," Boehner declared .. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/11/boehner-predicts-obamacare-will-never-work/ .. at a November press conference. "I don't think it's ever going to work."

There are a few metrics .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/02/four-ways-to-tell-if-obamacare-is-working/ .. to measure Obamacare's success — and, on the ones we have data for right now, the information seems to be positive. One is the uninsured rate, which seems to have fallen since the health care law's insurance expansion started.

Another is access to health care — an insurance card isn't much fun if it can't help get an appointment with a doctor. On this front, preliminary data also seems to suggest Obamacare is working: a recent Commonwealth Fund survey shows .. http://www.vox.com/2014/7/10/5887105/for-millions-who-signed-up-obamacare-is-working?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=mattyglesias&utm_content=thursday .. that most enrollees say they can get an appointment within two weeks.



Last, the health care law also aimed to control health spending growth. This is one area where there's just not a lot of data yet. We know that Obamacare has coincided with a period of real slow health cost growth, although whether it caused that slow growth is really hard to tell at this point.

But where there is data, it tends to suggest that Obamacare is doing what it was meant to do — and not realizing the disastrous Obamacare predictions.

Card 4 of 32 Launch cards .. http://www.vox.com/cards/obamacare/what-is-a-health-insurance-exchange

What is a health insurance exchange?

An insurance exchange is a website where consumers can buy health insurance plans, sometimes with financial help from the federal government. The insurance exchanges are open to all legal residents of the United States who are not in jail, although the financial assistance part is limited to lower and middle-income Americans.



Karen Bleier/AFP

Sixteen states and the District of Columbia built their own health insurance exchanges. Those all have different names like Covered California and New York State of Health. Outside of those 16 states, the insurance exchange is healthcare.Gov .. http://www.healthcare.gov/, a site built by the federal government. (There are also seven partnership exchanges that use healthcare.gov but have the state handle some of the on-the-ground support and outreach).



The insurance exchanges are essentially an online shopping mall for health insurance, where shoppers can pick between plans with different prices — and different levels of coverage. All health plans sold on the exchange are ranked by metal level, which denotes how robust — or skimpy — the insurance is .. http://kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/what-the-actuarial-values-in-the-affordable/. A bronze plan — the lowest tier — will cover 60 percent of the average enrollee’s medical bills whereas a platinum plan — the very top tier — covers, for the average enrollee, 90 percent of costs.

Once somebody picks a plan on the insurance exchange, their enrollment file gets sent electronically to the health plan .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/23/the-health-care-laws-most-important-number-834/, which typically collects the first month’s premium, sends out an ID card, and begins to provide coverage.

Everything you need to know about Obamacare
http://www.vox.com/cards/obamacare/what-is-a-health-insurance-exchange
32 Cards / Edited By Sarah Kliff Updated May 15 2014, 5:06p

http://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5898879/seven-predicted-obamacare-disasters-that-never-happened

See also:

I can't embed the video but's it's funny and worth a watch.
Watch Obamacare Misinformer Betsy McCaughey Walk Off Of An Interview With The Daily Show
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=106230541

Injustices: The Supreme Court's Nearly Unbroken History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=105836411

The ugly truth: why presidential leadership can't solve gridlock .. Ezra Klein (Vox) and Frances Lee ..

"Ted Cruz Continues His Push To Repeal 'Every Bloody Word' Of Obamacare" .. video ..
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=105428514

Costs of Crazy Issa's lawsuits
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=104433621