That argument would hold weight if congress was elected on the national level. They're not. Early polls show DNC congressional members in far more danger than GOP ones. The GOP will run on the failure and cost of Obamacare and a referendum on Obama. As I said earlier, Obama is less popular than Bush was (albeit 1 point) at the same point in his term. Remember the posts you made about Bush in 2005? Short of a huge GOP fuckup, the GOP will certainly retain the House and has a good chance at the Senate in 2014. The party in power almost always loses in midterm elections. The GOP's loss in 2006 was relatively mild compared to previous midterms. Any DNC candidate in a contested area is going to start to distance themselves far from Obama. He's an albatross at this point. I know you can't see that because he's your pony, but most Americans don't like him. His major and only true accomplishment is a colossal fuckup. Iraq was all Bush and Obama did nothing to change the course and deadline Bush set. Obama's policies had dick to do with OBL. He does deserve credit for gains made in Afghanistan, but I doubt he has the testicular fortitude to finish the job. His use of drones to kill citizens, Benghazi and NSA spying will haunt his legacy more than the loyalist who will cheer the fact he was on office when OBL got clipped. At best he's a mediocre president, at worst he's a complete disgrace. But we still have a year for the midterms and 2016 is far off. All it will take is another no name republican to talk about legitimate rape (though his comments were more intellectually honest than this dipshits who try to lump an ass slap and rape in the same statistic) before the media goes on a 24/7 spree for 3 months. We heard nothing about Benghazi leading up to the election, but plenty of morons who had nothing to do with the presidential race. It's hard to get elected when 90%+ of the people reporting on your candidacy back the other guy.What Is Obama's approval rating (rhetorically speaking) and what is the GOP Congress? Dems can dip in numbers, GOP barely have any left at all.
Now Do You See?
Started by
PERM BANNED
, Nov 05 2013 02:35 PM
21 replies to this topic
#16
PERM BANNED
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Posted 08 November 2013 - 08:41 PM
Beta male, and chubby incel doing what I do best...
#17
freedom78
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Posted 08 November 2013 - 10:33 PM
Some people call me a space cowboy....some people also call me Maurice.
We have a stuffed animal cow puppet (for our kids, and dairy themed kink).
We call him Moo-rice.
- Mr. Roboto and lynn like this
Sister burn the temple
And stand beneath the moon
The sound of the ocean is dead
It's just the echo of the blood in your head
#19
Mr. Roboto
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Posted 16 November 2013 - 08:44 PM
President Obama has been getting a lot of grief in the last few weeks over his pledge that with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in place, people would be able to keep their insurance if they like it. The media have been filled with stories about people across the country who are having their insurance policies terminated, ostensibly because they did not meet the requirements of the ACA. While this has led many to say that Obama was lying, there is much less here than meets the eye.
First, it is important to note that the ACA grand-fathered all the individual policies that were in place at the time the law was enacted. This means that the plans in effect at the time that President Obama was pushing the bill could still be offered even if they did not meet all the standards laid out in the ACA.
The plans being terminated because they don’t meet the minimal standards were all plans that insurers introduced after the passage of the ACA. Insurers introduced these plans knowing that they would not meet the standards that would come into effect in 2014. Insurers may not have informed their clients at the time they sold these plans that they would not be available after 2014 because they had designed a plan that did not comply with the ACA.
However if the insurers didn’t tell their clients that the new plans would only be available for a short period of time, the blame would seem to rest with the insurance companies, not the ACA. After all, President Obama did not promise people that he would keep insurers from developing new plans that will not comply with the provisions of the ACA.
In addition to the new plans that were created that did not comply with the terms of the ACA, there have been complaints that the grandfathering was too strict. For example, insurers can only raise their premiums or deductibles by a small amount above the rate of medical inflation. As a result, many of the plans in existence at the time of the ACA are losing their grandfathered status.
In this case also it is wrong to view the insurers as passive actors who are being forced to stop offering plans because of the ACA. The price increases charged by insurers are not events outside of the control of insurers. If an insurer offers a plan which has many committed buyers, then presumably it would be able to structure its changes in ways that are consistent with the ACA. If it decides not to do so, this is presumably because the insurer has decided that it is not interested in continuing to offer the plan.
As a practical matter, there are many plans that insurers will opt to drop for market reasons that may or may not have anything to do with the ACA. It’s hard to see how this could be viewed as a violation of President Obama’s pledge. After all, insurers change and drop plans all the time. Did people who heard Obama’s pledge understand it to mean that insurers would no longer have this option once the ACA passed?
If Obama’s pledge was understood as ensuring that every plan that was in existence in 2010 would remain in existence, then it would imply a complete federal takeover of the insurance industry. This would require the government to tell insurers that they must continue to offer plans even if they are losing money on them and even if the plans had lost most of their customers. This would at the least be a strange policy. It would be surprising if many people thought this was the meaning of President Obama’s pledge.
Finally, there will be many plans that insurers will stop offering in large part because of the changed market conditions created by the ACA. For example, last week the Washington Post highlighted a plan for the “hardest to insure†that was being cancelled by Pathmark Blue Cross of Pennsylvania.
This plan is likely being cancelled because it is unable to compete with the insurance being offered through the exchanges. The exchanges charge everyone the same rate regardless of their pre-existing health conditions. A plan that is especially designed for people who have serious health conditions would almost certainly charge a far higher rate. If these high-priced plans no longer exist because they cannot compete with the exchanges would this mean that President Obama had broken his pledge?
On closer inspection, the claim that President Obama lied in saying that people could keep their insurance looks like another Fox News special. In the only way that the pledge could be interpreted as being meaningful, the pledge is true. The ACA does not eliminate plans that were in existence at the time the bill was approved.
If we want to play Fox News, President Obama also promised people they could keep their doctor. Since 2010 tens of thousands of doctors have retired or even died. Guess the pledge that people could keep their doctor was yet another lie from the Obama administration.
http://www.salon.com...e_plan_partner/
First, it is important to note that the ACA grand-fathered all the individual policies that were in place at the time the law was enacted. This means that the plans in effect at the time that President Obama was pushing the bill could still be offered even if they did not meet all the standards laid out in the ACA.
The plans being terminated because they don’t meet the minimal standards were all plans that insurers introduced after the passage of the ACA. Insurers introduced these plans knowing that they would not meet the standards that would come into effect in 2014. Insurers may not have informed their clients at the time they sold these plans that they would not be available after 2014 because they had designed a plan that did not comply with the ACA.
However if the insurers didn’t tell their clients that the new plans would only be available for a short period of time, the blame would seem to rest with the insurance companies, not the ACA. After all, President Obama did not promise people that he would keep insurers from developing new plans that will not comply with the provisions of the ACA.
In addition to the new plans that were created that did not comply with the terms of the ACA, there have been complaints that the grandfathering was too strict. For example, insurers can only raise their premiums or deductibles by a small amount above the rate of medical inflation. As a result, many of the plans in existence at the time of the ACA are losing their grandfathered status.
In this case also it is wrong to view the insurers as passive actors who are being forced to stop offering plans because of the ACA. The price increases charged by insurers are not events outside of the control of insurers. If an insurer offers a plan which has many committed buyers, then presumably it would be able to structure its changes in ways that are consistent with the ACA. If it decides not to do so, this is presumably because the insurer has decided that it is not interested in continuing to offer the plan.
As a practical matter, there are many plans that insurers will opt to drop for market reasons that may or may not have anything to do with the ACA. It’s hard to see how this could be viewed as a violation of President Obama’s pledge. After all, insurers change and drop plans all the time. Did people who heard Obama’s pledge understand it to mean that insurers would no longer have this option once the ACA passed?
If Obama’s pledge was understood as ensuring that every plan that was in existence in 2010 would remain in existence, then it would imply a complete federal takeover of the insurance industry. This would require the government to tell insurers that they must continue to offer plans even if they are losing money on them and even if the plans had lost most of their customers. This would at the least be a strange policy. It would be surprising if many people thought this was the meaning of President Obama’s pledge.
Finally, there will be many plans that insurers will stop offering in large part because of the changed market conditions created by the ACA. For example, last week the Washington Post highlighted a plan for the “hardest to insure†that was being cancelled by Pathmark Blue Cross of Pennsylvania.
This plan is likely being cancelled because it is unable to compete with the insurance being offered through the exchanges. The exchanges charge everyone the same rate regardless of their pre-existing health conditions. A plan that is especially designed for people who have serious health conditions would almost certainly charge a far higher rate. If these high-priced plans no longer exist because they cannot compete with the exchanges would this mean that President Obama had broken his pledge?
On closer inspection, the claim that President Obama lied in saying that people could keep their insurance looks like another Fox News special. In the only way that the pledge could be interpreted as being meaningful, the pledge is true. The ACA does not eliminate plans that were in existence at the time the bill was approved.
If we want to play Fox News, President Obama also promised people they could keep their doctor. Since 2010 tens of thousands of doctors have retired or even died. Guess the pledge that people could keep their doctor was yet another lie from the Obama administration.
http://www.salon.com...e_plan_partner/
"It was like I was in high school again, but fatter."
#20
Mr. Roboto
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Posted 17 November 2013 - 04:10 AM
"It was like I was in high school again, but fatter."
#21
Mr. Roboto
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Posted 19 November 2013 - 04:37 PM
"It was like I was in high school again, but fatter."
#22
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Posted 20 November 2013 - 01:16 PM
So individual exchanges managed by states are seeing success? Seems to add credibility to the Republican suggestion that we allow insurers to sell policies across state lines and let the market succeed. None of that has anything to do with Obama's continued failure. Hence why he's at a 37% approval rating and more Democrats are jumping ship left and right. 2014 is going to be a great year for the GOP.
Beta male, and chubby incel doing what I do best...
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