Yesterday the President spoke to a group of governors and explained to them that if they really didn’t want their states to be included in the federal Affordable Care Act, there is a way to opt out —
“Beginning in 2017, if you can come up with a better system for your state to provide coverage of the same quality and affordability as the Affordable Care Act, you can take that route instead,” Obama told the governors.
And Obama said he supported moving that date up to 2014, as proposed by Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Scott Brown, R-Mass., to “give [governors] flexibility more quickly, while still guaranteeing the American people reform.”
In other words, they can opt out “if your state can create a plan that covers as many people as affordably and comprehensively as the Affordable Care Act does, without increasing the deficit,” the President said.
We’ve talked about this before. Basically, the deal is that if a state can come up with a way — any way — to insure the same percentage of citizens, with comparable coverage, at no additional cost, they are free to do that, and they can opt out of the ACA, mandate and all.
So far, the reaction from the “free market” libertarian right is a big howl of “that’s not fair!”
Peter Suderman of Reason‘s Hit & Run explains:
But the supposed flexibility the opt-out provision gives the states to innovate is fairly limited. Theoretically, they can get out of the mandate. But to do so, they have to submit a proposal that is judged to cover the same number of people, for the same cost (or less), with the same benefit and coverage levels as mandated in the law. That will make it easier for states—like Sen. Bernie Sanders’ home state of Vermont—to experiment with, say, single payer at the state level. But the high bar for coverage set by ObamaCare means that proposals that would rely on higher levels of cost-sharing, on increased use of catastrophic insurance, on allowing consumers to choose what benefits they actually want to pay for are less likely to pass muster.
I’m not even entirely sure how states will get out of the mandate. If, as is my preliminary understanding, they are required to keep some form of guaranteed issue and community rating—insurance regulations requiring insurers to sell to all comers and prohibiting discrimination based on preexisting conditions—then patients will have even less incentive to purchase insurance.
In other words, if you actually want to set up a system in which most citizens can obtain comprehensive insurance coverage, your options are single payer or something like the Affordable Care Act, mandate and all. Even the libertarians admit that. Of course, in their minds, it’s better to have some gawdawful Rube Goldberg mess of a system that is eating our economy and doesn’t cover a large part of the population, so long as markets are free.
Republican are pissed, in part, because this is a reasonable thing to do.
They like their leaders like Scott Walker – stubborn and uncompromising. And they expect the opposition leaders to be the same.
Obama said, ‘Well, you don’t have take part in this if your state can innovate (something I thought these clowns liked – oh yeah, that was yesterday, sorry…) and come up with something the same or better. So, go to it!’
And remember, this plan they’re bitching about was pretty much their plan in the first place!
I think now that an election is coming up, Obama is remembering how to play politics. He’s making these clowns look like the unreasonable hardliners that they are. He’s looking like the anti-Walker, and that ain’t a bad thing.
Republicans, with Walker and Christie as Governors stomping on workers, and Boehner and McConnell talking about shutting government down, Obama and the Democrats are hoping people look and realize who the adults in the room really are. And that ain’t the Republicans, the party of the ‘Terrible Two’s” – stubborn and hysterical children who can’t be reasoned with. I hope voters send them to their rooms without their supper in 2012.
Off topic, but this is too good to pass up!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/01/ohio-abortion-bill_n_829893.html
Gee, I got a couple of sperm who might want to testify also!
Raise your hand if you HAVEN’T figured out yet how this will go:
In 2014 every Republican governor will unveil their health care plan, which will read, in its entirety, “We will let the invisible hand of the market fix everything like it always has, which has given us the best health care system in the world, and this will cover as many people as affordably and comprehensively as the Affordable Care Act YES IT WILL YES IT WILL SHUT UP YES IT WILL.”
Followed by taking it to court,preferably one with a judge that they hired themselves, and screaming about Stalinism every step of the way.
Re: Swami’s reference: How do you swear in a fetus?
“How do you swear in a fetus?”
I understand no fetus has ever told a lie, so I guess it isn’t necessary.
That ‘free’ market thing is a puzzle simply because absolutely no one really seems to know what it implies – and if they do, they’re not talking. Citizens of this country are ‘free’ with limitations and rules and laws to ensure that one man’s freedom is not another man’s enslavement and/or one man’s freedom does not infringe on the freedom of another man.
But apparently a market can be ‘free’ with no limitations and rules and laws governing it, if the spouters of the system really believe what they advocate. Do they really believe that a system ungoverned and ungovernable is a viable system for any society? As I said (as least to me) the thing’s a puzzle.
They’re calling a fetus to “testify.”
They want to ban contraceptives.
They want to investigate pregnant women to make sure a miscarriage wasn’t an abortion.
Pretty soon, they’re going to start rounding up single people and charging them with “Pre-abortions” because they’re not married and not procreating, which is God’s will.
They’re like some evil version of Oprah: “You get a baby! And you get a baby! EVERYBODY GETS A BABY!!!”
They’re so pro-life that masturbaters will be sentenced to life – with hands and feet always bound, and forced to sleep on their backs, lest they roll around when they sleep, an accidentally pleasure themselves.
And Gadaffi thinks someone put LSD in Libya’s drinking water?
Felicity…It’s only a puzzle if you try to figure it out.
Here’s a Conservative speak puzzle I tried working on, but it proved to be too complex for my understanding. The American Dream just has to many variables to be able solve it … http://www.hermancain.com/
I’ve been working on the,” I want my country back” puzzle for the past several months now and I’m excited to say I almost got it solved..
Conservatives appear to want a failed health care system for majority of Americans. If you get sick, then pain, crippling, or death are your health care options. Libertarian ideology demand suffering from the poor. Apparently it is the noble way to live and die.
It’s a brilliant move that will let progressive states innovate beyond the sham of HCR that was enacted earlier.
Canada’s national health care system started in one province, Sasketchewan (I believe) and then it went national.
Who cares what the conservatards think. This is great news.
It’s a perfect response to the kinds of people who have no plan of their own yet maintain that a plan which is, from all accounts, going to insure more people for less money will be a disaster. It’s always easier to throw stones.
So it goes with every rightee issue. They some how claim that what is good for them will be good for everyone — without proof. Whether it’s tax cuts for the rich, trickle down economics or de-regulation… whatever makes the rich richer is better for the little guy who they forever seem to be trampling on. This new framing forces them to put up or shut up, or to appear afraid of competition, something they claim is a good thing (when occurring with a stacked deck).
I wonder what the talking point will be when the time comes. You know they’re going to have one. Aren’t they? They’re masters at having their cake and eating it too.
Conservatives (including the ones dressed up in libertarian clothing) don’t like our current health care system because “markets are free”. They like it because it works much better at the things they care about. Delivering good health care to as many people as possible isn’t what they care about. They’re not playing the same game we are.
What they want the system to do is reward the winners, punish the losers, and make it easy to tell the difference between the two. Giving health care to the losers directly contradicts the goal. The existing system is great at it.
Yes, exactly right. It’s why we talk past each other. We want a health care system that delivers health care efficiently and with some cost controls. They want a health care system that allows somebody, somewhere, to make out like bandits. And yes, there’s an implied moral code behind all this, that says “losers” need to be punished.