Image 01 Image 03

Obamacare plan: Not one step back (Update: Obama statement – Not going back)

Obamacare plan: Not one step back (Update: Obama statement – Not going back)

Republican response: Bring it on.

There is no turning back. Not one step. Instead, the White House and apparatus are going on offense pushing Obamacare forward, as CNN and other media are reporting:

Battered by two months of bad publicity over the Obamacare website, the White House is going on the offensive to tout what it sees as the good news about the President’s signature health care reforms.

President Barack Obama will launch a three-week campaign intended to highlight the benefits of the 2010 Affordable Care Act with a White House event at 2:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday, a White House official told CNN.

Greg Sargent, a WaPo blogger with close ties to Democrats, further reports:

I’ve been telling you for some time now that Democrats believe they can go on offense on Obamacare, by casting the debate over the law as a choice between the GOP agenda, which would return us to the old system, and a flawed but fixable solution that is tangibly improving the lives of many Americans.

Now, in the wake of the fix to the federal website, Democrats are launching a campaign designed to do just that. Politico reports that the White House and Dems are rolling out a coordinated effort to draw attention to the law’s benefits, which will kick off with a speech by Obama today….

With this sort of White House squirming, Republicans likely are saying, “bring it on”:

Update: Obama gave a statement this afternoon confirming that he will spend the next three years fighting for the law, that it never will be repealed so long as he is president, and telling anecdotes about people helped by the law.

DONATE

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.

Comments

American Freedom Fighter | December 3, 2013 at 12:02 pm

“Battered by two months of bad publicity over the Obamacare website…”

What??!!! By who? The MSM won’t report on this debacle, and in fact only sing its praises.

The folks at CNN must be smokin’ dope.

I’m put in mind of Hitler’s commands to his field commanders to never give an inch…or millimeter, whatever…in the face of all rational military doctrine to the contrary.

‘K, swell. A new snake-oil blitz from Pres. ScamWOW. That’ll turn the trick.

Well, except for the fact nobody with a brain believes him any longer.

TrooperJohnSmith | December 3, 2013 at 12:24 pm

I wonder if Jay Carney keeps scorpions in his pockets or puts one of those steel binder clamps on his privates to keep from busting out laughing over some of the sh!t he’s forced to say. Can you imagine his poor wife having one of those, “Honey, you forgot to ____” conversations with him?

Here, he is actually saying that a bad experience with the website is better than a non-experience. “Improving” over a complete failure doesn’t mean that anything real is still actually happening. Put another way, a flat tire on a nice day in a bad neighborhood seems preferable to having a flat tire in the same neighborhood on a hot summer day, but in reality, nothing of actual substance in one’s circumstances actually changes.

RICO statutes were written for such enterprises, so it’s little wonder that the government is exempt from these laws, especially if the sitting AG is one of the key parts of the “O” in “RICO”.

Is the federal government immune to all potential state level anti-fraud laws?

Even if it is…it might be pretty amusing for a conservative AG to loudly began an investigation…

    Phillep Harding in reply to 18-1. | December 3, 2013 at 12:58 pm

    … even if it goes nowhere.

    “Oooohhh, looky the roaches scrambling.”

    platypus in reply to 18-1. | December 4, 2013 at 10:02 am

    Fairly difficult to rationalize complaining about the feds when all of these states have already accepted payments for “services rendered.” IOW, they are hookers, they willingly contracted to be paid for being whores, and now they complain?

    This would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic. BTW, did anybody notice where the Zerocare business model (govt protecting insurance companies) came from? That’s right boys and girls, it’s virtually a carbon copy of the MSA (master settlement agreement) of the tobacco company lawsuits. The govt guarantees market share AND establishes a floor for insurance companies’ earnings.

    Sweet, huh?

“Stay the course.”

One aspect of obama’s new PR campaign will to be set the stage for next years’ PR campaign in which he will blame the insurance companies for people not being able to keep their doctors, even if they liked them. obama took huge blows from people experiencing truth rather than his “you can keep your plan” lie, and obama is not going to let that happen again. Next year will bring a major falling out between this years’ lovers: obama and the insurance companies.

And the Republican counter-offensive is what? Why isn’t there one? Why is Obama always on offense and the republicans do nothing?

It time to kick this community organizing punk in the nuts and all Boehner does is weep.

F this noise.

Yea, Obama may spend an hour a day “selling Obamacare with a smile”…

And spend the other 23 hours with his boot on your neck, shoving it down your throat with a hot poker with stink eye.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/12/white-house-blames-consumers-for-obamacare-enrollment-errors.php

Obami: “The problem is we need smarter consumers”.

But… The smarter the consumer, the less they support ObamaDoggle.

Heh!

The Democrats would be smart to run on ObamaCare.

In 1974, the Republicans balked at touting Watergate in their campaigns and lost 49 seats in the House and 4 in the Senate, as well as losing the presidential election.

Steer into the ObamaCare skid, Dems! Fast & Furious!

    LukeHandCool in reply to LukeHandCool. | December 3, 2013 at 1:04 pm

    correction: “… as well as losing the presidential election two years later.”

    Anyway, die is cast … pedal to the metal!!!

Bring it on.

Bring it on? Srsly? Dude, if the Republicans are saying bring it on, doesn’t that tinkle your early-warning system? Come on. These are Republicans we’re talking about, right? You know, the other half of the Perpetual Bipartisan Fusion Party (PBFP).

Listen closely: Democrats and their whores, the MSM, are about to clean the clocks of the Republicans on this. Sit back and watch and weep in your beer. You are about to witness the most awesome display of marketing spin ever devised in the history of humanity.

If Republicans were up to the challenge, believe me they would not be saying Bring It On. The Republicans would quietly be tightening a noose. Which Republicans do not have. Because Republicans are about neither victory nor real change. Republicans await their turn at the political feed trough.

Death to the Republican Party.
Long live the Tea Party.

Bring it on, my *ss.

    Phillep Harding in reply to [email protected]. | December 3, 2013 at 1:03 pm

    Ever see chickens hanging out in a barnyard? They usually peck apart horse and _donkey_ dung for undigested bits to eat.

    No donkeys in the barnyard means they will have to fly all the way up there to the feed trough to get a meal. Can’t have that.

JimMtnViewCaUSA | December 3, 2013 at 1:19 pm

I recently checked out comments about ObamaCare for an Althouse blog post. Their resident leftie, “garage mahal” showed no understanding whatsoever of how insurance works, what the complaints were all about, how cancellations affect people, grandfathered plans, and on and on. Truly pathetic.

On another blog I frequent, a leftie had no idea that OCare _requires_ coverage of pediatric dental whether or not you even have a kid.

Nonetheless, the lefties do seem to be gearing up to go on offense. The website “front end” is (Time magazine) “not a complete fail” anymore. They’ve got a year to bob and weave, then somewhere between 50 and 100 million people with employee-provided plans will work through the cancellation process as the employer exemption expires.

If you are interested to book-up on background info and bookmark web sites about the coming employer-provided kerfuffle, check out the comment section of this post.
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2013/12/signs-of-ezra-kleins-lack-of-real-world.html

    JimMtnViewCaUSA in reply to JimMtnViewCaUSA. | December 3, 2013 at 1:29 pm

    By the way, the website “front end” is partly working but the back end is still in deep doo-doo. Parts of it aren’t written yet, other parts are buggy. The worry is that some people will go to the doctor in Jan only to learn that their policy is screwed up such that they are not covered.

    Some key check points coming up over the next 12 or 15 months include:
    1) signups for this year. how many? also, did they get a good balance of young/healthy and elderly/infirm?
    2) if the signups are skewed toward the sickly, as expected, do insurance companies jump rates a bunch next year to adjust? or, does the gov’t pay them for the losses on ObamaCare policies?
    3) how many people are affected when the employer mandate kicks in? do millions get cancellation notices a couple months BEFORE the mid-term elections or are the Dems able to finesse that issue?
    4) of lesser political importance, but potentially crushing for state budgets: Medicaid. the OCare signups are putting massive numbers of people onto Medicaid programs. there are some federal subsidies involved but eventually state budgets have to handle this.

      Ragspierre in reply to JimMtnViewCaUSA. | December 3, 2013 at 2:07 pm

      It is also STILL toxic kludge from a security standpoint.

      STAY AWAY…!!!

      That is the very definition of a Potemkin village.

      I have read estimates that 1/3 of the applications have enough errors that they cannot be processed. So, 1/3 of the people who applied won’t even have insurance when they go to the hospital expecting to be fully covered.

      The Gov’t will bail out the insurance companies, no doubt. It is possible, likely?, that there will be a drip drip effect in 2014. The employer cancellations/premium increases will be big. Blaming insurance companies for dropped doctors will be hard, but Obama will certainly try.

“With this sort of White House squirming, Republicans likely are saying, “bring it on”

Hahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahah
Gasp
hahahahahahahahahhahahahahah

At today’s Obamacare pep rally, Obama will announce the Obama-Gerber partnership. This partnership allows for newborns (the newly non-aborted), one-year olds, two-year olds and three-year olds to begin saving tax free for their Obamacare health coverage.

The photo op will have dozens of babies lined up, cooing behind the mile-long Obama sneer.

No, the Republicans aren’t saying “bring it on!” because:

a) the leadership isn’t against it

and

b) Christie is the blowhard face of the GOP currently, and he’s about as valid an opposer of Obamacare as the most recent face of the party, Mitt Romney. Christie did not join the other states’ lawsuit against it. Christie also took the Obamacare funds.

NC Mountain Girl | December 3, 2013 at 1:39 pm

Millions of people have been negatively impacted by Obamacare. That means the spin isn’t going to work. There will be a few who will believe the so called experts in the media over their own eyes, but most will get even madder.

It’s like no one in this White House has ever experienced that the very last thing you ever want to do in the middle of a big fight is to tell the person who feels aggrieved to calm down because things aren’t as bad as they seem. That never works in real life.

“If you don’t like your new healthcare plan, you can keep your IRS audit”

    Ragspierre in reply to Browndog. | December 3, 2013 at 2:06 pm

    Good news! New improved Healthcare.gov queuing system makes sure you go straight to the Fuh Queue.—
    David Burge (@iowahawkblog) December 02, 2013

    We got better humor.

      Browndog in reply to Ragspierre. | December 3, 2013 at 2:25 pm

      You could have just stop at “we have humor”.

      (Iowahawk’s tweets are the bomb!)

      (I used that phrase to fire up all the blinking lights over at NSA)

When have Republicans recently said bring it on and brought a real counterpunch to the table?

I’m thinking not since Reagan

    Browndog in reply to healthguyfsu. | December 3, 2013 at 2:26 pm

    Gingrich.

    Ragspierre in reply to healthguyfsu. | December 3, 2013 at 2:38 pm

    Cruz, Lee, Labrador, etc.

      healthguyfsu in reply to Ragspierre. | December 3, 2013 at 6:40 pm

      I said “Republicans” and meant it as in a unified front.

      When I said Reagan, I was referring to the Reagan era.

        healthguyfsu in reply to healthguyfsu. | December 3, 2013 at 6:43 pm

        Sorry all but I’m pretty disgusted with Repubs right now after what they did with Cuccinelli.

        We are stuck here in VA with McAuliffe because they left him high and dry with nothing and they won’t see another dime of any of my family’s money after that little stunt.

        Hillary vs Obama was practically a Civil war among Dems and things were completely unified not long after the primary. One little spat and Repubs throw a battleground state to the wolves, pure effing genius. You got to at least give Dems credit for seeing the big picture after their fights, even if they are a bunch of crooked, selfish, and delusional a-holes.

Henry Hawkins | December 3, 2013 at 2:40 pm

“Battered by two months of bad publicity over the Obamacare website, the White House is going on the offensive to tout what it sees as the good news about the President’s signature health care reforms.”

OK, that’ll fill the first two minutes of their offensive..

____________________

As I’ve often stated, leftists are no good at governing if/when in power. Their natural place is agitation from without, as protesters, organizers, agitators, etc., but not as the establishment itself. They have no experience at this.

That being the case, what they’re going to do now is the only thing they know how to do – attack, agitate, blame, etc. – because they obviously have no clue how to fix the problem, how to reach out and ask for help, how to govern.

Makes perfect sense. Going on offense has always worked for them before. And doubling and tripling down is Obama’s metier. They see the republicans as congenitally defensive, weak and deeply afraid of political conflict and of battling the media and its narratives. I see no reason to doubt that assumption, or no reason that they should doubt it.

Henry Hawkins | December 3, 2013 at 2:45 pm

“We guarantee a 90% success rate! Call now!”

-Obama Parachute Company

Henry Hawkins | December 3, 2013 at 3:03 pm

Boy, the Democrats could sure use a distraction right about now and the Bring It On GOP is helping as much as possible.

Speaker John Boehner has hired Rebecca Tallent to head up the House efforts on immigration. Here’s some rezzoomay on Ms. Tallent:

-Director of immigration policy for the pro-amnesty Bipartisan Policy Center.

-McCain chief of staff 2005-2007, directing his pro-amnesty battle at the time.

-Staff attorney for pro-amnesty (former) House Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ).

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner

———————-

With Obamacare and Obama himself on the ropes, what better time to divide the party with a push for amnesty and GOP leadership attacks on its own f**king base, as McConnell has recently begun, huh?

Obama & Dems = SMART POWER

GOP = SMART POWERLESS

American citizenry = SCREWED

I’ve seen the lineaments of GOP defeat on this issue taking shape for weeks. Here’s what I’ve seen.

A sense of excitement that Obamacare was imploding on its own. That is, an excitement over a collapse so spectacular that it absolved anybody on the Right from actually having to make an aggressive political case for its failure. What a relief! In fact, this wish betrayed the Right’s deep fear of the media, of its inability or unwillingness to operate confidently and proactively in the political marketplace and take the fight to the Left.

The Left sees crises as opportunities for action; the Right sees opportunities as excuses for inaction.

All the juvenile “Schadenfreude” exultation was part and parcel of this. The idea was, we’re so starved for success and feel so beaten down, let’s celebrate a victory in the third quarter. The Left simply hunkered down and withstood the high-fiving. They knew the long game favored them.

And the game is far from over. And because the Left has absolutely zero sense of self-awareness or shame, the shadenfreude not only meant nothing to them, but in fact secured their understand of our cluelessness. Instead of schadenfreude we should have been organizing a ruthless attack campaign dedicated to kicking the Left when they were down, kicking them to a bloody pulp. But in fact, Boehner idiotically and predictably signaled that the GOP’s position was to say and do nothing and let Obamacare play out. “Play out”? When in human history has a government program not played out into perpetuity?

I’ve witnessed another grand illusion: that the media would FINALLY come to its fair-minded, professional and responsible senses and start attacking Obama and this Godforsaken program. This illusion is weirdly deathless. I’ve seen it among the Right at every turn of Obama’s presidency, from scandal to worse scandal. I remember people saying that Bob Woodward’s attack on the Obama White House was a “turning point,” that the critiques over the NSI spying were a “turning point,” etc. It was the illusion that slowly killed the Romney campaign. We never seem to learn. There will NEVER be a turning point. The media is NEVER going to “do its job,” because what they see as their job is sustaining Obama. They will allow themselves some passing, face-saving bouts of critique, but will never “do their job” and report the truth about anything in this presidency. I doubt they even could if they wanted to. They are soulless — completely beyond the reach of civic reason.

So I see Obama’s strategy here as positively brilliant. From his point of view, why should he think it won’t work?

“We believe we’re a better country than a country where we allow every day 14,000 Americans to lose their health care coverage.”
—Pres. ScamWOW today

I have no idea from where in the orifices of his self he pulled that bogus stat.

I DO know we have good numbers on those ALREADY stripped of their coverage by ObamaDoggle, and we have very high probability numbers on additional MILLIONS who will be.

    OnTheLeftCoast in reply to Ragspierre. | December 4, 2013 at 4:11 am

    OK, but how long can someone stand to be uninsured because of the “glitches” — or can’t afford the new premiums and deductibles — and heads for Medicaid? Enough of that going on and the insurance companies will be gutted. Golden parachutes for the execs who pushed Obamacare, job losses everywhere else and guess who else will be going on Medicaid?

    Oh, right. Not those with sweetheart crony and union deals and not Congress.

Obamacare is working like a charm!!

The employer mandate does not start yet, right?
Well, my employer-provided insurance already went up. Dependent coverage just doubled. Deductible and co-payments went up considerably.
And I lost my doctor!!!
If that’s now, I can’t imagine what’s coming in 2015.

Thank you very much, Mr. President.
Thank you very much.

Henry Hawkins | December 3, 2013 at 7:47 pm

My son gave up on Healthcare.gov (or maybe took my advice not to risk identity theft) and worked directly with the health insurance company via office visit. He got a quote, but hasn’t enrolled yet. Here’s his before and after:

Demographics:

He’s 34 yrs old, single, employed, no health issues, no previous med claims beyond a stitch here, flu antibiotics there, etc., Doc in a box stuff only.

Former policy:

Catastrophic, $5,000 deductible at $261/month, 80/20, low copays after deductible met. Policy cancelled in September effective 01/01/14 because it’s noncompliant with Obamacare minimums.

Obamacare exchange quote:

‘Bronze’ plan*, $4,700 deductible, qualifies for $119/month in subsidies, his share of premium (after subsidy) is $392/month, 80/20, medium copays after deductible met…..

IT’S THE SAME FUCKING PLAN. $300 less deductible, but copays higher after deductible met. He gets to pay $131/month more for the privilege. Thank God the government stepped in and stopped him from choosing better, cheaper insurance on his own.

*Insurance company was very careful to point out everything is tentative – premium might be higher, subsidies might be lower, they’re not sure how to confirm. I even asked him, “they didn’t say premium might be lower, subsidies higher?” Nope.

    Henry Hawkins in reply to Henry Hawkins. | December 3, 2013 at 7:49 pm

    Essentially, he’d have the same insurance, but be taxed $131/month to finance poorer and/or sicker people.

      …he’s scoring a $119/month subsidy from people like me who don’t qualify for welfare and so have to pay full freight.

      Yeah, it sucks that his rates have gone up, but tell him to look on the bright side — the rates of those of us who are stuck footing the bill for his $1400+ a year subsidy have gone up even more.

        Henry Hawkins in reply to Amy in FL. | December 4, 2013 at 11:23 am

        Be very careful about casting blame or shame on people who have no more choice in this than anyone else. My son was perfectly happy paying his own way.

          You claimed that he was paying more in order to finance poorer people. That’s not so, he IS one of the “poorer people” the rest of us are paying even higher premiums to subsidize. I’m not saying it doesn’t still suck for him, but the martyr coat doesn’t suit him in his present circumstances.

          Once he’s earning enough that he’s no longer receiving welfare from others but paying full ride himself, out of his own paycheck, maybe he’ll understand.

I just need to know one thing. When Obama told the insurance companies to ignore the law did he give himself line item veto powers? Will he be able to go cite his ability to tell insurance companies to ignore a specific detail of a law as precedence?