independentsforkerry.org

This is President Obama's signature on the healthcare reform bill which two years ago became the law of the land.

Its fate may be in the hands of the Supreme Court come Monday, but on Friday Democrats were not shy about defending the landmark 2010 healthcare reform law on the second anniversary of its enactment.

While President Obama himself talked about healthcare reform Friday only in the form of a single quote on the White House website, many other prominent Democrats were much more voluble — including Vice President Joe Biden, who extolled the virtues of reform in an email to supporters for the Democratic National Committee.

But perhaps the boldest defense of healthcare reform came from the man who has his hand on the president’s political pulse, the head of the Obama 2012 re-election campaign.

Campaign Manager Jim Messina fired off his own email Friday afternoon with the subject header, “Obamacare is working,” taking back ownership of a term the right has used as a pejorative since nearly the beginning of healthcare reform.

“Today is the two-year anniversary of the Affordable Care Act. Since then, the law that almost everyone calls Obamacare has been doing exactly what the other side has hoped it wouldn’t do: It’s been working. It’s about time we give it the love it deserves,” Messina says.

He notes that each of the Republican candidates for president this year have made repeal of Obamacare central parts of their campaigns.

“They’ll have to explain that to millions of Americans whose lives are now better because of it,” Messina says. “Because repealing Obamacare would mean telling women that they should be charged up to 50 percent more for coverage just for being women. Families with sick kids could once again be denied coverage because of an arbitrary ‘pre-existing condition’ label. Seniors could lose hundreds of dollars a year on the prescription drugs they need to stay healthy. And millions of Americans would once again have to worry about going bankrupt if they got sick, because before Obamacare, insurance companies were allowed to place lifetime caps on coverage, saying: ‘We’ll only take care of you up to a point.’

“We’ve been there. We’ve had that health system. And it didn’t work. Obamacare does,” Messina says.

The Supreme Court may get healthcare reform on Monday, but on Friday, Democrats took ownership of Obamacare — happily.

Scott Nance is the editor and publisher of the news site The Washington Current. He has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade.

The Democratic Daily

The point is that you can name the new program Medicare, but it’s an entirely different program — call it Vouchercare — that would offer nothing like the coverage that the elderly now receive. (Republicans get huffy when you call … Continue reading →
republican-elephant.com

Absolutely devastating testimony yesterday from Medicare’s independent economic expert Richard Foster before the House Budget Committee. In essence, in response to direct questions, Foster blew up the rationale for Obamacare and placed the president and his party in the uncomfortable position of having to explain why they lied to the American people about the two main selling points for the program.

Peter Wehner:

Mr. Foster was asked by Republican Tom McClintock for a simple true or false response on two of the main assertions made by supporters of the law: that it will bring down unsustainable medical costs and it will let people keep their current health insurance if they like it.
On the costs issue, “I would say false, more so than true,” Foster responded. As for people getting to keep their coverage, “not true in all cases.”

Foster also sided with those who argue that moving toward a defined contribution model is much more likely to keep health-care costs down than the kind of centralized, top-down price controls that are in ObamaCare.

Finally, in an exchange with Representative John Campbell of California, Foster blew up the claim that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s Medicare provisions could both reduce the deficit and extend the solvency of Medicare, as President Obama has claimed. Mr. Foster pointed out the obvious: this isn’t possible unless you double-count the savings.

“Is it legitimate to say,” Campbell asked, “that you can add a dozen years to the solvency of Medicare or that you can reduce the deficit, but it is not correct to say both simultaneously?”

“Both will happen as a result of the same one set of savings, under Medicare,” Foster said. “But it takes two sets of money to make it happen. It happens directly for the budget deficit, from the Medicare savings, and then when we need the money to extend the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, we have a promissory note – it’s an IOU, not a worthless IOU, but it is an IOU – and Treasury has to pay that money back. But they have to get it from somewhere. That’s the missing link.”

Recall that Obamacare opponents were not told they were wrong about these two assertions; they were not told they misunderstood what was in the bill; they were not told to go back and reread the sections in question.

The Democrats have been saying that Republicans are lying about these two assertions being wrong.

If a Democrat lies in the forest and the media doesn’t report it, is it still a lie?

Written by: Rick Moran
Source: American Thinker

Democratic Party News – The News of the Democratic Party.

While the Democrats continued to extol Obamacare and the president defended the behemoth law during the Date of the Union, HHS was quietly presiding over a massive Obamacare Waiver-mania explosion.

When last we examined the growing list, privileged escapees topped 222.

Now: The list now at 729 – plus 4 states (Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, and Tennessee).

Among the many new union refugees are 4 new SEIU locals :

1. SEIU Health and Welfare fund, 2000 with 161 enrollees

2. Service Employees 32BJ North Health Benefit Fund* representing 7,020 enrollees

3. SEIU Local 300, Civil Service Forum Employees Welfare Fund representing 2,000 enrollees

4. SEIU Health & Welfare Fund representing 1,620

This is in addition to the three other previous SEIU waiver winners: Local 25 SEIU in Chicago with 31,000 enrollees; Local 1199 SEIU Greater New York Benefit Fund with 4,544 enrollees; and SEIU Local 1 Cleveland Welfare Fund with 520 enrollees.

For the record, the total number of union waivers stands at 182.

Malkin notes that 45,000 employees are now exempt from Obamacare from SEIU unions alone. The number if you include all the waivers is over 2 million employees nationwide.

Note: Darrell Issa and his investigative team have targeted recipients of these waivers to see if some political shenanigans were involved. They might want to start here:

A snort-worthy new escapee: Obamacare sympathizers at The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, whose board of trustees includes Obama health care czar Nancy-Ann DeParle.

Funny how these coincidences keep occurring, how TARP money, stim money, etc. keep ending up in the hands of Obama friends and cronies.

Written by: Rick Moran
Source: American Thinker

Democratic Party News – The News of the Democratic Party.