Commenter jheartney points to this comment at Washington Monthly:
Ed, Watertown MA on June 29, 2012 10:57 AM:
To all the handwringing, all I can say is look to Massachusetts. We already have a working model of how this will play out.
1). After initial griping, and a few longer doctor’s waiting room delays as previously uninsured people hookup with their new Primary Care Physician, both patients and Doctors will become supporters.
2). Less than 2% of people will decide that they would rather pay additional taxes than get covered by health insurance.
3). Insurers will come up with a variety of different and innovative insurance plans that they will offer through the exchanges. Almost everyone will find something that they can afford that will allow them to get at least a minimum level of coverage and avoid being forced into bankruptcy by a medical emergency.
4). After the first few years, savings will start to appear as people go to their Primary Care Physician for preventative care as opposed to going to Emergency rooms, forcing the taxpayers to pay for the most expensive type of medical care.
5). Those of us working as Independent Contractors and Entrepeneurs will finally be able to find affordable coverage on the exchanges. People will no longer feel forced to stay at a job they hate just to keep health coverage. Now they can take a chance on starting new businesses without fear that they are putting their family at risk. New startups in Massachusetts are among the highest in the nation.
6). I don’t know if it will translate across the country, but Massachusetts since instituting “RomneyCare” has been growing faster than almost all other states. As of May, we are now down to 6% unemployment. Much better than the national average of 8.2%: http://lmi2.detma.org/Lmi/News_release_state.asp
7). Paying for all this has increased the state budget by only 1% which has since been more than offset by the increased tax revenues from more employed workers.
So my final word? Chill out and stop listening to the people with the dire predictions. They have an alternative agenda. They are not trying to do the right thing for America. They just want to win the next election no matter how much damage they do.
More importantly – TomKat to divorce!
h/t Brachiator
Basilisc
But nobody has any freeeeeeeeeeedom …
Valdivia
so the conclusion is that SCOTUS ruling in favor of ACA caused the divorce? is this the correlation?
28 Percent
How will we ever get government out of Medicare now!?!
Villago Delenda Est
Again, this entire thing wasn’t actually about the provisions of the ACA.
It was about defeating the Democratic President with the melanin surplus.
Period.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@Valdivia:
It’s a liberal conspiracy. Cruise is a well known liberal actor. He timed the announcement of the divorce to distract attention away from the stinging defeat for the forces of personal liberty inflicted by a traitor and a coterie of liberal activist judges.
JGabriel, Statist Minded Ideologue of the Left
That was quick. Now I can love Katie again. In that creepy, middle-aged, from afar, way.
.
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia: Isn’t it obvious? Katie is seeking FREEDOM anyway she can find it.
Valdivia
@Sarah, Proud and Tall:
Ah! Of course, so well planned! :)
@Omnes Omnibus:
because the freedom deficit began to be felt strongly yesterday morning!
Xecky Gilchrist
Those of us working as Independent Contractors and Entrepeneurs will finally be able to find affordable coverage on the exchanges. People will no longer feel forced to stay at a job they hate just to keep health coverage.
I might be a dick, but I think this is a big part of why the authoritards hate ACA so much – asshole bully bosses will no longer have as much power over people.
beltane
Yep. Our health insurance is out of Massachusetts and our premiums actually went down this year. Plus, we no longer have to fight with our insurer over each and every damn claim.
Keith
Now all Obama needs to do is somehow save the Olympics, and Romney has nothing except to say that the Olympics is a taxpayer-funded boondoggle that he never supported in the first place.
Ghost of L Ron Hubbard
Katie – you can run but you can’t hide.
sweet dreams,
CultChurch of Scientologyeric
@Keith: give it a week.
beltane
This is possibly OT (or maybe not) but can anyone explain this to me? http://www.eschatonblog.com/2012/06/things-nobody-warned-me-about.html Is Matt Stoller going to be an entertainment reporter now? I don’t get it.
kamalokitty
@beltane: That is great news.
beltane
@Keith: Hitler hosted an Olympics so that would make Obama just like Hitler which is something we all knew already.
Ash Can
Funny — now that freedom is dead and the nation destroyed, things seem an awful lot like they did before.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
They were against it for all the above reasons plus they knew that assuming the ACA plays out nationally the way it did in MA, then Dems will be able to run on this for decades, much the way they did on Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.
Politically, enacting this was a loser from the Repups standpoint. They’ve done an artful job of smearing it and of course we Dems have dropped the ball, again, on the messaging/framing aspect of the ACA but in the long run, that won’t matter.
BGinCHI
I have it on good authority that Italy’s sound thrashing of Germany is the reason for the Cruise-Holmes divorce.
Soonergrunt
@Sarah, top: Curse you and your faster thread creation!
eric
@BGinCHI: I suspect it was Mission Impossible IV: Hetero Intercourse.
BGinCHI
In other news, CNN launching a probe to find out how they jumped the gun with the wrong bullets yesterday:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/06/cnn-review-supreme-court-coverage.php?ref=fpnewsfeed
This is like a skunk grabbing all the other animals in the forest demanding to know who stinks.
ETA: The network who smelt it dealt it.
BGinCHI
@eric: Tag line:
“You want me to put what in where??!!”
Citizen_X
@Xecky Gilchrist: “Authoritards”–awesome. I’m gonna borrow that.
MattR
For the lawyers out there, out of curiosity, what would have happened had Kagan recused herself resulting in a 4-4 tie vote? Would it just have affirmed the 11th Circuit Court ruling in the cases it was hearing – that the mandate was unconstitutional but the Medicaid expansion was OK? Or would the fact that the 6th Circuit Court and the DC Circuit Court conflicted with the 11th by upholding the mandate have any effect on that?
BGinCHI
@MattR: I can only hope that the answer is Sudden Death Overtime, with extra Scalia mortification.
MattR
@BGinCHI:
Is that a euphemism for saying the whole bill would have been thrown out? :)
Mark S.
@MattR:
That’s a damn good question.
pseudonymous in nc
Another knock-on: there’s actually an incentive for med students to become primary care physicians instead of heading into a more lucrative specialist field. Combine that with federal incentives to enter primary care in the poorer parts of the US (through already-existing mechanisms like the NHSC’s tuition-forgiveness scheme) and you start rebalancing the lopsidedness of the American medical profession.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@Soonergrunt:
BAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA! Where’s my gin?
Roger Moore
@beltane:
But that’s totally different from when Mitt Romney was responsible for the Olympics. Those were freedom Olympics.
shortstop
What an interesting comment from Ed in Watertown, and also from beltane. We should collect more comments from freedom-deficient folks in Massachusetts.
shortstop
@eric: That can’t have helped, but I suspect it was the creepy total control that was the final dealbreaker.
Sly
@MattR:
The Court issues a per curiam decision (“of the court,” meaning not written by any individual justice) that upholds the Lower Court ruling. Justices may still dissent, and the ruling generally doesn’t set any kind of precedent.
David in NY
@MattR: Am I in moderation or just senile — thought I already answered this.
@BGinCHI: I support BG’s solution, but as a technical matter, that’s not it. Technically, all the cases before the court would be affirmed, leaving a mess.
The Court’s couldn’t just replace them with others from the docket, because Kagan would presumably then recuse herself again. How long this would go on might depend on the basis she found for her recusal (Justices make their own decisions about recusing themselves, I believe; no rules really). If it was because of personal involvement in the case, might be as soon as a new case came up in which she had no involvement; if it was appearance of partiality, could be forever. Or it could last until some Justice changed his/her mind, or a new Justice was appointed and confirmed.
The delay, in any event, would be intolerable. So she did not recuse herself. (Rehnquist sat on a case in which he had personally represented the government at an earlier stage. I always though that was wrong, but I might have been wrong, be wrong now, or the cases might be different.)
MattR
@Sly: How does that work with the conflicting rulings made by the 11th and 6th Circuits? Since they were reviewing the case from the 11th Curcuit, that decision is the one that becomes the law of the land?
Cathy W
One of my fears is that first-couple-years period: I can see a scenario that costs and wait times will go up, or at least not go down, as the newly insured catch up with deferred maintenance, and there will be finger-pointing and yelling from the right and the plug will be pulled before the backlog gets worked out.
…and on top of giving med students an incentive to go into primary care, it would be nice if there were more physician assistants and nurse practitioners in the system – but I wonder if people are reluctant to use them? At my current primary care practice, sometimes there’s a 3-4 day wait for an appointment with my official primary care physician, but I can get in to see the PA the same day or next day most of the time.
Valdivia
@BGinCHI:
You’re killing it today mr BG
sparky
1. posting an unsourced comment from somewhere else as a front page post? please. first, it’s a horrible idea; i thought the various R efforts at cherrypicking comments would have shown how foolish a practice this is.
2. second, it’s not even accurate.
really? then why is the Mass. Legislature going to introduce price controls?
Boston Globe March 2012
Patrick Press Release 2011
printing personal comments and incorrect comments as if they were facts doesn’t do anyone any favors and provides ammo to people who don’t like the ACA.
David in NY
@MattR: No, the affirmance of the cases from the 11th does not constitute binding precedent in the 6th, or any other circuit. So there’s no decision ending the conflict in the circuits and leaving no uniform national law, which is intolerable.
BGinCHI
@Valdivia: I’m only funny on Friday when it rains and the wind is blowing in at Wrigley.
Valdivia
Ms Sarah in your honor I’m having a negroni. Cheers. Also. Too. It’s hot as hell here.
JWL
I have scant regard for Obama’s political reflexes. But I must admit that the more I learn about Obomney-care, the more credit I am forced to extend him for insuring its passage. On top of that, the Massachusetts acclimation scenario the writer describes sounds like a logical progression to me. Which, in turn, validates Bill Kristol’s warning to the GOP back in 1993. We live in a strange world.
Valdivia
@BGinCHI: that sounds like a song. ;)
I think you’re pretty witty all the time. But maybe it’s the heat + Negroni talking!
j
Interesting that you ended this with the TomKat divorce, and used it in the headline because another “benefit” of the ACA is that some people won’t have to stay stuck in a shitty marriage just for the benefits of health care.
Just like being to tell an ogre of a boss to shove it, abused wives can kick their husbands to the curb much easier now.
Omnes Omnibus
@David in NY: @MattR: My first take on it would be that the affirmance of the lower court decision would have no effect on other Circuits. IOW the split between Circuits would remain. Like David in NY said, a mess.
sparky
oh and let’s not forget how this bright and shiny future may play out:
NonyNony
@JWL:
I have a high regard for Obama’s political reflexes – I think they’ve gotten him where he is now and will probably get him re-elected. I’m not so happy with his policy stances in general, but I can’t deny that he plays the political game quite well. (I had the same problem with Clinton – his political ability was always impressive but it sometimes served policy ends that made me want to kick him in the ass.)
It’s one of those “move the football a few yards” sorts of pieces of legislation. It does good things, and it should patch the system up a bit and keep it working for a few more decades, but it isn’t the kind of long-term fix that gets people excited.
But it’s going to have good outcomes. And I’ve reached the point in my life where having good outcomes for legislation is all I’m starting to care about. Long term solutions are great if you can get them, but I’m only going to be around for another 50 years at best. The longer I live the more the “short term victories” are starting to look like “long term solutions” as far as I’m concerned anyway…
MD Rackham
@sparky: Nothing you supply necessarily contradicts the “1% of the state budget, made up for by increased tax revenue” claim.
Your source say that the purported 1% of the budget is growing at 6.7-8% a year, not anything about what percentage of the budget healthcare represents.
And healthcare will *always* be too expensive under the Romneycare/Obamacare model, as there is profit built in that has to increase to please Wall St. Not to mention that anyone not actively using the medical system resents paying for insurance they’re not using.
I don’t know what the MA numbers are, but you don’t really shed any light on them. Can you provide any numbers related to the original post?
MattR
@David in NY: @Omnes Omnibus: Thanks guys. Having the mandate be in effect in some states and not others definitely sounds like an impractical mess.
shortstop
@David in NY: Intolerable indeed.
j
@sparky: And all of that was BEFORE the passage of the ACA which MANDATES at least 80% of the revenue be used ONLY for patient care.
Weaselone
@sparky: It might be nice if you provided some context for increases in health care costs, which although significantly greater than the rate of inflation are nevertheless an improvement from prior years. 6.7-8% is also about 2-3% less than the increase expected nationally for employer provided care.
The Moar You Know
@sparky: As an employer, I would kill my own mother if it would guarantee my business health insurance rate increases were only 6-8% per year.
You try dealing with rate increases of 12-20% a year, for at least the last ten years, every fucking year. It’s now the biggest non-labor expense I have, period, and that includes our office leases.
The only problem I have with ACA is that it wasn’t passed 20 years ago.
Villago Delenda Est
@BGinCHI:
CNN went to shit right after it lost Turner, and was turned over to the Village idiots of Time/Warner.
ericblair
@MattR:
Since Thomas should have recused his sorry ass way before Kagan, due to his teatard wife being financially involved in the case, it would have ended up 4-3 by my reckoning.
Patricia Kayden
@BGinCHI: You are funny! Good use of stinky skunks in an analogy.
Ed of Watertown’s comment is excellent. The Obama administration needs to get out there each and every day, including in ads, and let people know what benefits they can expect from the healthcare act. Let the Repubs explain why they want to take away a good thing from Americans.
danielx
I was already bathing in a cool, soothing baby pool of wingnut tears seasoned with pink Himalayan salt, but the temperature here dropped 25 degrees in 25 minutes as a front came through and dropped hail and an inch of rain.
Back up to 76 now and steamy but it was nice while it lasted, even if all the rain ran off the soil which has turned to the consistency of a brick…
Paula
@beltane:
Someone has to lead us to the Troo Progressive ™ Paradise from which Obama is so cruelly blocking us. If you fail @ actual politics, become a pundit.
We’re overdue for actual liberal media welfare anyway.
Silver
@The Moar You Know: This. My increase from last year to this year was 15%. If you start to add in copay increases and reduced benefits, it’s gotta be over 20%.
Now we play insurance roulette, like every other year. Does Kathy have to change doctors this year? Will Ted’s new plan feature dead pediatricians on its list? Stay tuned…