I might not have put up a post for this – Affordable Care Act, ho hum, it’s been around for more than 10 years – but it’s a big fucking deal to people who didn’t have health care before but have it now. And they must be announcing something, so let’s see what it is.
Speaking of which, one of these guys looks a little bit older now than he did back then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h77ICyHUg7c
Update: Washington Post article shared by germy in the comments.
President Biden plans to announce Tuesday that his administration is making a tweak to federal rules long sought by advocates that would allow millions of additional families to buy health plans through the insurance marketplaces created under the Affordable Care Act.
The announcement will represent Biden’s latest effort to use the ACA as the main fulcrum for his goal of making health insurance more available and affordable to American consumers.
In a piece of political theater to symbolize that point, the current president will be accompanied during an afternoon Rose Garden announcement by former president Barack Obama, who was in office when the sweeping health-care law passed a dozen years ago. Obama on Tuesday will make his first return visit to the White House since he moved out in 2017 after two terms with Biden as his second-in-command. […]
The tweak involves what is known in health-policy circles as the ACA’s “family glitch.” It involves who is eligible to buy health plans with federal subsidies through HealthCare.gov, the federal ACA insurance marketplace that opened in 2014, or similar marketplaces in states that operate their own.
President Zelenskyy To Address the UN Security Council (10 am Eastern)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I added some of that article up top. Thanks for linking!
Baud
Thanks.
SiubhanDuinne
Can’t wait to see Barack’n’Joe together again! Is Michelle going to be there too?
Ben Cisco
This is good news indeed.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Did you see my reply on the other thread? I had made the post this morning but had forgotten to set the reminder on my phone so I could make sure it actually published when it was supposed to.
So I very much appreciated your question.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: I was so excited about Barack that Biden and Kamala got second billing in the title. :-)
Has anyone else read Hope Never Dies or any of the other sequels to the Barack & Joe books?
WaterGirl
And they are starting!
mali muso
It’s a big Biden deal! (I would love it if someone would re-enact that ageless comment today for posterity)
WaterGirl
Kamala is such a joyous person.
Old School
One?
WaterGirl
This does not look like the Rose Garden. Maybe they are having the same crappy weather day that we are here.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
?
TaMara
I love Uncle Joe, but I sure do miss Obama.
And Kamala is just amazing…
Geminid
@WaterGirl: The Vice President certainly does project Joy. A Happy Warrior with a mind as sharp as a tack. Joe Biden sure picked a good partner.
TaMara
@WaterGirl: My app says cold and rainy…
WaterGirl
@TaMara: That’s us, too.
Am I the only one who is crying as I watch Barack speak?
mali muso
@WaterGirl: Maybe not crying, but definitely emotional and wistful here.
Baud
Nancy Smash!
Baud
“Pretty big … deal.”
C’mon, BO. No kids are watching.
West of the Rockies
@WaterGirl:
Didn’t wretched Melania have the garden torn out for tennis courts?
Geoduck
@Geminid: You know it’s a strength when all the GOP hacks go after her because she “laughs too much”.
Spanky
@TaMara:
It’s mid-
40s50s and rainy, so maybe not the same definition of “cold” you have. And definitely rainy.I’m about 20 miles from them, btw.
(Edited after I actually looked at the thermometer.)
Kelly
Nah she just degraded it to sterile monochromatic suburban office park landscape
Baud
@Geoduck:
The preferred terminology is “cackle.”
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’m on Medicare, and it covers more than it used to because of the ACA.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
I believe we first bestowed that name on her during the ACA negotiations and passage.
TaMara
@Spanky: Oh definitely cold – East Coast 50 degrees with rain, something about it chills to the bone. LOL I can run around here when it’s 20 and sunny and barely need a jacket (the sun just hits differently here).
Get me a rainy day in Boston and I’m bundled up like I’m going on an Arctic expedition!
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Oh, I love Barack’s impeccable comic timing. He could have had a successful stand-up career if politics hadn’t sung its siren song.
Kelly
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I started Medicare last year. Mrs Kelly is still on Obamacare which is hundreds of dollars more expensive for her alone than us together. I wonder if fixing the family glitch will fix that glitch.
Baud
Haha. “It’s a hot mike.”
CaseyL
Delightful to see Obama and Biden together again! Loved Biden’s crack about the hot mike.
WaterGirl
@CaseyL: It is a delight. Someone here in the last couple of weeks was pushing that Obama didn’t like Biden and didn’t respect him, thought he was a fool…
I don’t recall the exact details of what they said, but I wasn’t buying what they were selling.
Steeplejack
@TaMara:
It’s 52° and overcast here in Threadkill Lane. I’m about seven miles from the White House. Occasional misting rain.
Ben Cisco
@WaterGirl:
There ya go!
Brachiator
@WaterGirl:
Really. Wow. Damn stupid. One of the reasons that black voters liked Biden was that they felt that Obama and Biden had an excellent working relationship. And that Biden was loyal and supportive.
Steeplejack
@West of the Rockies:
No, Melania was the scapegoat when Trump and his minions tore up the Rose Garden for Amy Coney Barrett’s quinceañera party and some other pre-election events. Melania was involved in some renovations involving the tennis court pavilion.
Baud
@Ben Cisco:
I wouldn’t bet money that they were unadulterated.
Steeplejack
@TaMara:
It’s the humidity. (Currently 92% here.)
Jaysails
Great that they’re fixing the family glitch. Next, maybe they can do something for those of us who are still on the ACA, with a spouse on Medicare. Spouse’s premiums don’t “count” as health insurance premiums for ACA subsidy purposes, however their income from SS does! Lose/lose, yay! If my spouse’s income and/or medicare costs were being treated consistently, my ACA premiums would be about half what they are at the moment.
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: I never realized you were that close.
Ben Cisco
@Baud: BWAHAAHAAHAA
laura
Our monthly Kaiser premium through the ACA/Covered California just went from $201.00 to $139.00 per month. THANKS OBAMA!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Doesn’t this goon live in GA? He may actually be hearing this from people who know.
trump rammed Walker down their throats– to use one of their favorite phrases– because he was “famous”
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
About six miles from the Potomac, as the crow flies. My Google Maps routes to the White House are 8.0 and 9.0 miles, respectively. Not perfectly straight, of course.
Martin
ACA/Covered California is what allowed me to retire. Wouldn’t mind a price drop. It’s our single largest expense at the moment.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
IOW “things that Hershel Walker has said and done.” The bastards, is there no limit to how low they will stoop?
Martin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: He does.
I’m looking at the redistricting balance, and Dems are right about where they were prior to the redistricting with a number of maps still to be approved. Worst case, Dems are no worse off, and in the end the GOP will probably be a bit worse (most outstanding maps are red states).
The GOP are shoring up states, but not the country. They’ve killed off roughly one congressional district of their voters with Covid, and that’s on top of a demographic shift that was already working deeply against them. Gonna go out on a limb and say that calling Romney, and Murkowski and Collins pedophiles isn’t going to be a winning electoral narrative for the GOP.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
This is Great News for McCain!
laura
@Martin: Ditto. Staying on my employer Cadillac Plan would cost $2,500.00 per month. The subsidies saved my savings that I’d put aside to cover us till 65. Phew.
zhena gogolia
@Martin: They called them that?
Ben Cisco
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Serves them right, both for not standing up to the Angry Circus Peanut ™ AND for letting their party put forth a brain damaged abuser to run for the seat. Cue the tiniest of violins ?
MisterDancer
SERIOUSLY? Barack offered to loan Joe money to pay Beau’s family’s bills, after he passed. You don’t do that for someone you hate (usually…)
Which also tells you how little abuse Joe made of his time in office! As I recall: He was the poorest Senator, in terms of net worth, when Barack asked him to join in the VP slot. Barack was the poorest prior to running and having his books become best sellers as a result.
Anyway. These two rascals truly care about each other; they have a lot of little things in common, like both having taught Constitutional Law, that helped them bond, I think.
Geoduck
@zhena gogolia: Marjorie Taylor Greene called them “pro-pedophile” in a tweet, because they have announced they’re voting yes on the Supreme Court pick. The GOP as a whole hasn’t do so.. yet.
Ben Cisco
@zhena gogolia: Margarine Typhoid Gangrene did refer to them as pedo supporters (for advancing Judge Brown’s nomination).
ETA:Dangit Geoduck!!
Martin
@zhena gogolia: Yep. Quite a few are calling them that. The Q/Putin wing are winning inside the GOP.
zhena gogolia
@Ben Cisco: OK. I thought it was presented as a general Republican Party position.
debbie
Ben Cisco
@zhena gogolia: Oh, I have no doubt that it will be doctrine before the week is out.
Martin
@Geoduck: It’s coming from quite a few corners, actually, not just MTG.
MisterDancer
There’s a thing Trump did (does?) really depressingly well, and that is to embrace a “surface-level” Blackness, to undermine us as a group. We think of it as a joke, mostly, yet I have some longer-term concerns.
From Ye (Kayne) and Dimond/Silk, to Ben Carson and now Walker, Trump has always been eager to accept the trappings of Black sycophants in ways the Right has usually avoided. And that’s a concern if the Right picks up en masse on this trick and starts trying to make serious inroads into Black Political efforts. As toxic and painful and ugly as their current work to just wipe us+allies away from voting power, it would be so much worse if they eroded the actual voting bloc thru concerted lies and propaganda.
Baud
@MisterDancer: I still don’t know why we didn’t see more Whites for Biden groups in 2020.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
Marjorie Taylor Greene:
JML
@debbie: this is excellent news. Now, about FauxNews…can we get them dumped too?
MazeDancer
Mr. Obama does not look older. His hair does.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
And Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist:
Baud
@Steeplejack: It is kind of interesting in that he shouldn’t have voted against her the first time, so I do wonder why he switched.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
And it’s official. New York Times Pitchbot (DougJ):
Baud
@Steeplejack: Haha. He captures the NYT so well.
jonas
@Brachiator: I remember one of the most touching moments of Obama’s presidency — just a day or two before he had to vacate the WH for that malignant orange toad and his gaggle of malevolent grifters — was bestowing the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Biden.
Sure Lurkalot
@Baud: Romney is a windsock. His most consistent position is to enrich himself and his donors.
Old School
@Baud:
trollhattan
@Steeplejack:
Is a funny way to say “I have bees in my head.”
WaterGirl
@debbie: Such great news!
Steeplejack
@Baud:
Who knows? Mittens treads such a fine line on the (few) Trumpian things that he objects to that it’s impossible for me to figure out what triggers it, or when.
Baud
@Old School: Romney being pro-pedo is more believable than that bit of manure, but whatev. We have enough problems, and he ain’t one.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
First comment: “We asked these children at an evangelical Sunday school in Tennessee.“
Martin
@Baud: Utah republicans aren’t like the rest of the country. Being predominantly a mormon demographic, they’re more the ‘leave us the fuck alone’ wing of the party, not the ‘accuse your neighbor of being a marxist pedophile’ wing of the party.
Romney backs a lot of the usual low tax bullshit, but he’s not a bomb thrower and doesn’t go hard on the culture war stuff (because Mormons are never winners in culture wars).
Guessing that Romney was previously signaling that he’s a good Republican, and today he’s signaling that he’s a good person since the GOP has gone so far into the culture war weeds lately.
Brachiator
@Steeplejack:
Yeah, I knew the GOP was going to run with this lie. It will be an issue in the mid-terms.
Conservatives are really hung up on this. I have even seen right wing idiots in the UK raise this as an issue with sympathetic asshole Tory MPs.
Martin
@Baud: He really is frighteningly good at it.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I thought it might have been more along the lines of “I assumed she was a scary radical black woman, but I met her and she doesn’t seem as scary as i thought.
zhena gogolia
@Old School: Oh, yeah, the NAMBLA mainstream! //
zhena gogolia
@Brachiator: Cecily Strong took care of that one on SNL.
Geoduck
@Sure Lurkalot: Still, interesting if he thinks that’s way the wind is currently blowing.
Brachiator
@zhena gogolia:
Yep! Like how she showed how the congresswoman trusts the science.
Ruckus
This is a country that can elect a spoiled brat in his 70s and can also make life better for millions who would otherwise be unable to afford some of the not so simple parts of modern life – actual healthcare. As the president said, other countries can do this but many parts of our country seems to think that many of our citizens should just die. We are in an international situation right now that one countries leader seems to think that he can just kill off most of an independent nation’s population for the worst reason of all, his very, very broken ego, which lives in what passes for a brain, although it may have slipped down a bit and resides in his ass. The imbalance of money is what causes much of human suffering, most everywhere humanity lives, including this country. Now there will always be an imbalance but it doesn’t have to be such that people can live in massive opulence, while at the same time people around them are denied healthcare and the minimum necessary bits that enable life. Many people in this country live decent and healthy lives and there isn’t any reason that others are denied that just so some can have far more than is needed for anyone. We have +/- 700 billionaires in this country, and millions that go hungry and hurt because of the need of many of those 700 to demand far more than they can ever actually need and who pay massive amounts to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. On one West Wing episode Will explained progressive taxation very well and why it is necessary for the actual health of the nation. Many of those 700 billionaires paid/pay a lot to purchase the services of those who can end progressive taxation because they are fucking greedy pricks. Those that you saw on this video are the opposite. They get paid well but they think of others, not just themselves. That is far, far better than being greedy pricks.
Miss Bianca
@debbie: Oh, yay!
Geminid
@Martin: I noticed a distinct difference between the tepid support political Evangelical leaders gave the upright Romney in 2012, and the slavering enthusiasm with which they supported the sleazy Trump in 2016 and 2020. I bet LDS members in Utah and elsewhere noticed it too.
Martin
@Ruckus: I’ll add a small side variable to the taxation problem, one that I realized I fell into as well. The way the US sets up the mechanics of taxes incentivizes us to dodge. It becomes a game, and some of us are super-wired to play and win the game. I’m both a gamer and had a career setting and enforcing policy and I am very adept at looking at your rules and finding all of the flaws in them. And that’s really what the mechanics of the tax system encourages. Most people hate the game, but people that do taxes for a living love it, and rich people employ a lot of them. They don’t even need to be greedy, just the need to hire tax people gets the same result because the tax people see a game to win.
The feds could do themselves a huge favor by basically doing the taxes for us, and then having us amend them. That would take away a lot of the game.
In my case the game was around how to retire. So, how do I lower my health insurance price on the exchange? I take less income. I can take less income by paying off the house so I don’t need income to make mortgage payments. So I did that. Am I poorer? No, actually I got better subsidies by making myself less poor. Not how it’s supposed to work, but I can’t not see the game.
Martin
@Geminid: Yeah, I’m pretty sure they know the deal here. They naturally align with the evangelicals because there are some shared benefits there, but they also lay very low because they know they are only part of the coalition because it benefits the evangelicals. As soon as they can afford to turn on the Mormons, safe to say they will. Mormons know their history.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Martin: The irony is both groups want small government, the Evangelicals so they can murder anyone who isn’t one of them and the Mormons because they know the Evangelicals would murder them if the Evangelicals get control of the government.
Brachiator
@Martin:
Bullshit. I fell into doing taxes for a living by accident, discovered that I had a knack for it and made it a second career.
I mainly work with other tax professionals, including volunteers, who do taxes for free.
Tax professionals work hard dealing with a crazy tax system to get the best results for their clients. I don’t know any who look at their clients as meal tickets, and this includes CPAs who do returns for big corporations.
There is a difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion. I can assure you that in EVERY income group there are people who play fair and people who look to cheat. A lot of people do not give squat about their fair share.
But for this past tax season in particular, with Biden’s credits, many preparers have been absolutely delighted to help people get bigger refunds than they have had before, even going back to prior tax returns to find more help.
I have spoken with preparers who talk about clients who burst into tears because the 2008 financial crash resulted in them losing homes. Preparers felt angry and helpless that games by fat cats did this to them. But again, no one felt that this was a game. This was people’s lives.
Geminid
@Martin: The LDS population is not very large in my part of Virginia. There is a substantial Mennonite population though, and they have a lot in common with LDS folks. They both retain a strong religious identity among “Gentile” communities. Both denominations do a lot of world wide mission work. And both have experienced violent suppression by majorities: LDS founder Joseph Smith was killed by a mob, while Mennonite founder Jacob Menno was executed on orders of a Lutheran-dominated civil court.
The Shenandoah Mennonites I’ve observed tend to be small-c conservatives, and seem less likely to go along with the radicals that are ascendant in Virginia’s Republican party. My state Senator is Church of the Brethren, which like the Mennonites is a non-conforming, pacifist German church well represented in the Shenandoah Valley. Emmet Hanger is a moderate conservative who joined two other Republican State Senators to help Ralph Northam push through Medicaid expansion in 2018. His opposition to permitless concealed carry was featured in his campaign literature in his last election. In other, Baptist-dominated areas of rural Virginia, Hanger might have been primaried out. But he easily beat his tea party-type challengers in 2015 and 2019.
Ajabu
@MisterDancer:
I definitely co-sign that sentiment. One of my wife’s close friends (that we generally call ghetto fabulous) has recently announced she’s a Trump supporter because he made her some money. I won’t even bother to tell you with my wife called her in response. There are not enough of us to get segmented. Keep up the good work!
J R in WV
@laura:
Shouldn’t that be “THANKS BIDEN!!!” ?? After all, Biden is the current President!!
Rondon
The USA has no mechanism for prosecuting war criminals. We must establish one, and hammer the war criminal imperialist parties – Democrat and Republican over their war crimes or the war crimes will continue. This post about two war criminals touching each other disgusts me. Pelosi let war cirminal Bush go because she is a billionaire with no principles an the Democrat party knows they have their own criminals Biden and Obama being two principles ones, Pelosi, Hoyer and the other war criminals that voted to attack Iraq must be brought to justice. Their crimes are unforgiveable. Biden is now attempting to starve 40 million Afghans to death, literally after stealing all the Afghani governments money – 9 billion dollars. Democrats foment and create war against Ukraine and Russia. Wake up and take action. Demand a permanent War criminal democratically elected independent office be created.
Ruckus
@Ben Cisco:
Margarine Typhoid Gangrene
If someone is going to get an appropriate nickname this has to top the list. Bravo.
Ruckus
@MisterDancer:
lies and propaganda
Funny, my understanding is that is all the right has in their playbook.
evap
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m not sure that Walker will win the primary. I haven’t seen any polling, though.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
The opposition bullshit they run with is usually things they have way too close a personal relationship with.
Way too close. If you get my drift…..
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@evap: good point, eight weeks is a long, long time in politics, especially if they just need to keep him under 50%
ETA: not something I’m going to count on, I’ve been burned by hope too many times, but the GA primary– at the Gov, Senate and SoS levels– may be a real crab pot thanks to trump’s politics of vindictiveness
Ruckus
@Martin:
Yes. The system is rigged for the people that can find loopholes and can afford to pay big accounting firms to find all the loopholes and can buy political power to change some things, like how you structure your income to be investment income rather than a paycheck of some sort. I believe it was Warren Buffet that discussed that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary who made about $50,000/yr, which is just slightly less than he does. If I remember at the time he was making several million/yr then. Found it. It’s called the Buffett Rule.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
I didn’t lose a home in the last recession. But I did lose a business and everything else, as did many around me, in the wealthiest county in CA. That’s Marin county and there were people living rough along the unused N/S RR tracks that run though it’s cities and is now back in use as a commuter train route. Like the LA Metro system. Yes the actually wealthy lost money as well, but they had far more than enough to survive with just slightly less than they started with when the not so great recession was finished with the rest of us.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
During this period, my company worked with preparers who received thousands of Forms 1099A, foreclosures on homes and business properties. I don’t know a single tax preparer who was happy about this. It was terrible.
But a lot of affluent people were hit hard also. Obviously some very wealthy people weathered the storm, but this was not a fun period. More people responsible for this mess should have been punished, but that is another story.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
More people responsible for this mess should have been punished, but that is another story.
Every single person responsible for the recession that is the closest one we’ve had to a depression since the last depression several decades ago should be hung up by their genitalia with large fish hooks and hung out in the summer sun for oh 6-8 weeks just to remind them of how much they fucked up the economy for the rest of us.
Does this per chance tell you how I feel about getting screwed by republican presidential efforts? Again. And again and again.