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UPDATE III: "The part of Obamacare that's troubled is the part Democrats lifted from Republican policymakers. It's the part that tries to integrate private insurance companies with government systems in order to create a universal insurance system that's subsidized by the state but run by private companies. The part that's working well is Medicaid -- which is to say, the part that's working well is the part that expands an existing, government-run, single-payer system. . .
Obamacare isn't 'the left's' grand plan. Their grand plan is Medicare-for-all. Obamacare is a compromise between the left's vision of universal health care and the right's hatred of government-run insurance. It's based off a blueprint developed by the Heritage Foundation, introduced into the Senate as a Republican alternative to Bill Clinton's health-care ideas, and passed into law by then-Gov. Mitt Romney. It's true that Republicans abandoned their idea when Democrats decided to adopt it but that doesn't change the intellectual lineage -- or the point of the plan.
Put aside whether Obamacare's failure would hurt President Obama, who will never be on a ballot again, and look instead at what it will mean for health-care policy broadly. The case that can be made against the difficulties of implementing a system this complex isn't a case for the status quo. Nor is it a case for Republican health-care ideas, insofar as they exist. After all, Rep. Paul Ryan's health-care plan -- and his Medicare plan -- would also require the government to run online insurance marketplaces. It's a case for a much simpler, government-run health-care system."
Read the Washington Post, The right doesn’t want Obamacare fixed. But it’s even worse for them if it fails.
UPDATE II: "I happened to turn on the Hannity show on Fox News last Friday evening. 'Average Americans are feeling the pain of Obamacare and the healthcare overhaul train wreck,' Hannity announced, 'and six of them are here tonight to tell us their stories.' Three married couples were neatly arranged in his studio, the wives seated and the men standing behind them, like game show contestants.
As Hannity called on each of them, the guests recounted their 'Obamacare' horror stories: canceled policies, premium hikes, restrictions on the freedom to see a doctor of their choice, financial burdens upon their small businesses and so on. . .
But none of it smelled right to me. "
And it turns out, none of the stories were true. One business owner hung up when confronted with his lie, and two other couples would have saved more than 60% a year in premiums for equivalent coverage on Obamacare exchanges, but never bothered to shop the exchanges.
Read Salon, Inside the Fox News lie machine: I fact-checked Sean Hannity on Obamacare.
So many lies, so little time to refudiate.
UPDATE: "The U.S. likes to think of itself as friendly to small businesses. But, as a 2009 study by the economists John Schmitt and Nathan Lane documented, our small-business sector is among the smallest in the developed world, and has one of the lowest rates of self-employment. One reason is that we’ve never had anything like national health insurance."
The New Yorker, The Business End of Obamacare, which notes that "the likely benefits of Obamacare for small businesses are enormous."
"When you’re being forced to endure another rabid Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) soliloquy on Obamacare’s threat to human freedom, it’s easy to forget how absurd our health-care debate seems to the rest of the civilized world. That’s why it’s bracing to check in with red-blooded, high testosterone capitalists north of the border in Canada — business leaders who love Canada’s single-payer system (a regime far to the 'left' of Obamacare) and see it as perfectly consistent with free market capitalism.
Read the Washington Post, Canadians don’t understand Ted Cruz’s health-care battle.
