Wow. Keep it klassy, G-O-TEA.
But you know what? I'm not afraid of their ridiculous attacks, and I don't think any Democrat should be. Why? I'll let these people explain, and they actually know first hand what the Affordable Care Act is about.
And pay close attention here, as a skeptic who turned against President Obama when the ACA passed had a change of heart after her health care situation changed.
As we discussed last week, the Affordable Care Act really is saving lives and making health care better for Americans. As you can see in the videos above, Americans are no longer being denied health care because of pre-existing conditions. Seniors saved $2.16 billion on prescription drug coverage last year thanks to the ACA closing the Medicare Part D "Donut Hole" that George Bush allowed to form. And 86 million Americans have already been taking advantage of the ACA's expansion of low-cost and NO-cost preventive care.
So Republicans really want to attack President Obama for successfully achieving health care reform that's already working in expanding care and lowering costs? Apparently so. However, the only way they can keep attacking Obama and "Obamacare" is by lying about the ACA. So they lie about the costs.
Just last week, Republicans misrepresented a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report which said that the Affordable Care Act was expected to cost $50 billion less than they anticipated a year ago while extending coverage to 30 million Americans. In spite of what the report actually found, many Republicans have claimed that the cost of the bill would double. As FactCheck.org points out, Republicans appear to have reached their conclusion by distorting the math [...]
It is worth noting that Republican attempts to repeal either the whole bill or parts of it are projected to increase the budget deficit, suggesting that Republicans are more interested in delivering a blow to President Obama than lowering the national debt. At least one conservative justice has also noted the potential for “economic chaos” if the law was struck down and health care costs rose as a result.
More to the point, however, this is not the first time that a CBO report on the health care law has been misrepresented by its opponents to make it seem like they reached a different conclusion. Nor is it the first time that claims about the law have turned out to be inaccurate. Even the suggestion that millions of Americans will lose workplace health insurance ignores the reality: While employer coverage will vacillate — as it has before the ACA was enacted — the vast majority of businesses say they will continue to offer coverage to employees when the law’s insurance exchanges start up. In fact, if Massachusetts’ health reform is any indication, employers are highly unlikely to dump employees into the exchanges.
And they lie about the legality. Even a CONSERVATIVE judge that George Bush considered for the Supreme Court has spoken up to smack down the lies about the ACA supposedly not passing constitutional muster.
In curbing federal excess, courts risk lessening our national economic strength. That strength resides partly in the national aspects of our founding document, among them the now maligned commerce clause and the newly mistrusted supremacy clause, which gives preference to federal over state law when there is a conflict. States’ rights are important in many spheres, but the benefits of a national economic policy must also be considered. A vibrant economic order requires some political predictability, and the prospect of judges’ striking down commercial regulation on ill-defined and subjective bases is a prescription for economic chaos that the framers, in a simpler time, had the good sense to head off.
It is tempting to shout states’ rights when deeply flawed federal legislation is enacted, but the momentary satisfactions of that exercise carry long-term constitutional costs. Badly conceived bills die a thousand political deaths — in the appropriations process, in the states, through electoral retribution, in the executive appointments of a succeeding administration and ultimately in amendment and repeal. However, if courts read the Constitution in such a way that it enables them to make Congress ineffectual, and instead to promote 50 state regulatory regimes in an era of rapidly mounting global challenges, the risks should escape no one. Making our charter more parochial while other nations flex their economic muscle seems like poor timing.
Perhaps this explains why 85% (!!!) of Supreme Court experts polled by the American Bar Association believe "The Supremes" will uphold the ACA as constitutional. When one looks at the actual law and actual legal precedent, one can tell that "there's no there THERE" when it comes to the legal case against the ACA.
And when we look at the actual facts of health care reform and the actual policies in the ACA that are now being implemented, we see that people's lives are being impacted for the better. Yet when we look at the G-O-TEA alternative of repealing the ACA, we see that all it would do is drive up health care costs while putting more Americans at risk. Oh, and the Paul Ryan/G-O-TEA plan to repeal the ACA and do away with Medicare as we know it would actually ADD to the federal budget deficit if implemented!
All Dean Heller, Joe Heck, and their G-O-TEA buddies have against the ACA are lies and hot air. Perhaps that's why they're going to even more desperate extremes to attack "Obamacare". And most definitely this is why Democrats shouldn't be afraid of these attacks.
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