rickyp wrote:freeman3

Speaking of which, I think I bet you $20 that The ACA would be more popular by January, 2015. I don 't really remember the exact terms of the bet , however.

you win the bet.... maybe

In NY (and most places, I think) open enrollment for next year starts on November 15th, and until then there is little info on plans or rates. That's the big hurdle the ACA has to get over: there needs to be good rates/plans and websites that works. I'd hold off speculating one way or another until after the 15t

The Open Enrollment period for 2015 coverage is November 15, 2014 to February 15, 2015.

If you haven’t enrolled in coverage by then, you generally can’t buy Marketplace health coverage for 2015 until the next Open Enrollment period for coverage the following year.

If you’re enrolled in a 2014 Marketplace plan, your benefit year ends December 31, 2014. To continue health coverage in 2015, you can renew your current health plan or choose a new health plan through the Marketplace during the 2015 Open Enrollment period.

If you don’t have health coverage during 2015, you may have to pay a fee. The fee in 2015 is higher than it was in 2014 — 2% of your income or $325 per adult/$162.50 per child, whichever is more.

rickyp wrote:geo

In NY (and most places, I think) open enrollment for next year starts on November 15th, and until then there is little info on plans or rates. That's the big hurdle the ACA has to get over: there needs to be good rates/plans and websites that works. I'd hold off speculating one way or another until after the 15t

Compared to what Geo?

freeman3 wrote:Or Republicans could say you give us tax cuts we'll give you minimum wage. You give us Keystone we'll give you infrastructure. You give us trade expansion we give you student loan relief. Let's work something out on immigration.
But it's not going to happen . It's going to be give us what we want and we'll give you nothing. Watch.

rickyp wrote:http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/27/us/is-the-affordable-care-act-working.html?_r=0#/

timely

The most direct beneficiary of the law is the insurance industry, which is now experiencing growth in the demand for private insurance.

rickyp wrote:Obama will be more than willing to fight the fight on the ACA. If Republican extremists make it about repeal, it will end up being a tough issue. In 25 States the ACA is a reaility and as people become familiar with it, they are positive about it. And these tend to be larger States with more electoral votes...

An interesting factoid about the Senate election. 117,000 votes in total is all that made the Senate Republican. If you take the margin of election in Alaska North Carolin and North Dakota thats all that was needed to keep the Senate Democratic. This probably says more about the odditiy of having an election in which only 1/3 of a deliberative body up for election - and not the chief executive either.

Still it only took 90 minutes for all the counting in Toronto.

JimHackerMP wrote:Sorry this post has gone awfully damned fast and I have not had a chance to "catch up". My Democratic friends are pissed as hell that a lot of their fellow Democrats sat on their hands and let Hogan win. They don't seem to grasp that they did that deliberately because they don't like Anthony Brown.

The bill is still unpopular--a fact GOP candidates seized upon. There is not going to be a groundswell of anti-Republican fervor if they go after the ACA. It all depends on how they handle it

The chart shows that even in the states carried by Mitt Romney, slightly more favor keeping the law than repealing it, by 51-47. (That 51 percent breaks down into 39 percent who support the law plus 11 percent who don’t support it but want to keep it).

Meanwhile, in the states carried by Barack Obama, more favor keeping the law than repealing it, by 61-35. (That 61 percent breaks down into 45 percent who support the law plus a little less than 17 percent who don’t support it but want to keep it). The differences here just aren’t all that pronounced: In both Romney and Obama states, more favor keeping the law than getting rid of it, and the level of approval for it isn’t all that different

rickyp wrote:fate

The bill is still unpopular--a fact GOP candidates seized upon. There is not going to be a groundswell of anti-Republican fervor if they go after the ACA. It all depends on how they handle it

.
First, its no longer a bill. Its a law.

Second, repeal is not popular. (Making it better is...)

So yes, it depends on how they handle it. But a good size portion of the caucus will vote to repeal....which means going backwards.

Washington (CNN) -- As Congress voted on the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, in 2010, one of the bill's architects, MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, told a college audience that those pushing the legislation pitched it as a bill that would control spiraling health care costs even though most of the bill was focused on something else and there was no guarantee the bill would actually bend the cost curve.

In recent days, the past comments of Gruber -- who in this 2010 speech notes that he "helped write the federal bill" and "was a paid consultant to the Obama administration to help develop the technical details as well" -- have been given renewed attention. In previously posted but recently noticed speeches, Gruber discusses how those pushing the bill took part in an "exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter," taking advantage of voters' "stupidity" to create a law that would ultimately be good for them.

In this fourth video, Gruber's language is not as stark as in three previous instances, but his suggestion that Obamacare proponents engaged in less-than-honest salesmanship remains.

"Barack Obama's not a stupid man, okay?" Gruber said in his remarks at the College of the Holy Cross on March 11, 2010. "He knew when he was running for president that quite frankly the American public doesn't actually care that much about the uninsured....What the American public cares about is costs. And that's why even though the bill that they made is 90% health insurance coverage and 10% about cost control, all you ever hear people talk about is cost control. How it's going to lower the cost of health care, that's all they talk about. Why? Because that's what people want to hear about because a majority of American care about health care costs."