Sunday, May 4, 2014

Just the beginning


Republicans can continue to cower, now. Their biggest fear has happened yet again: Obamacare enrollment reaches over eight million, surpassing its already-reached goal of seven million. So far, approximately 35 percent of those enrolled are people under the age of 35.

Young people are crucial to the law’s success. With numbers surging everyday, the GOP might want to re-think running on their anti-Obamacare platform. Democrats, who fear the anti-ACA rhetoric from the right might cost them the Senate, can now flex their arms and proclaim that the healthcare exchanges are working, and working well.

“This thing is working,” President Obama said in a press conference, and also said that the “repeal debate is and should be over.” It appears so. However, the Republicans, who still have their head in the sand about the healthcare law, are claiming that the administration is “cooking the books” and deliberately lying about the numbers in order to win political advantage in the upcoming elections in November.

Number enrolled would double if not for GOP sabotage
The Republicans have beefed up their premature Obamacare “victories” most recently using the recent special election in Florida last month between Republican David Jolly and Democrat Alex Sink to show that the ACA has the potential to shut down Democrat’s chances of winning.

However, Jolly won by only two percent, whereas in the past three elections, the Republican contender always won by double digits. Obamacare was the biggest campaign message from both sides of the aisle.

Democrats too have been on edge since October when the healthcare law faced major criticism for its botched rollout. But with the administration reaching its goal of 7 million on March 31st, and now 8 million today, the GOP are the ones who have had to play defense in order to gain political clout.

Republican officials across the country met at an event attended by hundreds of conservatives in New Hampshire last week, blasting President Obama’s signature healthcare law and shared their views on the party’s future, which included an array of speeches were Senators Ted Cruz, Rand Paul of Ky. and former Governor of Arkansas Mike ‘Uncle Sugar’ Huckabee. The event was called the Freedom Summit and was hosted by Citizens United and Americans for Prosperity.

But that hasn’t stopped Democrats from standing strong on the law. In a statement made by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat from Califorinia laid into the GOP for their unhealthy obsession with repealing Obamacare, saying:

“It’s time for Republicans to seek treatment for their obsession with repealing the Affordable Care Act, and join Democrats to strengthen and improve it’s historic protections.”

In Pelosi’s state of California alone, over 1.4 million citizens have enrolled through the state’s own run exchange program, beating the administration’s expectations by a whopping 100,000 people. 

Similarly, over 1.9 million people have obtained insurance through the state’s expansion of Medicaid under the ACA. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of individuals in states with GOP governors will be denied access to healthcare because of their refusal to expand on Medicaid.

Gallup estimates that more than half of individuals receiving healthcare through the state and federal exchanges had been previously uninsured, highlighting the purpose of the law to insure the previously uninsured.

At this point in time, if Republicans repealed the healthcare law, that would risk yanking away the healthcare of over eight million Americans, four million of whom have it for the first time. That would also risk letting insurance companies deny coverage to individuals with pre-existing conditions, among other things.


The Republicans raised hell when 300,000 Floridians were having their insurance shifted, and they raised hell when 119,000 Californians had their plans shifted. But apparently they have no problem taking about healthcare from eight million Americans and counting.