UPDATED 11.17.2016 @ 10 AM EST: Do also read this cogent analysis -- from EmptyWheel (written by my long time buddy from the Bush-Cheney years, one Marcy Wheeler). It suggests the GOP's ACA deceptions, especially in the final week, after the debates, and right before election day -- may have contributed to HRC's loss. Pennsylvania might well be explained in this way. At a minimum, it would suggest that Mr. Trump was successful in blaming Obamacare for the fact that various GOP governors -- in lower income, lower wage states were both opposing sign-ups, and well aware that such a tact would in effect cause premiums to increase, occasionally significantly. [End Update.]
Please do go read it all.
I'll quote quite liberally from the editorial board's page -- as it simply puts the truth out, on front street -- tonight. And we all know Mr. Trump and Mr. Ryan have been lying about it. Repeatedly.
Do go read it all -- very well done -- but here is the gist of it:
. . . .Paul Ryan. . . said on on Fox News, that "because of Obamacare, Medicare is going broke." That statement is false. According to the Medicare trustees, cost controls in the A.C.A. (or, Obamacare, more informally) are one of the reasons that the system’s hospital trust fund is projected to remain solvent through 2028 — 11 years longer than before the A.C.A. was enacted.
A similar claim by critics of the A.C.A. is that the law is driving up the cost of employer-provided insurance, which covers 154 million people. A new study by the Commonwealth Fund, which compares costs in the five years before and after 2010, when the A.C.A. was enacted, rebuts that claim.
In most states, the pace of growth in premium costs and deductibles has slowed since 2010. Nonetheless, employees do spend a greater share of their incomes for health coverage because of continued slow wage growth through 2014. Another big factor, especially across the South, is that employers in low-income states tend to offer workers plans that are costlier in terms of employees’ premium contributions and plan deductibles. The result is a rise in the share of income going toward health coverage.
In Mississippi, for example, 14.7 percent of median household income went to pay for premiums and deductibles on employer-provided polices in 2015. In Texas and three other southern states, plus Arizona and New Mexico, households paid 12 percent or more. By contrast, in the high income states of Maryland and Massachusetts, such costs were less than 8 percent of median income; in California, Connecticut, New York and several other relatively affluent states, they ranged from about 8 percent to less than 10 percent.
There are no good reasons to repeal the A.C.A. It is helping 20 million people directly and it is not harming hundreds of millions who are insured outside the A.C.A. . . .
Now you know. I for one do not expect to see a full-on repeal. The elite GOP folks will moderate the Trumpian/Ryan wing (and the truth is, the GOP has no credible plan to replace it with). That's my guess. Have a great evening, one and all. . . Me? I'm packing bookshelves here. . . smile. . . .
नमस्ते
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