Tuesday Open Thread [5.28.13]

As we get closer to the 2014 midterm elections, you are going to start hearing more and more about the generic ballot. It is a poll question where polling organizations ask their respondents whether they are voting for the Democratic candidate or the Republican candidate as their Representative in Congress. Now, generally, this question only tells so much if the results are relatively close together, for example, Dems 42, GOP 40. Because in that instance, local politics, gerrymandering, and the incumbency advantage all play a part in deciding the race no matter the national preference for one party over the other. However, when the disparity between the two parties on this question becomes wider, it often indicates that a wave election is coming where one political party gets their candidates elected over the other. For example, in 2006, the ABC/Washington Post poll right before the election showed the Dems enjoying a 6 point lead over the GOP on the generic ballot question. The Dems won 30 plus seats and the House.

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll found that the Democrats lead Republicans on the generic ballot by 8 points, 48% to 40%.

Gov. Jan Brewer is becoming quite the advocate for Obamacare:

[Brewer] sent five bills to the scrap heap Thursday in a pointed gesture intended to prod lawmakers into a deal on the budget and her plan to expand Medicaid.

The five vetoes, follow-through on Brewer’s promise to block legislation until her top priorities move forward, capped a tense day that saw some lawmakers receive threats over their support for the plan to provide health care for more of the state’s poor.

In letters explaining her actions, Brewer revealed a growing impatience with the Legislature, which she noted has been in session for 130 days and has only five weeks until the constitutional deadline for a fiscal 2014 budget.

Brewer, to her credit, realized that she would only be harming her fellow Arizonan citizens by rejecting the Medicaid component of Obamacare. Meanwhile, it seems that the other parts of Obamacare are not bringing about the outright apocalpyse that conservatives predict. In fact, the law is doing what it was supposed to do: lower health care costs and insurance premiums. From TNR’s Jonathan Cohn:

Based on the premiums that insurers have submitted for final regulatory approval [in California], the majority of Californians buying coverage on the state’s new insurance exchange will be paying less—in many cases, far less—than they would pay for equivalent coverage today. And while a minority will still end up writing bigger premium checks than they do now, even they won’t be paying outrageous amounts. Meanwhile, all of these consumers will have access to the kind of comprehensive benefits that are frequently unavailable today, at any price, because of the way insurers try to avoid the old and the sick.

Sarah Kliff of Wonkblog has more:

Health insurers will charge 25-year-olds between $142 and $190 per month for a bare-bones health plan in Los Angeles.

A 40-year-old in San Francisco who wants a top-of-the-line plan would receive a bill between $451 and $525. Downgrade to a less robust option, and premiums fall as low as $221.

These premium rates, released Thursday, help answer one of the biggest questions about Obamacare: How much health insurance will cost. […] Multiple projections expected premiums to be relatively high.
The Congressional Budget Office predicted back in November 2009 that a medium-cost plan on the health exchange – known as a “silver plan” – would have an annual premium of $5,200, [or $433 a month]. A separate report from actuarial firm Milliman projected that, in California, the average silver plan would have a $450 monthly premium.

Now we have California’s rates, and they appear to be significantly less expensive than what forecasters expected. On average, the most affordable “silver plan” – which covers 70 percent of the average subscriber’s medical costs – comes with a $276 monthly premium.

Boy, if Obamacare works out on a national level as it is in California, then the Republicans are going to forever regret calling the Affordable Care Act “Obamacare.” Because the program will go down as the most successful program in all history after Social Security and Medicare, and President Obama will go down as one of the nation’s greatest Presidents, with his name on a program. Indeed, Roosevelt and Johnson did not get their names on Social Security and Medicare, respectively.