Sunday Open Thread [12.28.14]
Obamacare is wildly popular now. Meanwhile, the public finally is starting to notice that things are going pretty well in the economy now. A new CNN/ORC says that 51% of Americans have a positive view of the economy, a sharp increase from the 38% who felt that way in October. Perhaps because in October they were being falsely and misleadingly distracted with news of Ebola.
The jump was present in every demographic group — men, women, whites, non-whites, urban, rural — and was largest among Americans who earn less than $50,000 annually.
“After years of muddling along, the U.S. economy appears to be breaking into a sprint that could alter the political landscape heading into 2015 and beyond,” Politico reports.
“The latest evidence of strength came in a report on Tuesday showing growth expanded at a robust 5 percent pace in the third quarter of 2014, the fastest speed in over a decade. The news helped drive the Dow Jones Industrial Average above 18,000 for the first time ever in a bull market charge that began six years ago and shows no signs of slowing.”
An economy that is both strong and viewed so by the public changes 2016. Hillary Clinton no longer has to point out differences with Obama. She will begin to point out similarities. And she is already doing so.
The Washington Post reports Hillary Clinton “is working hard to shore up support among liberals in hopes of tamping down a serious challenge from the left in the battle for the 2016 nomination.”
“Clinton has aligned herself firmly with President Obama since the November midterms on a range of liberal-friendly issues, including immigration, climate change and opening diplomatic relations with Cuba. In an impassioned human rights speech this month, she also condemned the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation tactics and decried cases of apparent police brutality against minorities.”
“The recent statements suggest a concerted effort by Clinton to appeal to the Democratic Party’s most activist, liberal voters, who have often eyed her with suspicion and who would be crucial to her securing the party’s nomination.”
This isn’t any fun to read but…..http://billmoyers.com/2014/09/09/noam-chomsky-are-we-approaching-the-end-of-human-history/
Clinton: Leading from behind 2016.
Oops lol
Calling Obamacare popular is simply delusional.
Few Have Bought Health Insurance Through New Exchanges
Voters end the year with little personal experience with the health insurance exchanges established under the new health care law.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 15% of Likely U.S. Voters say they or any member of their immediate family have bought health insurance through one of the new exchanges. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.
The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on December 28, 2014 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Saying Obamacare is only about enrollment is also delusional.
Pre-existing conditions, cap removals, children staying on plans, etc. are also part of Obamacare.
The $600 dollar refund check I received my my insurance company last year was also due to the ACA.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 15% of Likely U.S. Voters say they or any member of their immediate family have bought health insurance through one of the new exchanges.
15% is a LOT of people who got covered or got cheaper/better insurance through Obamacare. 15% is a hell of a lot more health care than the direction Republicans were taking us before Obamacare.
They don’t care. Its all about their selfish tribal obsession with their sociopathic party of sadistic resentment
The insurance companies are making incredible profits off the ACA! Centene Ins. Co., net income soared 67%. As a result, Aetna Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc. and the Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurer WellPoint Inc. all posted third quarter results that trumped Wall Street estimates and raised their forecasts for 2014. Shares of those companies — the nation’s three largest health insurers — have all repeatedly hit all-time highs this year, their growth easily outpacing broader trading indexes.
Premiums rose 66 percent in Pennsylvania, 37 percent in California, 34 percent in Indiana, 30 percent in Kentucky and 29 percent in Colorado.
There should have been a better way, than this! It was shoved down our throats.
Maybe if the republicans had cooperated just a bit
Or maybe… more people getting insurance equals more profits. I know, math is hard.
That was the justification for the buy in from the insurance monopoly, more customers..
“There should have been a better way, than this! It was shoved down our throats.”
Lest you forget, this was a feature, not a bug. More customers was the carrot for insurers to drop opposition to the law.
Or maybe, anonymous is reporting data that isn’t quite true. A quick google of Centene provides an explanation of better 3Q results due to having more *Medicaid* members signup. Then Aetna says that it’s profits are due to being able to maintain their margins on their *commercial* business.
Seriously, people, we are not FOX News up in here. Links or you’re pulling it out of your ass.
Good point, but it’s not as if insurers were expected or expecting to lose money on ACA. The details may be wrong, but the principle remains accurate: Profits are being made on health insurance, which strikes many people as an immoral source of capital growth.
Blaming the ACA for this is disingenuous. The profit motive of insurers predates ACA, and was not challenged by ACA because no plan would have passed if the insurers had lobbied against it. Anonymous surely knows this.
No, they were not going to lose money, even though they need to live with the mandated MLR. Which means that they make money when they 1) increase the pool of people they insure and/or 2) control the cost growth of the services provided to that pool.
It ust be sad to belong to a political tribe that thrives on resentment and shills for people who work against them
@Mouse: I don’t know what “side” anonymous is on. I’m a fan of ACA only if the alternative is doing nothing. If the alternative were expanded Medicare or some other form of single-payer, I would prefer that to ACA.
Conservatives consistently have misrepresented the polling numbers on ACA. The reason its popularity remains below 50% is that about 10% of those polled think it’s weak tea and want something better. The percentage of people who want to return to the former status quo is about 40%, consistent with the percentage that backs any dumb-ass conservative idea you can cite.