Harry Reid is smacking around the lying Obamacare liars, and someone seems a bit upset by it. Reid went to the Senate floor to put a statement on the record about all of the lies being bandied about by the likes of Americans for Prosperity.
Speaking about the recent deluge of whining, lying ads, Reid said "Despite all that good news, there's plenty of horror stories being told," He continued, "All of them are untrue, but they're being told all over America."
It's probably a bad idea to make a statement claiming "all" of anything is false, because I'm certain there are a few stories out there that are true. Take, for example, all of those people in red states who have been denied health care access because their governors and legislatures won't expand Medicaid. That is definitely a horror story, one that can't be told often enough.
At any rate, Reid's statement lathered up Senator McConnell, who ran straight to Fox News for comfort from Megyn, who welcomed him with open arms.
Let's just dispense with Megyn's listing of the one hundred horror stories that turned into "thousands" a couple of lines later. In each and every case but one, what she describes is the result of insurer or provider decisions.
Doctors not in the network? That's because the insurers didn't settle their contract with them, or because they opted out of insurance reimbursements from that company.
Medication not covered? That's an insurer decision, and one they made all the time before the Affordable Care Act was fully implemented. Nothing has changed but the blame vessel.
Surgery delayed? Hospital out of network? Yep, that's an issue between the carrier and the provider, and happened all the time before the Affordable Care Act took effect.
As President Obama said, every single health policy decision made by providers and insurers might have been made anyway, but instead it's laid at the feet of the Affordable Care Act. Except needy Medicaid recipients. That's entirely the fault of selfish, lying Republican Koch-heads who want desperately to see more people die faster.
Since we're on the topic Fox News and their nonstop "I hate Obamacare" campaign, let me just take a moment to observe how incredibly arrogant their "how dare you" pronouncements sound.
This is a new chorus among the conservative faithful: How dare you (or Obama or the Congress or anyone else) decide what policies are junk? Or as it was put to me personally by American Commitment's Phil Kerpen and one of his Twitter minions, who accused me of lying about the liar Julie Boonstra in the lastest AfP ad:
.@Alice_Aitch I dare because I care. I've seen too many people's lives and livelihood destroyed by illnesses they couldn't afford to treat
— Karoli (@Karoli) February 27, 2014
My reply is there, too. Yes, I really do care about people not dying because they can handle the bills and have a magic ticket to walk in the doctor's door called an insurance card.
There is no question that coverage with no annual or lifetime caps where the premium cost plus deductible up to maximum out-of-pocket costs for $2 per year is hardly a nightmare, and it's definitely not some kind of disaster. She could have chosen to explore her options on the exchange and didn't. As far as I'm concerned, that puts the lie to the entire ad.
We just paid our third premium for insurance and we actually look forward to paying it every month. The burden we once carried is off our shoulders. The real beneficiary is our son, who pays for the top-of-the-line exchange policy without subsidies. It covers the medications we were paying for out-of-pocket since 2010. Instead of $800 per month for medications not covered by the $1200 per month insurance we had, he is now paying $337 for his own insurance policy and $30 per month for his medications.
Which one of those scenarios was the nightmare? The insurance we could have kept because we liked it? (We didn't.) Or the insurance he now can obtain on his own without assistance and without discrimination?
I think the answer is clear.