ACA winners and losers chart making the rounds
Jonathan Cohn:
To be clear, this is an extremely rough approximation, in more ways than one. (The experience of the people buying coverage on their own is more varied and complex than the chart suggests.) And in a country of 300 million, 3 percent still represents a lot of people. But to stick with one of my themes, all policy choices involve trade-offs. The higher premiums that some people will now pay for insurance are the price of a system that makes coverage available to all, at uniform prices, regardless of medical condition—and that establishes a basic set of benefits that no plan may omit. Obamacare attempts to minimize the impact by providing subsidies, generous enough so that people stuck with higher bills can, by and large, afford them. But there's no denying that some people will pay more, whether because rates go up or they have to buy more expensive plans.
Josh Barro:
Unfortunately, except the 80% largely unaffected, these numbers are garbage.
According to Lizza, Gruber marks 14% of the population as clear winners because they are uninsured now but gain access to affordable coverage. That would be about 45 million people as of 2016, when the Affordable Care Act is in full swing.
But according to the Congressional Budget Office, the law will only increase insurance coverage by about 26 million people through 2016, or 8% of the population. That's the group that can be called "clear winners"; 14% is too aggressive an estimate.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Jonathan Chait:
The health-care debate has suddenly come to focus almost obsessively on the alleged victims of Obamacare, who have lost their cheap individual insurance. Here’s Matthew Fleischer mourning the loss of his bare-bones plan in the Los Angeles Times; here’s David Frum doing the same for the Daily Beast. Mary Landrieu, a vulnerable red-state Democrat, is introducing legislation to ensure that nobody can lose their individual health-care plan.
The idea underlying this notion, while facially appealing, is in fact misguided and morally perverse. No decent health-care reform can keep in place every currently existing private plan.
NY Times:
Charles Nance, Dean Wright and Julie Tyrrell are getting dropped — forced out of their existing health insurance plans — and landing smack in the middle of the uproar over President Obama’s health care law.
One expects to pay more. One expects to pay less. And one is just trying to figure it all out.
Each, in a different way, represents the relatively small part of America that the Obama administration did not talk about while campaigning for the Affordable Care Act: people who have health insurance that they like, but who will be unable to keep it under the law.
Good stories. However, the plural of anecdote is not data. That's why the chart and discussion above are so much more important.
Ed Kilgore:
One of the reigning experts on this subject, Sarah Binder of George Washingon University and Brookings, has a WaPo op-ed expressing doubt that 51 Democratic senators can be held together for a direct assault on judicial filibusters. I agree, but hope fury at Republican obstructionism soon makes radical filibuster reform more realistic.
Regular readers know how I feel (filibuster delenda est!), but let me raise this in a broader context than is usual. All the endless and interminable and redundant whining we hear these days (sometimes in our own voices!) about partisan gridlock in Washington invariably revolves around demands for “deals” and “compromise”—which is actually music to the ears of the least compromising elements in Washington (hint, hint: the ones who shut down the federal government), who know that this false-equivalency framing of the problem gives them a huge advantage in ultimately getting their way. Indeed, when such folk have no plausible way to achieve their goals via elections, the obstruct-then-compromise-on-favorable-terms approach may seem the best and maybe the only way to win.
Guardian on next weeks R Alabama Congressional primary:
Who is the current Treasury secretary?
Byrne: I can see his face but I can't remember his name. Is it Jack Lew?
Young: It was Paulson. Is it Tim Geithner now?
Who is the current chief whip for Republicans in the House?
Byrne: Kevin McCarthy. I met him the other day so that's an easy question.
Young: I don't know. Eric Cantor - is that who it is?
What should US policy toward Saudi Arabia be?
Byrne: While it is nominally an ally, it has a lot of internal problems, particularly with what they deal with what I consider to be extremist views within Islam … We need to be in a serious conversation with them about that.
Young: We should have free trade with them.
Leaving the question of gay marriage aside, do you believe homosexual people can feel the same love for one another as straight people?
Byrne: Yes.
Young: When you start talking about that, I don't even know … Homosexuality is wrong, and that is just the way it is. Always has been, always will be.
Where was Barack Obama born?
Byrne: He was born in Hawaii and he has produced a birth certificate.
Young: That is what we call the $64,000 question! I have no idea! [When pushed for an answer:] Kenya.
Dana Milbank:
If Ken Cuccinelli II loses his bid to be the next governor of Virginia on Tuesday, as polls suggest he will, the date of the Republican defeat will be traced back to May 18.
That was the day the commonwealth’s Republican Party took what had been a sure thing and instead allowed the tea party to give the Democrats an opening.