Derp King Paul Ryan
What do you do about a schmuck like Republican Congressdope Paul Ryan?
In prepared remarks for a hearing Wednesday on next year's budget for the Department of Health and Human Services, he went, as he is wont,
full derp. But just how derpy did he go? Let's take a look!
First, I want to thank our witness, Secretary Burwell. We were supposed to have our hearing earlier this year, but events overtook us. So here we are today. I understand the majority of your remarks will be about the president's budget request. That's all well and good. But it shouldn't surprise you that we're more interested in talking about Obamacare, especially given the president's remarks this week.
Translation: I don't give a rat's ass about why you're actually here. It's hobbyhorse time!
And I hope he gives you a medal after this—because defending Obamacare is no easy task. I think any objective observer would say this law is on the fritz ... by the law's own standards.
What a condescending jerk. Also, no, no it's not.
The whole point of Obamacare was to make health care more affordable. But premiums aren't going down; they're going up—way up. All over the country, insurers are proposing double-digit premium hikes. In Maryland, it's close to 30 percent. Tennessee, 36 percent. South Dakota, 42 percent.
You know what's always happened to health insurance premiums all the time? They go up. Every year. That's because health insurance is provided by private companies, who are constrained only by what the market will bear—in other words, nothing at all. So actually, why is Paul Ryan complaining? Would he prefer that the government clamp down on the free market and tell insurers what they can charge? Or better yet, eliminate the free market entirely and impose a single-payer system, where the government is the only insurer? Go ahead, friendo. Make our day.
We're not nearly done yet. Head below the fold for more in our War on Derp.
Tax season was like a bad dream before. Now it's a total nightmare. People could never afford these plans on their own, so the law gave them subsidies. Well, now, two-thirds of the people who got them had to pay the IRS back—on average over $700. That's not the kind of money most people have lying around.
Stupid mendacious Paul Ryan didn't even read to the middle of the
first full sentence of
H&R Block's report. The accounting giant said that yes, a lot of people have had to "pay back" a chunk of their ACA subsidies—but "pay back" in this case means "cutting their potential refund by almost one-third." It does
not mean that these folks had to find $700 in spare cash. They just got a smaller credit than they expected.
And why was their credit smaller? Because many people underestimated their income, meaning they made more than they thought they would last year (thus reducing the size of the insurance subsidy they were eligible for). In essence, Paul Ryan is trying to say that it's a bad thing that people a) earned more money than they anticipated and b) consequently needed less government assistance. He's lost his mind.
And for all of this hassle, what are we getting for it? The argument was if people had insurance, they'd go to the doctor instead of the emergency room. But now even more people are using the emergency room.
A very dicey claim. For one, it's based on a study that was just a
poll of emergency room doctors' perceptions, not actual admission numbers. For another, there's a
post hoc ergo propter hoc issue: We don't know if Obamacare has actually led to an increase in emergency room visits. As Sarah Kliff points out, the frequency of ER trips
went up in prior years, too. Ryan just doesn't have the data to support his point, but he'll go on making it whether he has any data or not.
So, whatever the Supreme Court decides this month, I think the lesson is clear: Obamacare is busted. It just doesn't work. And no quick fix can change this fact. We're not talking about a fender bender or a flat tire. The whole law's a lemon. Its very linchpin—its central principle—is government control. That means higher prices, fewer choices, and lower quality. So the answer isn't just tighten a few screws and everything will be fine. The answer is to repeal and replace this law with real, patient-centered reforms.
Shut up.
And the truth is, I don't have to convince this administration the law is broken. I know that you know it's broken . . . because you keep trying to fix it. For several years now, HHS has delayed parts of the law—and in some cases rewritten it—on the fly. We know the most egregious example: the subsidies. The law says people who buy plans on state exchanges can get subsidies. It doesn't say anything about the federal exchanges. And yet, HHS has sent millions of subsidies out the door, putting millions of people at risk.
OMG. No, you didn't! But he did! He mainlined
some pure John Thune and fell into a deep R-hole. Paul Krugman already inducted this line of "reasoning"
into the chutzpah hall of fame, summarizing it as, "Obamacare is a failed policy, because we may be able to kill it with an absurd legal challenge!" How does a guy like Ryan even sleep at night? (Answer: Very well, no doubt. It's exhausting being this dumb.)
More and more it seems the administration isn't so much implementing the law as improvising it. We already have evidence of the administration using one account to pay for multiple programs—programs that Congress has never funded. That's one of the main reasons we're holding this hearing today. It is Congress that wields the power of the purse. And more and more the administration is acting like a purse-snatcher.
A Groupon for whichever speech-writer came up with that "purse-snatcher" line.
So again, my kudos to you for taking a tough assignment. But the American people deserve better. They deserve a health care system that puts the patient first. They deserve lower prices, more choices, and higher quality. And this committee is going to do all it can to make those reforms happen.
Republicans haven't done jack manure to advance the cause of improving access to health care. They don't want to and they never will. They've long lived in a two-pronged fantasy world: one where Obamacare is on the verge of collapse, and one in which they have a perfectly excellent alternative (that they just can't show us quite yet). No matter how much contrary evidence they face, they still continue to believe these two things fiercely. When a child shows that much faith in Santa, we call it sweet. When grown Republicans do it, that's called
derp, and on the summit of Mt. Derp stands Paul Ryan.