I expect Scott Walker to apologize for his numerous attempts to dismiss, derail, and defame Obamacare around the same time he’s caught in flagrante delicto with Marty Beil in the “Free Mumia” T-shirt booth at Fighting Bob Fest.
But with Obamacare’s fortunes turning around, it’s inevitable that Walker and the other GOP governors who cynically placed their bets on a total health care reform collapse will be exposed as the black-hearted political schemers they are.
Now, as soon as this blog post dips one diffident toe into the genteel marketplace of ideas that is the World Wide Web circa 2014, I fully expect the right-wing Borg hive to respond with vigor, telling me about the family whose $6 health plan was cancelled and replaced with a $1,900 plan that only covers toddler sex-reassignment surgery and late-term abortions.
But the truth is, Obamacare has already helped millions get real, affordable, comprehensive insurance plans — plans that can’t be cancelled or denied because you were once unlucky enough to get really sick.
The latest news on Obamacare is positive. More importantly, it shows that the law has strong forward momentum. In January, more than 1.1 million people signed up for insurance through federal and state exchanges, and the number of enrollees aged 18 to 34 (who are crucial to the law’s success) ticked up from 24% to 27%, perhaps presaging a further increase in participation among that demographic as the March 31 deadline for avoiding the individual mandate’s tax penalty nears. (Remember those nights in college when you finally sat down to write your 20-page metaphysics paper after spending the bulk of the evening spontaneously devising My Little Pony drinking games? Yes, procrastination is a powerful force among the young.)
Most importantly of all, the new numbers make the Obamacare “death spiral” Republicans had hoped for extremely unlikely, if not impossible. Even fierce Obamacare critic Avik Roy has waved the white flag on that one.
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But lest we forget the real, everyday impact of health care reform — the reason President Obama stuck his neck out in the first place — it’s important to note another very positive development: The percentage of uninsured Americans has already dropped to a five-year low and is falling fast.
Republicans were sure this one was over long ago, spiking the ball and dumping Gatorade over each other’s heads like callow Pop Warner peewees shortly after the disastrous Obamacare kickoff. But they should know you can’t declare victory until the final seconds have ticked off the clock. They’ll no doubt continue to savor the fruits of their full-throated misinformation campaign and try to exploit vestigial anti-Obamacare sentiment through the November election and beyond, but the law is here to stay, and the more positive headlines it generates, the sillier the GOP will begin to look.
The down slope
I’ve had a hard time getting appropriately revved about the Winter Olympics. I watched the end of Eric Heiden’s historic 10,000-meter race from the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics on YouTube the other day, and it still sent a little tingle up my spine. And, of course, the ’80 U.S. hockey team’s miracle win should be used to flush out moles living among us. If that video doesn’t elevate your heart rate at least a little, you must be a commie spy.
I think the problem now, however, is that there are just too many made-up, ersatz sports, and the whole affair has gotten a tad silly.
On the plus side, Americans are running away with the events no American had ever heard of until last week. For instance, Team USA swept the men’s ski slopestyle competition. You could have told me we dominated the “ice-fishing at night without drunkenly falling in the hole” competition and I would have been no less surprised — and slightly more proud.
I know the U.S.’s boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in the old Soviet Union still stings, so in the interests of diplomacy I’ve tried to force-feed myself some of these events, but I’m kind of relieved the whole spectacle is coming to an end soon and that we can all stop worrying that Bob Costas’ Eye-of-Sauron gaze has transformed us into an army of soulless thralls who pretend to enjoy incomprehensibly Dadaistic spectacles like the biathlon. (Ironically, cross-country skiing is the Olympic sport that’s least improved by rifles. Think about it.)
I’ll wait for the 2016 Summer Olympics, where at least there’s a chance a swimmer will dive in the pool less than an hour after eating and flop around like a drunk sea lion.
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