Republican talking Points and Fake News

There is a Fake News Republican talking point that Obamacare is in a “death spiral”. Unfortunately for their talking point, Obamacare is doing quite well, thank you.  Another talking point especially by the Lier in Chief, Donald Trump, was the repeated calling of Hilary especially in the debates, “crooked Hilary”. If  fake news is repeated enough times, it becomes a fact , whereas it is merely a “walking zombie”.  Reince Priebus said that Obama’s health care reform law is “imploding and exploding”. Speaker Paul Ryan  said many times that the ACA is in a “death spiral” and that “the law is collapsing”. Trump said that the ACA is “just about ready to implode” and “Obamacare is dead.”. He also said the immoral hope that after the failure of the new Republican Health Care law, Obamacare will collapse and he will pick up the pieces.

The CBO recently found that the health insurance “market would probably be stable in most areas.  And the New York Times pointed out that the healthcare market under Obamacare would probably be stable.  The death spiral lie was started when Aetna pulled out of 11 states and the CEO blamed this on a “death spiral”. This was actually done because Aetna was not allowed to merge with Humana and to avoid antitrust scrutiny. Another argument against a death spiral is that fewer young adults, who usually are more healthy, would buy policies through the exchanges, but in fact 85% of  the new policy members are protected from premium increases by subsidies. In 2017, 121.2 million people were signed up on Obamacare. There probably would have been more except that Trump stopped funding government adds reminding people of the deadlines for enrollment. The number will increase since four states people who started the enrollment before Jan. 31 to be enrolled. And Louisiana recently expanded Medicaid.  Experts agree that Obamacare would probably stabilize in the next few years. However, there are a few states where the markets are near collapse, but in Wisconsin, Idaho, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Arkansas and California, the markets have multiple insurance companies. New York has 17 insurance carriers and total enrollments increased 28% for 2017. Also fake news is that doctors are leaving due to Obamacare. But the total number of active physicians has increased 8% from 2010 and medical school applicants and students are at an all-time high. Finally the Medicaid expansion covers around 11 million people and has driven down the uninsured rate by around 7%.

There are definitely some problems in Obamacare, but most are due to Republican governors refusing to expand Medicare.  And a recent Trump executive order instructed agencies to relax Healthcare rules, and the IRS complied by refusing to enforce the individual mandate.

In 1897, the American writer, Mark Twain, said that “the report of my death was an exaggeration”. If the Republicans want Obamacare to die, they will have to do it themselves, which they are quite willing and capable of doing.  The only saving feature is that current users of Obamacare and Medicaid (Democrats and Republicans) have been filling the town hall meetings of their Congressmen and shouting down any signs of wanting to destroy Obamacare. This is something that Trump and friends can think about in their jail cells. The fact is that only the thing that is in a “death spiral” is the Republican Party.