Everyone's a liberal until they get screwed over by liberal policies

"Before you vote to be all free with "other people's money" consider that you might be one of those "other people"

That's the money quote and should be taught in every school; even, dare I say it, repeated by decent politicians.

I like to think I'm an even minded, live and let live type of person, but fuck these people.

And in CA, thanks to those well-connected Insurnace Commissioners, we can't buy insurance as members of these group plans, even if we wanted to. (Like the Freelancers Union, mentioned in the piece.) Thanks so much, all you well-intentioned people who voted for this clown and his string-pullers.

I think they should get everything they voted for. Unfortunately they are taking the rest of us down with them.

What I love is that she's a lawyer: She charges clients by the hour to interpret statutes for them. This is a full page ad in the NYT, not for her practice, but her ineptitude.

She seems to at least grasp one thing that seems oblivious to many.

In order to stop Obamacare, you needed to vote FOR Mitt Romney, not some third party candidate, who cant even scrape up ten percent of the vote.

“I’m for it,” she said. “But what is the reality of it?”

Ahhhhh yes, that old "reality" thingy strikes again. What an inconvenient truth.

I'm with JFP'

These people voted for the guy. Now they are getting ass f*ucked. They deserve it.

A taste of their own medicine, so to speak.

Yes, but those of us NYC lawyers who squawked endlessly about the problems with Obamacare until people stopped inviting us to parties because we just couldn't stfu about it...well, we are nonetheless going to have our insurance canceled. I voted for Gary Johnson, damn it. Gimme back my policy!

Oschisms, I'm a bit puzzled on why you assume she's an "inept" lawyer. Because she's surprised her policy was canceled? Well, it IS surprising. The policies meet Obamacare standards,so New York need not have canceled them. Maybe she was a sucker for believing Obama's express promise that we'd be able to keep our plans, but that doesn't make her "inept" at her job. Unless her job is being an expert in healthcare law. And even then -- I still can't blame her for being surprised.

I'm a bit surprised, too, even though I had nothing but the grimmest expectations from Obamacare. Seriously, the NYC bar policies are pretty good. They're not particularly cheap, either -- they're pretty comparable to the group rates you'd get working for a company. They're only "cheap" in comparison to the ludicrous "individual" policies in New York, which, last time I looked, were about double the group rates.

Liberals and obamacare. They said they were supporting affordable health care coverage for the poor. They thought they were getting cheaper health care coverage for themselves at someone else's expense. What they got is screwed right along with everybody else.

They're all in favor of more affordable health care coverage for the poor as long as they think someone else will have to pay for it. So who did they think was going to pay for it? The Koch brothers? Big corporations? Those guys can afford politicians.

Instead of bitching about paying more for less coverage, shouldn't they be thanking Obama for giving them the opportunity to help provide more affordable health care for others?

Stories like this help make obamacare less intolerable.

She doesn't bill herself as a health care lawyer, true. But I don't see how you represent clients without interpreting statutes.

It seems fairly obvious that she is not very good at statutory interpretation.

Oschisms, THIS ISN'T A MATTER OF STATUTE INTERPRETATION. (Sorry to yell, but you weren't listening). Nothing in the wording of Obamacare or NYS law required this to happen. It's not something she missed when perusing thousands of pages of healthcare law in her spare time. This is a dumb-ass unnecessary decision that the dumb-asses here in New York made with regard to plans that are actually in conformance with Obamacare. I'll give you a dollar if you can tell me what statute she "misinterpreted."

Gail: "The policies meet Obamacare standards..."

Not if they keep rates low by being selective about who they enroll.

"The rationale for disqualifying those policies, said Larry Levitt, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation, was to prevent associations from selling insurance to healthy members who are needed to keep the new health exchanges financially viable... Siphoning those people, Mr. Levitt said, would leave the pool of health exchange customers 'smaller and disproportionately sicker,' and would drive up rates."

"Ms. Meinwald also looked on the state's health insurance exchange. But she said she found that those plans did not have a good choice of doctors, and that it was hard to even find out who the doctors were, and which hospitals were covered. 'It's like you're blindfolded and you're told that you have to buy something,' she said."

This is in keeping with the spirit of the Affordable Care Act. You have to buy the plan so you can see what's in it.

Sorry, all. I'm really grumpy. The NYC bar and my insurance company told me a couple of months ago that my policy was fine because it exceeded the standards (and then some). I'm one of the people who is just learning that I'm still screwed. And I'm finding it hard not to punch walls.

I always thought Obamacare was a mess. I guess we're all learning just how big a mess.

I'll try to calm down now.

Oschisms: "It seems fairly obvious that she is not very good at statutory interpretation."

I don't think this indicates weakness in her ability to interpret law. I doubt that she took the time to read the couple thousand pages of the Affordable Care Act. I think her weakness was in being gullible enough to believe what politicians were saying about it. Everybody knows that politicians lie.

I mean, come on! We're going to provide better coverage, for 40 million more people, without any limits or restrictions... for less money? We have to hurry up and pass the law so we can see what's in it? If that's not a pig in a poke I don't know what is. And she bought it.

The Republican House passed Obamacare in early 2010, right?

So why all the vitriol about 'liberals'?

Face it, folks, there's only one party in charge - the people with money and power.

This Republican/Democrat divide is manufactured nonsense.

To say that it's not a matter of statute interpretation is just an irrelevant exercise in semantics. There is a reason that the statute left the bureaucracy at the Dept. of HHS a blank canvas on which to draft regulations. For political reasons, this administration couldn't make it obvious in the statute, but it had as its goal all along the subsidization of the old and sick by the young and healthy, representing the greatest exercise in wealth redistribution in the nation's history, as well as in effect the largest tax increase ever on the middle class (although the taxes are called "premiums") to support, in many cases, medical care for those better off and/or more politically connected.

So while the law might not have said in so many words that most everyone would NOT be able to keep their health coverage under present conditions, the HHS regs certainly said that. And the coming continued public outrage at the results will give the feds a chance to ride in and come to the rescue with a single-payer nationalized health insurance system. Several of the principals responsible for the ACA admitted at the time that this was the endgame, after all, but they would not be able to bite it off all at once.

Bottom line: for the sake of wealth redistribution and bureaucratic control over health care and thus over our very lives, the feds ruined a system that was working just fine for 90% of us under the guise of helping the other 10%. It is the quintessential example in the modern day, of the way all government "one size fits all" solutions work in operation.

"The Republican House passed Obamacare in early 2010, right?"

Not exactly. The House vote 'deemed' it to have passed. I don't really see why they couldn't now 'deem' it not to have passed.

@Gog_Magog:

Assuming you weren't being facetious in ascribing the passage of the ACA to a Republican House, the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress at the time. The ACA passed 219-212 (NO Republican votes) in the House and 60-39 (NO Republican votes) in the Senate, and was signed into law on 3/21/10.

Enough of the American people were upset by this government grab of the healthcare industry that they promptly, in Nov. 2010, turned control of the House to Republicans by giving them 63 additional seats, a record for a midterm election. Massachusetts, of all states, also closed off the six-month window during which the Democrats had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate (the only way the ACA passed in the first place) by electing a Republican to Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat in spring, 2010.

Just to set the record straight, although your point about the two parties being substantively the same is true in many cases, in the case of the ACA the Democrats completely own the statute, the regs, and the ensuing results -- all of it.

"The Republican House passed Obamacare in early 2010, right?

So why all the vitriol about 'liberals'?

...

Posted by: Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at December 14, 2013 11:12 AM"

----------

No.

In 2009-2010 the Democrats controlled the house.

All but one Republican voted against the first iteration of obamacare in 2009.

In the final version that was inflicted on America, all 178 Republicans and 34 Democrats voted against it. 219 Democrats voted for it, and the Democratic Senate had already passed it before Scott Brown was elected. Democrat President Obama signed it into law. Obamacare is entirely the property of the Democratic party, free and clear title.

Republicans did not gain the majority in the house until the 2010 electons in November, with the term starting in 2011.

Ok, thanks. I was trying to think back lo these many years.

Doesn't matter. The worse Obamacare turns out, the more low-info voters will vote for democrats who will promise to protect them.

Doesn't matter. The worse Obamacare turns out, the more low-info voters will vote for democrats who will promise to protect them. -- dee nile at December 14, 2013 2:58 PM

Probably you're right. But if the Constitutional Convention fails, I'm going to see about leading a state secession movement.

Gog: "Face it, folks, there's only one party in charge - the people with money and power... This Republican/Democrat divide is manufactured nonsense."

That I can agree with. It's not Democrats versus Republicans. It's Democrats and Republicans versus us.

Gog: "Face it, folks, there's only one party in charge - the people with money and power... This Republican/Democrat divide is manufactured nonsense."

That I can agree with. It's not Democrats versus Republicans. It's Democrats and Republicans versus us.

Posted by: Ken R at December 14, 2013 10:23 PM

And actually voting like you believe this (ineffectively for a third party) as opposed to supporting candidates you like in the primaries, is a strategy guaranteed to leave the democrats in charge, as they turn out their base, and you fail to support their only viable opposition.

Something Gog said is telling. The ACA did not get one republican vote, and libs like Gog are still convinced that is was a bipartisan bill.

When you control the media, you control the message.

Republicans did not gain the majority in the house until the 2010 electons in November, with the term starting in 2011.

A major part of the reason Republicans gained the House in 2010 was a promise to overturn Obamacare.

Pelosi and Reid fell for Democrat propaganda - i.e., that Democrats, and Democrats alone, were responsible for the "good" bills enacted in the past. Social Security was "all Democrat." The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was "all Democrat." So, they saw no problem ramming through a bill with no Republican votes. After all, those other laws were done that way and survived, right?

Except, the narrative is wrong.

Social Security passed with bipartisan support. In fact, when Dwight Eisenhower (Republican) was president, he wanted to overturn Social Security, but lacked support within his own party to do so.

And the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would never have gotten out of committee if not for the efforts of Everett Dirksen (R-Illinois), Hubert Humphrey (D-Minnesota). It was stalled in committee by a Democrat Congressmand from Mississippi. The Act actually passed with a greater percentage of Republicans voting for it than Democrats.

If you want a bill to survive when your party is no longer the majority party, you need it to pass with bipartisan support. Pelosi and Reid chose to ignore history in favor of propaganda.

Democrats had an overwhelming majority in the House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate in 2009 and 2010. It was, in effect, a one-party Congress during that period.

It is the job of subsequent Congresses to overturn bad laws or amend inadequate laws passed by their predecessors.

Bills passed with not a single vote from the opposing party do not go down in history as good laws. If you can't get at least some members of the other party to vote with you, you may want to go back a rethink your bill.

True Conan, but, americans are nothing if not ignorant of history. I can see it now ~~~~~~~~

Sometime in the near future

Democratic politician "The reason the ACA failed was republican opposition, not one rep voted for it and not one rep in all this time has supported it. It would have worked if not for the sabotage of republicans."

Idiot voter "Hey, he's right. Lets vote for him!!"

The media has already given that excuse for Obamacare's failure, i.e. "The law passed wasn't the final law envisioned by our fearless Democrat leadership because no Republicans would vote for it, therefore, any problems with it are all their fault." And it's partially true, with the only caveat being that the House and Senate Democrat leadership should have been able to figure that out with opposition research, if at least not by themselves, then by using Obama's campaign organization to help them with it.

So they're being pretty explicit now that this is a wealth redistribution program. There's some interesting political calculation going on: (1) It's probably true that the elderly vote is swinging Democrat, as the last of the WWII generation dies off and Boomers move into that demographic. And Boomers get what they want. (2) They figure that the Millennials are so emotionally wedded to the Left that they will tolerate any amount of abuse to remain members of the tribe. There's a certain amount of truth to that. I seriously doubt that Barbara Meinwald would have voted for Rommey even knowing what she knows now. For her cohort, running with the right crowd is more important than doing the right thing.

@cousinDave

The dems have been very successful is getting people to vote benefits for themselves when they had no skin in the game.

However there is nothing stealth about the high premiums co pays, and deductibles of the Obamacare plans.

It is going to take a lot more than a good ad campaign to convince the millennials to cough up several hundred bucks a month in perpetuity for this Ponzi scheme.

I think millenials will become more (fiscally) conservative in the next few years. Many of them are still on their parents' insurance (and on their parents dime) at this point. This hasn't really hit a lot of people who are under 25 yet. Wait 'till they're all paying their own rent/mortgage, plus insurance, plus childcare and car payments...

"It is going to take a lot more than a good ad campaign to convince the millennials to cough up several hundred bucks a month in perpetuity for this Ponzi scheme. "

I hope you're right. I fear that for a lot of them, leftism is their religion (and a rather cult-like one at that), and they'll regard it as a tithe.