Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Reuters reported last week that Tea-Publican economic terrorists and a phalanx of "Kochtopus" organizations are mobilizing a counter-offensive against "ObamaCare" including town hall meetings, protests and media promotions to dissuade uninsured Americans from obtaining health coverage through the health insurance exchanges. Republicans prepare for 'Obamacare' showdown, with eye to 2014 elections:
"The best way to get the juices of that right-wing electorate and activist group going is to attack Obamacare - make everything that happens look awful and voters will rebel against it," said Norman Ornstein, an expert on congressional politics at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
"It's a belief that if they highlight this, and sabotage it as much as they can, and if it's disruptive, that that will work for them in the mid-terms."
The White House and Department of Health and Human Services are well aware of their opponents' political maneuvers.
"There are folks out there who are actively working to make this law fail," Obama said in a speech on Wednesday, condemning the opponents' effort as "a politically motivated misinformation campaign."
A new political playbook for Republicans in the House encourages lawmakers who have voted nearly 40 times to repeal or defund the law to showcase their concerns at town hall meetings and special forums with like-minded young adults, healthcare providers and employers.
"Make sure the participants will be 100 percent on message," the House Republican Conference's August planning kit advises for events with businesses. "While they do not have to be Republicans, they need to be able to discuss the negative effects of Obamacare on their employees."
Obama's 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is also due for public attack at town halls featuring Democratic lawmakers, where Tea Party activists plan to air their opposition under an initiative by FreedomWorks, the Washington-based grassroots lobby that helped found the movement.
* * *
FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, a
conservative issue group financed by billionaire brothers David and
Charles Koch, known for funding conservative causes, are planning
separate media and grassroots campaigns aimed at adults in their 20s and
30s - the very people Obama needs to have sign up for healthcare
coverage in new online insurance exchanges if his reforms are to
succeed.
"We're trying to make it socially acceptable to skip the exchange," said Dean Clancy, vice president for public policy at FreedomWorks, which boasts 6 million supporters. The group is designing a symbolic "Obamacare card" that college students can burn during campus protests.
Americans for Prosperity launched a $1 million TV ad campaign against the healthcare law this summer to test its message in swing states of Virginia and Ohio. The 30-second ad presents a young pregnant mother who asks questions that suggest the law will raise premiums, reduce paychecks, prevent people from picking their own doctors and leave her family's healthcare to "the folks in Washington."
The group plans a bigger push on TV and social media to persuade young people, especially men under 30, to see the healthcare law as a high-cost liability directed at them.
"This is a good time to be out there explaining what the law means to people," said the group's president, Tim Phillips.
Steve Benen writes today, The 'Refuse to Enroll' campaign gets to work:
[W]hat kind of people would invest time and energy into convincing struggling families to turn down access to affordable health care? Who would be so callous as to put partisan spite over the basic health care needs of their community?
Well, now we know. The Dayton Daily News has hidden the story behind a paywall, but the paper reported yesterday on groups like the "Citizens' Council for Health Freedom," which is rallying behind the "Refuse to Enroll" campaign.
With time running out, opponents of the Affordable Care Act have taken to the airwaves in Ohio and elsewhere with ad campaigns not only attacking the bill's merits but also actively encouraging uninsured Americans not to sign up for coverage under the health care law.
The Obama administration has acknowledged the success of the law, commonly referred to as Obamacare, depends in large part on broad-based participation in federal and state-run health exchanges that will begin selling government-subsidized health plans to the uninsured on Oct. 1.
The anti-enrollment campaigns reflect the resignation and desperation of many Obamacare opponents who have given up hope of a government repeal or court-ordered injunction to stop full implementation of the law beginning next year.
This is clearly an important stage in the larger fight. Desperate right-wing activists know the law won't be repealed; they know it can't be stopped in the courts; and they know there's a limit to Republican efforts to sabotage the federal health care system. So they've been reduced to one last-ditch effort: convince people with no health care coverage to voluntarily turn down affordable insurance so as to advance their ideological cause.
And why do conservative activists want this? It's not altogether clear, exactly, but apparently their hatred for President Obama has overwhelmed their judgment and basic sense of morality to a degree that can only be considered alarming.
Twila Brase, for example, is putting the "Refuse to Enroll" campaign on her radio show, which is "broadcast on more than 350 stations nationwide, including the American Family Radio Network with stations throughout Ohio." And she'll have lots of company, including support from her Koch brothers allies.
The conservative group Americans for Prosperity, which has a chapter in Ohio, has launched another campaign attacking Obamacare with television and online ads that began airing in Ohio last week.
Joan McCarter summarized this nicely: conservatives "have to convince people that either paying through the nose for insurance or going without, all to make a political point, makes sense. Because 'Freedom' means never being able to go to the doctor. Seriously. They are spending millions of dollars to try to con people out of getting affordable health insurance."
Greg Sargent throws down the gauntlet in The conservative (led) boycott of (some) health insurance:
You know, it’s one thing to oppose a policy; that, of course, is perfectly legitimate. It’s another to undermine it’s implementation by using whatever legislative or legal maneuvers are available to keep it from working, even if it imposes widespread costs in the meantime. Oh, and it’s even worse to do that when you have no alternative policy.
* * *
We can try to think this through a bit. We actually can put a label on what’s happening here; conservatives are trying to organize a boycott of Obamacare. Note that boycotts are not about convincing people that they won’t be getting good value if they purchase a product; instead, boycotts are about putting pressure on those offering the product for sale, even at the cost to the consumer of passing up something she would ordinarily be happy to purchase.
Except … that’s not what’s actually going on here, is it? After all, it’s not just the exchanges which are governed by the Affordable Care Act. It’s true that the exchanges are the most visible part of the law, but ACA radically changes the regulation regime of all private health insurance, as well as making significant changes in Medicare and Medicaid. Boycotting ACA at this point really means boycotting all health insurance.
So that’s my question: Are those conservatives who are urging people to boycott health insurance actually practicing what they preach? Have they dropped their health insurance, too?
* * *
I really can’t imagine the case for telling others to boycott signing up — especially those who, thanks to the subsidies that are an important part of the law, really will be getting a great deal — while continuing to participate in the system themselves. Or for enjoying the benefits of some government regulations of insurance companies and taking one kind of government subsidy (the tax treatment of employer-linked health care) while urging others, as some sort of principle, to reject another.
Practice what you preach you morally depraved assholes.
Recent Comments