stevenleser
stevenleser's JournalMy opening statement about the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare for this weeks show
My opening statement about the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare for this weeks show
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/lesersense/2013/12/02/rude-pundit-vs-ryan-girdusky-on-iran-accord-tea-party-and-more
Welcome back. By the time you hear this show the deadline for fixing healthcare dot gov, the website for the Affordable Care Act also known as Obamacare, will have passed.
I and several folks predicted that by the time the deadline passed the website would be working very well. Most Republicans predicted that the website would still be experiencing problems.
Who is right?
Well, an article in Politicsusa by Jason Easley should settle things. The title of his article is “The Media Is Forced to Admit That The Obamacare Website is Fixed”
In his article, Mr. Easley references a New York Times article of this weekend that reports quote:
As the Obama administration’s weekend deadline for a smoothly functioning online marketplace for health insurance arrives, more than a month of frantic repair work is paying off with fewer crashes and error messages and speedier loading of pages, according to government officials, groups that help people enroll and experts involved in the project.
Although the administration has postponed a December marketing campaign, fearful that the site would collapse under a surge in traffic, five weeks of repair work have clearly made the exchange better. From last Sunday to Tuesday, nearly 20,000 users managed to enroll in insurance plans, the most for a three-day period, according to people familiar with the project. By comparison, fewer than 27,000 users picked an insurance plan on the federal site in the entire month of October.
And pages that once took an average of eight seconds to load now show up in a fraction of a second. The rate at which a user sees an error message has also dropped from about 6 percent to 0.75 percent.
Endquote.
Judging from these reports for all intents and purposes, the website is fixed.
So what’s left for Republicans to complain about, oh yes, the issue about not being able to keep your plan or your doctor.
The folks in my panel today will discuss that a bit, but I return to a segment by Jon Stewart where he discussed the keeping your doctor piece. He joked about this Republican talking point as Republicans suggesting that before Obamacare Doctor and Patient mated for life.
The point of that is that if you had employer provided health insurance and your company decided to change health insurance plans one year because they got a better deal, something that has happened twice to me in my life at different jobs, you don’t get to keep your doctor and you don’t get to whine about it on political talk shows. That is just the way it is.
In real life before Obamacare, the chance of you getting to keep your doctor for more than five to seven years was pretty small. Chances are you would change jobs and work for a company that had a different insurance provider or your employer would change providers at least once every five to seven years.
Ironically, the only folks who really did get to keep their doctor long term were the elderly who were on Medicare. There’s that awful government run health care again.
So the idea that Obamacare disrupted a lifelong association between patient and doctor is ridiculous.
As far as keeping your plan, there is another canard. Health Insurance companies also frequently change their plans, add things to plans that you then have to pay more for or withdraw certain plans altogether.
Again, try to find someone who bought health insurance on their own who got to keep the same exact plan for the same money for more than five to seven years. You won’t find many. The number is probably less than one percent of folks who bought health insurance on their own.
So Republicans have really pulled a fast one here with their criticism of the Affordable Care Act. It’s not surprising, they are desperate to try to couch it as being unsuccessful because they understand that a successfully rolled out massive change to healthcare in this country where the majority of the uninsured got health insurance would help Democrats and would be devastating to the Republican Party. So they are going to everything possible against the wall to see what sticks.
Don’t be fooled.
This is obviously not the first thing the Republicans have tried to claim about the affordable care act and it wont be the last thing. Remember killing grandma, remember death panels, remember all of the things since the very beginning that Republicans have claimed about the Affordable Care Act. Remember this was going to be a government takeover of healthcare, it was going to be socialism. No, these are private insurance plans that people are buying and are being offered through the plan.
Again, don’t be fooled.
Now on to our panel discussion.
At this point, I think the admins should consider relegating porn discussions to a dungeon.
As I said in my response to this OP: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4117700
"Best" part is that in the porn threads, no ones mind is changed and the legal situation can't change (1st amendment), it is a totally wasted exercise that pits two groups against each other that will not ever change their minds"
and I would add two groups who repeat the same arguments over and over again to each other, talking past each other as they do it.
These threads are complete trainwrecks. You can predict who is going to respond and what they are going to say. It's the Groundhog's Day version of a discussion.
Thanksgiving gift to DU and my listeners, the Rude Pundit returns to my show this Sunday/Monday
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/lesersense/2013/12/02/rude-pundit-vs-ryan-girdusky-on-iran-accord-tea-party-and-election-2014Join Making Sense with Steve Leser for an epic debate between the progressive Rude Pundit, aka Lee Papa, a professor at CUNY Staten Island and GOP Strategist Ryan Girdusky.
The Rude One and Ryan debate the Iran Accord, whether the Tea Party is just the latest wingnut incarnation of the John Birch Society and how the 2014 congressional elections stack up.
Afterwards we will have our trademark hall of fame and shame for those politicians and prominent individuals who made great sense, or shameful nonsense, respectively.
The show airs at 7pm Eastern time Sunday December 1 at the above link on Blogtalkradio.com and it airs Monday at 2pm Pacific time in the Los Angeles basin on KCAA 1050am.
Israeli grass roots, in contrast with Netanyahu, are willing to give accord with Iran a chance
http://news.yahoo.com/wary-war-israeli-public-gives-iran-deal-chance-160023316.htmlJERUSALEM (Reuters) - Going about their business on Monday, Israelis seemed more accepting than their leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, of a nuclear deal with Iran that he rejected as a historic mistake.
On the streets of Israeli cities, people questioned about Sunday's interim accord between global powers and the Islamic Republic voiced doubts about an agreement that Netanyahu said would leave arch-foe Iran within reach of an atomic bomb.
But they also said the deal, which allows a six-month period of limits to Iran's nuclear program in exchange for up to $7 billion worth of sanctions relief, was preferable to war.
"I am leaning more to the side that it's worth the effort - the six months - to see if there's a chance there can be a diplomatic solution," said Sharon Bar-Lev, 49, from the central Israeli town of Kfar Saba, north of Tel Aviv.
Me on Judge Pirro: "Filibuster reform a reaction to Republicans unprecedented Obstructionism"
xPost from GD: Tribute to Stephanie Sautter and more on my Radio show this week
This week's radio show features a panel discussion on the Senate filibuster changes, McDonalds and Walmart and more
The show airs at 7pm Eastern time tonight (Sunday) at blogtalkradio.com at the below link and Monday 2pm Pacific time on KCAA 1050am in Inland Empire and the Los Angeles Basin in California.
This week, Steve is joined by Noelle Nikpour, a GOP fundraiser who worked on the 2008 Presidential campaign of former New York City Mayor Rudi Giuliani
and
Penny Lee, a Democratic Strategist and President of Venn Strategies, LLC having joined after serving as the top communications and political advisor to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
The three discuss the recent change in the US Senate to the filibuster rule for Presidential appointees, the crazy statements and actions by McDonalds and Walmart and the healthcare.gov website.
The Hall of Fame and Shame returns this episode featuring those politicians and prominent individuals who made great sense or shameful nonsense this week.
At the beginning of the show we will have a special tribute to Stephanie Sautter.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/lesersense/2013/11/25/panel-discussion-on-filibuster-change-obamacare-mcdonalds-and-walmart-and-more
Tribute to Stephanie Sautter and more on my Radio show this week
This week's radio show features a panel discussion on the Senate filibuster changes, McDonalds and Walmart and more
The show airs at 7pm Eastern time tonight (Sunday) at blogtalkradio.com at the below link and Monday 2pm Pacific time on KCAA 1050am in Inland Empire and the Los Angeles Basin in California.
This week, Steve is joined by Noelle Nikpour, a GOP fundraiser who worked on the 2008 Presidential campaign of former New York City Mayor Rudi Giuliani
and
Penny Lee, a Democratic Strategist and President of Venn Strategies, LLC having joined after serving as the top communications and political advisor to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
The three discuss the recent change in the US Senate to the filibuster rule for Presidential appointees, the crazy statements and actions by McDonalds and Walmart and the healthcare.gov website.
The Hall of Fame and Shame returns this episode featuring those politicians and prominent individuals who made great sense or shameful nonsense this week.
At the beginning of the show we will have a special tribute to Stephanie Sautter.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/lesersense/2013/11/25/panel-discussion-on-filibuster-change-obamacare-mcdonalds-and-walmart-and-more
The Iran accord - Thank you President Obama
I've been hearing for years from some folks how there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans.
You can bet that if either McCain or Romney had won, we would already have a Paul Bremer type person running Iran and a ton of dead Iranians and American soldiers.
Thank you President Obama for choosing a different course.
Are you for or against the senate rule change making it easier to confirm Presidential appointees?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/21/us-usa-senate-nominees-vote-idUSBRE9AK11420131121(Reuters) - The Democratic-led Senate, in a historic rule change, stripped Republicans on Thursday of their ability to block President Barack Obama's judicial and executive branch nominees.
On a nearly party-line vote of 52-48, Democrats abruptly changed the Senate's balance of power by reducing from 60 to 51 the number of votes needed to end procedural roadblocks known as filibusters against all presidential nominees, except those for the U.S. Supreme Court.
Glenn Beck's network running a story that the Admin has concluded a secret nuke deal with Iran
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/11/18/report-international-negotiations-with-iran-are-a-facade-secret-deal-allegedly-already-struck-directly-with-valerie-jarrett/If true, I think its a good thing.
White House is denying that this is true. From the article in the above link:
But according to the Israeli outlet Haaretz, White House National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said that the report about the deal was “absolutely, 100 percent false.”
Of course if it is secret, Meehan may not know about it.
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Name: RuggedRealistGender: Male
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