Noted for Your Morning Procrastination for November 9, 2013
- Mitch McConnell: Tea Party Groups Mislead for Profit: "They’ve been told the reason we can’t get to better outcomes than we’ve gotten is not because the Democrats control the Senate and the White House but because Republicans have been insufficiently feisty. Well, that’s just not true, and I think that the folks that I have difficulty with are the leaders of some of these groups who basically mislead them for profit..."
- Sarah Kliff: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/11/08/obamacare-by-the-numbers/: "The big problem for these people... is that the place where they're supposed to buy health insurance coverage--the new insurance marketplace--isn't really working.... 38 days have gone by since HealthCare.gov launched, and it's still experiencing lots of problems, running slowly and sending users error messages. Six people managed to enroll on Oct. 1. That number hit 248 by the end of day two. That's a long way from the 7 million people the Congressional Budget Office estimates will sign up in year one.... 143 days are still left in open enrollment.... Only 123 people signed up for Massachusetts's coverage expansion in its first month, about 0.3 percent of the first year's enrollment..."
- Prairie Weather: Just the facts, please, ma'am: "Every time I see hard numbers like the ones Sarah Kliff has posted, I have to wonder what all the hullabaloo is about. Some of us still have scars and personality disorders after weathering Bush's Medicare D. Others among us have permanent traumatic stress disorder from dealing with billing errors at Verizon or with an online merchant... or United Healthcare..."
- David Weigel: Delaware Obamacare signups: Weigel family represents one-quarter of them.: "The AP broke the news yesterday: In a month and change, my home state of Delaware saw four signups for Obamacare. What went unreported, because nobody cared: My younger brother appears to have been one of the four. I asked him about the experience and got a more press-release-esque response than one typically expects from a family member: 'I am a 26 year old healthy male who was able to get a gold Blue Cross Blue Shield policy and a dental policy from Delta Dental through the online exchange at a savings of over $210 per month, without subsidies. I currently have policies from the same sources through COBRA that were going to expire at the end of February next year. I am a consultant and my company does not offer health insurance, so without Obamacare I would have been faced with finding an individual health policy the old way. Now I will have one with no annual or lifetime maximums and with no doubts about acceptance or future cancelation. Obamacare works for me.' Left unsaid in this spin job: Phil was born premature and had some surgery on his intestines early in his life. The sort of thing I'd assume could have been used in the old health care regime. Also, his/my father works for a company that got a waiver, exempting it from that whole 'kids on your insurance until age 26' thing."
And
Plus: Long:
William Dudley: Ending Too Big to Fail | Jonathan Chait: What’s at Stake in Senate Nuclear Judicial Showdown | Vincze Miklos: Anti-Communist propaganda is more awesome than any horror movie poster | Karl Marx (1852): Free Trade and The Chartists | #####
Plus: Short:
