Must-Read: As I say over and over again, conservatives could be taking a huge victory lap right now with the empirical policy success of the nationwide implementation of the health-care reform pioneered in Massachusetts by the 2012 right-wing standard-bearer Mitt Romney. It is an index of their extraordinary policy, rhetorical, and ideological dysfunction that they are not doing so.
Would somebody please point them a way back to fact-based reality?
**: The Affordable Care Act Is Providing Affordable Care. That’s a Big Problem for Its Opponents: "A gov’t program that, after a troubled start...
...found its footing and is having its intended effect, and without the distortions opponents claim. While they can keep calling it a “job killer,” that’s just not defensible. I’m increasingly struck by how... conservatives... [and] candidates, are so intent--and so successful--at not talking about what matters to people beyond what I think is a narrow sliver of their base.... Elevating a policy success in a realm that’s very important to families--health coverage--serves as a lamppost on the way back to Factville....
I’m sure some will respond to the piece: “yeah, millions more now have coverage, but it’s lousy coverage and they don’t like it.” Wrong....
A large majority (86%) of people who are currently insured through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces or newly insured in Medicaid are very or somewhat satisfied with their new health care coverage, according to a Commonwealth Fund report out today. Nearly seven in 10 (68%) adults with new coverage have used it to get health care, and of those more than three in five (62%) previously would not have been able to obtain or afford that care.
