As relentless as Affordable Care Act (ACA) opponents have been in their quest to deny Americans affordable health insurance, even they would have to admit they’ve lost ground in recent months.
Let’s start with the Koch brothers, who have spent more than $30 million in anti-Obamacare ads, only to see the law’s popularity continue to grow. A recent ABC/Washington Post found plurality support for the healthcare reform law for the first time ever, at 49 percent to 48 percent opposed. In November, at the height of the HealthCare.gov rollout debacle, it was 40 percent to 57 percent. And polls from CNN, George Washington University and Pew found a significant percentage of those opponents are criticizing the law from the left.
Furthermore, that Koch-funded ad blitz had a perverse side effect, proving the new law simply isn’t as bad as they claim. For example, a recent ad featured a leukemia victim, Julia Boonstra, claiming she lost her insurance and doctor thanks to Obamacare and would have to pay higher costs. She ended up paying much less and kept her doctor, making her the latest in a long-running list of supposed ACA victims who turned out to be ACA beneficiaries.
Or what about Washington Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ “Bette in Spokane,” who could find a better, probably cheaper policy on the exchange to replace her $552-per-month plan, but would rather go uninsured than “go on that Obama website at all?” Or Emily Lamb, another Koch-featured supposed victim who is only paying more than her previous high-risk-pool state insurance because she chose a top-of-the-line plan?
There was Dianne Barrette in Florida, who lost a $54-per-month Blue Cross insurance policy that failed to meet the law’s minimum guidelines. She eventually admitted Obamacare was a “blessing in disguise.” We saw Deborah Cavallaro crying on CNBC about losing her junk policy and failing to find an affordable option, when a bronze plan on the exchange cost as little as $194 – less than the $293 she was paying for her junk plan.
The fact that conservatives haven’t found a single real victim suggests there just aren’t any real victims.
Conservatives have suffered other setbacks recently. After months of pundit chortling about low enrollment, it turns out people were simply procrastinating. In a last-minute surge, the law hit 6 million new private insurance policies through the exchanges and will end close to early estimates of 7 million. Of those, 85-90 percent have already paid their first premium, shattering conservative hopes that the signups didn’t amount to real coverage.
Meanwhile, Republicans will be running this November on taking that insurance away from those people, including 359,000 currently in Kentucky. Republicans like Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell still think that’s their winning ticket. But every one of those new ACA beneficiaries now has reason to defend the law. And the ballot box is a great place to do it.
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