Check out more articles on BuzzFeed.com!“What do we know about them? They’re overwhelmingly male. They’re majority nonwhite. One out of every three lives in California, Florida or Texas.”
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I know, right? Will your friends agree?And while the Obama administration’s delay is not the first — the White House previously delayed implementation of the employer mandate until 2015 among other unplanned postponements — this delay comes at a time when the White House is attacking Republicans for wanting to delay parts of the president’s health care law.
According to Politico, House Republican leadership is considering adding a yearlong delay of the Obamacare individual mandate to a Senate bill that would avert a government shutdown.
“It’s unconscionable to imagine that there are those in the Congress — and now, apparently, because he couldn’t persuade them otherwise, the speaker of the house has joined them — who believe that it is the right thing to do to threaten another recession, threaten economic calamity in this country and the globe, over their ideological desire to defund or delay the Affordable Care Act,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said last Thursday.
Carney hammered Republicans twice more in his Thursday briefing for wanting to delay the law.
“And we can’t go to the nation — or we shouldn’t — they shouldn’t go to the nation and say, we couldn’t get this through normal means, so we’re going to threaten your job, your welfare, your security and future, so that we can defund Obamacare, or delay it — a proposition which would actually increase the deficit,” he said.
“He understands we need to do more, but we need to do it in a way that’s fair to the middle class,” said Carney. “What is not fair to the middle class is a shutdown that hurts the middle class. What is not fair to the middle class is default for the sake of the ideological goal of defunding or delaying the Affordable Care Act, ‘I’m either going to take your job — make sure you lose your job, or take away your access to health insurance’ — that’s the choice.”
In his Wednesday briefing the day before, Carney also hit Republicans for wanting to delay the law in the upcoming fight to fund the government.
“The irony is that they are doing it in the name of trying to defund or delay, or defeat in some other way, a law designed to provide access to insurance for millions of Americans — to health insurance — a law that is already providing tangible benefits to millions of Americans; a law, as I said the other day, that when implemented will ensure that at least close to 6 in 10 uninsured Americans will now have the capability of buying insurance for less than $100 a month.”
Asked about specifically why the White House wasn’t open to Republican-pitched Obamacare delays while the White House had already delayed some key portions of the law, Carney said previous delays were a “very small portion” and “the right and responsible thing to do.”
“On the employer responsibility provision, which represents a very small portion of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, it was the right and responsible thing to do, reacting in part to the requests of businesses to delay implementation of that for a year.”
“As every Republican who is pushing the idea of delaying implementation of the individual responsibility provision, they know that that is the heart of the Affordable Care Act. It is what is essential to ensuring that everyone in your extended family who has a preexisting condition can still get health insurance and isn’t blackballed by the insurance companies to making that work, making sure that the individual responsibility provision is there.”
“Furthermore, delaying it would do what? Add to the deficit,” Carney concluded. “So in the name of deficit reduction, Republicans are saying we should add to the deficit, even as we’re taking away health care for millions of Americans. Seems like a bad idea.”
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I know, right? Will your friends agree?Clinton’s riff on the current affairs of the capital, where House Republicans are attempting to defund President Obama’s landmark health care bill, marked a notably partisan moment for the former secretary of state. Clinton has kept quite this year on much of what happens inside the Beltway.
“I find the debate over this issue to be quite unfortunate,” Clinton said Tuesday, on a panel moderated by CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta about women’s health. “A law was passed. It was upheld by the Supreme Court. It is the law of the land.”
To affect a contrast with what she described as today’s “noisy minority” of House Republicans, Clinton cited past health care bills, specifically George W. Bush’s Medicare Part D benefit, which also presented implementation challenges but was met with less opposition by lawmakers on the right. “You didn’t have obstructionist members of Congress once the vote was taken,” said Clinton.
Clinton, a possible presidential candidate in 2016, did acknowledge that Democrats could stand to benefit from Republican threats in Washington to shutdown the government over funding for the bill. “It wouldn’t be the worst thing for Democrats if they tried to shut the government down,” she said. “We’ve seen that movie before. It didn’t work out too well.”
“If they want to try to shut the government down,” Clinton added, “that’s on their head — that’s their responsibility.”
But Clinton said that if Republicans “go even further” by refusing to raise the debt ceiling over the issue, sending the country into default, “that is not just partisan politics, that is going to the heart of our credibility around the world,” she said. “I hope that smarter, cooler heads prevail and that we deal with our budget and we deal with our debt limit.”
Clinton, calling Obama’s health care reform a “significant step forward,” did acknowledge the bill wasn’t infallible. “Nobody is saying it’s a perfect bill. I served in the senate for eight years — there is no such thing as a perfect bill.”
She also gestured toward the public messaging problems the Obama administration has faced with the measure, stressing that while people may “agree with the specifics” of health care reform, “they have been in effect convinced the overall program is not to their liking.
“We’re in this sort of bipolar political world,” Clinton said.
Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) speaks to the media after the Republican policy luncheon on Capitol Hill in Washington December 18, 2012.
Credit: Reuters/Joshua RobertsWASHINGTON | Sat Sep 7, 2013 2:10pm EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Weeks before healthcare exchanges under President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul open next month, a Republican senator attacked the plan on Saturday by saying Americans may experience "sticker shock" from higher prices.
Senator John Barrasso said in the weekly Republican address released on Saturday that the Affordable Care Act is hurting middle-class Americans.
"Many families are going to have real sticker shock when they see their new insurance rates - even families who get government subsidies," Barrasso, an orthopedic surgeon, said.
A White House official disputed Barrasso's characterization, citing studies showing that repealing the healthcare law would lead to higher rates.
Consumers will be able to buy health insurance from state exchanges - a key component of the healthcare overhaul - starting on October 1. The exchanges allow residents of each state to seek subsidized health coverage.
The government aims to sign up 7 million people in the first year. That number is expected to grow to 22 million in 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Republicans are bitterly opposed to the healthcare plan, which passed without a single Republican vote in Congress in 2010 and is seen by Obama's supporters as one of his greatest achievements as president.
Barrasso said there is "no question" that the U.S. healthcare system needs reform, but at a lower cost, not a higher one.
He cited a Kaiser Family Foundation study this week showing that the average family premium for people getting health insurance through their employers has risen by nearly $3,000 from when Obama took office in January 2009.
The Obama administration also cited the study, which came out earlier this week. It stressed that the study showed that insurance premiums will be more affordable on the healthcare exchanges.
"In fact, if the ACA were repealed, individuals and families could see rate shock, with $1,000 to $8,000 in premium hikes based on data from the Kaiser Family Foundation," the White House official said on Saturday.
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Additional reporting by Robert Rampton; Editing by Eric Beech)
