Republicans lost on health care and the Missouri GOP has responded with predictable temper tantrums in order to impress their Tea-Party addled constituents:

–Republican Governor wannabe, Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder, is planning to (maybe) file a pseudo official lawsuit against the Obama health care reform, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).

–Rep. Todd Akin (R-2), man of action that he is, isn’t waiting around like Kinder, but has just signed on to an amicus brief in support of the lawsuit against the PPACA that the Republican governor of the State of Virginia has filed.

–Roy Blunt (R-7) has announced his support for legislation to “repeal and replace” the “onerous” PPACA by bringing back the much ridiculed earler GOP “alternative,” and repackaging it as a new Republican proposal.  HR 5424, the Reform Americans Can Afford Act, which is cosponsored by Todd Akin and Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-9), would cut access to health care, drive up the deficit, reduce the life of the Medicare trust fund by 10 years, and reopen the “donut hole” for prescrption drugs. (As far as reform goes, a bit unclear on the concept perhaps?)

–Not to be outdone by the GOP federal congressional delegation, the state’s GOP dominated lege wants Missourians to vote to opt out of health care reform this August.

Just the usual political games you may be thinking – but perhaps not, after all, such smart political moves as some GOPers thought a month or so ago. As Slate reporter, William Salatan observes:

Tales of death panels and warnings about losing your doctor can now be falsified. (That’s what happened to the early scare stories about Social Security and Medicare.) And Republicans who denounce the program and promise to repeal it will no longer be bashing an abstraction. They will be proposing to take away existing, tangible benefits… .  

… why assume that lockstep Republican opposition will discredit the health care program? Maybe the opposite will happen: Lockstep opposition will discredit Republicans.

Apparently the Democratic National Committee not only agrees with this assessment, but has enough confidence in it to go on the offensive.  Which brings me to a great new DNC ad that will soon begin airing:

Update:  Speaking of tangible benefits, my husband just forwarded a message from his employer detailing the changes in our health care coverage that have resulted from passage of the PPACA, and needless to say, it’s all good. Now just let the Republican try to take it away.

Our Republican dominated state legislature couldn’t manage to pass a meaningful ethics bill, but, as I am sure you know by now, they did join Arizona and Florida in placing an essentially empty measure on the ballot (the August Primary ballot in Missouri) that is meant to nullify the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), known popularly as Obamacare*. Three states, Virginia, Idaho and Utah have already enacted similar legislation. So Missouri must be coasting on the leading edge of a cresting wave of anti-Obamacare sentiment, right?

Wrong! A recent report notes that of the 40 states identified by the health insurance industry front group, The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), as likely to take steps to oppose the federal legislation, 24 have rejected anti-PPACA legislation – including such deeply red states as Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. In seven states the legislation has been tabled or otherwise put out of its misery, and three states, Texas, Rhode Island, and Montana, never got around to doing anything at all. Meanwhile, plans for implementation are proceeding apace in all 50 states – including Missouri which seems to have a few adults left in government.

If Missourians vote for this amendment next August, they will have identified themselves with a very small and retrograde group of states – and while it is fun to go along with the crowd, it’s not so much fun to crawl out on the bleeding edge practically alone and find out you’re a laughing stock – but, of course, that’s a risk folks run when they jump to “defend” the Constitution before they have taken the trouble to figure out just what the Constitution actually says.

So where does this leave our anti-Obamacare stalwart, Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder, and the weirdly anonymous donors (insurance industry or industry stooges?) who are financing his intended lawsuit against the PPACA? FiredUp! has suggested that Kinder may be getting cold feet or, at the very least, stalling for political advantage. It is, though, becoming more and more apparent that this paticular pander is akin to shooting at a moving target, and, in the end, he may not get all the bang that he expects for his donated bucks – or any bang at all perhaps?

* Obamacare … yes, I know that the Teople (i.e., Tea Party People) use it as a pejorative, but I like the term and see nothing wrong with it. Obama’s a relatively good guy as far as I’m concerned, and he should get credit for taking this issue on and getting something, imperfect as the PPACA may be,  out of our ossified, corporate-owned congress. Calling the PPACA Obamacare can be seen postiviely as one way to recognize his role.

Then again, that isn’t saying much.

Sue Lowden is a republican candidate for U.S. Senate from Nevada, challenging Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D). She recently touted the virtues of bartering chickens for health care:

…Senate hopeful Sue Lowden’s plan for Healthcare reform is to barter chickens for medical procedures. But you may be unsure how many chickens are required for your medical care. This handy calculator converts many common procedures into chickens so you won’t look like an idiot at your next Doctor’s Appointment…

Lowden Medical Procedure to Chicken Converter

I wonder if Roy Blunt will recommend squirrel instead.

It is clear that Peter Kinder thinks that there’s lots of political hay to be made by getting in on the lawsuits against the Affordable Care Act –  a belief that he shares with the AGs of several states, although it’s unlikely that such a suit has even the proverbial snowball-in-Hell’s chance of success. Sadly for Kinder, in his role as Lieutenant Governor he lacks the authority to file suit on Missouri’s behalf.  Happily for Missourians, responsible adults, to wit Governor Nixon and AG Chris Koster, have slapped Kinder down and refused to drag the state into this potentially very expensive morass. Indeed, Senator Claire McCaskill has gone so far as to describe some of his assertions as “embarrassingly wrong and irresponsible.”  

Although no state funds will be forthcoming, Kinder remains resolute – there are a few riled up Tea Partiers out there who need some TLC after all. Consequently, he has announced that he is collecting private donations in order to finance a suit out of his office. To this end, he has set up a Website, “Health Care in Action: Standing up against the infringement on state sovereignty and personal freedoms” – how’s that for a particularly tone-deaf non-sequitur?

Perhaps this new variation on Kinder’s crusade means that he was stung by criticisms like those of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which ridiculed the potential use of taxpayer dollars in an effort to deny Missourians the benefits of health care reform at a time when the state is engaged in budget cutting so dire that fiduciary bones are being scraped away. Or maybe he doesn’t really care whether he raises sufficient funds or not – he’s undoubtedly calculating that he’ll get lots of fringer street cred out of this little piece of theater no matter what.

Laugh though we may at Kinder’s grandstanding, we should not dismiss the harm he and others can do. The rightwing tactic of mounting legal challenges to the new law is potentially harmful to its successful implementation whether or not they have legal merit. As a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes:

Even though attempts to nullify provisions of federal health reform legislation have no legal effect, they should not be ignored. With enactment of the PPACA, substantial efforts are needed to meet tight deadlines for implementation. Legal challenges and campaigns to block the legislation will consume time and resources needed for implementation and may slow implementation until legal challenges are resolved. State provisions that purport to prohibit the individual mandate could be used as a shield by those who refuse to comply with the law. They also may weaken political support for health reform.

Conventional wisdom has it that Kinder is prepping for a run for Governor and that he sees this lawsuit business as a convenient tool to garner attention and establish his fringer bona fides. Still, he’ll need more than Tea Partiers to become governor – and if he allows himself to be identified with the political thugs seeking to work over our hard-won health care reform, more people than he thinks may be upset.

Update:  Here’s Kinder bloviating on the Greta von Susteren show last night (FiredUp! points out that here once again he continues to lie just like a lying liar):

Rep. Todd Akin (R-2nd) reacted to the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) with predictable bile. He also tried to dredge up some some stale GOP health care hash, twittering on the eve of its passage:

Did you know that the healthcare bill included a marriage penalty? A married couple making $50,000/yr will have to pay $1,650 more per year for health insurance than an unmarried couple making the same amount.

Although this claim is old news, dating from the first of the year, Akin’s attempt to resurrect the meme indicates, sadly, that we may be hearing it repeated for awhile yet.

The marriage penalty Akin refers to is  the mechanism the PPACA uses to structure progressive premiums for the ca. 17 million individuals who are now uninsured and who would be eligible for insurance subsidies through the exchanges. The Wall Street Journal picked up the story from a memo circulated by the GOP, printing two articles that provided a cover of credibility as the story went viral among the wingnutagencia – just google “health care marriage penalty” and you will get a gazillion hits from all the usual suspects.

Nancy Pelosi firmly rejected the contention that this structural inequity comprises a new marriage tax hidden in the Health Care Act, observing that:

…it is a new criticism of how the federal poverty level has been calculated for decades-under Republican and Democratic leadership alike. Under all federal income-related assistance programs, total assistance provided to two single people is greater than the total assistance provided to a married couple for the simple fact that two people living together have lower expenses than two people living separately.  (And the federal government assumes that single people are living separately and a married couple is living together.)  It is considered good stewardship of tax dollars to reflect actual costs.

…

So it turns out this myth is really focused on a small subset of Americans who are: 1) unmarried couples who are living together and then decide to get married; and 2) are among the 6 percent of Americans who are using the Exchange because they do not have access to employer-provided insurance or a program such as Medicare and Medicaid and who qualify for affordability credits.

Unfortunately, the WSJ wasn’t as inclined to run with Pelosi’s very clear exposition as they were with the original GOP assertions. Others, such as Igor Volsky of The Wonk Room, however, have noted the beneficial aspects of the scaled subsidies:

In fact, since the majority of the uninsured are not married and marrying lowers uninsurance rates, providing more subsidies to individuals is a better way of targeting affordability credits to those who need them most.

Both Peolosi and Volsky point out that Akin and his GOP cohorts have little moral ground to stand on, since their team’s proposals failed to do anything for the uninsured, married or unmarried. The PPACA, on the other hand, will, as Pelosi put it, actually help married individuals by “allowing coverage under a spouse’s plan, and more affordable rates per person under a family plan than individuals got when they were single.”

Of course, the enumeration of such benefits will no doubt fail to convince some of Akin’s hardcore supporters. Just consider this query and response on Akin’s facebook page:

[Comment 1] Did you know that the healthcare bill forbids insurance companies from denying coverage?

[Comment 2] I didn’t know that, but its another reason to be against the current bill–besides the blatant funding for abortion!

With intellects like these parsing features into bugs and insisting on discredited misinformation, Akin shouldn’t have to lie too strenuously in order to play his role in the ongoing Republican obstructionist soap opera.

Reps get spit on, windows broken, mysterious powder–and Palin blames the “lame-stream media”.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) excoriated DNC Chair Tim Kaine and DCCC Chair Rep. Chris Van Hollen, for “dangerously fanning the flames” in using recent acts of violence and intimidation by anti-health-care reform opponents, “as a political weapon.”

Was there spittle? Or, was there not?

There is so much spin going on all over the place it’s a wonder the number of car-wrecks don’t go up due to a permanent condition of dizziness afflicting the populace.

A friend of mine I play B-ball with said, “Don ‘t complain about Glenn Beck, the left’s got Keith Olbermann–the Republicans, Bill O’Reilly–and Democrats, Chris Matthews.”

It’s clear television news today is not your father’s nor mother’s fav journalist broadcaster. The days of Howard K. Smith or Walter Cronkite are gone.

So we have these ratings machines — FOX News, CNN, MSNBC — stoking reactionary stimulus throughout the neural networks of many a head, whipping folks up in their respective corners only to meet in the real world with shouting, disconnects, and yes, even acts of violence.

What are the solutions? I mean, quite possibly, there’s as much wrong with American media appetites as there is with our real eating habits of sugar, salt, carbs.

Maybe we’re just in the dark ages of the information revolution. Does that make sense?

I just finished a mentorship program with sixth grade students in Wellston, Missouri. We were helping students with projects for a Science Fair, and teaching them what the scientific method is. You come up with an idea–you test it–and appreciate knowing if you were right or wrong.

Teaching the method in simple terms gave me a clue as to what might be going on as the nation further fractures, polarizes and chasms, politically.

Scientific evidence shows that people like to be “right” and actually get a chemical lift from the experience, kinda like what a Ding-Dong and Coke’ll do to ya.

In fact, people like to be right so bad, that they will actually rearrange and distort facts to reach emotionally satisfying conclusions, as opposed to accurate ones. This is the filter of an addiction to the false sense of security in knowing you’ve got it all figured out; a comfortable and safe place, to be sure. Media venues pump a light-and-sound show that tweak this addiction to be “right”, and profit off of being pushers of self-reinforcing arrogance.

What I shared with my students was the fact that, as scientists, we have to lean against this propensity to always want to be right, and to embrace revealing facts and statistics that might–god forbid–actually disprove our theories, ideas or concepts. After all, as the story goes, Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb as much as found thousands of light bulbs that didn’t last until they discovered a carbonized bamboo filament that lasted lit-up for over a thousand hours. The point is, objective evidence may not feel good all the time, but an individual or community or nation that celebrates it, will be less prone to ego-satisfying folly or self-destructive cultural battles.

The problem with our political system resembling more of a sporting contest than a thoughtful democracy is that a sort of “March-Madness” begins to creep in (nothing against the beautiful B-ball we’ve been witness to recently). A large portion of folks are just hell-bent upon winning–delivering “Waterloos” to the other side at any cost–including damaging the better interests of the American people.

To think that not a single Republican voted for health-care reform is emblematic of the Napoleon-like mentality that has polluted our political universe.

Our nation is 233 years old, a youngster as compared to other cultures; adolescence can be difficult.  As America grows up, let’s make sure her citizens have access to the liberating mindset of the scientist seeking solutions, and move past the “I’m right, you’re wrong” political theatre that plays out more like a Greek tragedy, than the story of a modern, mature and manifest leader in the world.

This is why education is the investment in our future like no other. And making sure the education for future generations is the best we can deliver.

Elections have consequences. Hell yes we can.

…and if you aren’t a posturing republican politician you understand.

The Democratic Policy Committee issued a report on the benefits of health care reform, state by state:

The Benefits of Health Reform In Missouri (pdf)

Together, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act will ensure that all Missourians have access to quality, affordable health insurance. The Congressional Budget Office has determined that these two bills are fully paid for, will bend the health care cost curve, and will reduce the deficit by $143 billion over the next ten years with further deficit reduction in the following decade. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act will reduce the cost of health care for the middle class, ensure health security to seniors, and provide tax credits to small businesses and individuals to further reduce the cost of health coverage…

…Key Benefits for Missouri

Provide tax credits for up to 79,900 Missouri small businesses to help make coverage more affordable. [HealthReform.gov, accessed 3/20/10]

Prohibit insurance companies from excluding coverage of pre-existing conditions for the 1.4 million children in Missouri, starting this year. [U.S. Census Bureau, 1/7/10]

Close the “donut hole” and improve other Medicare benefits for 961,000 Missouri seniors. [HealthReform.gov, accessed 3/20/10]

Reduce Medicare premiums for the 779,000 Missouri seniors who are not enrolled in Medicare Advantage and will no longer subsidize these private insurance plans. [Senate Finance Committee]

Ensure affordable coverage options for 790,000 Missourians who are uninsured and 335,000 Missourians who purchase health insurance through the individual market. [HealthReform.gov, accessed 3/20/10]

Ensure immediate access to affordable insurance options for as many as 94,581 uninsured Missourians who have a pre-existing condition. [staff estimate using Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), 4/09 and HealthReform.gov, accessed 3/20/10]

Provide tax credits for up to 516,000 Missourians to help make health insurance more affordable, bringing $8.4 billion in premium and cost-sharing tax credits into Missouri during the first five years of the health insurance Exchange. [HealthReform.gov, accessed 3/20/10; Senate Finance Committee]

Reduce family health insurance premiums by $1,640 – $2,350 for the same benefits, as compared to what they would be without health reform by 2016. [Senate Finance Committee estimate based on CBO, 11/30/09]

Provide access to Medicaid for 385,388 newly-eligible Missourians, and provide $8.2 billion in federal funding for the cost of their coverage. [Urban Institute, 1/25/10; Senate Finance Committee]

Create 4,900 – 7,800 jobs by reducing health care costs for employers. [U.S. Public Interest Research Group, 1/20/10]

Allow 559,567 young adults to stay on their parents’ insurance plans. [U.S. Census Bureau, 1/7/10]

Provide more federal funding for 180 Community Health Centers in Missouri. [National Association of Community Health Centers, 2009]….

The lunatic fringe right, however, doesn’t get it either, and breaks windows.

Five Words to define HCR in the election season

Option A: Move forward or move backward

Option B: You Can’t Trust The Republicans

Hey, can’t hurt to have multiple options.

Ultimately the campaign over the HCR bill will have wild distortions, both for the contents of the bill and the moves that Republicans can do if they win in November.

The distortions, involving death panels, abortions, and tomatoes being poisonous, are not going to stop (zombie lies live forever) and only the most honed of the Republicans will be able to pick out a part of the bill, in the actual bill, that is the most objectionable. Which would be a fun game to play provided you have safety goggles on at the time.

As for the moves that are possible for the Republicans. They will not be able to do anything whatsoever to forcibly repeal the HCR law. They might remove portions but only if Obama agrees and an amendment to current law. If you hear a person voting Republican to repeal the law in 2011, they’re a sucker of the highest magnitude.

But plain and simple, the Republicans want to move backwards on Health Care and the only unknown is how far back they want to go when they’re tossing you out into the cold.

The alternative is moving forward. The alternative is making sure that America’s health care system is not just the biggest in the world, but that it keeps working to be the best in the world. Considering the Republican record, they’d only move forward while kicking and screaming the entire way. It’s not in their nature or reputation to move forward.

Moving forward and ironing out any possible flaws beats throwing the entire law out. Think about it, throwing the entire bill out is the statement that this is a 100% bad bill which is highly unlikely. Partly because there are a lot of elements to the bill and partly because it’d take a lot of coldness to reject every single part of the bill.

Shredding the innards of the bill and keeping some organs intact wouldn’t be a repeal, just a criminal assault. The Repealwecan Republicans want to go all the way backwards (how far, 1964? 1934? who knows).

You give the Republican an inch, they take a mile. You give them 51% and 286 electoral votes and they attempt to claim a mandate to kneecap Social Security. If they get 218 House seats and 51 Senate seats, they’d probably try to overexert themselves again.

What about the last 10 years tells you that you can trust the Republican Party? What about the last 15 months tells you that these guys are not going to propose extreme leaps back in time? Paul Ryan’s plan is not off their table and they’re prepared to be candidates who will smile when they talk about medicare and elected officials who will decimate that program.

George W. Bush has been retired to his historical infamy, but the architects of his putrid presidential policy still exist and they’re still fueling the House and Senate Republicans. These people seem to think that their policies were not rejected decisively in 2006 and 2008. Conservatives are looking all around the country and their idea is “Be more conservative”. It’s the electoral equivalent of swimming towards Niagara Falls in order to get towards dry land.

In essence, what you’d get in 2011 if the Republicans have Congress (or in 2013, if the crazy sauce has been passed out and Sarah Palin is in year 1 of her 2 1/4 year Presidency) is a faith-based plan on health care.

Why is it faith-based? because you need a lot of faith to not expect a Republican plan to be a 10 pound can of bad ideas. Only ignoring their record shields one from noticing what they are very likely to do.

Two questions to ask voters this fall

1) Do you want to move forward or backwards on health care in this country?

2) Can you trust Republicans if they win Congress back?

If you want to move this country forward, the last party you want to vote for is the Republican party. If you can’t trust the Republicans to not go crazy, like they did in 1995/1996, 2005, and so on, then don’t give them power.

This is not advanced chemistry here. I hope that the message on our side is direct and on the offensive. Only one side can move forward and deliver on this topic. We know what side that is.

Two recent posts over at FiredUp! strike me as telling. One draws our attention to Kit Bond’s assertion that the actions of our Democratic controlled congress to craft and pass health care insurance reform is comparable to suicide:

I think it may be more accurate to say they [i.e., Democrats] put red bandanas on their head, took a drink of sake, and went out on what I believe to be a Kamikaze mission.

The other posting describes Bond’s and Roy Blunt’s willingness to put their names to a hasty, Republican-sponsored measure designed to repeal the health care reform package lock-stock-and barrel. In view of today’s USAToday/Gallup poll that shows that Americans favor the reform bill 49% to 40% against, they and their buddies may have just blundered onto the Kamikaze plane by mistake – because that margin can only get better as their erstwhile followers begin to notice that the legislation did not bring about the Armageddon these fearless leaders have been frantically predicting.