The Chair of the Missouri Republican Party, Ed Martin, has a problem with the reality that the rest of us inhabit. The proof? Read his oddly gloating statement about the Obamacare signup numbers that were released Monday. He starts cute:

The truth hurts; at least it hurts everyday Missourians and millions around the country. Another month of enrollment numbers brings another announcement from the Administration cloaking the colossal failure that is ObamaCare.

“The truth hurts”? Give me a break. Is Martin trying to say that the numbers aren’t accurate? If so, where’s his proof? Or is Martin really so dense that he  believes the fact that total enrollments doubled in December constitutes some type of failure? In fact, this new evidence that the early rollout hiccups are now in the past inspired The Wasington Post‘s Ezra Klein to announce that we’re seeing the “death of Obamacare’s death spiral,” – you, know, that “death spiral” that folks like Martin have been heralding for the last three months.

Seems to me that the main thing that the new numbers tell us is that lots of folks have managed to get healthcare coverage, many for the first time. But that type of success doesn’t concern Ed Martin:

No amount of repairs to a website, or new rules meant to shore up ObamaCare’s failed policy, will fix the problem the law created for countless Americans that lost theirs plans through no fault of their own.

And this is where the truth actually does hurt – only the wounded entity is Ed Martin’s credibility. As Patrick Caldwell notes in Mother Jones, the truth “turns out to be a tad more complicated” than the rote talking points of GOPers like Martin suggest:

… . On New Year’s Eve, the Democratic minority on the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a report examining exactly how many people will lack health insurance under the new regime. The report uses an Associated Press estimate that 4.7 million people received cancellation notices as their baseline. But out of that group, according to the Democrats, only a small sliver of Americans-just 10,000 people-who lost their 2013 coverage won’t have access to affordable insurance.

“Previous false claims have included the assertion that the law requires death panels, that the law represents a government take over of health care, and that law has caused millions to lose their jobs,” the report says. “The assertion that the law will cause five million individuals who currently have coverage in the individual market to go without coverage in 2014 is similarly baseless.”

But Martin’s got more: He’s sure that the risk pool among the new enrollees is so unbalanced it will bring the whole Obamacare edifice tumbling down:

By the White House’s own admission, the young and healthy will have to shoulder the burden of ObamaCare. Today’s numbers show young Americans are avoiding the mandate at a significant rate. The White House continues to hide key data points by refusing to release the number of Americans that have actually paid for plans selected through the federal marketplace. What are they hiding?

However, as Klein notes, Ed’s worries about the ratio of young enrollees to older, sicker folks is a tad premature:

But — and this can’t be emphasized enough — this is not the final risk pool. No one anywhere expected that the risk pool would be balanced by Jan. 1. Major health laws always follow the same pattern: The people who badly need insurance sign up first, and they tend to be older and sicker. Younger people sign up later — typically right before the penalty hits. So far, the age pattern in Obamacare enrollment is tracking the age pattern in enrollment for the Massachusetts reforms quite closely.

In fact, as Klein notes, it may take up to three years to sort out the risk pool to the point that we actually understand how well the system will function. At any rate, the current ratio of young to older enrollees is actually not, as it stands, an insurmountable problem according to Larry Levitt, Senior Vice-President of the Kaiser Foundation:

Even if the current mix of enrollees holds, Levitt does not foresee a shock to the insurance system, with only a potential 2 to 3 percent increase in premiums in 2015. “I see no signs at this point of a feared premium ‘death spiral,’ ” in which premiums skyrocket and the system collapses, he says.

Nor is the failure to tell us how many enrollees have paid for their plans a real issue. Just the teensy-tiniest bit of reflection might suggest that it’s a bit too early to get meaningful figures – many new enrollees haven’t even had time to receive billing statements. Perhaps Martin should dry his crocodile tears and ask again in a few months.

It’s Martin’s closing grace notes, however, that are really special:

When America judges this administration, when it’s all said and done, this law will undoubtedly be the downfall of a historic presidency.

Who’d of thought that Martin would be so worried about the legacy of the black man in the white house, the same guy who’s kept Martin and his co-partisans so lathered up during the last five years that they’ve clearly lost touch with the real world.

From Talking Points Memo we learn that the following Missouri Republicans signed up for Obamacare through the D.C. marketplace without indicating that they would refuse the employer contribution: Billy Long (R-7), and Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-3)

So what you say? We all know that the employer contribution was reinstated for congressmen and their staff in order to restore fairness – after all, 80% of Americans get their insurance through their work where all or much of the costs are borne by their employers – which was also the case with congress before an anti-Obamacare stunt on the part of GOP Senator Chuck Grassley backfired, forcing congressional employees onto the exchanges which had only been intended for folks who had to purchase their insurance on the open market without benefit of an employer group’s buying power.

But the big deal is that these particular members of congress were unwilling to give up the talking point about unfair treatment for government workers and were pretty vocal that the subsidy should not be restored; both voted in September to strip the employer contribution for members of congress and their staffs. As TPM puts it, these folks now have the chance to “practice what they preach” – and some Republican members of the House have had the integrity to do just that. Or like Missouri’s Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2), they either have coverage through a another source, or sufficient private means to buy their own insurance, and so can afford to spurn their employment-based insurance and avoid the issue of “do as I say, not as I do” altogether.

But not Long and Luetkemeyer, even though they were specifically called out on the issue during the disastrous GOP “defund-obamacare” government shutdown by the new Chairman of the Missouri Democratic Party, Roy Temple, who called upon members of Missouri’s GOP House delegation to “put your money where your mouth is”:

On the seventh day of a Republican government shutdown, due to the US House majority demanding a dismantling of the Affordable Care Act before they fund basic services, Missouri Democratic Party Chairman Roy Temple issued a challenge to Representatives Ann Wagner, Blaine Luetkemeyer, Vicky Hartzler, Sam Graves, Billy Long, and Jason Smith: that they voluntarily forfeit their employer contributions to their health care plans – contributions they have lately labeled “special treatment.”

Long even felt entitled to crudely grill HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius – who is not subject to the congressional mandate to buy insurance from the exchanges – about why she is not giving up her federally supplied insurance and buying from the exchanges. As for Luetkemeyer, he actually voted to suspend all subsidies under the pretense that they are liable to fraud, a consideration that apparently doesn’t bother him when he’s the recipient.

Say what you will about hypocrisy, perhaps Long’s and Luetkemeyer’s actions simply demonstrate what everybody else has known all along. The entire brouhaha about “special treatment” for congress was simply an effort by the GOP to keep stirring up trouble and generating false anti-Obamacare scandals. Don’t you think that these folks are maybe going to cry “wolf” just once too often? Like any day now?

 

Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2) offers a case study of what is wrong with the pathetic Republican anti-Obamacare crusade. Wagner has had this request posted on her congressional Webpage for some time:

Have you had your health insurance plan cancelled as a result of ObamaCare? Have your premiums increased or even doubled? Have you had to switch doctors? Have you lost your job or had your hours cut?

You are not alone and the American people need to hear your story. Give Obamacare a face and share your story with me at ObamaCare.Wagner@mail.house.gov

.

Notice that Wagner makes it clear that she’s only interested in hearing from those who’ve got a beef with Obamacare – or think they have; she has no interest in learning what’s working or how any of her constituents may be benefiting from Obamacare. So much for unbiased fact-finding.

A few days ago I learned from a video embedded in  Rep. Wagner’s constituent email newsletter (which I have included over the fold) that her call for ammunition against Obamacare has been fruitful to some extent; she wants us to know that she  has heard “far too many heart-wrenching stories” about the ravages of Obamacare from the folks in her district.

If you bother to play the video, you’ll be struck by how few details she offers as she recounts a few sketchy anecdotes that meet the criteria she specified in her Website invitation. As is the norm for the GOP’s anti-Obamacare “real-life” stories, she doesn’t tell us what her informants’ old coverage offered as compared to the new policies they can get through the exchange, or if they’ve even gone to the exchange. Nor does she tell us if any of these folks are eligible for subsidies. Neither, apart from her angsty evocation of “far too many,” does she quantify the complaints she received, or tell us how that number compares with the  31,474 Missourians, seeking coverage for 62,964 individuals who have completed applications for healthcare through the federal Website. But hey! Who cares about folks getting healthcare coverage, many probably for the first time, when you can get a few folks to grouse about maybe having to change their coverage plan or their doctor?

There’s lots more about Obamacare implementation that Wagner doesn’t seem to want folks to know. For instance, she doesn’t drop a hint about state Republicans’ all-out efforts to hobble the process in Missouri in order to keep people from signing up. Nor does she have a single word to waste on Missourians who will be caught in the “Medicaid gap,” those whom Obamacare intended to cover by exending Medicaid coverage, an extension that Wagner’s fellow partisans in the state legislature refused to enact after the Supreme Court gave them an out. Individuals in the gap make too much for Missouri’s current Medicaid eligibility rules, but not enough to qualify for subsidies through the Obamacare healthcare exchange. Wagner evidently isn’t interested in the “heart-wrenching” stories these victims of what Kevin Drum has called “one of most sordid acts in recent American history” will have to tell.

And then finally there’s all the misleading or just flat out dishonest assertions that Wagner stuffs into her performance, most of it the usual drivel that has long been discounted – as in this Factcheck.org report on Obamacare myths or this Bill Moyers’ piece on the failures of Obamacare media coverage. Rep. Wagner – and the hysterical rightwing media – to the contrary, 80 million people aren’t going to lose their insurance – this number is just one more example of the type of “bait and switch” logic that the demonstrably dishonest conservative economist Avik Roy employed when he came up with a similar extravagant figure in Forbes earlier this year. Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill knows what she’s talking about when she observes that when it comes to Obamacare, Missourians “are being told that it’s something that it isn’t.”

But that what’s last ditch warfare is like – just before defeat, the losers will latch on to any weapon that comes to hand, even if they have to lob slime from the bottom of the trench. Fortunately, the muck Wagner and her GOP pals are tossing makes a poor weapon; eventually all this hyperventilating will have come to an end. The Website is improving, folks will get insurance, those who  have been terrified by GOP fear-mongering will emerge into the light of a new day, at least as far as health care goes. As Michael Tomasky argued yesterday, it’s looking more and more likely that HealthCare.gov is going to be a plus for Democrats in 2014 – and even further:

… in two more years’ time, and indeed less than that, many millions of Americans will see that what they thought was decent health insurance before the Affordable Care Act was like gaslight before electricity.

Step over the fold if you want to watch the expensively dressed and groomed Rep. Ann Wagner, who will no doubt get gold-plated insurance through her wealthy husbands’ employer – she has declined the coverage offered to congress – emote about how middle class and poor folks are going to suffer because of Obamacare:

Recently Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker claimed the overweening Republican problem to be messaging. According to Parker, the GOP needs to present a more positive, hopeful face to the country. She thinks their negativity permits Democrats to cast them – unfairly – as cruel and heartless villains who consequently can’t compete with a president who wins hearts and minds by tossing – ready for the conservative meme du jour, a riff on the old bread and circuses schtick – “coins and candy into the crowds.”

Unfortunately for Parker’s thesis, which largely centers on Obamacare, access to basic healthcare is a little more substantive than “coins and candy.” In fact it isn’t overstating the case to say it’s a matter of life and death. Healthcare reform is long overdue and although Obamacare, as a product of compromise reflecting diverse interests, is far from perfect, its problems are all eminently fixable. It’s a real and considerable achievement that will make all our lives a little better.

It is not the ineffective and naively liberal president they consistently  invoke that bothers Republicans, but the calm, measured, do-something-for-the-99% president who is driving them bonkers. And the resulting GOP tantrum simply reveals what they really stand for – and the picture is, as Parker correctly discerns, not very pretty, but, Parker to the contrary, the problem is more essential than bad self-presentation. Based on their actual policy preferences and lack of concern for the real problems of the vast majority of Americans, nobody can deny Republicans are a seriously bloody-minded bunch.

Slate has published this interactive map prepared by Kantar media that tracks where money is being spent on Obamacare attack ads relative to the numbers of uninsured. Guess what? More uninsured, more ads. Here in Missouri, the let’s-kill-Obamacare folks are hammering the Springfield Market where 23.5% of the inhabitants are uninsured. It’s also one of the poorest areas in Missouri.

Then, of course, there’s the content of these ads. For the most part, they seem filled with distortions and outright falsehoods. What kind of people tell lies to  make their points? Especially when those very people here in Missouri are refusing to take federal funds, our own tax dollars, to expand Medicaid coverage, all the while while bleating about the imagined evils of depending on a federal hand-out – but never one word about the evil situation where over 20% of their constituents lack access to good healthcare.

Perhaps Parker’s candy meme tells us more than she intended about who today’s Republicans really are. Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson’s hilarious variation on the old bread and circuses business suggests that the GOP ought to be careful about which talking points they want to promulgate:

They [i.e. Democrats] are giving away candy, and it is tasty stuff,” he said. “We’ve got the drill and the Novocain to fix the cavity.

So a functioning safety net, good health care, quality education, strong infrastructure and a prosperous and growing middle class – all the concerns that animate progressives – are just like cavities? And the folks running around waving their metaphorical drills? Parker is at least partly right. Nobody wants sadists running government.    

Michael Berson in a recent post quotes a twitter exchange that asks Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-4) to essentially put up or shut up when it comes to Obamacare by specifying how she would replace it. Surprise, surprise – Harzler is prepared for just such querries:

West-Central Missouri Representative Vicky Hartzler admits that the Republican party may have spent too much time battling the Affordable Care Act. But now, she’s cosponsoring an alternative bill. It’s called the American Healthcare Reform Act. [i.e.,H.R 3121 (pdf)].

“Our plan would allow more competition across state lines and more individual control over decisions between doctors and patients. It would also allow for some tort reform, which is a real cost driver. It also supervises ways for people who can’t get insurance to access it through high-risk pools,” she said.

Seems to me that I’ve heard these proposals before. Weren’t these the best ideas that John McCain could manage? And, of course there was the three-page alterntive to Obamacare that Roy Blunt and his GOP working group produced way back when, which might have hit the same high (or low) points if I remember correctly. The points Hartzler specifies are simply those every GOP hack flourishes when put on the spot about an alternative to Obamacare.

The most recent of those hacks to pull out the tried-and-true GOP healthcare wish list is Sarah Palin – or at least I think that was what she was trying to do during a typically incoherent interview with Matt Lauer yesterday:

The plan is to allow those things that had been proposed over many years to reform a health-care system in America that certainly does need more help so that there’s more competition, there’s less tort reform threat, there’s less trajectory of the cost increases, and those plans have been proposed over and over again. And what thwarts those plans? It’s the far left. It’s President Obama and his supporters who will not allow the Republicans to usher in free market, patient-centered, doctor-patient relationship links to reform health care.

Hunh? “Less tort reform threat”? At least we now know how Vicky Harzler differs from Sarah Palin. Both espouse the same silly ideas but one of them speaks English.

And the ideas in H.R 3121, which it’s safe to assume Palin would endorse, are silly, especially when presented as an alternative to systematic reform. Some are harmless bits of fiddling that  would have minimal impact on the problems of our healthcare delivery system, others are downright harmful, and some are simply gifts to the insurance industry – purchasing insurance across state lines, for instance. As formulated in HR3121 it seems to me that the point is to permit out-of-state insurers to flout state-based consumer protections in the name of competition.

Consider also the GOP standby, tort reform. HR3121 follows the usual pattern of instituting caps on non-economic and punitive damages. It also allows the court discretion to redirect attorney’s fees to clients in some cases. According to Adam Dawson, who has analysed the results of a similar reform in Texas, “tt’s a terrific plan, except for the fact that it’s a terrible plan.” Some of the most salient results of the Texas experiment:

One of the more optimistic predictions was that doctors would simply stampede to Texas in order to set up practice thanks to Governor Perry’s legal protections. But the latest info from the American Association of Medical Colleges has Texas ranking 42nd in the country in doctors per 100,000 people. […]

Also torpedoed by the facts is the notion that tort reform causes health insurance premiums to drop. Between 2003 and 2010 the average price of a health insurance premium for an individual in Texas went up 46 percent, and the average price of a family health insurance plan in Texas went up 52 percent. As if that wasn’t enough of a sign that tort reform hasn’t helped make health care cheaper, Texas had one of the highest rates of uninsured people in the country in 2010. […]

[…] in McAllen, Texas, Medicare costs per person are actually higher than the median income of the people who live there. While doctors might no longer fear lawsuits, it seems they are also not at all afraid of sending big, fat, test-laden invoices to Uncle Sam or insurance companies. It doesn’t seem to be “defensive medicine” as much as it is an amendment to the Hippocratic Oath: “First, do no harm. Second, daddy needs a new pair of shoes.”

It is absolutely true that medical malpractice cases have dropped drastically in Texas, but doctors and surgeons are making just as many mistakes as they always have. It’s just that now most of the victims have been priced out of the courtroom. […]

HR3121 also, as Hartzler noted, proposes high-risk pools as a way to answer criticisms that our current system leaves those with pre-existing conditions without coverage.  High-risk pools were one of the centerpieces of John McCain’s healthcare proposals and, as I recollect, nobody was too impressed then, nor should they be now, Our experience with high-risk pools in the past has shown that they are not very effective in providing health care; they tend to be prohibitively expensive and often offer inadequate coverage. Many individuals are expected to get better deals by leaving existing state-run high-risk pools and purchasing insurance through the Obamacare exchanges.

All of which brings me back to the difference between Vicky Harzler and Sarah Palin. Their similarities are actually more important than their differences since in GOP circles whether or not one can manipulate English syntax is not so important as being able to get all the buzz words out in public as fast as possible. And when it comes to generating empty noise, both women get a gold star.

*Edited slightly for clarity.

193,420. That’s the number of uninsured Missourians who would have qualified for coverage if the state’s Republican lawmakers had accepted federal funds to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). These jokers turned down the chance to recover a big enough chunk of the tax dollars that we Missourians send to Washington D.C. to pay 100% of the expansion for three years and 90% thereafter – and, no matter what they do in the future, they’ve already cost us the first year’s 100% free ride.  

Put another way, 193,420 is the number of Missourians that we know for sure will pay the price for the Republican anti-Obamacare tantrum. The actual number is probably higher given other aspects of GOP ACA obstructionism in the state – refusing to create a state exchange, attempting to sabotage the “navigators” who have been hired to help people sign up, and, of course, the constant barrage of GOP lies and distortions about Obamacare.

The source of 193,420 number is this interactive map from a TPM report. If you take a look at it, you’ll note that the only state bordering Missouri that has also failed its ACA Medicaid eligible population is Kansas, one of the few states heading to the bottom faster than Missouri. Will somebody tell Missouri’s legislators that this is not a competition we want them to win?

Of course, it’s likely they won’t care. As the article’s author, Dylan Scott, observes:

… it’s the poorest people who make up those 4.8 million [nationwide] who are missing out. Because of a kink in the law’s language, people between 100 and 133 percent of the poverty level will still be eligible to receive financial help to purchase private coverage on the insurance marketplaces that opened Oct. 1.

But those actually in poverty will be out of luck.

And of course, the very poor are the same people our Republicans seem to have been either ignoring or targeting with destructive legislation for several years now.

Nevertheless, you could let your state rep know if 193,420 unnecessarily uninsured Missourians  not only upsets you but leads you to view his or her performance less charitably. Governor Nixon has called a meeting on Nov. 26 with the two legislative committees that  have been “studying” the Medicaid expansion issue (like it needs more study). He framed the meeting as important because Missouri’s health care system “falls short ‘delivering the quality, affordable and accountable care Missourians need and deserve.'” Messages from constituents reiterating that claim, perhaps leavened with a little – polite but righteous – indignation, might help him make that case on the 26th.

 

Yesterday when I was researching a post on what Missouri’s Washington D.C. delegation had to say about the latest overblown Obamacare roll-out “crisis,” I came across this claim in an official news release issued by Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-3):

Consider this: the Administration spent a total of $500 million on the Obamacare website and its back end systems. To put this into perspective, Facebook operated for six years before surpassing the $500 million mark.

Unfortunately for Rep. Luetkemeyer’s credibility, his statement is totally untrue and, hence, the comparison between the costs of Obamacare.com and Facebook is so much gibberish.

The $500 million number is probably a riff on an erroneous report in Digital Trends that was subsequently corrected. Republicans, eager to slander Obamacare in any way possible, seized on the initial report, omitting in the process to note that it referred to a decade of work by the company in question and covered many projects other than Obamacare.com. However, Republicans eager to do their special brand of mischief went to town with the false number. As Media Matters reported:

The life of the $600 million figure appears to be the latest example of how misinformation is fermented within the right-wing media and then adopted as quasi-policy by the Republican Party. After all, Rep. Camp is holding a hearing specifically to determine why the government’s $600 million health care website doesn’t work, even though the site didn’t cost $600 million.

Secretary Sebilius, in answer to questions during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing last Wednesday, set the total costs at $174 million, which coincides with an earlier estimate based on analysis of government documents by the Washington Post Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, that put total direct costs somewhere in the vicinity of $170 million. Obviously, the government won’t get Obamacare.com set up and running for nothing, but the actual cost so far is nowhere near the $500 million figure Rep. Luetkemeyer and his ilk are presenting as the current cost of Obamacare.com in order, presumably, to gin up outrage over the roll-out of the Website.

Which brings me to the real issue here. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer has sufficient staff and resources to come up with numbers similar to those of the WaPo‘s Kessler if he had cared about accuracy rather than trying to make a partisan point. Actually, since the Luetkemeyer release I referenced above was issued on Oct. 25, he or his staff could have easily found lower estimates if they had performed a simple a Web search. No one is forcing him to promulgate erroneous talking points. The conclusion we are left with is either that Luetkemeyer is so intellectually lazy that he doesn’t care whether or not he gives his constituents the right numbers, or he deliberately used an incorrect number to bolster an anti-Obamacare stance that is so weak that it won’t withstand the truth.

And, given that this is not Rep. Luetkemeyer’s first blatantly overt ofense against the truth, I’d end to go with the latter explanation. In his 2011 skirmish against the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), he cited a totally spurious report that purported to represent the work of 700 scientists whom Luetkemeyer claimed challenged the work of the IPCC on climate change.

Taken individually, these may not be life-and-death issues – although a good case could be made that health care and climate change, in general, are just that. But whatever the case, questions that give rise to worries about either the competence or the honesty of our elected representatives are important. We all know that we’re worse off as a nation because of the misinformation that pervades Fox Nation. What may yet doom us is when trusted officials like Luetkemeyer are willing to abuse their integrity in the name of partisan advantage to the extent that they will play a role in helping to maintain that miasma.  

Republicans are mostly breathless with glee at the faux news “exposé” to the effect that the insurance policies of some folks in the individual health care market will be changed by their providers in such a way that they can no longer be offered under the provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Of course, this is not really news – it was known, debated and covered in the news when the issue first arose in 2010.

Nevertheless, our Republican friends are nearly convulsing with false concern.  What they’re saying:

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-4) thinks the news offers “more proof that the President’s health care law is unworkable and hurts Americans. ”

Rep. Billy Long (R-7) thinks that this problem is so serious that he needs to offer legislation to delay the individual mandate because “portions of the president’s health care law are harming consumers nationwide.”

Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-3) has made ample use of the generic GOP boilerplate on the topic of roll-out glitches on his Website, adding that his constituents are suffering because of the President’s “empty” promises that are belied by the fact that “currently available plans  are cancelled.” He even offers a vague, unverifiable constituent horror story about the havoc wreaked by the cancelled policies – though he doesn’t answer lots of questions that spring to mind about the actual situation of his annecdotal constituents.

Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2) breathlessly tweeted that “White House finally admits, ‘It’s True’ some Americans won’t be able to keep their health care plan under Obamacare. #MoreBrokenPromises.” Finally? Sheesh! Too hard for her to remember what was going on three years ago? About an issue she putatively cares so much about she was willing to shut down the government down over it? She ought to be able to do better.

Senator Roy Blunt, for his part, is “committed to fighting for Missourians who are being crushed by ObamaCare,” which includes those who are having their  policies cancelled among other individuals in situations that have elicited his misplaced concern trolling.

So what’s the story? Here, via TPM, is a chart that puts these dire claims into a slightly different perspective:

To  summarize, 80% of the people who like their  current, employer-provided plan will see no change, just as the President promised; 3% will change policies but see little difference in cost or coverage; another 3% will probably have to pay more for better policies; while 14%  who were previously uninsured will get affordable insurance and access to healthcare. I don’t know about  you, but government can “crush” me like this any time it wants.

Slightly edited for clarity. Inadvertently garbled content restored in last paragraph.

Yesterday the President defended the Affordable Health Care Act – Obamacare to most Missourians – noting that one of the biggest problems with the program’s implementation was the unreasoning, mad-dog bile of the GOP, although he didn’t use those exact words – he’s far more gracious than I. He did, however deplore the ugly GOP political games in terms of what they will cost an American populace less interested in right or left partisanship than in pragmatic solutions to their problems:

… anyone defending the remnants of the old, broken system as if it was working for people, anybody who thinks we shouldn’t finish the job of making the health care system work for everybody — especially when these folks offer no plan for the uninsured or the underinsured, or folks who lose their insurance each year — those folks should have to explain themselves.

Ironically, while the President was calling on the obstructionists to explain themselves, they were putting on a little show in a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing , trying to pretend that Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had to explain herself to the very folks who had done everything in their power to hinder her Obamacare sign-up efforts.

Mixing it up with the bully-boys was Missouri’s Rep. Billy Long (R-7). As Dave Weigel describes Long’s ham-fisted effort to help his GOP colleagues hammer home what seems – inexplicably given it’s inanity – one of their favorite talking points:

But they did try to bring back the “fairness” attack. Colorado Rep. Cory Gardner started a wave of questions to Sebelius about why she didn’t have the integrity to get on the exchange herself, if she was so great.*

Missouri Rep. Billy Long, a former auctioneer who’s built like a kettlebell, did the same, with less aplomb. “If you can, will you?” he asked. “Yes or no? Yes or no?”

Sebelius, looking bored, explained that she couldn’t get on the exchange as she had insurance already (not quite true, she simply couldn’t get the subsidies that other enrollees would get) and that D.C. had its own exchange, anyway.

That Sebelius found this line of questioning tiresome and time-wasting was indicated by a comment overheard on a “hot” mic” at the end of Billy’s star turn. “Don’t do this to me,” she muttered to an aide, a response that reminded me of my own soto-voce, eye-rolling “save me” pleas to my husband after having been cornered by particularly obtuse bores in the past.

As for the substance of the issues with which Billy tried to skewer Sebilius, Duane Graham has very aptly demonstrated over at The Erstwhile Conservative that Billy’s anti-Obamacare cupboard was all too bare: Contrary to Billy’s assertion that everyone other than Sebelius will have to get healthcare through the exchanges, only those Americans who lack employer-supplied insurance and who are ineligible for Medicare will need to use the exchanges; Sebelius isn’t eligible for healthcare through the exchanges since she not only has employer supplied insurance, she is enrolled in Medicare Part A; nor is she, as Long asserted, the “architect” of Obamacare – that honor goes to the conservative Heritage Foundation via Mitt Romney with a little input from several months of congressional wrangling in 2009.

Facts don’t fly with Billy Long, however. He has, after all, just announced that he has signed on to legislation that he says is intended “to ensure those already hurt by the president’s health care law are given a one year break from the law’s individual mandate.” This in spite of the fact that folks “hurt” by Obamacare are kind of thin on the ground – but then, this rhetoric actually pertains to another GOP fantasy talking point du jour,  and involves what they depict as the “millions” who, in Billy’s words, “are beginning to receive notices from their health insurance carriers that the coverage they currently enjoy will be terminated at the end of their current plan year because of the president’s health care law. These same people will be penalized if they do not find new coverage.”

If Billy had not been too busy badgering Secretary Sebelius to listen to the President’s speech yesterday, he might have learned that the situation is far from dire enough to require his legislative intervention:

So anyone peddling the notion that insurers are cancelling people’s plan without mentioning that almost all the insurers are encouraging people to join better plans with the same carrier, and stronger benefits and stronger protections, while others will be able to get better plans with new carriers through the marketplace, and that many will get new help to pay for these better plans and make them actually cheaper — if you leave that stuff out, you’re being grossly misleading, to say the least.

Of course, if Billy had been trying to do the right thing and act in concert with facts, he might not have gotten his name in the headlines for his little performance yesterday and pulled in all the associated Tea Party points – which I am sure that he hopes will prove potent when he comes up for election and has to compete again against  Democratic hopeful Jim Evans, who makes no bones about his  support for Obamacare.