Conservative Blogger
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
Republicans pounce on Obamacare after White House announcement
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| The unravelling of Obamacare |
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, while campaigning in Tampa, Fla., emphatically declared Obamacare “over.”
Trump added that his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, "wants to double down and make it more expensive and it's not gonna work. ... Our country can't afford it, you can't afford it." He promised his own plan would deliver "great health care at a fraction of the cost."
Trump’s running mate Indiana Gov. Mike Pence echoed his partner’s words, saying on Twitter “Higher premiums, less competition & fewer choices lie ahead for Obamacare. Hillary Clinton wants more of the same.”
Before taxpayer-provided subsidies, premiums for a midlevel benchmark plan will increase an average of 25 percent across the 39 states served by the federally run online market, according to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services. Some states will see much bigger jumps, others less.
Moreover, about 1 in 5 consumers will only have plans from a single insurer to pick from, after major national carriers such as UnitedHealth Group, Humana and Aetna scaled back their roles.
"Consumers will be faced this year with not only big premium increases but also with a declining number of insurers participating, and that will lead to a tumultuous open enrollment period," said Larry Levitt, who tracks the health care law for the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., accused Democrats of only wanting to double-down on Obamacare instead of fix it and vowed that Republicans would “replace it with real, patient-centered solutions that fit your needs and your budget.”
“The president recently compared Obamacare to a Samsung Galaxy Note 7, and he's right: this disastrous law is blowing up. But at least you can return the phone,” Ryan added.
Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., urged the White House to admit that the health care law wasn’t working.
"We’ve reached this point because Obamacare is built on the lie that Washington’s bureaucrats are smart enough to plan health care for millions of Americans. At every turn—whether it’s CO-OPs collapsing, premiums skyrocketing, or big insurers bailing—the American people have paid the price. More spin won’t solve this—it’s time for the White House to admit that this law isn’t working."
HHS essentially confirmed state-by-state reports that have been coming in for months. Window shopping for plans and premiums is already available through HealthCare.gov.
Administration officials are stressing that subsidies provided under the law, which are designed to rise alongside premiums, will insulate most customers from sticker shock. They add that consumers who are willing to switch to cheaper plans will still be able to find bargains.
The vast majority of the more than 10 million customers who purchase through HealthCare.gov and its state-run counterparts do receive generous financial assistance. "Enrollment is concentrated among very low-income individuals who receive significant government subsidies to reduce premiums and cost-sharing," said Caroline Pearson of the consulting firm Avalere Health
But an estimated 5 million to 7 million people are either not eligible for the income-based assistance, or they buy individual policies outside of the health law's markets, where the subsidies are not available. The administration is urging the latter group to check out HealthCare.gov. The spike in premiums generally does not affect the employer-provided plans that cover most workers and their families.
Overall, it's shaping up to be the most difficult sign-up season since HealthCare.gov launched in 2013 and the computer system froze up.
Enrollment has been lower than initially projected, and insurers say patients turned out to be sicker than expected. Moreover, a complex internal system to help stabilize premiums has not worked as hoped for.
Early voting suggests tight race in key states despite Clinton camp boast
Hillary Clinton’s campaign is touting some “eye-popping” advantages in early voting, in an apparent effort to energize Democratic voters, but preliminary figures suggest the race remains tighter than her aides acknowledge.
The preliminary numbers appear to show Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, with an edge in several of the roughly 10 battleground states that will decide the 2016 White House race.
“We're seeing eye-popping vote-by-mail application numbers,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said on “Fox News Sunday.”
In Arizona and North Carolina, for example, more registered Democrats than Republicans have indeed cast early ballots.
But such numbers are open to interpretation, including how many Democrats in those two states voted for Clinton.
Meanwhile, early data shows Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump with potential advantages of his own in battleground states Florida, Ohio and elsewhere.
See the Fox News 2016 battleground prediction map and make your own election projections. See Predictions Map →
Still, the Clinton campaign seemed bolstered in recent days by mail-in balloting in battleground Florida, where in-person voting started Monday in a majority of counties.
Early Florida numbers showed about an equal number of Democrats and Republicans had requested a record 3.1 million early ballots, compared with 2008 when Republicans led 49-to-32 percent and President Obama still won the state.
However, registered Republicans now have a slight lead -- 1.8 percentage points -- in the nearly 1 million ballots received by Friday.
Trump, on a swing through Florida on Monday, made another push for supporters to cast their votes now.
“You got to get out there. Who’s voted already?” Trump asked a cheering crowd in St. Augustine. “If you’re not feeling well on Nov. 8, we don’t want to take a chance.”
Clinton said in battleground North Carolina on Sunday: “From now until Nov. 5, you can vote early. It’s a big deal. You get to vote today, right after this event.”
Mook also pointed out Sunday that in Nevada, officials saw a “record turnout” in Democratic stronghold Clark County, which includes Las Vegas.
However, Trump has throughout the campaign appeared to have the support of some potential crossover voters, including Latino immigrants who back his tough message on illegal immigration.
A recent CNN/ORC poll, for example, found 33 percent of registered Latino voters in Nevada support Trump, compared to 54 percent for Clinton.
The Clinton campaign declined Monday to provide details on the states to which Mook and vice-presidential nominee Tim Kaine referred Sunday.
Kaine told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the campaign “like(s) the early voting activity and the absentee-ballot requests coming in.”
Kendra Stewart, College of Charleston political science professor, said Monday that Kaine and Mook are “doing exactly what they should be doing by trying to use this as an opportunity to create enthusiasm within the party in the hopes of a bandwagon effect.”
However, she cautioned about the effort perhaps “leaving some Democratic voters less motivated to vote if they feel like their candidate doesn’t really need them” and giving the Trump campaign the opportunity to use the underdog strategy to try to rally supporters to get out and vote.
Elliott Fullmer, a Randolph-Macon College political science professor, suggested either camp could play up select early-vote trends.
“I don’t think it would be a surprise for a campaign to think any positive momentum would play well,” Fullmer said Monday. “And the more they can discuss an advantage in early voting, they will.”
According to the University of Florida’s U.S. Elections Project, roughly 6 million Americans have already cast early votes, which do not include absentee ballots.
More than 46 million people are expected to vote before Election Day -- or as much as 40 percent of all votes cast.
The District of Columbia also allows early voting. Included in the 37 states that allow early voting are Colorado, Oregon and Washington, which have only mail-in balloting.
Clinton holds a 6 percentage point lead over Trump in national polls, according to the RealClearPolitcs average.
Clinton -- who has been the frontrunner for the entire race -- also has leads in battlegrounds states New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Trump leads in battlegrounds Georgia, Iowa, Missouri and Ohio.
Though neither Georgia nor Ohio break down early balloting by party affiliation, Trump appears to have an advantage in both states.
In Ohio, such requests are down 10 percent among black voters, who in recent decades have tended to vote for Democrats. And requests among Ohio’s increasing white population, a voting bloc in which Trump appears to do well, is up 3 percentage points, to 91 percent.
In Georgia, ballot requests and returns among black voters trail 2012 levels.
Republicans banking on carefully built House firewall
A map of an average congressional district would be - if one could channel the Founders’ intention - a fairly straightforward geometrical thing. But politics has distorted the geometry of modern congressional districts in a big way.
"Goofy kicking Donald Duck," is how one observer described a map of Pennsylvania's 7th congressional district - just one of several gerrymandered districts that Republicans are pinning their hopes on as a firewall against a Democratic run on November 8.
Having lost the White House and Congress in 2008, Republicans undertook a complex plan to win control of state legislatures around the country in the 2010 mid-terms. The first step was redrawing congressional districts.
Christopher Jankowski, a GOP strategist and former Executive Director of "Red Map," was one of the architects of the plan.
"The GOP has a built-in advantage from 2010 that continues to pay dividends and that advantage is going to prevent the House from flipping, certainly this year," he told Fox News.
In 37 of the 50 states, it is the legislature's role to draw congressional districts based upon population shifts recorded by the once-in-a-decade census. In those states, the party that controls the legislature can shape congressional districts in whatever way it sees fit, no matter how geometrically or geographically challenged they may appear.
See the Fox News 2016 battleground prediction map and make your own election projections. See Predictions Map →
But the bizarre shape effectively consolidated a big chunk of the state’s minority population into one district - ensuring minority representation in Congress, but also helping white, conservative GOP candidates in adjacent districts to win races by big margins - virtually guaranteeing their re-election through several cycles.
In Michigan’s 7th District, GOP redistricting sealed Democrat Mark Schauer's fate as a one-term congressman. "They drew a seat they expected to win and sort of took me out of the picture, just like they did with dozens, literally dozens of people just like me around the Congress," he told Fox News.
Schauer didn’t get mad over his loss, but he got even. He is now heavily involved with a super PAC, Advantage 2020, which is helping Democrats try to retake control of state legislatures before the 2020 census. Schauer has plenty of company.
In a swing through the West last week, President Obama told a Las Vegas crowd, "We gotta have more Democratic members of Congress in the House of Representatives."
To that end, the President is working with former Attorney General Eric Holder to develop the National Democratic Redistricting Committee to do what Republicans did in 2010 - take back the House and the statehouses and to preserve what they hope to win.
Top adviser on Clinton Wall Street speeches: 'It's pretty bad'
A veteran and trusted Hillary Clinton adviser ripped the Democratic presidential nominee after seeing transcripts of post-State Department speeches Clinton gave discussing Wall Street, ObamaCare and Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to emails released by WikiLeaks.
Mandy Grunwald, an adviser to Clinton’s current White House bid, offered a particularly frank assessment on Jan. 23 after seeing the text of three speeches given to Goldman Sachs in 2013.
“It’s pretty bad,” Grunwald wrote to a cadre of top Clinton aides. “She is critical to some extent of what led to the crash but the more memorable stuff is totally accomodationist.”
Grunwald cited Clinton saying the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory legislation was enacted because “people needed to do something for political reasons” and claiming “I’m not interested in pointing fingers.”
Grunwald has been in the Clinton orbit since 1992 when she was director of advertising for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign. Grunwald remained a close adviser to Hillary after that election and later worked as head of campaign media relations on her failed 2008 presidential bid.
The email, uncovered in Monday’s WikiLeaks dump of emails hacked from Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta, came as Clinton was battling populist and uber-liberal challenger Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a fierce critic of Wall Street. Grunwald may have also been especially sensitive to the language Clinton used since Grunwald worked on Elizabeth Warren’s successful Senate campaign in Massachusetts. Warren and Sanders arguably are the most vocal Wall Street critics on Capitol Hill.
See the Fox News 2016 battleground prediction map and make your own election projections. See Predictions Map →
During the primary campaign, Sanders repeatedly called for Clinton to release her post-State Department speeches. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has echoed that demand, though Clinton repeatedly has refused to do so.
Portions of the speeches, however, eventually were disclosed in a lengthy document citing remarks that could prove harmful to Clinton’s campaign. That file was contained in WikiLeaks releases.
But Grunwald's criticisms stretched beyond Clinton’s financial sector comments.
“There are also some very tepid comments about Obamacare,” she wrote. “And a ton of foreign policy stuff, including some naïve sounding comments about Putin – that could cause a whole separate set of issues – but [aide] Jake [Sullivan] should review all that.”
Clinton has been particularly critical throughout the general election of Trump’s praise of Putin and views on Russia. But the Goldman Sachs speeches show that Clinton could also be cordial with the former KGB operative.
“I would love it if we could continue to build a more positive relationship with Russia,” Clinton said during a June 4, 2013 speech at Goldman Sachs’ IBD Ceo Annual Conference.
During the same speech she said: “We would very much like to have a positive relationship with Russia and we would like to see Putin be less defensive toward a relationship with the United States so that we could work together on some issues.”
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