Affordable Care Act - the more you know

With the recent Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act and all the hysteria among my neighbors and friends ginned up by local and national media, it was good to read a commonsense and nonpolitical article addressing some of the pros and cons. Consumer advocate Stacy Johnson addressed a reader's question about the penalty and coverage and then went on to note some of the law's provisions.

While being upset by all the hype about the penalty, most people I know are supportive of well-known provisions of the law - for example, allowing children to stay on the parents' policy until age 26 and forbidding the big insurance companies from cherry-picking by denying or dumping people with preexisting conditions. As more of the law's provisions become known, this bird predicts the law will gain even more support.

Stacy's MoneyTalksNews post included information about a provision of the Affordable Care Act that I've found very few people knew about, but when informed, they think is a great idea - insurance companies are required to spend 80-85% of gross income on health care for customers and not on bureaucracy, CEO pay, or stockholder dividends. Failing to meet this requirement, means the company will have to send rebates to policyholders. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates the rebates to businesses and consumers could be as much as $1.3 billion in 2012 alone.

Anytime you are discussing the big health insurance companies, cynicism rolls through the brain like sweat off the brow during the recent heatwave - creative accounting and smoke and mirrors may yet undo these good intentions of the law. But, the fact that this "anti-greed" provision is even in the law more than implies that federal inspectors will be keeping at least a cursory eye on the company books.

When I brought this to the attention of an anti-Obama skeptic the clucking stopped for a least a moment. Seems even Tea Partiers and Occupy folks can find common ground when it comes to excessive CEO salaries and greed! While I don't think the Affordable Care Act is perfect and will need modifications especially during the first years of implementation, I do think there is far more good than most Americans now realize - the more you know.

Truth is a stranger

In much of our politics, be it local, Virginia, or nationwide, the truth has become a stranger.

All politicians of whatever stripe, from whatever era, and manipulating whatever form of government engage in exaggeration and boasts, in selective forgetting and remembering, and in false advertising. But in modern American politics, especially on the Republican side, the truth has become an absolute stranger.

Consider that the forces driving today's GOP reject science (until they need a transplant) in fields such as biology and climatology. They refuse to accept the president's (how many ways can you prove it is valid) birth certificate. Republicans, tea partiers, and their honchos on Fox and talk radio regularly engage in spewing "false facts." Oh, I guess they sound knowledgable and convincing to the ditto heads, but truth has become a stranger. Facts don't matter. Repeat lies often enough and big enough and there are fools who will believe.

As Leonard Pitts noted in a recent column, "...Americans increasingly occupy two realities, one based on the conviction that facts matter, the other on the notion that facts are only what you need them to be in a given moment."

The recent Supreme Court decision on health care has ginned up the Republican "false facts" talking machine to new levels of dishonesty. Mitt Romney, for example, just earned 4 Pinocchios for Romney’s claim on an Obama health care pledge for twisting and perverting the meaning of 2008 campaign statements made by candidate Barack Obama.

Before the ink was close to dry on Chief Justice Roberts' decision, the Fox fact-free zone was deriding the mandate and penalty as a "tax." Arrogant Eric Cantor went into hyper-lie mode as he promised to hold a (political posturing and meaningless) vote on July 11 to repeal Obamacare. Those talking points have filtered down to local tea partiers and wingntus and are being heard on call-in shows and in barber shops in the Shenandoah Valley.

Permit this bird to push back against the distortions and false facts currently littering my nest. I guess the  mandate and penalty in the Affordable Health Care Act is a "tax" in the broad sense that every payment to government is essentially a tax. Shenandoah National Park entrance fees are a "tax." Get caught failing to drive by the rules you get a fine... I mean penalty... I mean "tax." The mandate and penalty in the Affordable Health Care Act is quite similar to the well established principle that if you want to license a car and drive on our government built roads you have to have insurance. If you fail to do so, you must pay a uninsured motorist fee... or a penalty... or a "tax."

Ezra Kline @ The Washington Post.

Another oft repeated Fox/Republican false fact that is making political rounds locally as well as nationally is that Obamacare represents the largest tax increase in history. Wrong. False. Untrue. As the Washington Post's Ezra Kline concludes, "So no, the Affordable Care Act isn’t the 'biggest tax hike in history.' It’s not even the biggest tax hike in the past 60 years. Or 50 years. Or 30 years. Or 20 years."

I'd like to add that the mandate and penalty, if it is a "tax," is (like the uninsured motorist fee) a voluntary tax. You choose to be irresponsible and not be insured... then, and only then, you pay the tax. It is all about personal responsibility and paying your own way. But, we shouldn't be surprised that Republicans only give lip service to personal responsibility and paying the costs of what they want.

In their zest for removing President Obama and putting politics above nation, Republicans appear to have taken to heart the advice of Mark Twin when he wrote in a letter to San Francisco Alta California, dated May 17, 1867, "The most outrageous lies that can be invented will find believers if a man only tells them with all his might."

More Mark Twain wisdom on lying liars and the lies they tell.