Even though the federal government in now officially shut down (sort of – here’s a summary of what’s affected and what’s not), we are pleased to announce that Blue Mass Group’s operations will continue unaffected.  This is because we are “essential” federal government employees we work for the NSA and are funded via the “black budget“ we don’t have anything to do with the federal government, despite what the folks at RMG would probably tell you. đŸ˜‰
In a related story, the Obamacare insurance exchanges are supposed to open for business today. Â I don’t doubt that there will be problems in the early going, and that those problems will be widely trumpeted by silly Republicans as proof that Obamacare doesn’t work.
But the real reason for the GOP’s health care shenanigans is pretty straightforward.  Once the technical glitches are ironed out (and that will happen soon enough), Americans will discover what people in Massachusetts have already discovered: buying health insurance via an exchange like the MA Connector is much, much better than doing it the old way.
Over the years, I have had to buy non-employer-sponsored health insurance a couple of times. Â Once, I did it through the Connector; another time, it was pre-Connector so I improvised. Â And I can tell you that, pre-Connector, the experience was awful. Â It was next to impossible to figure out what companies would sell to me, what the available benefit options were, and what the cost would be. Â In contrast, the Connector worked really well: I entered some basic information, and a bunch of plan options popped up with a reasonably easy-to-read list of available benefits and the associated prices. Â It is a far superior way of buying health insurance.
In short: once Obamacare starts working, people are going to like it. Â And once that happens, the GOP’s goose is cooked for a long time to come. Â They know that; that’s why they are so desperate.
DURING WARTIME???
Nihilists and Rightical Chic Anarchists representing Rotten Boroughs in Wastelands…that is who.
My Ghod for this did my Honorable and Departed Father Sacrifice Everything Short of his Very Life in the ETO.
Elias N.
Bad on Bloomie.
…how Obamacare could start today without funding, but the article explained that it was an entitlement not subject to congressional appropriations. Now I have another question. If Obamacare is not part of the budget then why is the GOP trying to leverage it in budget negotiations?
if my daughter didn’t have anything to do with the billion dollars that I earned, why are her kidnappers asking for my money in exchange for her safe return?
Trying to find some logic in Tea Party tactics. I guess I figured the biggest budget impasse was whether or not to fund Obamacare.
I’m wondering if the stall in this whole thing might be resolved if the Senate grasped some negotiating ground that it could then give up.
My pet peeve about Obama-care is that it dropped a public option, the most readily available being a buy-in, for healthy young and mid-career people into Medicare.
If Reid responded to Tea party belligerence with his own passage of an amendment on the senate side to the continuing resolution to allow a Medicare buy in, he would immediately raise the stakes for Republicans and at the same time place something on the table that could be negotiated out. Everyone take breath now.
The tea party is trying to move the chains, or pull the chain as the case may be, Democrats should get aggressive.
Of course, that relies on whether or not Reid would even want to promote a public option.
The ACA is so closely wired to the insurance industry, there may well be zero stomach for a tactic like that…
…but the time for that also was during the debate on the actual bill.