Last night's election was a triumph for Democrats, who managed to take back the House of Representatives and a majority of the governorships across America. Yes, there was some heartbreak along the way - Andrew Gillum lost the governorship of Florida to an unabashed racist, ...read more
The Banter Long Read: Earlier this week, the White House signaled its support for a bill that would criminalize all abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy... To continue reading this article, please go here. You'll get unrestricted access to all our member's content, and your ...read more
The zombie is back. Just when you thought the crusade to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act was dead -- beheaded and dismembered by Lisa Murkowski, John McCain and Susan Collins, along with the entire Democratic caucus -- we're back here again, so grab your phones and ...read more
We just learned via The Washington Post's Robert Costa that President Trump asked the congressional Republicans and Speaker Paul Ryan to cancel the vote on Trumpcare, aka. "The American Health Care Act Fuck Yeah!" In other words, the GOP's highly ballyhooed repeal and replace ...read more
Republicans are walking a tightrope with their plans to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act, aka "Obamacare." On one side is their angry, racist base that wants to obliterate anything and everything connected with President Obama. On the other side are millions who have ...read more
It took them four years longer than they were expecting, but the GOP finally took complete control of Washington, D.C. And with that control came the opportunity to do what they have been promising since before the ink dried on President Obama's signature legislation, the ...read more
This past week, Republican members of Congress held a retreat in Philadelphia. Of course one of the topics of discussion was what they were going to do about following through on their promise to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act, or "Obamacare." On Thursday evening, ...read more
Regardless of what you think about Hillary Clinton, President Obama, or centrist Democrats in general, there is no question that they would not repeal massively complex legislation affecting millions of people without a comprehensive backup plan. While the Democrats are ...read more
As Congress gets down to business for the new year, one of the issues they are already starting to tackle is their promised repeal of the Affordable Care Act, aka "Obamacare." There will be severe consequences to deleting President Obama's landmark legislation, but the GOP isn't ...read more
Nicholas Kristof on the utter madness of Trump's plans to dismantle Obamacare with no real alternative "on day one" of his presidency: Trump would have you believe that he will keep the popular parts of Obamacare, such as the ban on discriminating against pre-existing ...read more
During the 2009 debate about the new federal health care legislation created to cover uninsured Americans, Sarah Palin claimed that it would lead to a "Death Panel" of bureaucrats who would have the power of life or death over patients who needed urgent health care. She posted ...read more
You've got to give Ted Cruz something like credit for being willing to stick to his stupid-ass guns even when it means telling some dad "Yeah, fuck your disabled son," but then again, I guess that's exactly the kind of credit John Boehner was giving him this week. While ...read more
Yesterday, the White House published a letter that long time Republican and Wisconsin resident Brent Nathan Brown wrote to president Barack Obama back in June of last year. Brown, who says he has voted Republican his entire life, was extremely critical of President Obama, and ...read more
America's favorite moose huntin', truth tellin', bible readin' hockey mom wants you to know that Obama's "DEATH PANELS [ARE] STILL NOT DEAD" (notice the alarming caps). In a rambling facebook rant posted yesterday, Palin attacked the Obama administration for reviving its ...read more
Typically, politics describes "the activities associated with the governance of a country or other area." It is hard then, to classify the Republican Party as an actual political party given they steadfastly refuse to engage in the actual business of politics. Speaking with ...read more
Happy Monday, my faithful Banterduckens, and welcome to this week's Members Only visit to the White House, where we'll take an inside look at last Wednesday's doings at the People's House. It was a short trip, just a few hours, but I managed to pack a lot of action into that ...read more
It's unclear whether Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) deliberately chose March 23 -- the fifth anniversary of the signing of the Affordable Care Act -- to announce his candidacy for president, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. After all, Cruz has made a name for himself by lying about ...read more
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) kicked off his 2016 presidential campaign in auspicious fashion Monday by announcing his bid at religious wingnut Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, and promptly having TedCruz.com hijacked by supporters of President Obama's immigration reform. At ...read more
As we reported earlier, Bob Cesca and Media Matters caught Fox News' Bret Baier with his hand in the Associated Press' cookie jar, citing an "independent expert" who refuted new Obamacare figures without identifying or attributing him. Baier reported, Monday night, that the ...read more
UPDATE: Via Twitter and Tommy Christopher, Bret Baier clarified his source for the story. There was no explanation as to why the source, Gallup-Healthways, was left out of Baier's report on Fox News Channel. Meanwhile, regarding the Gallup-Healthways' lower insurance ...read more
On several occasions in the past year, I've mentioned that I finally have health insurance coverage due exclusively to the efforts of President Obama and the Affordable Care Act. Confession: my insured status turned out to not be entirely true, unfortunately. Make no mistake, ...read more
In the wake of the Republicans' midterm election sweep, there has been a predictable Beltway media push for bipartisan compromise, and an equally predictable push to dress up Republican ideas to screw Americans as reasonable proposals. Already, Democrats are weakening in the ...read more
It was around this time last year that the mainstream media, including the White House press, became acutely interested in the Affordable Care Act, showering the law with attention (if not factual accuracy), so when White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest released some big news ...read more
President Obama held a surprise presser in the White House briefing room on Thursday, and in his opening remarks, announced the stunning news that Obamacare enrollments have surpassed 8 million, blowing away the 7 million target that they were never supposed to reach, and that ...read more
After months of saturation Obamacare coverage that consisted of white-hot attention to the disastrous rollout of the website, false story after false story about people having their lives ruined by the Affordable Care Act, a bombardment of myths that would embarrass Aesop, and ...read more
At last Tuesday's White House daily briefing, Press Secretary Jay Carney fought back narrative assaults on the Affordable Care Act's 7 million enrollment milestone by citing figures from a Gallup survey on the rate of uninsured Americans, figures which were, I pointed out, not ...read more
In a late-ish addition to his Tuesday schedule (10 am), President Obama delivered remarks in the Rose Garden of the White House this afternoon, in order to herald the 7 million enrollment milestone the Affordable Care Act exceeded overnight. The Daily Banter was there, and we've ...read more
The fight for the narrative on Obamacare continues apace, even with the announcement that the Affordable Care Act has achieved what seemed unachievable in November, December, or even as recently as yesterday: Despite the disastrous rollout of the Obamacare website, enrollments ...read more
Anyone who tells you the GOP is a lock for holding onto the House of Representatives while taking back the Senate in the midterms doesn't know what the hell they're talking about. Why? Because it's April. The election isn't for another seven months. That's a huge block of time, ...read more
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report today showing that the Affordable Care Act would reduce the labor force by an estimated 2.4 million workers by 2024. Cue shrieking about how Obamacare is killing jobs and the economy. Headlines: CBO: O-Care slowing growth, ...read more
It seems obvious, doesn't it? Contraception, and easy access to it, prevents unintended pregnancies and, therefore, abortions. So why is it that the anti-choice movement is also opposed to women having access to free contraception via the Obamacare health insurance plans -- I ...read more
(Gohmert photo meme via Little Green Footballs) Let's be perfectly clear about this from the beginning. Congress is not "exempt" from Obamacare. The idea that members of Congress are somehow exempt from the law is possibly one of the grossest lies foisted upon the American ...read more
You might not have heard about it, but Health and Human Services (HHS) released new enrollment numbers for the Affordable Care Act yesterday (pdf). From October 1 through November 30, more than 3.6 million Americans applied for health coverage under the ACA while just over ...read more
The Los Angeles Times assembled Affordable Care Act enrollment numbers from several states and determined that we might be in the midst of a surge in Americans signing up for health insurance under the newly formed exchanges. Here's where some of those states are at the moment: ...read more
In an attempt to mitigate the fallout from a series of high profile insurance policy cancellations, President Obama announced an administrative fix to the Affordable Care Act that will allow Americans with individual health insurance policies to keep their plans if they like ...read more
"The shorthand explanation for what’s going on here is that everybody — the insurance companies, members of Congress, and Obama — is bullshitting." -- Jonathan Chait on the "Democratic freak-out" and the consequent plan by President Obama to adjust one of the main provisions of ...read more
The Obama administration is taking a serious beating on the role out of the Obamacare website. It looks like the botched site won't be ready at the new deadline set for November 30th, putting the President's signature health care reform law at even greater levels of scrutiny. ...read more
A TPM report has uncovered the extreme lengths to which some prominent insurance companies have gone to in order to keep existing customers on higher premiums despite the new regulations under the Affordable Care Act. These attempt have apparently been so egregious that it has ...read more
You might've noticed that I've been away on vacation for a couple of weeks, but now that I'm re-entering the atmosphere and catching up with national events, one of the many things that hasn't changed is the garment rending and disinformation campaigns regarding the ...read more
When you want a political issue debated properly, who better to call in than celebrity dietitians? Suzanne Somers, author of Sexy Forever: How to Fight Fat after Forty, and Bombshell: Explosive Medical Secrets That Will Redefine Aging has weighed in on the Obamacare debate ...read more
It's Monday, gerbils, which means it's back to the wheel with you. Here's what you need to know -- or might at least want to know -- going into the new week. 1. Site Survey This morning in the White House Rose Garden, President Obama will hold a press conference where he'll ...read more
We've seen a lot of creepy political commercials come and go. A lot of the creepiest ones have involved racial dog-whistles as part of the nefarious Republican Southern Strategy: the Willie Horton ad, the "white hands" ad, the ridiculously over-the-top attack ad accusing Janice ...read more
Washington, DC is not a popular place. That's not really new. For years I have been told that people "inside the beltway" are disconnected from the ordinary, hard working Americans that live outside of it. New polling data released this week shows Congress' approval rating ...read more
Here's precisely why raising the Medicare eligibility age appears to be the only solution to keeping the program solvent: the Republican Party, which hates Medicare and always has, and the compliant DC news media, which self-consciously dittos the Republicans so as to not appear ...read more
By Bob Cesca: We've all known a kid who upon losing a board game would freak out, hurl the game across the room and storm off while shouting something like, "This game sucks anyway!" The modern permutation of this unhinged sour grapes tantrum is to chuck a video game controller ...read more
The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From TPM: Late last week more than a dozen Republican governors declared that they will not build the insurance market exchanges called for by the Affordable Care Act, including prominent names like Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, John Kasich of ...read more
James Kwak provides an enlightening analysis of the GOP argument that the individual mandate is an oppressive tax on the middle class. His conclusion: In short: Very few people are even theoretically subject to the tax, and most of them are made much better off by the law, since ...read more
In case you missed it, here's what we covered at The Daily Banter this week!: We looked at New York Time's columnist Thomas Friedman's fast food intellectualism, and analyzed Obama's use of Karl Rove's election tactics for the 2012 Presidential race. Bob Cesca tore into ...read more
by Charles Ornstein: For many people without insurance, a key question raised by the Supreme Court's decision today to uphold the Affordable Care Act is whether states will decline to participate in the law's big Medicaid expansion. Although the court upheld the law's mandate ...read more
