(Image source: via screengrab) When I first moved to America in the late 90’s (and then again in 2004) I remember listening to people’s horror stories about insane medical care costs. It was routine for people to face bankruptcy due to medical bills, despite having insurance. And ...read more
Last night, Jimmy Kimmel delivered an emotional monologue on Jimmy Kimmel Live! where he revealed his newborn son needed emergency open heart surgery shortly after being delivered last week; a terrifying ordeal for any parent. The good news is Kimmel's son is doing well even ...read more
One of the reasons why people like myself spent the better part of 18 months desperately pleading with the American public to vote for whoever won the Democratic primary was to protect millions of Americans from Republicans destroying Obamacare and booting them off of their ...read more
Whether you call it AHCA, Trumpcare, Ryancare, Whocares, or Obamacare-lite, one thing is certain about the new Republican sponsored healthcare bill—it’s not as draconian as most of these heartless, self-righteous geezers wanted it to be. Because when you get a bunch of hypocrite ...read more
Sadly, this news isn't surprising in the slightest. From the Huffington Post: The Republican plan to repeal and “replace” the Affordable Care Act would increase the number of Americans without health coverage by 24 million and reduce the federal budget deficit by $337 billion ...read more
Monday morning, Donald Trump explained to an assembly of Republican governors that healthcare in America is complicated. He did this with all of the sagacity of a 5-year-old explaining that Santa uses magic to get down a chimney because of course he wouldn't fit otherwise. You ...read more
While it appears that the Affordable Care Act is under grave threat as the Donald Trump administration prepares to take office, those who fear the worst should take solace in the fact that Republicans have no plan to replace it and face a political quagmire if they boot millions ...read more
The Republican Party's war on expanding medical care to the vulnerable and sick has been one of the most vile acts in modern American history. Essentially a conservative idea in the first place, Republicans have opposed the Affordable Care Act on the grounds that it was ...read more
The Atlantic put together a short video explaining how Donald Trump's health care plan for America would work -- or in this case, not work at all. It is important viewing because it is yet further proof that Donald Trump isn't actually running for president, but conducting the ...read more
After breaking down conservative arguments against Obamacare with cold, hard statistics, Jonathan Chait concludes the following:Â Conservatives have gone from absolute ideological certainty that health-care inflation would rise in the wake of Obamacare to absolute ideological ...read more
If you read these pages with any regularity, you'll find a wide range of opinions about the presidential candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont, including my own assessment that he can't win the presidency. What I don't think you'll find is any writer on ...read more
Throughout the 2016 presidential race, the predominant narrative surrounding the Donald Trump campaign has been this: he is a bigoted, inarticulate blowhard whose every statement is somehow more outrageous than the one that preceded it. His platform has invited comparisons to ...read more
If you held a gun to my head and asked me which politician I would prefer to see as President at the end of 2016, I would probably say Bernie Sanders. From a liberal perspective, Sanders is close to being the greatest thing since sliced bread -- he's an outspoken Social Democrat ...read more
Earlier this week, Bobby Jindal chose to block all Medicaid funds from going to Louisiana Planned Parenthood facilities even though none of the Planned Parenthood locations in his state provide abortion services. In other words, he's simply blocking Medicaid recipients from ...read more
Texas man Thomas Eric Duncan, who contracted Ebola in Liberia and has been quarantined at Texas Health Presbyterian Center in Dallas since mid-September, has died. Duncan leaves behind a partner and multiple children, who have been in forced quarantine while being monitored for ...read more
A couple of days ago I posted the video of the roundtable discussion I took part in on Thom Hartmann's show where I got into a pretty heated back-and-forth with David Hogberg, a Senior Fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research over the issue of health care. ...read more
On Tuesday morning, a U.S. appeals court tossed out the IRS regulation that governs subsidies, dealing a huge blow to the Affordable Care Act. In effect, the court overruled the subsidies in the 36 states that chose not to set up their own insurance exchanges, meaning that ...read more
It's the lie that never dies. Quite possibly the most egregiously misleading Republican line about the Affordable Care Act is that Congress is somehow exempt from the law -- at least, that's what they want their low-information voters to believe. Now, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) has ...read more
The Supreme Court decision in Burwell v Hobby Lobby Stores continues to confound me. It's difficult to get beyond the basic dumbness of the conservative justices who utterly failed to recognize that the Affordable Care Act absolutely does not mandate that corporations buy ...read more
As time wears on, the following prediction will seem less like science fiction and more like science fact: The Republicans will eventually try to take credit for the Affordable Care Act. The fact that it's proving itself to be increasingly successful, along with the reality that ...read more
Bibles? Firearms? Blah people? Nope, nope and nope. Better. Speaking at the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics, the former U.S. senator and presidential frontrunner Rick Santorum was asked about his views on Catholicism and contraceptives. Of course, Santorum is no ...read more
It's actually quite easy to explain. The reason why 19 states have refused to expand Medicaid has nothing to do with the cost -- the federal government would cover the full cost of the expansion for the next two years, then 95 percent of the cost thereafter. It definitely ...read more
With a non-stop geyser of news hitting digital media every day, a lot of material tends to slip through the cracks. For example, we somehow missed an op/ed from several days ago that's packed wall-to-wall with lies and misinformation about Obamacare. Naturally, it was ...read more
My dearest friends are always warning me to stop being baiting into political shovel fights on social media. And while I've somewhat restrained my natural compulsion to do so, I simply can't help it. It's what I do. If there's someone who's marketing in crapola online, I can't ...read more
Political commentator/evil Sith Lord Charles Krauthammer is very good at being wrong. He's so good at being wrong that Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier has him on as a nightly panelist to help promote the network's alternate view of reality. Krauthammer was wrong about ...read more
There are literally hundreds of examples of Eric Bolling saying stupid things on Fox News Channel, whether on The Five or elsewhere. In fact, I'd love to read a doctoral thesis on how many words Bolling speaks in a given week, and then how many of those words are deliberately ...read more
The Republican battle against the Affordable Care Act just can't catch a break. First, the website is repaired and currently runs quite well. Then we find out that millions of uninsured Americans signed up for a plan, with millions more signed up through the law's Medicaid ...read more
This week marks two new low points in journalism. As we've reported over the last couple of days, they are, 1) Glenn Greenwald's effort to conflate malicious hackers with political activism via a leaked Snowden document, and 2) the broadly misreported analysis of the ...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
This might sound strange coming from me, but I actually like it when President Obama agrees to be interviewed by Fox News hosts like Bill O'Reilly. Not only is it good for democracy that the president is asked tough questions by reporters, anchors and hosts who don't share the ...read more
North Carolina State Senator Bob Rucho (R-District 39) not only invoked Godwin's Law by comparing something to Nazis, but he ran over Godwin's Law with a tanker-truck full of crazy, stopped, backed up, ran over it again, then got out of the truck to unzip and whiz all over its ...read more
During a healthcare "town hall" episode of Fox News Channel's Hannity, Christian Dorsey from the Economic Policy Institute blasted a gaping hole through Sean Hannity's anti-Obamacare bubble. Toward the end of a segment, Hannity repeated the same old whiny "Obama lied" meme ...read more
Here's Rick Santorum earlier today: “If we have a system where the government is going to be the principal provider of health care for the country, we’re done. Because then, you are dependent on the government for your life and your health…When Thatcher ran for prime minister ...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
If you have children, be prepared to fight your way through the toy store for this year's hot Christmas item. No, it's not the Xbox One or a Furby. Your kids will be forever grateful if you forgo those items and, instead, get them their very own Ted Cruz coloring book. Because ...read more
The latest attempt by the Republican Party to sabotage the Affordable Care Act will absolutely piss you off. California Republicans -- specifically, GOP members of the state's general assembly -- sent out mailers to their constituents informing them about the state exchange ...read more
I'm old enough to remember when tort reform was a thing. The issue was mostly driven by Republicans in the name of politicizing so-called "frivolous lawsuits." Certainly there's some merit in the idea of legislating against lawsuits by nimrods who bite into a hot apple pie and ...read more
Fact: the only thing that's like rape is rape. But this self-evident fact seems to repeatedly escape certain doofuses who seem to believe just about everything is like rape. Rush Limbaugh thinks the Senate rule change to eliminate the use of the filibuster against judicial ...read more
Earlier today, I posted an article about the news media's insufferable penchant for shoehorning Obama administration events into "The Script" -- in this case, the traditional news media's struggle to pin down President Obama's second term scandal/failure not unlike previous ...read more
It's been 11 days since The National Journal's Ron Fournier wrote that Obamacare is President Obama's Katrina. Oh, and it's also his Iraq, Fournier wrote. Obama's Katrina and Iraq. Both. Since then, however, the Healthcare.gov website has been vastly improved and many of the ...read more
You've probably heard the scuttlebutt about the U.S. allegedly "closing" its embassy at the Vatican. It's a lie. In fact, the State Department is merely moving the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See to a facility that includes our embassy in Italy. Once the move takes place, the ...read more
The Supreme Court announced that it plans to hear arguments regarding the Affordable Care Act's mandate requiring all health insurance policies to cover contraception and reproductive services without co-pays. The mandate has been challenged by two business owners including the ...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
We're entering a bizarre end of the year edition of Silly Season in which the news media is laser-focused on the wrong things. As stories about the roll-out of the Affordable Care Act begin to dissipate, it looks like we've segued into an especially nonsensical "British Anchor ...read more
Since 2009, the opponents of healthcare reform have successfully circulated a lengthy roster of narratives and agitprop against the policy and, eventually, the Affordable Care Act itself. You know the list. "Death panels," "government takeover," "failed law," "socialized ...read more
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) appeared on CNN Thursday and complained that she's going to lose her insurance because of Obamacare. This has been part of the law since 2009 when, yes, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) introduced an amendment mandating that members of Congress, along with ...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
You've probably heard the number 106,000 bouncing around the tubes today. It represents the supposed number of Americans who have signed up for health insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act. Of course it's not the most accurate indication of what October really ...read more
Mediaite's Tommy Christopher, who's been tenaciously debunking various ACA "horror stories," noticed the following tweet by former MSNBC and CNBC screamer Dylan Ratigan: "I bought a catastrophic health policy for $170/mo when I left MSNBC. Obamacare cancelled the policy. New ...read more
During an interview with NBC News' Chuck Todd, President Obama apologized to Americans who are receiving cancellation notices from their health insurance providers. I suppose it's the grown-up thing to do or something like that, but two things here: 1) Like the tea party, Fox ...read more