hmmm now they want our medi-care money

Jon PerrFollowRSS
Daily Kos memberProfileDiaries (list)Stream.Wed Mar 28, 2012 at 12:47 PM PDT.

Will the Supreme Court End Republicans' Privatization Dream?by Jon PerrFollow .

49 Comments / 49 New.After another bad day for the Affordable Care Act at the Supreme Court, voices across the political spectrum are already pondering life after death for health care reform. Conservative Ross Douthat and liberal James Carville agree that overturning the ACA will help President Obama get reelected. Meanwhile, statements by Mitch McConnell and Mitt Romney seemed to confirm David Frum and Jonathan Chat's shared conclusion that Republicans will do nothing to help over 30 million American who would be denied access to health insurance.

But if Obamacare is euthanized by the Roberts Court, its demise may contain a poison pill for the conservative ideologues who brought it about. That is, if Congress cannot mandate that Americans buy health insurance from private companies, the Republican dream of privatized Medicare and Social Security is probably over as well.

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It's worth noting at the outset just how few Americans would actually be impacted by the individual mandate contained in the Affordable Care Act. A recent analysis by the Urban Institute concluded:


What may be surprising, however, is that if the ACA were in effect today, 94 percent of the total population (93 percent of the nonelderly population) or 250.3 million people out of 268.8 million nonelderly people--would not face a requirement to newly purchase insurance or pay a fine.
As Ryan Grim noted, that's because "98 percent of Americans would either be exempt from the mandate -- because of employer coverage, public health insurance or low income -- or given subsidies to comply." Last year, the Commonwealth Fund estimated that of the 52 million people who went without health insurance in 2010, half (26 million) would be covered by Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. While another 17 million would receive subsidies to buy coverage in the private market, only 3 million would have to take on the full cost themselves. (That squares with the experience in Massachusetts, where Mitt Romney's wildly popular law has reduced the ranks of the uninsured rom 10 percent to a national low of two percent.)


Click chart to see full-size image.

But if Obamacare's individual mandate affects a comparatively small number of people, Medicare and Social Security are another matter altogether. Virtually all working Americans pay the payroll taxes that fund the pensions and health care for millions of seniors today - and for themselves in the future. And it is precisely those low-cost government insurance programs, the ones that have reduced poverty among the elderly by two-thirds, Republicans want to turn over to the private sector.

so you see they use their puppets to spiel bull and alarm those who believe these shills
to get money they had no access to! nor should they!