What happened to avoiding "President Obama is on the side of reform and Republicans are against it"? -- Steve Benen

Luntz wrote that memo, when? Two-three months ago? Obama's poll numbers have gone down some since, so Repubs are taking that as an opening for more direct attack, without fear of retribution.

>Boehner claim: "93% of the American people have >access to high-quality, affordable health >insurance."

I thought the data shows a combined private/government employer provided
health care coverage rate at roughly 71% !

Has reality been rescinded ?

You've missed the latest memo which states that Republicans are to forget message altogether and focus instead on screaming, disrupting, jeering, chanting, and pitching juvenile hissy fits in public.

>>93% of the American people have access to high-quality, affordable health insurance.>>

This is not the same as saying 93% have high-quality, affordable health insurance.

The key word seems to be "access." As in they could buy it if they could afford it.

The GOP position becomes clear once you grasp that for them the purpose of health care is not to provide Americans with health care but to generate profits for health care providers. It's surprisingly similar to their attitude to defense. Their real achievement is to have persuaded so many people that there's something unAmerican about suggesting that the health care system should have the provision of good and universal health care as its primary objective.

fusion makes the correct point: having "access" to health insurance isn't the same as "having" health insurance.

in addition, for many people, the only health insurance that they have access to is one that denies coverage for pre-existing conditions.

it's just another of the endless series of lies is all.

as for why they do it? they're republicans: most of them aren't too bright, they have authoritarian personalities, they represent a core of angry people who've been trained by years of propaganda to despise the government, and so they go "off message" when they let their emotions dominate their speech.

which they do all the time....

Luntz is telling Republicans to acknowledge reality.
The insurance lobbysits who hire people to lick the taints of politicians then pad them dry with 100-dollar bills are telling Republicans that no no, everything's fine.

Even though Luntz's message is, to some degree, more helpful, who do you think unscrupulous and stupid Republicans are more prone to heed?

It's too late for the Dixiepublicans to offer any alternative to health care reform other than "No." It so doing they may have lost an opportunity to further cloud the issue by proposing a bunch of bogus "plans." Their current strategy is going to wear pretty thin in six weeks, unless they can distract by fomenting more birther/racist civil unrest or hoping some disaster or attack wriggles into the public's attention.

While I was out with the flu, this came in my work mail-box:

hi $NAME,

Earlier this year, $COMPANY implemented a federally required change to some employee benefit contribution amounts. If an employee is covering a domestic partner (same or opposite sex) or a same sex spouse, any employee contributions made for the partner/spouse benefits must be deducted post-tax.

Additionally, any amounts that $COMPANY pays for the partner/spouse benefits must be attributed to the employee as taxable (imputed) income. Because your benefits are listed as employee plus spouse (vs employee plus domestic partner) this wasn't caught earlier in the year. Below is more information about these IRS regulations. Please note: the information is directly from government websites. Unfortunately, the federal government doesn't recognize same sex marriages so it only refers to domestic partners. However, the rules are the same for both.

.. (more legalize skipped, you get the gist. Now the punchline) ..

Amount payroll will reverse:

Pre-tax: $1453.50

This is a wonderful way to pay for our insurance, isn't it? I mean, it's not like we want special rights... No, another $3K or so a year isn't special rights, is it?

In fact, nearly all 300 million of us are underinsured, including households making six figures, since health insurance policy limits are wholly inadequate for catastrophic care. Therefore, even the healthiest among us are just a hair away from a financial catastrophe.

I live in a predominantly white, upper-middle-class GOP area, and I don't know anyone who isn't worried about being wiped out financially because of health bills.

On the other hand, they are very skeptical that the proposed bills will really make things better. But the idea that most Americans love the status quo is just pathetic.

Yesterday, Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) spoke out against changing the system and said the number of uninsured has been exaggerated.

Another major slip up. Does he really think he can win Illinois like that?

He can't.

93% of the American people have access to high-quality, affordable health insurance.

There's an imported sports car showroom a couple miles from my house. Therefore, I "have access" to a Lamborghini.

O_o

I can look at the moon. I must have access to it.

Honestly: why is it so hard to convince people private companies do have other things in mind but being altruistic incarnations of Jesus and Gandhi combined?

Why is the American people that naive?

It can't be all Faux News, can it?

The Luntz memo was months ago when insurance companies thought they had to control the damage of the reforms that were inevitably going to pass. Then the media and bought Dems like Baucus turned the tide in their favor and now Republicans and the insurance companies are winning. Right now it looks like they may kill reform completely, which gives them the confidence to be more honest since people seem to be listening to them.

Sounds like it could backfire bigtime politically if they're successful since the vast majority of Americans do in fact realize that the current system is unsustainable. Which was Luntz's point. They should have continued following his advice instead of going for the big pyrrhic victory.

The Evidence of Access is not the Access of Evidence.....

What about math? 25 million uninsured, your number, amounts to 8.3% of 300 million. So Boehner's number is about right, especially if the population is now a bit more than 300 million. I hate the Republican position too, but bad math won't defeat it.

Uh... just as an arithmetical note, there's almost perfect agreement between Boehner's figure of "93% of the American people" having good insurance and Media Matter's figure of "roughly 25 million Americans" being underinsured.

The US presently has roughly 305 million people. So 7% not having good insurance as Boehner concedes would be roughly 21 million. Media Matters says it's roughly 25 million instead. So that's a tad over 8% rather than 7%, but this seems mostly to be an example of the maxim my grandpa taught me, "If you want to get a good sense of what the costs really are, always ask for 'em in absolute terms, not percentages" (in this case, 7 or 8% sounds like "Oooh, that's not bad at all," whereas 25 million men, women, and children sounds like "Oh, that's really bad!"). It doesn't seem to me like either side is unaware of the true raw numbers themselves.

Republicans know they should talk about reform but the health care corporations paying them don't want them to even mention that. Far better to have the Republicans act as active advertisements for the health care industry.

The talk-radio hacks sure aren't following the Luntz script.

Keith? Bill? That 25 million figure from Media Matters is for the underinsured. That is, those who have insurance but still face significant out of pocket expenses (they used 10% of gross income as a cuttoff) over and above premiums.

That figure is in addition to the 46 million uninsured in this country and is brought up to counter the various sleights of hand that Boehner and other conservatives are tyring to use to claim that most of the uninsured aren't "really" uninsured.

You know what is missing in all of this debate? The concept of insurance.

By definition insurance is trading an affordable and known periodic payment for unexpected and unaffordable expenses.

What seems acceptable is to pay less in premiums and expect to pay more of the first few dollars (deductibles, co-pays, etc.) But this isn't what actually happens with regular medical insurance.

Instead there is a division between services and coverage. It is had to say if even the doctors can figure out the coverage for a particular patient. I hope they can't figure it out, because otherwise I am left with the possibility that doctors mislead their patients.

Point in fact: I recently got a crown on a "posterior" tooth. My insurance paid $1000 for the type of crown I received. That means that they allowed my dentist to charge $1000 for the procedure and I had to pay 50% of that amount. But guess what! My insurance only allowed this particular type of crown to be used on "anterior" teeth. Since the tooth was "posterior", they were only willing to pay $819, but they still allowed my dentist to charge $1000. Guess who has to make up the $181 difference?

To make matters worse, the $1000 my dentist is allowed to charge does not appear on any bill or document.

I contrast this with my Group Health Coop coverage. Since there is no "insurance company", they simply charge and pay based upon my contract. All that really means is that if the doctor does something it is covered. If they charge a lot, it goes toward my deductible. But there is not a twilight zone of charges which are both not covered and don't contribute to my deductible.

I believe everyone has either been or has known someone who was trapped in Job Lock Hell. That's when you have health insurance that you can't afford to lose, provided by a job that you'd lose in a heartbeat if you could. Like a potential entrepreneur with a good business plan who also has a child with chronic asthma. Or someone offered an exciting new career opportunity in a company whose health benefits don't kick in for six months.

You'd think conservatives, crazy in love with the free enterprise system, would be eager to free up all this repressed creativity and risk taking.

You'd think conservatives, crazy in love with the free enterprise system, would be eager to free up all this repressed creativity and risk taking. - Mandy Cat

I'm guessing it is a toss up but CONTROL trumps free enterprise and bizzness needs its stick. Adequate regulation however, ...well that's another topic.

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