Romney Says He Supports Popular Obamacare Provisions On NBC, Quietly Reverses Hours Later On Conservative Website | ThinkProgress

deadcrackerstorage:

cyborgkoala:

kinovore:

This morning on NBC, Mitt Romney said that “there are a number of things that I like” about Obamacare and suggested he would retain: 1. The guarantee that insurance companies couldn’t discriminate against people with pre-exisiting conditions, and 2. The provision that allows young adults to stay on their parents plan.

Just hours later, his campaign quietly told a conservative website that he actually opposes those provisions of Obamacare.

lol mitt y u do this

No, really. What does he actually support/not support?

What is his actual economic plan?

What is Mitt Romney?

(via letfreedomlulz)

Source: apsies

Fox Falsely Claims Obama Is Gutting Medicare While Ryan Is Trying To Save It

abaldwin360:

Fox is pushing a Romney campaign falsehood that President Obama rather than Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) plans to gut Medicare as we know it.

Ryan has received strong criticism for his plan to transform Medicare into a voucher system. Trying to deflect the attacks on Ryan’s plan, Fox contributor Angela McGlowan claimed that the Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) cuts hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare.

In fact, the savings the ACA makes to the Medicare program would not cause a decline in quality of care under Medicare, and Ryan has proposed identical savings. But Ryan’s plan goes much further, ending Medicare as we know it by transforming it into a voucher plan.

read more and watch the video

Well, that didn’t take long, did it?

The claim was also made on “Meet the Press” and on “This Week”  by Romney campaign surrogates.  Rachel Maddow shot it down on “Meet the Press” and George Stephanopoulos laughed it off on “This Week”.   

Dear Mitt Romney: if you call a healthcare reform law "non-essential" -- a law that gives 30 million of your fellow Americans access to health insurance, access they currently don't have and never have had -- then you're going to get booed for being a generally insensitive, uncaring dumbass.

inothernews:

Re-posting to correct the headline.

(via deliciouskaek)

Source: inothernews

Four months before Mitt Romney signed his health care plan into law in Massachusetts in 2006, he told a conservative group that the state’s tax code would be the hammer that would make the plan work.

For those who refused to comply with the state’s mandate to buy health insurance, he said in remarks to the Heritage Foundation, “they are going to lose their personal tax exemption.”

“We will withhold any of their tax refund,” he said.

As the Massachusetts governor and then as a presidential candidate, Mr. Romney spent the next six years describing in a variety of different ways the possible punishments for ignoring the Massachusetts mandate: as “free-rider surcharges,” “tax penalties,” “tax incentives” and sometimes just as “penalties.”

But regardless of the terms he used, his intentions were clear: Massachusetts residents who chose not to buy health insurance would see their state income taxes go up.

Now, as he battles President Obama for the White House, Mr. Romney is asking voters to condemn his rival for a health insurance mandate that is nearly identical to the one he championed in Massachusetts. In allying himself after a delay of several days with much of the rest of the Republican Party in labeling Mr. Obama’s mandate a tax, Mr. Romney reduced the chances that he would anger conservatives. But in effect he also asked voters to ignore his own record.

The New York Times, “In Defending His Health Care Plan, Romney Called His Mandate A Tax.”

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Hey, Republicans?  Just so you know, Mitt Romney thinks you are a bunch of stupid, amnesiac louts.

(via inothernews)

He’s not wrong.

(via deliciouskaek)

Source: inothernews

politicalprof: By now, many of you will have seen this ridiculous tweet from Ben Shapiro, an editor for Breitbart.com and a prominent conservative noise maker. What many of you may not know, is who Dred Scott was and why this comment is so vile. Dred Scott was a slave whose master took him to the free (anti-slavery) state of Illinois. There, Scott sued claiming that he could no longer be a slave since Illinois outlawed slavery. In other words, he claimed his civil rights were being violated, and demanded that the federal courts declare him free. In one of the worst — if not the worst — decisions in American history, the Supreme Court ruled against Dred Scott (in 1857) because — and I am not making this up — that all persons of African descent brought into the United States for the purposes of slavery were by definition not US citizens and therefore had no standing to sue in US courts for violation of their civil rights. In other words, whatever the laws of the state in question, even free blacks were not US citizens with rights if they or their ancestors were brought to the US for the purpose of slavery. So excuse me, Mr. Shapiro, if I can’t quite equate the requirement to buy health insurance or face a fine with the denial of one’s status as a human being and a citizen on grounds of one’s race. It’s one thing to not like Obamacare and the individial mandate. It’s another to imagine that your problems look anything like Dred Scott’s.   Once again illustrating why I can’t stand conservatives. I’mma say it again in case you ain’t heard: NOTHING IS LIKE SLAVERY…EXCEPT SLAVERY!!! No situation is like the denial of humanity and citizenship, except denial of humanity and citizenship.  Stop cheapening the experiences of my ancestors to make a point.  You can say you don’t like something without comparing it to slavery.
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politicalprof:

By now, many of you will have seen this ridiculous tweet from Ben Shapiro, an editor for Breitbart.com and a prominent conservative noise maker.

What many of you may not know, is who Dred Scott was and why this comment is so vile.

Dred Scott was a slave whose master took him to the free (anti-slavery) state of Illinois. There, Scott sued claiming that he could no longer be a slave since Illinois outlawed slavery. In other words, he claimed his civil rights were being violated, and demanded that the federal courts declare him free. In one of the worst — if not the worst — decisions in American history, the Supreme Court ruled against Dred Scott (in 1857) because — and I am not making this up — that all persons of African descent brought into the United States for the purposes of slavery were by definition not US citizens and therefore had no standing to sue in US courts for violation of their civil rights. In other words, whatever the laws of the state in question, even free blacks were not US citizens with rights if they or their ancestors were brought to the US for the purpose of slavery.

So excuse me, Mr. Shapiro, if I can’t quite equate the requirement to buy health insurance or face a fine with the denial of one’s status as a human being and a citizen on grounds of one’s race.

It’s one thing to not like Obamacare and the individial mandate. It’s another to imagine that your problems look anything like Dred Scott’s.

  Once again illustrating why I can’t stand conservatives. I’mma say it again in case you ain’t heard: NOTHING IS LIKE SLAVERY…EXCEPT SLAVERY!!! No situation is like the denial of humanity and citizenship, except denial of humanity and citizenship.  Stop cheapening the experiences of my ancestors to make a point.  You can say you don’t like something without comparing it to slavery.

Supreme Court Obamacare Severability | TPMDC

justinspoliticalcorner:

We know there’s some chance the Supreme Court will decide to take a pass on President Obama’s health care law for a few years — until after its mandatory coverage mandate takes effect in 2014. And we know that if they do rule on the central challenge to the Affordable Care Act this year, precedent is on the side of upholding that piece of the law.

But what happens if they determine that the mandate is unconstitutional anyhow?

On Tuesday, the court will hear arguments about just how “severable” the ACA is. Major legislation often includes what’s known as a “severability clause,” to prevent courts from invalidating entire laws when they find that small sections of those laws violate the Constitution.

By dint of a small, but highly consequential legislative oversight, the ACA does not include such a clause. That means it’ll be up to the justices to decide how much of the law can stand if they rule that the individual mandate violates the Constitution.

There are three main possibilities: The court could throw out the mandate alone; they could throw out the mandate along with two other key provisions of the law that are very closely tied to the mandate; or they could throw out the entire thing.

The challengers will argue that if the mandate falls, the rest of the law must go as well — that the law is “inseverable.” That, of course, is the conservative challengers’ ultimate goal. But it’s also a concession that the mandate is necessary if Congress is going to require insurance companies to sell coverage to all people, without bias to pre-existing medical conditions — one of the law’s central and most popular goals.

So far only one federal trial court judge — Judge Roger Vinson of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida — has ruled that the entire law must go on the basis of his determination that the mandate is unconstitutional.

“I think that it’s almost inconceivable that they would strike the entire statute,” said Timothy Jost — a legal scholar, and supporter of the health care law. “It would be a major threat to the legitimacy of the court.”

There are important signs that he’s right. Vinson’s determination was reversed by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which also found the mandate unconstitutional, but held that it could be stricken without disturbing the rest of the law. The bathwater, but not the baby.

As Samuel Y. Sessions and Allan S. Detsky wrote in The New England Journal of Medicinerecently, “Many ACA provisions are already in effect and thus clearly can function without the mandate, which becomes effective in 2014.”

That leaves the two other, likelier outcomes.

In the event of an adverse ruling, the administration takes a peculiar view: that the law is “partially severable.” They say that if the court scotches the mandate, it should also eliminate provisions in the law guaranteeing that everybody will receive health insurance, regardless of prior health conditions. This reflects a certain policy rationale: that the health insurance system will crumble if people aren’t required to buy into it, and thus only sick people take advantage of the coverage guarantee.

h/t: Brian Beutler at TPM

(via sarahlee310)

Source: justinspoliticalcorner

pantslessprogressive:

On his “conscience” bill - The Blunt Amendment - Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) said the following in a February press release:

This bill would just simply say that those health care providers don’t have to follow that mandate if it violates their faith principles. This is about the First Amendment. It’s about religious beliefs. It’s not about any one issue.

Except that it is about one issue: a woman’s choice.

It’s about her choice to follow her own principles, be those in faith or godless heathenism. It’s about her choice whether or not to use contraception based on those principles.

The Blunt Amendment tells me women should not be allowed to make that choice. Rather, the employer makes those health care decisions for the entire company based on his or her own moral compass. Keep in mind this amendment is applicable to any kind of health coverage and allows employers to opt out of coverage based on “their religious beliefs and moral conviction.”

From S.182:

[The Affordable Care Act] does not allow purchasers, plan sponsors, and other stakeholders with religious or moral objections to specific items or services to decline providing or obtaining coverage of such items or services, or allow health care providers with such objections to decline to provide them.

By creating new barriers to health insurance and causing the loss of existing insurance arrangements, these inflexible mandates in PPACA jeopardize the ability of individuals to exercise their rights of conscience and their ability to freely participate in the health insurance and health care marketplace.

I’m thoroughly entertained by legislative language like the sentence I bolded above. You’d think the Affordable Care Act forced employers to escort their female employees to the Abortionplex.