"Breathtakingly cynical"

Jonathan Cohn put it this way in The New Republic:

Republicans are outraged that some Americans must give up their current insurance plans because they don't satisfy Obamacare's new regulations for benefits and pricing. . . .

It’s unconscionable, they say, that lawmakers would force people to give up their current coverage. . . . [A]n angry Representative Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee practically screamed at the witness [Sec. Sebelius]: “You’re taking away their choice!”

It’s good politics, I’m sure. It’s also breathtakingly cynical.  Republicans have repeatedly endorsed proposals that would take insurance away from many more Americans—and leave them much, much worse off.

Start with the federal budgets crafted by Paul Ryan. . . .  Those budgets called for dramatic funding cuts to Medicaid. If Republicans had swept into power and enacted such changes, according to projections . . .  between 14 and 20 million Medicaid recipients would lose their insurance.  And that doesn’t even include the people who are starting to get Medicaid coverage through Obamacare’s expansions of the program. That's another 10 to 17 million people. . . .

Nobody knows exactly how many people are giving up non-group policies because insurers are reacting to Obamacare regulations. But it's probably in the millions [And they are being offered alternative plans;  not losing insurance.]  —and still substantially less than the number of people who would lose insurance if Ryan's proposal for Medicaid became law. . . .

Under Obamacare, the number of Americans without health insurance at all will come down, eventually by 30 or 40 million. Under most of the Republican plans, the number of Americans without insurance would rise.

Honest Republicans would justify their policies by arguing that Medicaid is a wasteful, inefficient program not worth keeping . . .  But they should stop pretending that it’s possible to address the problems of American health care without disrupting at least some people’s insurance arrangements—because, after all, they want to do the very same thing.

This has become such a media circus, and the hypocrisy is so thick -- pity the poor person trying to work through this maze of misinformation, political grandstanding, and outright lies.

The Obama administration has not earned top grades for the technical rollout, but the product is still a good idea.   As someone put it:   "Obamacare is not a web site;  it's a program to benefit people who lack health insurance."  Not as good as a single payer system, but a good step in that direction.  Let's give it a chance.   Rome wasn't built in a day.   The successful, popular Massachusetts health care system didn't run smoothly at first either.

Ralph