Lots of people continue to fret over the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. In my opinion, David Brooks sums up the frustration of conservatives in a column he wrote a couple of days ago. Basically, he thought the Affordable Care Act should be repealed and then replaced with a bunch of laws that are already in the Affordable Aare Act. Kind of confusing, isn’t it?
The Google I/O conference may not be as well-known or as eagerly anticipated as Apple’s yearly lovefest. In spite of this, there was plenty of fun and technology to be enjoyed by all.
Continued power outages in the Washington DC area is highly frustrating.
Back to the dysfunction of the conservative movement over healthcare reform. In essence, conservatives have nothing for the American people should they be able to repeal The Affordable Care Act. Senator Mitch McConnell stated that covering uninsured Americans was not the issue. I can only smile. There are several major issues that the Affordable Care Act tries to address. First, try to cover the majority of uninsured Americans. Secondly, try to curb some of the abuses of insurance companies, including inventing lifetime limits on health insurance, dropping people with pre-existing conditions and simply making up reasons not to cover certain treatments or procedures. For the most part, The Affordable Care Act covers all those issues.
New poll shows growing support for ObamaCare?
One of the craziest decisions to come out of the Supreme Court during this term was their overturning Montana’s 100-year-old Corrupt Practices Act. Basically, Montana had set up a law which capped the amount of money that could be spent in state races. This seemed to work very well for everyone… except for those who wanted to game the system.
Finally, Tiger Woods won the AT&T National golf tournament yesterday. It is his 74th tournament victory on the PGA, pulling him in front of some guy named Jack Nicklaus. All I can tell you is that Tiger seems to be in complete control of his game, including his putting, which seemed to let him down at the U.S. Open two weeks ago. On 18, with a one-stroke lead, he pulled out the driver and drove the ball 340 yards. The ball landed in the middle of the fairway. Impressive. Bo Van Pelt really played some solid golf. He held up to the pressure of being tied with Tiger Woods down the stretch until the 16th hole. Mistakes on 16 and 17 cost him the tournament.
But with Supremes allowing states to opt-out of expanded Medicaid plan, then the primary mechanism for insuring the uninsured goes bye-bye. The law will do a lot to help middle class who already have insurance, or who need to buy it, but the “working poor” are still going to be sidelined. Good news is Supremes say single payer is constitutional, if we only had the political will to do it.