At the risk of heresy… I am still unable to understand how we talk about ‘austerity’ when we borrow over 40 cents of every dollar spend and our DEBT to GDP ratio has just exceeded 100%.

disclosure matters.

Let the viewer/ listener decide.

Transparency can not just be for ‘the other guy’.

200k is real money for those of us not in the 1%

Don’t forget NBC allowing Ed Schultz to receive $200k from unions.

Disclosure, at the minimum, is good, regardless of political point of view.
WSJ, CNBC, Bloomberg has it better.

Welcome to Animal Farm — where in the Obamabot world some animals should be just a wee-bit more equal than others.

too late:

150,000 California seniors to lose their coverage due to the $132 billion cut to Medicare Advantage…

For all its problems, MA is disproportionately used by low income, non-white seniors (2007 study showed 80% of seniors making less than $20k/year on MA plan).

Jon- state based single payer a la VT is now not a possibility in OH.

It is not meaningless… and they did not contest it because it was going to pass no matter what… and if money was spent, then it would be harder for dems to ignore…

but it is worth repeating — the state of Ohio can no longer institute single payer.

concern for Democrats:

Collective bargaining is not going to be a national issue next year (federal employees already have restrictions)… but health care will be a huge issue…

Individual mandate is a loser for every Dem up for reelection in a swing state or district…

and, unless Mittens wins the nomination — any smart Republican strategist will begin, middle, and end hammer health care as the theme to beat over incumbent dems (and state dems that vote against legislative versions of Issue 3).

Eli- should add Issue 3 to your toplines… it matters, and FDLers have been on the front lines of this from the beginning.

DDay- what is the polling on Issue 3, the health care ballot issue? If that loses near the level that Issue 2 goes down, it is a much bigger blow to Obama and national Dems.

1. the medicaid expansion will likely never happen- and if it does, it will be at the expense of the erosion of the last vestiges that Medicaid can be called a health ‘care’ program. It is already in its last gasps now (see CA cuts for the biggest, most progressive state in the union for most recent evidence).

2. all that will remain is the $400 billion (low end estimate) of direct subsidies to largest private health insurers —

3. Turning United health care, wellpoint, aetna, cigna into the new Halliburtons of health care is now the BEST CASE SCENARIO!

4. Dems would never have supported this law if Republicans tried to pass it– we need to ‘give up the ghost’ (to turn a Halloween phrase) and demand that the progressive caucus get behind repeal.

5. one more note- the 2014 timeline was ALWAYS A RUSE!!!! Bothers me when progressives lament the delayed timeline — you are being used as a tool.

The GOAL is ‘full coverage, at a cost we can afford’.

The law under any current permutation, with or without the mandate, will NOT give us either the full coverage or the ‘can afford’.

Link for California

Jon- tangential question (but very relevant) — the recent accounting by USA Today/KFF about the huge cuts in benefits to Medicaid is already happening — and this will only accelerate as PPACA implementation moves forward…

The Dems could not even seem bothered to include mammograms for poor women aged 40-50 in the law (the Mikulski amendment only applied to non-medicaid) … CA and CO have already dropped mammas…

Should Obama/HHS and progressive leaders in Congress be (a) allowing -bc HHS could deny those changes (b) speaking out at all AGAINST this turning of Medicaid into 3rd world health care?

And has anyone considered that the HIE (exchanges) under PPACA are merely a staging ground to do the same to the non-Medicaid population?

Medicaid expansion will never occur as passed…

As the USA Today article this am showed — states are already ‘discounting’ benefits in anticipation of the law possibly going into effect — so if it is still intact — the benefits will be cut much, much further by then…

making medicaid WORSE than 3rd world health care.

But, hey, to Obama, apparently this is a feature, not a bug.

Costs are up.
The number of uninsured is up.
Insurance companies are about to get a $400 billion windfall from the government.
“high risk” plans are better called – “unaffordable insurance plans”
Medicaid is being driven to collapse.
The “deficit reduction” was derived from Enron/Solyndra accounting tricks that included the unworkable CLASS Act ($70 billion), and a failure to recognize that doctors will need to be actually paid to see patients ($250-300 billion)

And the individual mandate is loathed by 65-70% of the electorate.

No matter the SCOTUS outcome — the ACA is a sure loser for Obama… if he wins — the R base that obliterated the Dems in 2010 will be fired up.

If he loses — the first 5 points will be used to drive the wedge that if we kick Obama out, we will finally be able to get rid of the rest of this disastrous law.

If the village veal pen idiots want to delude their small readership with this… let them have at it.

what has happened is that Dems embraced formerly republican concepts — republicans opposed them — democrats and their sycophants embraced them because republicans were opposing them — and the result are bad policies.

republican presidential candidates now can rightly (since they were never in washington supporting them – except gingrich and bachmann) announce that those policies really stink… and another course is preferable.

that, along with failing to uphold the rule of law and expansion of the unitary executive… has made Democrats undesirable with few other than the die hard base… which would cover for Obama if he suddenly became pro-life.