Note to GOP: Don’t Reveal Your Fiendish Plan to Destroy Obamacare Until the Last Reel

 

One of the reasons that insurers aren’t too worried about the low signup rate for Obamacare is that it’s early days. They figure things will work out eventually, and in the meantime they’re protected from serious losses during the first three years by a provision of the bill called “risk corridors.” The details aren’t too important here. In a nutshell, if it turns out that an insurer has seriously miscalculated the cost of its coverage on the exchanges—perhaps because too few people have signed up—the federal government will reimburse them for part of their losses.

This is all very wonky stuff designed to smooth the transition to Obamacare. You’re only reading about it now because a little while back some bright spark decided that if you called this an “Obamacare bailout” it might turn into a big campaign issue. Maybe Republicans could even get it repealed, which in turn would make life so hard for insurers that they’d drop out of Obamacare entirely! Bwa-ha-ha!

But their plan isn’t going anywhere, and Dave Weigel thinks it’s partly because conservatives have acted too much like a stock villain from a James Bond movie:

I mention Bond villainy for a reason. What’s the mistake that Goldfinger and Blofeld and 006 et al constantly make? They explain the plot while there’s still time for 007 to stop it. Conservative groups from FreedomWorks to Heritage Action have rallied behind Rubio’s bill and a companion House bill, and obviously the hope is that a “no bailout” bill would gather momentum in the Senate and make life difficult for red state Democrats. But Congress just passed an omnibus funding bill that takes care of things for the rest of the year. A good chance to pressure the Senate on Obamacare — slotting the “no bailout” language in the House bill — has been lost. Even a scheme backed by Krauthammer, Ponnuru, and Cannon, all well-respected on the right, failed to gain traction in a Congress that’s been chastened by the shutdown, and is more fearful of causing a crisis to gut Obamacare.

Neither Democrats nor the insurance industry were ever going to be fooled by any of this, but by making it clear that the real goal of repealing risk corridors is to cripple Obamacare completely, proponents lost even the slim chance they had to get a hearing from the press and from independents. They might take another crack at making this a big issue when the debt ceiling comes up, but it probably won’t get them anywhere. Their tea party allies will be thrilled, but everyone else will see it as yet another in a long, tired string of contrived outrages designed to kill Obamacare. Time to move on, folks.

 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate