NBC News reports on the number of people who have signed up for Obamacare. It’s even lower than the estimate I reported earlier in the week.
Excerpt:
In a new low point for President Barack Obama and another ding against his signature domestic achievement, only 26,000 Americans signed up for health insurance plans in the month that the federal government’s troubled website has been open for business.
When figures from state-run exchanges are included, more than 106,000 Americans selected plans during the Affordable Care Act’s first month of open enrollment. Still, that number, combined with the administration’s repeated warnings of low early-enrollment figures, won’t mute the mounting political outcryfrom both sides of the aisle over the rocky rollout.
[…]Even the administration’s Democratic allies have begun to exhibit signs of nervousness.
Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Red State Democrat who’s up for re-election in Louisiana next fall, has proposed a patch to Obamacare that would allow consumers to keep insurance plans threatened by cancellation. The tweak would, in essence, force Obama to make good on his once-stated promise that individuals who like their health care plan could keep it.
The bill, passage of which would represent an embarrassment for Obama, has even won over some administration allies, including California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. And former President Bill Clinton, whom Obama once dubbed his “explainer in chief,” didn’t help the White House on Tuesday when he endorsed a similar fix.
[…]Throughout it all, Obama’s approval ratings have plummeted to new lows, suffering from successive crises involving a Republican-led government shutdown and near-default on the national debt, and then the struggles of Healthcare.gov.
Breitbart News has more on the revolt of the Democrats who are up for election in 2014.
Excerpt:
On CNN’s The Lead, host Jake Tapper said that Democrats had refused to come on the program to discuss the abysmal Obamacare enrollment numbers released on Wednesday afternoon.
Dana Bash reported, “Republicans are tripping over themselves to come out and talk.” She continued, “we’re not hearing from Democrats so far, the sounds of silence, tells you everything you need to know.”
Tapper confirmed that Democrats were suddenly silent: “To be completely honest, we had difficult time booking Democrats to come on after those numbers were released, to have them come on and talk about fixing the problem.”
And moderate leftists Kirsten Powers and David Frum are furious that that their health care plans have been canceled, and even more furious at the White House spin on the millions of Americans who are losing their health care.
Excerpt:
On Tuesday, two prominent media personalities who support President Barack Obama’s overhaul of America’s health care system took to the airwaves to vent about their insurance plans which have been cancelled as a direct result of the Affordable Care Act.
In an appearance on Special Report on Tuesday, Fox News Channel contributor and Daily Beast editorial writer Kirsten Powers lashed out at the White House – and, by extension, her Democratic cohorts – for implying that her consumer choices were poorly informed and insufficiently focused on the collective good.
“My blood pressure goes up every time they say that they’re protecting us from substandard health insurance plans,” Powers told Bret Baier. “There is nothing to support what they’re saying.”
“I have talked to about how I’m losing my health insurance,” she continued. “If I want to keep the same health insurance, it’s going to cost twice as much. There’s nothing substandard about my plan.”
“All of the things they say that are not in my plan are in my plan,” Powers lamented. “All of the things they have listed — there’s no explanation for doubling my premiums other than the fact that it’s subsidizing other people. They need to be honest about that.”
Powers, a committed Democrat, once supported the aims of the ACA, if not every mean designed to achieve a noble end. Today, it would seem, she is wavering on the virtue of that end as well.
Powers is in good company. On CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday, former Daily Beast columnist David Frum hijacked a conversation about President Bill Clinton’s shocking admonition of President Barack Obama to discuss his own cancelled health plan.
“I’m pulling rank,” Frum informed his fellow panel guests, “because I’m one of those who has had his plan canceled.”
“I still have, but will not very much longer have, a plan in the District of Columbia, covered my wife and my children, which is canceled,” he reported. “I can buy on the exchange a plan that will cost $200 a month more and have a higher deductible. I can’t get back my old plan unless, as Ron [Brownstein] says, the administration drops the element of the law that requires the coverage of everybody.”
“That’s why my coverage went up is because every insurer must now cover everybody,” Frum continued. “I think President Clinton should have the honesty to defend that.”
It’s all falling apart, but will it be in time? I have friends who are in the individual market who are losing their health care and being offered plans with higher deductibles AND higher co-payments, that cost far more than what they had. We really need to see a push to repeal this monstrosity now before more people have to suffer from it.
WINTERY KNIGHT 