Posted on 11/16/2013 10:35:18 AM PST by SeekAndFind
We mentioned earlier this week how red state Democrat Senator Kay Hagan of North Carolina had watched as a previously slim but solid lead in the polls had evaporated of late. It seems that this was no momentary glitch in the numbers and the situation continues to deteriorate. The slide continued with what could only be described as a disastrous conference call with reporters, eager to pepper her with questions about her role in the development and launch of Obamacare, which even the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank saw as a ship taking on water.
Well, her problem begins with Obamacare, ends with Obamacare and has a whole lot of Obamacare in between.
Hagan hosted a conference call for reporters Tuesday morning to discuss the problems with the health-care law’s rollout, and the Q&A session was so painful that the senator should qualify for trauma coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
Hagan tried reciting some of the standard issue White House talking points to claw her way out of that one, but things only got worse when one of her spokeswomen followed up to try to clean up the mess. (From Big Government and the local paper the News & Record.)
“First, this is nothing more than a political stunt that does nothing to help more people get access to care and highlights the difference between Kay, who is working to fix this law, and her opponents who don’t have any plan to reform our broken health care system,” Hagan spokeswoman Sadie Weiner told the News and Record, a Greensboro, NC newspaper. “In her capacity as a member of the HELP Committee, Senator Hagan was involved with that committee’s markup of the health care reform bill in the summer of 2009.”
In the next sentence of the quote, Weiner states that her boss Hagan was aware of the fact that people would lose their healthcare plans under Obamacare some time ago.
“Once insurance companies began disingenuously offering plans that they knew they would be canceling it became clear that more people would be getting cancellation letters,” Weiner said.
Did you catch that one – two punch in those answers? Not only was her boss, Senator Hagan, an instrumental player in crafting the bill, but she was also aware that insurance companies were going to be cancelling policies as soon as it went into effect. It’s bad enough that the popularity of Obamacare in North Carolina is rapidly approaching that of a raging case of the crabs, but that sort of admission plants her firmly in the series of shifting denials and stories about precisely who knew what when.
If Kay Hagan, one of the busy bees working on the bill, was aware that many people who liked their policy would not, in fact, be able to keep it, how did the President not know? Did she not find it worth mentioning to him? And since the “you can’t keep that” effect is presumably hitting people in her own state, how does she square up not letting the voters in on this little secret before she voted for it? Either way, somebody has some explaining to do, and there is a pack of GOP challengers who are all very interested in that Senate seat who are more than happy to discuss the matter with her in the coming battle. I think we can put North Carolina in play as one of the six seats the GOP needs to pick up next year.
To blame an insurance company for cancelling a policy that has become illegal under the PACA is deceit and treachery of the worst kind.
While it is likely true none of the Senators and Congressman that voted for it actually KNEW what it contained, their very willful negligence in a matter of actual life or death is grounds for indictment, prosecution, judgment as guilty, and execution in a manner of their choosing according to the law. IOW, they deserve the Death Penalty.
““Once insurance companies began disingenuously offering plans that they knew they would be canceling it became clear that more people would be getting cancellation letters,” Weiner said.”
It would be interesting to know if that’s even the truth. My Medicare Advantage plan has been cancelled, but it’s been a relatively stable product for the EIGHT YEARS that I have had it.
BTW, I’ve just obtained much better insurance through AMAC, and the time their people took to enroll my wife and I was as professional as it could have been. Everybody needs to join AMAC. At Sixteen bucks a year, it’s a bargain!
But Kay’s website said - at least until a few days ago - that if you like your insurance you could keep it. Now her aid says that she knew all along
That the cancellations were coming. She’s toast!
Hopefully, she and her staff have ordered their packing boxes early.
Hey Kay, if you like your job, you can’t keep it because you put your PARTY before your Constituents and your Country. Duh!
We need to reclaim our red states. NC should never have had such a horrible POS as Hagan elected and nor should it have such a weak swill POS like Burr. Both need to be replaced just like Graham in SC. We need to stop accepting weak Republicans and faux conservative Democrats in the South.
Consumer fraud is a serious crime. Contact your state attorney general.
“Once insurance companies began disingenuously offering plans that they knew they would be canceling it became clear that more people would be getting cancellation letters,” Weiner said.
It’s truly horrifying how much this sounds like Maduro in Venezuela criticizing the “greedy” appliance store owners.
I can’t still get over Kansas electing Sebelius.
The problem is too many who lean conservative aren’t informed. I don’t know how many time I encounter people who actually wait for election ads and debates to decide who to vote for without ever looking at the records of the candidates themselves. That is the problem. I wish there was some easy way to remedy it.
We need to reclaim language in this country and stop using terms like "immigration reform", "swift boating" and "red states" to mean what the liberal media wants them to mean. I will never refer to conservative states as "red"
While the Democrats truly are in full panic mode, I have no doubt that the Republicans will bail them out. Yesterday’s passage of the Upton bill was step one in the process.
The Republicans struggle with decent Senate candidates. Liddy Dole (Bob Dole’s wife), who Hagan beat, was a carpetbagger who used her mother’s address as her “residence”. Burr is extremely boring.
If Tillis (the establishment choice) is the candidate, Hagan will likely win reelection. She starts with the advantage of 95% of the black vote and 75% of the Hispanic vote. Add the liberal whites in Charlotte and Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill plus the young white women who will automatically vote gender when the teacher’s unions start running ads calling the Republican anti women and children. If the media is able to help her make women’s issues (i.e. abortion and contraception) the issue over which the campaign is fought, instead of Obamacare, Hagan will win against any Republican.
North Carolina is another reason why Republicans have to come up with an effective counter to the “war on women” campaign theme the Democrats employ so well.
At present, only 40% of Americans support ObamaCare. Which means that in Conservative states like North Carolina and Louisiana, the percentage of ObamaCare supporters must be considerably lower (30%?).
So how is a Democratic Senator running in a state with only 30% ObamaCare support supposed to win 51% of the vote next November?
However, even if a miracle happened and every Democratic Senator voted to repeal ObamaCare and override President Obama’s veto, the Democratic Senators running for re-election next year still couldn’t win because the 30% of loyal ObamaCare supporters in their states would be angry at them and stay home on election day.
Very few incumbent senators are easy to beat. It will take hard work and considerable $ to put conservative Republicans into these seats even with the Obamacare fiasco. You can be sure the Democrats will generally run from Obamacare during the election even though they voted in lockstep to pass it and absolutely refused to negotiate on it as little as a month ago. The Republican candidates, whoever they are, better hit Obamacare hard, but that’s not enough. We only win if we elect true conservatives. It won’t help if we put squishes in these six-year jobs, because they’ll simply sell us out as soon as they win.
SEN. KAY HAGAN (D-N.C.):
“People who have insurance they’re happy with can keep it.
We need to support the private insurance industry
so that people who have insurance they’re happy with
can keep it while also providing a backstop option
for people without access to affordable coverage.”
-
(“Republicans Vent As Other Compromise Plans Get Aired,”
National Journal’s Congress Daily, 6/18/09)
I think she should have obama come in and bolster her campaign.
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