Separated at birth?
Posted on 10/19/2014 1:38:05 PM PDT by ModernDayCato
Despite the president's low approval ratings, and the continuing cacophony of hate directed toward him by Republicans and racists, any reasonable assessment of Barack Obama's accomplishments to date would conclude that his presidency could well go down as a time of historic achievement.
The Affordable Care Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Act, the Dodd-Frank Financial Regulation Bill -- the largest since the New Deal -- and his economic policies bolstered by yeoman's work of the Federal Reserve, place Obama solidly in the company of presidents like FDR and LBJ.
Despite widespread Republican disinformation about and unrelenting opposition to the Affordable Care Act, it clearly is a success -- and where it is not succeeding as well as it might, it is just as clearly the fault of the right-wing rather than the law itself.
About 2.1 million Americans have gained health insurance by signing up on state and federal exchanges. Another 4.4 million have obtained Medicaid coverage.
And under the provision that allows parents to cover their children up to the age of 26, another 3.1 million persons receive health coverage, totaling more than 9 million newly insured Americans through the Affordable Care Act.
And the recently released annual report from the actuaries at the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services showed that for the fourth year running the amount of growth in annual health care expenditures is significantly declining.
In 2012, health care spending totaled $2.79 trillion, up just 3.7 percent over the previous year.
By comparison, before the recent recession, we were averaging annual increases in health care spending more than 7 percent during the calendar years 2000 to 2008.
The current numbers represent the slowest rate of growth since the government began tracking the data in 1960.
But in a fit of ideological madness, a study by the Robert Wood Johnson foundation and the Urban Institute showed that 24 states that have refused to expand their Medicaid programs under the Affordable Care Act are depriving their citizens of $423 billion through 2022, as well as depriving nearly 8 million citizens of health care coverage.
Under the law, the federal government picks up all the costs of Medicaid expansion through the first three years, and then its share gradually drops to 90 percent. Not only could those billions be put to use in their respective states for education, infrastructure improvement, and other state needs, but it is estimated that the absence of health care coverage among many low-income residents will result in as many as 717,000 preventable deaths each year in the holdout states.
The right-wing majority on the United States Supreme Court, and one of its several wrongheaded decisions in recent years, allowed states to opt out of the Affordable Care Act's requirement to expand Medicaid.
Several Republican governors were wise enough to understand the financial and human advantages to their states of opting into the Medicaid expansion -- Jan Brewer of Arizona, Rick Snyder in Michigan, John Casey in Ohio, Susana Martinez in New Mexico, Bill Haslam in Tennessee, and Terry Branstad in Iowa. None has been hurt politically despite anger expressed by right-wing ideological purists in their states.
Under Obama's stewardship and the 2009 passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, there has been a net gain of 5 million new jobs, more than in the administrations George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush combined.
Obama's American Jobs Act, which continues to be undermined by anti-Obama Republicans, would increase employment by roughly another 2 million jobs according to numerous economists, including Republican Mark Zandi.
The Obama stimulus program, a payroll tax cut in 2010, emergency unemployment benefits, and targeted tax credits, along with the Federal Reserve's efforts to resuscitate the financial sector, helped jumpstart the economy and avert a depression as well as helping to create jobs for millions.
The president's extraordinary record will long outlast vicious partisan and racist attacks on his administration. Only now, as he is seemingly softening on his mantra of "don't do stupid stuff" in foreign affairs, is he in danger of besmirching his brilliant achievements by allowing himself to be goaded into another war.
Despite the brutality of ISIS and other extreme jihadist groups, they present no existential threat to the United States.
Obama should back off and push those nations like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and others in the Middle East that are directly threatened by these dangerous groups to stand up and defend themselves with reasonable assistance from the United States, but with no further involvement of American troops.
Bwahahaha! That's some company there.
FDR and LBJ
I spit on their names.
OOPS! Looks like the author got some kool-aid on his kneepads. That could make them slippery; he could injure himself.
Obola HAS TRANSFORMED this one fine nation in EVERY way possible!! Open Gays in the military....the end of our independent insurance and medical companies.....abortions free anywhere, anytime......the “Just Us” dept.....the PURGE of our good military leaders....and that’s just the things in the US!!! Think about the MESS he’s gotten us into in the WORLD!!
That's living large! Fat city!.
And to them, that's all you should hope for.
place Obama solidly in the company of presidents like FDR and LBJ.
Yeah, they’re all dead.
Who the **** was Lilly Ledbetter????
Moonbat Central.
The title needs a teflon barf bag alert.
Yeah, some great historic accomplishment. Nobody even knows who or what it’s about.
It’s like reading something written in North Korea.
Separated at birth?
I guess if they are not cheating to get elected, they win.
I think they are cheating.
“Obama presidency headed for historic achievement”
Surely you’re not referring to that worse case scenario if/when Ebola breaks out in some Central American hell hole and rapidly spreads out of control, with a subsequent surge of the infected for the open southern U.S. border that Obama has mandated. With hundreds or even thousands of Ebola-infected Central Americans melting invisibly into the U.S. hoping for free cures, we’ve then entered “The Stand” phase for our country.
Oh, right. Obamacare. You’re referring to obamacare, where 10,000,000 already had their inexpensive but excellent health insurance policies canceled for medicaid-style exchange policies costing $600/person/month with $6,000 deductible for networks that are so narrow they are unusable. Oh, and in the next 12 months, add another 90,000,000 cancellations to that boat when obama’s illegal extensions expire for workers who get their policies via their employer.
Historic indeed
Wow, talk about an escape from reality and sadly folks these are the supposed educated kool-aid drinkers.
My God the feces is just dripping from their mouths with this piece of...propaganda. They are so hyperbolic their attempt to prop up this evil POS poseur in the White House, that it even fails as propaganda. Even Pravda did it better than this.
Well it would be hilarious except for the irreparable evil harm this Manchurian candidate and his puppet masters have done to this country, a sharp turn to the left for which there will be no correction. Margaret Thatcher’s “ratchet effect” on steroids.
f hate directed toward him by Republicans and racists,
isnt that redundant according to ,ost of the leftists pukes??
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