The laugh is on Cory Gardner regarding his recent remarks attacking Mark Udall re: Obamacare

I got a laugh when I read the Denver Post story about Cory Gardner, running against Democrat incumbent Mark Udall for Senate.  Gardner tried to make an issue of a long ago Udall statement that he (Udall) did not want a government run health insurance program but wanted to improve our employer based program and then to find a way to cover those uninsured.  Claimed Gardner it was another lie a la the President's promise to allow you to keep the insurance you had.  Shame on Udall.. he LIED. ..so the inference goes.

First, Obamacare did not remove the employer based program we have, but it did improve the employer based insurance system.  It stopped  the insurance company  practices of charging more than 20% for overhead, for discriminating against women by making them pay more for premiums, or putting lifetime caps on insurance, and other consumer unfriendly practices.  Nearly 80 per cent of those not on Medicare, Medicaid  who worked had employer's insurance and that has not changed.

The laugh refers to the origin of Obamacare.  It was a plan to thwart attempts to move to a single payer system like Canada's or other socialized medicine systems and still provide a way to cover the 30 million not covered by Medicare, Medicaid or who did not get insurance from employers because their employers did not provide it.  Out of fear that the insurance industry would be destroyed by a single payer system that short cut the private insurance industry, the conservative Heritage Foundation came up with a proposal to require all who could to pay for insurance per income level to purchase private insurance.  That is exactly what Obamacare does and the laboratory for it was Romneycare...the state of Massachusetts.  It kept the private insurance industry in the loop, gave them a potential of 30 million new customers who now had their policies subsidized so they could afford private insurance , and it is, per the American Medical Association, performing as designed.  The projections  are that within 3 years, the program will be fully operational and most of the 30 million will have been insured.   Those who have gotten insurance via Obamacare seem happy with their policies, even though they may have had to change doctors, but that is not new. Employers often change insurance providers leaving employees having to change doctors as well.  (For more regarding this point, key word search this site for "Obamacare" where much is written and polled about this).

Is this a government run system?  It depends what you mean by government run.  Requiring insurers to abide by standards so that consumers are no longer harmed, or setting up the infrastructure to be able to subsidize consumers per income level, or providing a marketplace for consumers to choose a private insurance plan may fit the most broad definition, but so far the GOP has not been able to come up with a better plan to cover the 30 million uninsured.  Even their attempt to propose alternatives such as cross state competition or malpractice reform has been a farce.  The Congressional Budget Office estimated that it would reduce premiums so that 3 million more could afford insurance....hardly adequate for the job of insuring the other 27 million. When the GOP comes up with a plan that will provide the same benefits and make insurance affordable, maybe we can take them more seriously. Until then, they are the ones worthy of a laugh.

House vote on immigration ensures high Latino support for Democrats for years to come

GOP House votes on immigration bills last Friday is a gift to Democrats, ensuring high Hispanic support for Democrats for years to come. In Colorado statewide races, the Hispanic vote is significant. Over 485,000 Hispanics, 12% of the electorate, are registered to vote. In 2012, President Obama got 75% of their vote.  Several other battleground states also have large numbers of Hispanic (or Latino) voters, and they could determine the balance in the US Senate. 

Two Colorado Republican congressmen bucked their party and voted no on the Republican bill. The impact is to deprive Democrats of some campaign sound bites to rally greater turnout of the Hispanic vote this November. It does not change Hispanic perception of the general anti-Latino immigrant tone of the Republican Party.

Democrat incumbent Sen. Mark Udall is facing  Congressman Cory Gardner.  Former congressman Bob Beauprez (R) is challenging Gov. John Hickenlooper (D), and Democrat Andrew Romanoff is taking on Republican Congressman Mike Coffman in the 6th district. Coffman gained more Hispanic voters in his Denver suburban district through redistricting so that he has had to do some backtracking on his hard-line anti-immigrant positions. Gardner and he were two  of the few GOP House members who voted against the Republican bills.  Beauprez has yet to check in on this year’s immigration issues.

There are three major sore points between Hispanics and Republicans: “dreamers,” “pathway to citizenship,” and deportation of children in the recent border crisis. Both agree to secure borders, only the GOP makes it a condition of doing anything, if anything, later.  Hispanics want a comprehensive package plan.   “Dreamers”  were brought to the US by their parents when they were children. Frustrated by Republican opposition to support legislation to allow them to work and study without fear of deportation, President Obama used executive orders to give dreamers a two-year reprieve and has threatened to extend and expand deferred deportation by executive order.  One of the Republican bills Friday would have stripped him from being able to use his executive power of prosecutorial discretion, exposing  half a million young people  to deportation in the middle of their studies.

GOP anti-immigrant rhetoric calls a pathway to citizenship “amnesty,” and Friday they killed a bipartisan compromise the Senate had hammered out.  Both Gardner and Coffman have a history of opposing comprehensive immigration reform that would give a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented and the dream acts.

The “crisis on the border” with nearly sixty thousand, mostly children, flooding the US also got the GOP anti-immigrant treatment. Their Friday bill slashed administration requests for funds, and it gutted an anti-human trafficking law. Their action would have allowed instant deportation regardless of any due process hearings or humane considerations the law requires. It also would have reopened gates to Central American traffickers.

Harry Reid, Senate Majority leader, will allow no votes in the Senate on these House bills, effectively killing them.  The President now can only address the border crisis and “dreamers” issues with his limited executive powers and resources. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/growing-share-of-hispanic-voters-helped-push-obama-to-victory/2012/11/07

http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/10/01/latinos-in-the-2012-election-colorado/

www.votesmart.org

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_25907264/mike-coffman-is-no-friend-immigrants

http://www.9news.com/story/news/politics/2014/08/01/reps-coffman-gardner-buck-party-on-immigration/13498889/

House OKs bill to address border crisis

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans passed legislation late Friday to address the crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border by sending migrant youths back home without hearings, winning over conservatives with a companion bill that could lead to...

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