Say what? Obamacare hurts families and small businesses? Did you see that political ad?

A  young entrepreneur mom and wife looks you straight in the face in a recent anti-Mark Udall commercial and asks Udall to repeal Obamacare because it hurts families and small businesses.  Mark Udall is running for reelection for US senator for Colorado and his Republican opponent, Cory Gardner,  wants to repeal Obamacare.  How that mom could have delivered  that ad with a straight face is beyond me. 

 Eli Stokols of Denver's Fox 31 interviewed the spokesperson and concluded, "Bottom line: this is yet another example of a deceptive Republican attack on Obamacare falling apart under even casual scrutiny."  Her story does not fit the circumstances she claims it does.

Aside from that bogus personal story, does Obamacare  (ACA)  hurt families and small businesses?  Does the mom really think that it is better for families to go without health insurance because they cannot afford it?  Does she think that if one of her children or her spouse has a preexisting condition and strikes out on his own, it is better if an insurance company refuses coverage?  Does she really think it is better for the wife who gets insurance from her employer to have to pay higher premiums and more for cancer screenings just because she is a woman?  If she gets seriously ill, is it a good thing when she finds her insurance runs out because her care costs more than the cap or she is dropped mid-treatment?  Does she think it is better that she has to kick her over-18-year-olds off her insurance plan because her insurer is not required to cover them?  Does she think it is better for families to pay on the average $1000  a year more for insurance because the cost of caring for the uninsured with charity is shifted to the health providers and onto her health insurance premiums?  Obamacare has addressed all of these problems, and she wants to go back to the old way? That is what the GOP and Cory Gardner want to do, and neither has a plan to replace the benefits that Obamacare provides.

Does Obamacare hurt small business?  If a business has over 50 employees, most already provide employer insurance, and the 2 or 3% of those larger businesses do not have another year to arrange it.  Businesses with less than 50 employees do not pay higher taxes or have to deal with more regulations either, in spite of what the ad wants you to believe. Those with 25 employees or less even get tax credits if they want to offer health insurance. Obamacare also frees those who want to leave their corporate jobs to start a business or stay home with the elderly and kids to still be able to get affordable health insurance for their families. That ability hurts small business and families? 

Give me a break.  60% of the American people want Obamacare fixed instead of repealed. They understand some  advantages of the ACA provisions better than the writers of the ad think. 

A version of this appeared in the Sky Hi Daily News September 12, 2014

For more, visit www.mufticforumblog.blogspot.com

http://www.dailycamera.com/columnists/ci_26301441/littwin-dreadfully-consistent-anti-obamacare-industry

Boehner and McConnell fall on swords to stop Tea Party bitten by amnesia bug

This past  week, John Boehner, House Speaker  and 27 of his fellow Republicans, fell on their swords to aid their party  when they joined with Democrats   to raise   the debt ceiling  with no strings attached and to block  Tea Party  threats to shut down the government again. The Senate then passed the legislation on a party line vote, though  enough Republicans led by  minority leader Mitch McConnell,  voted to break  the filibuster rule requirement of 60 votes. The GOP leaders realized the Tea Party must have been bitten by the amnesia bug.to try to repeat their last fiasco and other failed strategies.   

Last fall,  Boehner let the Tea Party have their way and the GOP did shut down the government. The  political backlash   was so severe , Republicans  even feared they would lose seats in the 2014 midterms and set up another Democratic win for the White House in 2016.   The GOP was  saved by   the bungled roll out of Obamacare, charges the President’s” lied” about keeping insurance,   and a budget deal.

That Boehner’s action risked  his  speakership and Mitch McConnell gave fuel to Tea Party opponents in his upcoming primary  shows that the Tea Party has   nearly   completed their takeover  of the Republican party.   In Colorado,  traditional  business oriented Republicans are only bystanders in a battle between the Tea Party Express and local ultra conservatives   to see who can endorse the most conservative candidate to take on Democrat Sen.  Mark Udall in November.  Similar battles elsewhere   guarantee that Democratic candidates for state houses and  Congress in blue and purple states will have an advantage in facing  the most extreme opponents who will have problems  pivoting to the center to  appeal  to moderate middles in the general election.  

This year the situation is different . The web site works. As of February 1 nearly 14  million are already covered by Obamacare (3.3 million through the exchanges; 7 million through Medicaid expansion and  3 million young adults on parents’ policies).  An estimated 60% of the  5 million losing individual insurance have found other insurance policies or qualified for cheaper ones.. By the 2014 mid terms, the administration  projects    six  million will have signed up through Obamacare  exchanges. .  The Tea Party still is adamantly advocating  total repeal and no replacement. All those  benefiting  by November 2014  will not look kindly on candidates wanting to take away their newly acquired affordable  insurance coverage.

The Tea Party’s domination of the GOP will also help  Democrat’s chances of holding onto the Senate since key states with large Hispanic populations swung  blue in 2012  by their  disaffection with the GOP’s perceived hostility, Colorado included..   Thanks to Tea Party fanatics in Congress, Boehner was forced to back down from any compromise or even a piecemeal approach to immigration reform this year.

The Tea Party  continues to  alienate  unmarried women, a must win voting block.   Anti choice platforms and  Insults  continue, the latest by former  Gov. Mike Huckabee who opined   women wanted the pill  because they could not keep their “libido” under control.   The GOP ‘s repeal  of  Obamacare would   eliminate  Obamacare  standards  that prohibit  higher  premiums  for women  or covering  mammograms  and birth control pills sans  co-pays. Since women comprise much of the minimum wage workforce, GOP opposition to raising it is one more  turnoff.

How much freedom are we willing to give up to stay safe? Courts may decide for us

How much personal freedom are we willing to give up in the name of homeland security? That’s the political question that erupted last week. The underlying legal question is whether interpretation  and application of the 2002 Patriot Act  passed to protect us from terrorist attacks   is constitutional.   In the long run, the Supreme Court may make the decision for us.

 At issue is the potential violation of the 4^th Amendment to the Constitution  which requires warrants for  search and seizure  that are based on probable cause  and have specifics that some violation of law is suspected.   The 2002 Patriot Act authorizes some types of warrantless searches.

Details of the workings of the Patriot Act  had been kept hush hush until a  British publication, the Guardian, opened the worm can.  It published leaks from a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor that warrantless gathering of information  was conducted on all of Verizon’s telephone calls (Sprint and AT&T, too, revealed later) and that there was surveillance  contents of  internet communications of suspected terrorists and their connections abroad.

Colorado has become a high profile  focus  of  the  debate.   Colorado Democratic Senator Mark Udall, member of the Senate Intelligence Committee,  has consistently voted  and spoken out against    the Patriot Act,  because he objected that  warrantless telephone call metadata mining was  kept secret from the public and  was conducted on telephone customers whether they had terrorist connections or not . On CNN Sunday  Udall told Candy Crowley “that it was not clear the program gave information that could not be found elsewhere” in thwarting attacks .

 Others including the President   believe the telephone metadata program is helpful . CBS News Saturday reported that the telephone metadata collection enabled the  apprehension  of Denver resident Najibullah Zazi  before he could carry out a  plot to bomb the New York City subways in 2009.

It seems creepy to know even  limited phone data is being collected and it leaves many, including me, with a gnawing fear that someone in the future could get their hands on the data base to use it  for witch hunting.

Another  surveillance program  exposed by the Guardian is called PRISM. It allows the NSA to tap into  the content of internet communications of suspected terrorists abroad, including the content of those communications of non US citizens in the US communicating with them. Warrants are issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court  good for a year.  While acknowledging PRISM’S effectiveness in thwarting  terrorist attacks, Sen. Udall objected anyway since “some Americans have been swept up in it”.  The administration expressed outrage that exposing  PRISM  damaged American’s security interests.

Trusting the user is not enough; are the controls enough to protect us from abuse?.

What is  this  FISA court, anyway?  Eleven judges are appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court  for seven year terms.  It works in secret and deals with classified information related to terrorism, in order not to  blow the cover off covert operations and tip off suspects. The Court informs the Senate and House intelligence committees of their rulings. The telephone metadata mining is reauthorized every three months.

 Wide spread  collection of telephone metadata is limited to numbers, length, date, and location, though customers’ names are not collected.  To access content or conduct wiretaps, warrants still must be sought from the FISA court.

This is still a dangerous time .  The Boston Marathon Bombing, the Ft Hood shooting, and the nearly successful Times Square and New York subway bombers involved difficult to detect  lone wolves living in the US.  We would not like to handicap our government agents executing their  mission.

Civil libertarians, left and right, are not waiting for Congressional action. They are threatening to take the issue to court which will ultimately decide the constitutionality issues.

For more, visit www.mufticforumespanol.blogspot.com

This is a version of my column which will appear in the www.skyhidailynews.com this week