The Obamacare Cancellation Notices You Haven’t Heard About

By Igor Volsky and Adam Peck on November 18, 2013 at 2:44 pm

As lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are endorsing legislation to allow Americans purchasing health care coverage in the individual market to stay in their existing insurance plans, they’re ignoring a far more pressing coverage problem in the 26 states that have yet to expand their Medicaid programs. There, five million working poor Americans could be denied access to affordable insurance altogether.
The stories of private market enrollees being forced to purchase more substantive insurance have animated politics for the last three weeks. But the failure of 25 states to expand Medicaid coverage to 133 percent of the federal poverty line, as envisioned by reform, is actually far more disastrous and undermines the promise of health care for the millions who earn “too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to qualify for Marketplace premium tax credits.”
Relying on analysis form the Kaiser Family Foundation, ThinkProgress compared the numbers of lower-income Americans who are denied coverage by GOP-controlled legislatures or governors to the public estimates of residents receiving cancellation notices in those states’ individual markets. Though the public debate has focused on the loss of individual private plans, the working poor are far more likely to go without insurance:

The problem plaguing recipients of cancellation notices is even less severe than the graphic above would suggest. Nationally, approximately 15 million people are purchasing individual plans, but just 5 million remain in those plans for a year or more — the majority switch to more comprehensive insurance.
Some percentage of these five million enrollees will be able to stay in their cancelled policies for longer, as state insurance commissioners and insurers adopt the Obama administration’s new flexibility rule, allowing existing plans to continue offering coverage for at least a year. But even the millions who do have to enroll in new policies in 2014 will do so with the aid of a tax credit and will pay less or a comparable price for more comprehensive coverage. Approximately 48 percent “of people now buying their own insurance would be eligible for a tax credit that would offset their premium,” Kaiser estimates. More than one million “will be eligible for Medicaid starting in 2014.” That leaves 2.1 million to 2.4 million Americans who are too wealthy to qualify for assistance and will have to pay more for insurance under the new system.
Compare that to the 5 million Americans who fall into the coverage gap. They are the working poor cashiers, cooks, nurses’ aides, waiters and waitresses who were intended to benefit the most under reform, yet will continue to struggle to afford coverage as a result of the GOP’s political calculations. “Blacks are disproportionately affected,” the New York Times recently reported, “largely because more of them are poor and living in Southern states. In all, 6 out of 10 blacks live in the states not expanding Medicaid.”
Yet the very same Republican lawmakers and conservative advocacy groups who have seized on the cancellation notices to argue that the law has failed are actively campaigning to prevent states from expanding public health insurance to these people. They claim that expansion would cost states millions, even though the federal government will pick up nearly all of the costs of coverage (100 percent for the first three years, phasing down to 90 percent in 2020 and all subsequent years), paying nearly 93 percent the cost over the next nine years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

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White Anti-Gay Activist Wins Election After Pretending To Be Black

By Ian Millhiser on November 9, 2013 at 9:31 am

Dave Wilson: not black

An electrician best known for mailing homophobic fliers to thousands of Houston voters attacking the city’s lesbian mayor narrowly won an election to the Houston Community College Board of Trustees after he misled voters into believing that he is African American. Dave Wilson defeated longtime incumbent Bruce Austin, who actually is black, in an overwhelmingly African American district.
Wilson’s campaign fliers were filled with black faces that he admits to simply pulling off of websites, along with captions such as “Please vote for our friend and neighbor Dave Wilson.” Another flier announces that he was “Endorsed by Ron Wilson,” which is the name of an African American former state representative. Only by reading the fine print will voters discover that the “Ron Wilson” who actually endorsed Dave is his cousin. The cousin lives in Iowa.
In an interview with a local TV station, the anti-gay activist turned higher education policymaker did not deny that he intended to mislead the electorate, instead justifying his actions by claiming that “[e]very time a politician talks, he’s out there deceiving voters.”

It’s worth noting that Wilson was likely able to get within striking range of a 24-year incumbent member of the board due to a wave of scandals involving insider dealing by board members. Nevertheless, he defeated the incumbent Austin by just 26 votes, so it is likely that Wilson’s deceptive campaign tactics helped push him over the edge to victory.
The Houston Community College Board of Trustees governs the college and has the power to approve the school’s “educational program.” Previously, Wilson unsuccessfully tried to scuttle the campaign of victorious Houston mayoral candidate Annise Parker by mailing a flier to 35,000 voters featuring a picture of Parker standing by her same-sex partner and the caption “IS THIS THE IMAGE HOUSTON WANTS TO PORTRAY?”

Parker told a local news station that he opposed Parker because “[t]he openly gay lifestyle leads to extinction.”

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A Mass Shooting Happened Yesterday But You Didn’t Hear Anything About It

By Annie-Rose Strasser on November 8, 2013 at 11:03 am

CREDIT: AP

On Thursday, a man reportedly dressed in body armor ran into a crowded room and opened fire with a high-powered assault-style rifle, killing three and injuring six. But television stations didn’t cut away to report on the horrific event. In fact, it’s likely this is the first you’re hearing about it.
What makes this shooting different? Several things. First, it happened in Detroit, a city with a staggeringly high murder rate. Second, the reported gunman had a criminal history, and may have had a longstanding feud with some of the victims. And, third, it happened in a space where many people can’t imagine themselves: a gambling session in the back room of a barber shop.
But the quotes coming out of the shooting at Al’s Place Barber Shop are as heartbreaking as those you’d hear anywhere.
“Police wear body armor. Why would a community member be driving around in body armor?” asked Detroit Police Chief James Craig in a press conference following the shooting. Craig called the violence “urban terrorism.”
“I’m angry that it happened. I’m angry that people are dead,” Arnold Redmond, one of those injured in shooting, told the Detroit Free Press. Redmond also insisted that the shooting had nothing to do with “the barbershop or any of the people associated with it.”
Sadly, the relative media ignorance of the shooting tracks with a common theme: Gun crimes often occur in low-income neighborhoods with largely non-white victims, but, from the news, you’d think every shooting put the white and affluent at risk of violence. There’s an obvious reason from a producer’s perspective: They want traffic, or viewers, and think they can get more if more well-off news consumers are self-concerned with the story. But it doesn’t reflect the reality of gun violence in the United States, where black people are far more likely to be victims of gun homicides compared to their white counterparts.
The three victims have been identified as Joezell Williams, 61, Bryan Williams, 29, and Kevin Perryman, 40. Police say each one was shot at least twice.

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