The Miracle of the Obvious

By Bill Maher

According to the Washington Post, Republican candidates are beginning to retreat from their hardline “repeal Obamacare” stance. Michigan Senate candidate Terri Land “applauds” the expansion of Medicaid into her state, and Oregon's Monica Wehby talks about all the provisions she'd like to keep. Scott Brown hates it, but acknowledges that it has allowed his 23 year-old daughter to stay on his plan. Even Mitch McConnell's new campaign spot talks about “fixing” the law.

Part of the reason for the retreat is that fewer than 40% of voters now favor repeal. But Republicans are also backing away from their direst predictions because they have turned out to be 100% wrong. The moving goalposts of “No one will sign up” and “No one will pay” are dead and buried, again without apology. But the website “California Healthline” detailed all the other myriad ways the scaremongers have turned out to be full of shit.

They said a wave of seriously ill patients would swamp the system – but when you think of it, shouldn’t sick people get to go to doctors? In reality, it’s been a trickle of new patients – roughly the same number in first quarter of 2014 as there were in 2013. Also, the predictions that hospitals would see a skyrocketing of uncompensated care costs turns out to be wrong. Quite the opposite – as the CEO of the University of Arkansas Medical Center put it, “We have seen a steady decline in our uninsured visits. We did not anticipate this big a drop this quickly.”

What? Insuring millions of uninsured people has led to a decline in the number of uninsured people? Who could’ve seen that coming? Sadly, a lot of people didn’t, thanks to four years of relentless and nonsensical propaganda.