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#FullRepeal Daily Digest

Washington Post: GOP has claimed control of Va. Senate, forced Democrats to cave over Medicaid impasse

  • Virginia Republicans snatched control of the state Senate on Monday, immediately ending a budget stalemate by pushing Democrats to agree to pass a spending plan without Medicaid expansion, Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s top priority.
  • The power shift forced Senate Democrats to yield after a protracted standoff that had threatened to shut down state government in less than a month, according to several lawmakers with direct knowledge of the deal. Democratic negotiators agreed in a closed-door meeting Monday to pass a budget without expanding health coverage to 400,000 low-income Virginians.
  • [RELATED] The Wall Street Journal: Virginia Drama Puts Spotlight on Medicaid Expansion Holdouts
    • Perhaps more revealing is the fact that, some two years after the Medicaid expansion became available for states, 24 still have not done so. Of those only five – Indiana, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Utah and Virginia – are even considering it, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
    • And of the states that haven’t moved and aren’t debating the expansion, only Florida, Maine and Wisconsin have competitive state elections this year in which a Democrat could feasibly win and seek to change the dynamic.
    • President Barack Obama spent some time in the last year trying to pressure Republican governors who had resisted the Medicaid expansion – Bobby Jindal in Louisiana, Rick Scott in Florida and Rick Perry in Texas, to name three. But those efforts largely petered out as the White House turned its focus to saving endangered Democratic senators.

Politico: VA report: Months-long waits for 57,000-plus vets

  • The examination of 731 VA hospitals and large outpatient clinics, released Monday, found that more than 57,000 veterans have been waiting more than 90 days for an initial appointment. Over the past 10 years, 64,000 people who enrolled in the department’s health care system never have had appointments.
  • Revelations about an Arizona VA facility’s use of secret lists to hide long waits for appointments started the furor that led to Eric Shinseki’s resignation as secretary in late May. But the audit, first reported by The Associated Press, found that type of deception was hardly rare and by no means limited to Phoenix. Eight percent of VA schedulers said they have used an alternative waiting list. Another 13 percent said their supervisors directed them to falsify appointment dates to hide the true wait times, a practice that occurred at least once in 76 percent of VA facilities.

Fox News Poll: Voters regret ObamaCare, say country is worse off under new law

  • Less than a third of voters believes that the government will do a better job with ObamaCare than the VA did managing care for vets (31 percent). Over half believe it won’t (55 percent).
  • By a 55-38 percent margin, people wish the Affordable Care Act had never passed and the 2009 system were still in place. That includes a quarter of Democrats (25 percent), a majority of independents (58 percent) and most Republicans (85 percent). Over half of voters under age 35 (53 percent) along with a majority of those ages 65 and over (58 percent) regret ObamaCare passed.
  • In addition, by a double-digit margin, more voters say the country is worse off under the new health care law: 44 percent worse off vs. 29 percent better off. Another one voter in four says ObamaCare hasn’t made much of a difference either way (24 percent).

Huffington Post: Trader Joe's Proves That Obamacare Can Free Us From the Wrong Jobs [the example in this column is unintentionally illuminating: a woman who worked 9 years at Trader Joe's has left her job to become a full-time labor organizer]

  • She had spent about nine years working for the grocer -- several years longer than she'd anticipated when she first came on. A change seemed long overdue. By the end of January, O'Rourke had enrolled in Obamacare and left the Trader Joe's crew. "Honestly, the health insurance was one of the the few things keeping me there," O'Rourke, 37, said.
  • In O'Rourke's case, the new coverage has given her the chance to become a full-time labor organizer. She's wrapping up her undergraduate degree in labor studies and plans to help launch a worker center in Indianapolis…"It's quite a bit less [her taxpayer subsidized Obamacare plan] and the coverage as far as I can tell is pretty similar [to the Trader Joe's plan]," said O'Rourke. The one clear distinction is that her new plan doesn't include vision and dental.

Washington Free Beacon: Obamacare Penalty to Hit One Million Low-Income Americans 200,000 earning less than 100 percent of the poverty level to pay fine

  • The CBO estimated that four million people would pay the individual mandate penalty for not having health insurance by 2016 as a result of the president’s health care law, according to a report released last week.
  • All told, CBO and [the Joint Committee on Taxation] JCT estimate that about four million people will pay a penalty because they are uninsured in 2016 (a figure that includes uninsured dependents who have the penalty paid on their behalf),” the report said. “An estimated $4 billion will be collected from those who are uninsured in 2016, and, on average, an estimated $5 billion will be collected per year over the 2017–2024 period.”
  • A chart accompanying the report revealed that 200,000 of those paying the penalty earn less than 100 percent of the poverty line. An additional 800,000 are considered low-income, earning between 100 and 199 percent of the poverty level.

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