Maybe a small hint here that Speaker Boehner wants to make a real move on immigration reform.
From TPM Reader SF …
I’ve an Obamacare story – a happy one! – I thought I’d share with you, because I suspect I’m representative of a demographic that’s not getting a lot of ink.
I’ve bought health insurance on the individual market for a decade. Since 2007, when my youngest was born, I’ve had the same BC&BS policy to cover the whole family (me, wife, two kids, no major health issues). It’s roughly equivalent to a silver plan, albeit a fairly tarnished silver—no maternity, for instance—and it’s more than doubled in the past six years, from $684 a month in ’07 to $1,457 now. Our plan is grandfathered, so we could keep it, a fact BC&BS reminded us of in a cheery mailer. If we did nothing, we’d be rolled over onJanuary 1 with a new premium of $1,549 a month for our same silvery plan.
Who knows whether Healthcare.gov is “fixed”. That’s a semantic and polemical point. But it seems to be working dramatically better than it did in the initial weeks of the Obamacare roll out. If that’s true, does this open a new chapter in the roll out of health care reform and the politics surrounding it? Or will the press narrative stay the same and we’re still basically on the hard, brutal slog we’ve been on for two months. We’re discussing that question now at The Hive (sub. req.).
If you haven’t read it yet, check out this story about a man who survived for three days in an air pocket in a sunken ship on the Atlantic seafloor just off the coast of Nigeria. He was discovered and rescued by a diving team that was there simply to recover bodies. There’s a extraordinary moment when one of the divers sees the hand of what he assumes is a corpse, grabs it and then feels it grab back. It’s a classic feel good story. The video is amazing. But reading the piece, marveling at this guy’s amazing luck, I kept thinking of the countless people who have been in some similar position and met the totally predictable, close to inevitable conclusion of the story – with plenty of time to grasp the sheer hopelessness of their predicament.
Monica Warhol, cousin to Andy (once removed), who was ten when Warhol died in 1987: “My grandfather and Andy’s father were brothers. My Aunt Betty took me to the cemetery every week, where we’d pray over Andy’s grave, because my aunt said he was pretty flaky and was probably in purgatory.”
She’s a painter too. And Warhol fan Kanye West has commissioned her to paint Kim Kardashian … Whatever. But the quote is amazing.
House Republicans float the impeachment option but way on the down low.
Today over at TPM Cafe Book Club, we have an excerpt from NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik’s book, Murdoch’s Word: The Last of the Old Media Empires. Today’s excerpt takes a fun, gossipy look inside Fox News’ buildup in the Obama era.
Don’t forget that we’re hosting a chat with Folkenflik himself on Friday at noon.
There’s one issue that hasn’t gotten a lot of discussion in the health care reform roll out debate. And that is imperfect knowledge and the sheer complexity of insurance. One of the promises – and I think to a real extent the realities – of the exchange sites is that it gives the average consumer some ability to make apples to apples comparisons between policies. But that still doesn’t mean everything is clear.
Sometimes I just have to believe that Politico is in an arms race to publish the most ridiculous crap imaginable. Today was a banner date. In the new issue of Politico magazine, columnist Daniel Allott (currently the Dean the SlatePitch School of Journalism) argues that far from being a liability, Chris Christie’s weight will likely be a big asset in a potential 2016 presidential – apparently as a signal to show that the party is not out of touch with obese, middle-aged white men. Really.
Dick Cheney rebukes gay daughter Mary for publicly criticizing straight daughter Liz Cheney for opposition gay marriage.