As GOPers pretend Obamacare beneficiaries don’t exist, number of uninsured falls again

[TomCADem]

The ability of the GOP to ignore facts on issues such as climate change and Healthcare illustrates the power of a corporate funded right wing media to push fictional narratives.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/04/07/morning-plum-as-gopers-pretend-ocare-beneficiaries-dont-exist-number-of-uninsured-falls-again/

The Republican response to news that Obamacare has hit seven million sign-ups has been to assert that we don’t know how many people previously were covered. That’s a fair point — even proponents of the law raise it, in arguing for caution about what the seven million number really tells us. But as Larry Levitt has explained, Gallup’s continuing findings will count as further evidence that the net number of uninsured is indeed falling.

And yet some GOP lawmakers are clinging to the idea that the number of cancellations is higher than the number who gained insurance, proving a net drop in those covered. Mitch McConnell is hanging on to this claim by his fingernails, falsely insisting that this is the case in Kentucky, where hundreds of thousands have signed up through kynect, the state exchange. Meanwhile, as Sahil Kapur details, other GOP lawmakers are continuing the drumbeat that the law is nothing but an unremitting catastrophe, probably because the GOP base cannot accept any other version of reality.

As we’ve seen in the case of Americans for Prosperity’s ads, the individual horror stories have withered away under scrutiny — call it the “Incredible Shrinking Obamacare Sob Story.” Now we’re seeing that the broader GOP narrative about the law — that even if it hit sign-up targets, overall it has hurt more people than it has helped — is also getting whittled away by more and more evidence. Of course, it cannot be true that the law is functioning more or less as intended – Obamacare is fatally flawed; Republicans never entertained any other possibility – so therefore it isn’t.

And so you’ll continue to hear GOP lawmakers continue to paint the law — in rhetorical terms — as a uniform disaster. But that’s only part of the story. Some leading GOP candidates are, in fact, indicating an awareness that the politics of the law are shifting: North Carolina GOP Senate candidate Thom Tillis says that of course he’d replace Obamacare with something-or-other that accomplishes the same goals as Obamacare does. Michigan GOP Senate candidate Terri Land is making nice noises about the Medicaid expansion in the state. Scott Brown is equivocating on the expansion in New Hampshire. So you actually are seeing some GOP candidates attempting to adapt to a new reality in which Obamacare could actually work, even as they continue to denounce it as an irrevocable catastrophe.

[Blue Owl]

1. Mitch McConnell's got a Grim Fairy Tale for ya...

n/t