The most progressive part of the Affordable Care Act is working the best. There’s no doubt that the craptacular launch of Healthcare.gov will go down in history with the vice-presidential nomination of Sarah Palin as one of the early 21st century’s great unforced errors. Calling it Obama’s Katrina is absurd, but we can’t ignore the fact that people will die […]

Something very dangerous is going on in America: People are taking Republicans’ concern trolling about health care seriously. Of course, I have a lot of sympathy for people who are finding that their health insurance plans are cancelled and they’ll have to pay more to get the coverage they have. But I have no sympathy for those who are pretending […]

As we try to judge the short-term winners and losers from the Affordable Care Act, you can’t deny that it’s terrible to find out that your insurance plan has been cancelled. It happened all the time before Obamacare when it was a much worse fate, as there was a chance that no insurance might cover you again because of a […]

Finding out that your health insurance plan has been cancelled is terrible — especially when you have cancer. This practice, known as recision, was one of the worst and first insurance industry abuses banned by the Affordable Care Act, along with annual caps on coverage and pre-existing conditions for kids. Discovering that your insurance policy doesn’t cover much of anything […]

Even before the government shutdown, seniors were turning against the GOP. Rampant extremism had shaken the confidence of older Americans who were most responsible for giving the House back to the Republican Party in 2010. The shutdown combined with the second threat of a debt default — that would delay Social Security checks — in three years seems was too […]

You’ve probably seen the new Gallup numbers that show that for the first time a majority of Americans want to legalize marijuana: With 58% of Americans supporting legalization, that makes it even more popular than the now very popular institution of same-sex marriage: Both are far more popular than the now unprecedentedly unpopular Republican Party, which is almost as unpopular […]

I understand the anger at Senator Ted Cruz. The junior senator from Texas — enabled by a feckless Speaker Boehner — has led an effort that has cost the economy at least $24 billion, putting Americans out of work while millions are still in need of jobs. Enabled by a vast network of right wingers funded by billionaires terrified by […]

You know the GOP is ridiculous. They discovered the deficit they created on the day President Obama was inaugurated. They ran against Medicare reforms that they then adopted in their budget. They shut down the government then demanded negotiations they rejected 19 times. They spent much of the this useless government shutdown yelling at people for things they shut down […]

Go blue. When Michigan-native Mitt Romney went on his “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” tour, people missed his point. The future GOP nominee didn’t want the auto industry to go out of business — he wanted to use the financial crisis to bust the auto workers unions. He wanted the Big Three to survive just without the careers that helped create […]

Why can’t Elizabeth Warren and Ted Cruz debate… for America? Being against “government” is generally a pretty easy gig. You just blame it for everything you don’t like. The last week has become a spectacle of Republicans having to admit over and over again that government does good, necessary things that aren’t being funded because the House won’t even vote […]

Gerrymandered from reality Everything is working out as well as it possibly could for people like me who wanted to see the Tea Party get the fight over Obamacare they wanted. Speaker John Boehner hoped to focus his caucus on negotiating about over the debt limit, as public overwhelmingly believes that raising it should be tied to spending cuts. Tea […]