There is much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over the horrible GOP repeal of Obamacare.



One newly formed progressive super PAC is planning to cart caskets to Republican lawmakers' districts and hold mock funerals for their constituents. Another activist is encouraging protesters to ship their own ashes — should they die without health care —to GOP lawmakers. And other progressive groups are planning graphic "die-in" protests as they work to derail GOP plans to repeal Obamacare.

People are righteously upset over this setback.

It's so important to defeat the Obamacare repeal that even Bernie Sanders agreed to put off the Medicare-for-all bill in order to unite in defense of Obamacare.

Just listen to how this Democratic President denounced the legislation.



Former President Bill Clinton steamrolled President Obama’s signature healthcare law at a rally, calling it “the craziest thing in the world.”

Hmmm. OK. How did that quote get in there?

Wrong president. Let's listen to President Obama explain why Obamacare needs to be defended.



The point is, now is not the time to move backwards on health care reform. Now is the time to move forward. The problems that may have arisen from the Affordable Care Act is [sic] not because government is too involved in the process. The problem is, is that we have not reached everybody and pulled them in. And think about it. When one of these companies comes out with a new smartphone and it had a few bugs, what do they do? They fix it. They upgrade—unless it catches fire, and they just—then they pull it off the market. But you don’t go back to using a rotary phone. You don’t say, well, we’re repealing smartphones—we’re just going to do the dial-up thing. That’s not what you do.

Yes. Very well put.

We need to defend Obamacare because it only sometimes catches fire.

Wait a sec. What?

We're getting off-track here. The important thing is that Trump is breaking Obamacare!



Health insurers are asking for sharp increases in the cost of their Obamacare plans next year, thanks to instability in the law’s coverage markets that’s been compounded by the Trump administration.

In Maryland, Virginia and Connecticut -- the first states to make filings public -- premiums for Affordable Care Act plans will rise more than 20 percent on average, according to data compiled by ACASignups.net and Bloomberg...

The increases can be blamed in part on uncertainty among insurers about the strength of the law’s requirement that people carry insurance. The Trump administration has raised doubts about whether it will enforce what is considered by some insurers to be an already insufficient penalty.

Yes. Exactly. It's Trump's fault for the premiums going up.

Before Trump everything was fine.

As concerns about the survival of the Affordable Care Act’s markets intensify, the role of nonprofit “co-op” health insurers -- meant to broaden choices under the law -- has gained prominence. Most of the original 23 co-ops have failed, dumping more than 800,000 members back onto the ACA markets over the last two years.

OK, well not "fine", but certainly not a death spiral.



One of the biggest industry critics has been Aetna Inc. Earlier in the day, CEO Mark Bertolini said the markets were “in a death spiral,” predicting that more health insurers will quit in 2018, following Humana Inc.’s decision this week to exit entirely next year.

All right, that's just one insurer's opinion. It isn't shared by anyone else.



The head of the largest insurer in the Mid-Atlantic region warned Thursday that the Affordable Care Act marketplaces were in the early stages of a death spiral, a statement that came as the company announced its request for massive, double-digit premium increases for next year.

Hold on just one minute. At least people will be insured under Obamacare as long as Trump doesn't repeal it.



At least 40,000 people in the Knoxville area may have no health plans to pick from in the Affordable Care Act’s markets after insurer Humana Inc. opted to pull out from all 11 states where it still sell plans in 2018.



You didn't let me finish. I meant to say at least people will be insured under Obamacare as long as Trump doesn't repeal it AND they don't live in Tennessee.



The vast majority of counties in Iowa could have zero insurers on the ObamaCare exchanges next year after another company announced it may not participate in 2018.

Medica said in a statement Wednesday it would pull out of the exchanges if Congress does not move quickly to stabilize the markets.

Or Iowa. I meant Tennessee OR Iowa, obviously.



To summarize, we must unite to defend health insurance legislation that is “the craziest thing in the world”, and that sometimes "catches fire", that its premiums rise more than 20 percent on average every year, that is in a "death spiral", and that is vanishing in large parts of America.

We must use all our resources to defend the this status-quo, and that's why we can't have Medicare-for-all.

It makes perfect sense.