CJ John Roberts now bringing up the fact that the Obama Admin argued that the mandate penalty was "critical" in 2012; why is it no longer "critical"...Verrilli (for the defense) makes exactly my point: The situation was very different in 2012 vs. 2020.
Verrilli correctly notes that the carrot (financial subsidies) simply turned out to be far more important than the stick (mandate penalty).
Put another way: GOP cut off most of the red leg...which was then replaced by the World's Most Expensive Shim®.
Verrilli correctly notes that THE SITUATION CHANGED BETWEEN 2010 AND 2017.
In 2010, virtually every insurance carrier said they wouldn't participate in the ACA exchanges without a mandate. If that had happened, the law *would* have failed *at that time*. 2017 wasn't 2010.
Exactly. Zeroing the mandate did cause *some* damage to the indy market, but not nearly as much as feared. Just because the Obama Admin thought it was “vital” in 2012 (mostly to keep carriers from bailing in the early, shaky days) doesn’t mean it’s still “vital” today.
2019 premiums (the first year after the penalty was zeroed out) were indeed about $580/year higher specifically due to this reason than the would’ve been otherwise for unsubsidized enrollees...but that’s a fender bender, not a totaled car.
Counties w/highest #COVID19 cases per capita: 1. Lincoln County, AR 2. Norton County, KS 3. Chattahoochee County, GA 4. Bon Homme County, SD 5. Trousdale County, TN 6. Buffalo County, SD 7. Lafayette County, FL 8. Lake County, TN 9. Dakota County, NE 10. Buena Vista County, IA
2/
⚠️ 18% of the entire population of Lincoln County, Arkansas has now tested positive for #COVID19.
⚠️ 80 of the 100 counties w/the highest known infection rate were won by Donald Trump in 2016 by more than 6 points.
3/
Add the 1.2 million from NY and that's 3.8 million. Add in missing ballots from other states and it could be as many as, what, 5 million total nationally?
Assume Biden wins 3/5 of those and that's an extra 3.8 million for him + another 1.2 million for Trump, or 79.4M to 72.4M.
To everyone posting that "Buffalo Chronicle" story claiming that Biden has picked Mitt Romney for HHS, did you bother checking some of their other stories?
I mean for God's sake...I'd love to see every house get a solar roof in the next decade, but I'm pretty sure nothing this extensive (or expensive) is part of Biden's green energy plan:
There's no byline on any of these stories, by the way. Just slapping high-profile names into cabinet positions.
I don’t agree with everything in this thread but most of it is on target. Dems turned out in record numbers...but GOP voters did as well. The GOP voters who flipped for Biden didn’t down ballot, and it sure as hell wasn’t because those red district Dems didn’t support M4A or GND.
The thing about “waves” is they tend to recede. Candidates in some of those gerrymandered districts weren’t expected to flip them in the first place; it was only due to high Dem turnout AND relatively low GOP turnout in 2018 that they did. In 2020 they had high turnout of both.
Biden will end up with ~77 million votes or so; Trump with ~72 million. That’s 11 & 9 million more respectively. We were hoping Trump had hit his ceiling in 2016. If he had, then ~9 million fewer Republicans would’ve voted down ballot this year...mostly in those red districts.