Revisiting Pat Toomey's Flawed "Defense" Of His Flawed Healthcare Bill

Hey, remember yesterday when we found out that Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey was misleaing you, his Pennsylvania constituents, about his Obamacare replacement bill?

Well, I'm not the only one.

Over at Whatifpost, Rob Cullen did basically the same thing (if by "basically" I can mean he covered more of Pat's disassembling with a wider range of information - hahahaha!).

Take a look at a few examples of Cullen's work.

Pat wrote:

The reason is simple: The foundation of Obamacare, a dramatically enhanced federal role in health insurance, has failed to deliver on the promises of its architects.

Rob countered:

Obamacare hasn’t delivered on every one of its promises, but it has inarguably delivered on its biggest: fewer people are uninsured than at any time in America’s history, and they have coverage that actually protects them when they get ill. Here’s the CBO’s coverage estimates for Obamacare vs. the House bill, which, like the Senate version, ends the Medicaid expansion and cuts tax credits to help purchase insurance:

Including some art:

Then there's this from Pat:

Millions, who liked their plans and their doctors, couldn’t keep them.

And this from Rob:

Only 2.2% of Americans who purchased coverage on their own (400,000 people), and just 0.3% of Americans with coverage through their employer (500,000 people), had their health insurance policies cancelled when the ACA took effect in 2014. Not millions.

Now on this one I have to call a technical. 900,000 is close to a being million and a million  is close to being "millions" so I guess technically what Pat said  is close to being true.

Haha.  I'm only kidding.  Pat's BSing us all here, too.

But here's some bigly BS from our junior Senator:

Republicans have begun the process to roll back this misguided experiment, and the first step is to address the most immediate challenges presented by Obamacare’s collapse.

And from Rob:

Again, the CBO has made it clear that Obamacare was not on the verge of collapse.

Had I written this, I have to be honest, I would have gone with a few other links than Vox.

Like these:

• Snope:

  Republicans repeatedly claim that Obamacare is in a “death spiral,” collapsing of its own weight. This is wishful thinking on their part, with little evidence to support it.

• The Washington Times:

  Obamacare in a death spiral? It’s been a mantra of Republicans, who say the law is collapsing and they are riding to the rescue.
  
  But the Congressional Budget Office, in a little-noticed part of its report last week, said that is not the case. In fact, the CBO analysts said, Obamacare’s exchanges are likely to “be stable in most areas” under the existing law.
  
  The analysts said the key is the tax subsidies the government provides to most of those buying plans on the exchanges. As premiums go up, so does the amount the government pays out to help people buy their coverage — meaning there will always be a pool of customers.

• CBO:

  Under current law, most subsidized enrollees purchasing health insurance coverage in the nongroup market are largely insulated from increases in premiums because their out-of-pocket payments for premiums are based on a percentage of their income; the government pays the difference. The subsidies to purchase coverage combined with the penalties paid by uninsured people stemming from the individual mandate are anticipated to cause sufficient demand for insurance by people with low health care expenditures for the market to be stable.

Did Pat get anything right in his defense of his cruel bill?

Rob Cullen gets the last word:

Over a million Pennsylvanians rely on [Obamacare] for coverage, and the Senate bill (which Toomey apparently supports) guts the funding that makes their coverage affordable. It then goes a step forward and guts federal funding for traditional Medicaid, putting Pennsylvania’s disabled, children, and elderly at risk.