Yet More Healthcare Nonsense Debunked

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


No, healthcare reform will not cost America 800,000 jobs. (Link.) What’s next up to bat? Oh yes: the claim that the Chicago thugs in the White House are engaged in naked corruption by granting waivers from the law to organizations friendly to the Democratic Party. Take it away, Suzy:

Now an audit by the Government Accountability Office—the investigative watchdog of Congress—has blown the GOP attack out of the water….According to the GAO, the Obama administration granted waivers if following the new health-care regulations would raise premiums for employers by more than 10 percent. It generally rejected applications if the premiums would rise by 6 percent or less. Overall, the Obama administration “approved 1,347—more than 95 percent—of the applications in their entirety, while rejecting 25 in part and 40 in whole,” The Hill reports.

What’s more, “according to the GAO’s data, the majority of denials were for plans that covered union employees,” the House Energy and Commerce Democrats pointed out on Tuesday. Such evidence further deflates the GOP accusation that unions were getting a disproportionate number of waivers because of their political ties to the Democratic Party.

This stuff is never going to stop, of course. The party that brought you death panels is unlikely to let facts get in their way, after all. By this time next year we’ll probably be hearing that Obamacare deliberately favors illegal immigrants over hardworking white people, leading to thousands of deaths of people who probably would have voted against The One in November. Brace yourselves.

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate