Insurance buyers used to be able to get reimbursed for over-the-counter drugs used for certain ailments, and now approximately 15 thousand over-the-counter products will be subject to a new procedure under Obamacare which will cost the taxpayers addition money.Considering this was deliberately written into the Obamacare law, passed by Democratic party line vote in the House of Representatives and the Senate, both controlled by Democrats, then signed by Barack Obama, no one can claim this was an "unintended consequence."
Some 45 million people are about to lose a key tax break in health care. Starting in January, they'll have to get what amounts to a prescription from a doctor in order to get reimbursed for over-the-counter medications such as cold and flu remedies or allergy medicines.
As recently as yesterday it was being reported that Barack Obama was still insisting that negative publicity is the reason voters are opposed to Obamacare, that it is politics via "negative ads" that is forming voter's opinion on the issue.
"I think that you've seen a couple hundred million dollars of negative TV ads that make it very difficult to do so," Obama told radio host Michael Smerconish when asked about many congressional Democrats' efforts to distance themselves from the legislation.
The new health reform law has been a political albatross for many Democrats facing tough reelection challenges. Polls show that a not-insignificant number of voters would like to repeal the law in part or in whole.
Reps. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) and Bobby Bright (D-Ala.) have joined with Republicans in demanding the law's repeal, and West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin (D), who's campaigning for Senate, has said the law should be repealed if it can't be fixed.
The president blamed "misinformation" during the congressional debate over healthcare for having negatively cast the reforms, misinformation that Obama said had carried over through present day.
But Obama expressed confidence that, as the reforms in the bill gradually go into effect, the public's negative opinion of the legislation would fade.
Obama would do well to remember, articles about the consequences for American taxpayers, like the one above, has nothing to do with negative ads and everything to do with Obamacare, a horrible piece of legislation that was passed over the opposition of the majority of American voters and in a completely partisan vote.
Bottom line, Democrats passed it, Obama signed it into law and now the public is getting a taste of what is in it.
National Journal explains what Obama means for the 2010 midterm elections.
Election Day isn’t until Tuesday, but the postgame spin has already begun. Conventional wisdom is blaming Democrats’ expected poor performance on the lousy economy. Democrats blame the influx of outside money. And Republicans are thanking Nancy Pelosi.
But the reality that Democrats hate to discuss – and even some Republicans have been hesitant to fully embrace – is that the party’s signature health care law is what’s turning a bad election year into a disaster of potential history-making proportions.
It was the debate over health care that propelled now-Sen. Scott Brown’s unlikely special election victory in Massachusetts back in January. And it’s the growing unpopularity of the new law that’s fueling Republican energy, turning off independents and jeopardizing the prospects of dozens of Democrats who looked like locks for reelection just a year ago.
There’s no doubt that the health care bill is unpopular. A new Battleground Poll shows 54 percent opposed to it, 40 percent strongly. This weeks' Society for Human Resource Management/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll, conducted with the Pew Research Center, showed voters favor repealing the law by a 10-point margin, 51 to 41 percent. Republicans have been hammering Democrats across the country over their votes for the legislation, even in solidly Democratic states and districts. Of the many Democratic lawmakers in trouble, only a brave and principled few, such as Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., and Rep. Scott Murphy, D-N.Y., have even mentioned their support for the bill – and the latest polls have both trailing in their reelection bids.
The article goes on to explain that politicians, Democratic politicians, that opposed Obamacare are in better shape politically than their counterparts that did vote for it.
Barack Obama is living in an alternate universe and completely disconnected with the reality of this one.
Perhaps that is why 56 percent of likely voters want him fired and 48 percent believe Bush was a better President than Obama is.
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