They don't want to repeal Obamacare.

They want to roll back the 3.8% NIIT.

And make the middle class pay for it.

What's the Matter with (Kentucky), indeed.

In a so-called democracy, people have an inalienable right to be stupid and to vote against their best interests.

Of course, if they insist on exercising that right, they should have the decency not to complain afterwards about the consequences of their stupidity.

Pretty much the reference implementation of "Low Information Voter"

speaking as a person who grew up within spittin distance of KY, they wont turn on the GOP because abortion. and the blacks.

end of thinking process.

Just a reminder: It takes a two-thirds majority in the House AND the Senate to override a Presidential veto. So, barring other developments, there's zero chance of an actual repeal becoming law during Obama's remaining term.

Now, it's still conceivable that Republicans will find some way to screw with the funding, but even if they achieve majorities in both houses of Congress, their only legislative option on healthcare would be to pass something better to replace it, like ferinstance, Single Payer/Medicare-For-All. Which, for them, is really no option.

BTW, somebody needs to call those shitheads on their bullshit "Repeal And Replace" slogan. Replace, sure. Pass something better to supplant ACA, fine. But, repeal? That leaves us with nothing, and they'll never get around to (have no intention of) passing anything to replace it. Replace means replaces what's there. There's no need for a separate step of repealing. But, they know this, and they don't want anything to replace it. Their slogan is pure deception. They just want to kill it.

Obamacare is a moot point. It's here to stay and will only get improved with GOP input. In the meantime, please be respectful of Ms. Evan's constitutional rights and privileges.

@ 9, what do you mean by respect? To accept without criticism? That's not respect.

My money is on Ms Evan's having no idea whatsoever that the reason she was able to get Medicaid is because of Obama and ACA (Obamacare). Nor does she understand that if McConnell had his way she wouldn't have gotten Medicaid.

I'd also wager that even if that was explained to her she wouldn't believe it. No matter how much evidence one produced she would just refuse to believe it.

"Keep your Socialist hands off my Medicare!"

Kentucky isn't exactly known for its high intelligence, otherwise they wouldn't still live there...

@16-gnot, really good post and I'm copying it here so others who may not read unregistered, ( like me most of the time) can.

--One helpful comment I read on the NYT article is that Republicans in KY, even poor ones, especially poor ones, don't want to see themselves as dependent on the state. There's a lot of shame associated with it, about being one of "those people". They'd rather pay a little for crap insurance that would drop them if they got sick than nothing for extremely good insurance from the state, because it makes them feel like good independent hard working Americans. They've been taught to hate those who need financial help from the state, the last thing they want to be is someone in need of that help. But you try finding a good paying job in KY that has decent and affordable health insurance. Those jobs barely exist, and then definitely not for people w/o college degrees. It's easy to think these people are stupid. It's just that they've never been shown how thoroughly they are being screwed, and how high the deck is stacked against them, and that they are voting for those who use the legitimate pride they have for the hard struggle they've been in their whole lives just to make their way in a bleak financial landscape against them. It's one of the reasons why poor people buy more expensive brand names (Coke vs generic soda) than rich people do. The scraps of pride you can retain when you know other people look down on you for being poor (when you are taught to look down on yourself for this failure in the land of opportunity) are importa

Grrr... End of #17 should read-- " are important. ".

Trying to get logic or reason out of a person from Kentucky is like asking a pig for directions from Natchez to Mobile--dang knows how he got there, and darn tootin' he don't know where he's been.

Yes yes, we're all better than those people from Kentucky.

Now that you're done with your circle jerk, could I press upon y'all to recall the study which demonstrated that poorer people make worse decisions, because of the constant stress? Maybe we could work on solving that issue, while also addressing what gnot @16 alludes to, the socialization of the poor stigma.

Or we could just sit here and enjoy feeling superior to people from Kentucky.

It's not just the south. I went to high school with a idiotic woman who married a moronic "radio personality" (conservative radio, of course) who fell off the roof about eight years ago. He survived, but is disabled and dependent on government assistance, as well as many, many write-offs at the local hospital (they trot him out as a success story to help recoup the loss)

Luckily, she recently got a government, union, job (secretary at our old Junior High) so they now have medical coverage, but they were very much dependent on the ACA for a few years. Yet she regularly rails against both it and the president on her FB page.

@20 Amen.

We lefty teee-huggers embraced (mostly) Obama, despite his continued warring, continued support of unconstitutional shadow projects, etc etc. We tolerate/accept/justify his failures and, yes, deceptions, in exchange for those things we like: ACA and less-conservative domestic policies.

If KY votes for Mitch, it's because he is (thought to be) accomplishing things for that region that others might not. Earmarks, govt projects... and, yes, full-on harrasment of Obama (cause, he's Mooslim). Mitch's oppostion to ACA is a non-factor, until he actually gets really close to pulling that plug. Then... It will be a different story - and he won't do it.

@20, That's exactly the point. We're trying to solve that issue. We're doing everything we can to help solve that fucking issue and those fucking inbred idiots (Sorry 16 but having a reason for being stupid doesn't make you not stupid) have successfully stopped us in most of our attempts to help. In the next election there's a very good chance they're going to vote out the very people who have already helped and could potentially help in the future.

I'll agree with 9 on one thing. I believe Republican politicians will stop trying to repeal Obamacare the second they have a chance at success. Those cynical fuckers knew that it was a good law to start with and the only reason they were against it is that Obama's name was on it. I disagree that they will make any meaningful improvements to it. They'll just keep putting poison pills into it to siphon off as much money from it as possible to give it to insurance company CEO's until 75 years from now they've bankrupted it like they have Medicare (soon) and Social Security (a little less soon) and they can say it's a "failed socialist experiment".

"Obamacare" is not getting repealed, regardless of who gets elected. The minute that the sizable number of people who got healthcare through the program realize they would actually lose that healthcare, repeal will be off the table. The Republicans are just bashing the law in a cynical grab for votes.

The really annoying thing is that they're afraid of a TRUE free-market solution which would be (mandated) health savings accounts and no more insurance except for the truly poor. People could - gasp - shop and compare health care! Hospitals and clinics would actually have to - what's that word again? _ compete! But no supposedly free-market-worshipping GOP senator or house member wants to do anything but fellate their buddies in Big Insurance, because, y'know, they're Successful Businessmen, and therefore Randian supermen. It's all so insane.

#9 What the heck is a constitutional privilege? If she wants to be a dumbass in public, no one is stopping her from doing that. Free speech comes with the risk that someone will free speech right back at you and call you a dumbass if you don't know what the hell you are talking about. You dumbass.

By the way, the Affordable Care Act is only getting worse with more GOP input. There are now over 100 lawsuits from corporate "persons" claiming that it infringes on their right to worship . . . all claiming the partisan, sexist, anti-worker, anti-woman, anti-rational Hobby Lobby v Burwell decision as precedent.

The court said "why make these corporate persons pay for their employees' birth control against the corporation's religious beliefs: let the government (i.e., the rest of us) pay" . . . think the GOP is going to jump in and approve government-paid IUDs and condoms? Hah!

@20: I was born, raised, and continue to live as an adult in the Midwest, so I think it's my birthright to say that while there's plenty of ass-backwardness to go around in this region, Kentucky is its own special brand of stupid. Sorry, but there it is.

Too stupid for her own health.

A Southerner will always bite the hand that feeds him and kiss the hand that slaps him. To Boobus Confederatus, opposition to a first-trimester abortion is a perfectly valid reason to diminish the prospects of a living child.

I was raised poor and we were and are liberals. Poor is no excuse for idiocy.

@32

Okay. If not poverty, what is your excuse?

Kentucky-bashing (or any other region bashing) is as bad as racism.

Oh SB, I know by now you're not as bad as a Westboro member or anything, but you have to admit you're a conflict junkie of a sort. You don't even try to see others' point of view or engage in reasoned debate. You just provoke.

I'm actually a fan of agonistic discussion. But people like you give it a bad name by trolling in forums like this. Either debate methodically and politely, or don't bother.

@33: You're not one to talk about idiocy, Mr. My-Opinions-Trump-Supreme-Court-Rulings.
@34: I don't burn deep-dish pizzas on the lawns of New Yorkers. No, I just eat deep dish pizza and take joy in having decent pizza. The best revenge is living well...

This woman is a perfect example why I don't believe in democracy any longer. Democracy only works when you have a rational population with at least a moderate level of education. Democracy doesn't work when the people are generally a bunch of fucking morons.

And I don't care where she is from. If she were from Boston or Seattle or Chicago and thought this way she would be just as much of a moron. Kentucky may have a larger percentage per capita of morons than other states, or it may not. It doesn't really matter because the country as a whole has reached a critical mass of idiocy.

The only thing worse than a democracy of idiots is an oligarchy, which is where we are headed thanks to the idiots voting against their own best self-interests. We are quickly becoming a country ruled by a handful of powerful corporations who see the rest of us as nothing other than resources to be exploited.

@ 34, no it is not. It's not morally correct, but Kentuckians have suffered no discrimination, no lynchings, no disenfranchisement for simply being residents of the bluegrass state. They aren't the first laid off and the last hired. They aren't called uniquely hateful words like African Americans or Hispanics. Having no history comparable to those of racial minorities, your statement is absurd.

Do you agree?

@40 - I agree that it is a weak juxtaposition but both racism and regional-based insults are both inherently rude to our fellow citizens.

The trouble with the ACA is it was instituted by a *BLACK* man and we don't want anything from a negro man. They have cooties.

@ 41, racism is way worse than "rude." But I'll take it.

@25 In my years at the University of Chicago School of Economics {where I was Gary Becker's teaching assistant}, one of he great lessons I learned from Mr. Becker was the effects of unitizing a risk pool to minimize risk optimally. In fact, the lesson was that single payer health care was the ONLY solution that gave a socially optimal solution.

Since then, I have broadened my studies of health issues to realize the benefit to all of having good public heal for all. Kids today are not being vaccinated a high rates but can skate by from the beneficial effects of herd immunity. Of course, their kids will not be so lucky and the waves of preventable illness we have now will seem like the good old days when childhood illness becomes rampant. This is just one example. The lost productivity from people getting sick with preventable diseases where the societal benefit of treatment surpasses the costs of the treatment is another huge factor that universal health care from a single payer would bring about.

Now even though I no longer believe in a lot of the fairy stories I was taught at U of C {thinking that pareto optimality is anything but a tautology and inapplicable to a world of great transaction costs}, I think that markets too have benefits. But they also have failures. Stability is not assured by markets, markets will lead you to a local optimum but there is no guarantee of a global optimal solution {easily understood with calculus of variations}. So I would keep private insurance companies as administrators of single payer. They will have the incentive to compare costs, to develop understanding of how to minimize the costs that we all will be bearing. Consumers will have a choice of admistrator who each have a range of services they offer.

Last, get rid of barriers to entry in insurance. Make it a national market subject to tough auditing standards and oversight. In fact, state regulation, that darling of the right. is mostly about protectionism and cronyism and is a thorn in our sides.

The Euro and trade in Europe is in trouble because of structural differences in the economic challenges various countries face, not from the lowering of barriers to competition that the eurozone has brought. Trade unification, like insurance unification is a key to making sure resources are allocated efficiently which maximizes the pie for all. If we had uniform trade laws here int he US, we would be so much better off.

I remember once reading a quote by you, Dan, paraphrasing, "I'm done worrying about the needs of people who go to the ballot box and vote against me and mine." In other words, don't bother sending a sympathy card to this stupid, stupid, piece of shit woman.

@34, 41 - Not really. Actually, not even kind of. "Racism" carries with it all the trappings of power and privilege; regionalism, while certainly chauvinistic, does not necessarily contain this; the disdain of, say, an urban bohemian for a cracker contains no intrinsic material or cultural disparity in its DNA.

Inherent rudeness is one thing; rudeness with an impunity borne of seemingly immutable privilege is another.

@45 - See @47.