December 23, 2015

Republicans Aren’t Delusional, Just Dishonest

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Today Jon Chait writes what must be about the millionth blog post explaining that nearly all conservative criticisms of Obamacare are wildly cherry-picked and intentionally deceptive. In fact, Obamacare is doing pretty well. Not that it matters. Nothing Chait says will have any effect because conservatives just don’t care. Obamacare is bad because it taxes rich people and provides health care to poor people. All the rest is just chaff.

Take this paragraph, for example. It’s about the Cadillac Tax, which partially removes the tax-exempt status of high-end health plans as a way of trying to rein in costs. It was supposed to take effect in 2018, but it’s now been moved out to 2020 because everyone1 hates it:

As bad as this news is for Obamacare, it’s absolutely catastrophic for Obamacare replacements. Every Republican plan to replace Obamacare relies on the same financing mechanism: limiting or repealing the tax break for employer-sponsored insurance. The Cadillac Tax is a smaller, more painless version of this same policy. If both parties can’t abide a partial rollback of the tax break for the most expensive health plans, they’re never, ever going to go along with eliminating the entire tax break for all health plans. The conservatives cackling over the demise of the Cadillac Tax are delusional — it’s as if they’re watching the backlash against the Iraq War in 2008 with fingers tented, anticipating that this will encourage war-weary Americans to support a land invasion of Russia. The bipartisan support for maintaining the tax break for employer insurance will hurt Obamacare, but it can survive. The Republican plans to replace it would all be wiped out.

This would be a devastating point—if all these conservative plans were actually serious. They aren’t. Republicans haven’t the slightest intention of ever enacting any of them. Their opposition to the Cadillac Tax doesn’t show that they’re delusional, it just shows that they’ve never taken their own plans seriously and couldn’t care less if any of them ever see the light of day.

1Except for health wonks. But nobody cares about them.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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