The Great Good News You Don't Know

Dollars to donuts you don't know these three great pieces of good news.

First,  Obamacare's great success has gotten greater.  In April, the media was caught gape-mouthed by the fact that eight million people had signed up for the new federal health insurance program.  Well, here's an even bigger surprise:  When enrollment opens again this fall, it is forecast that the number will jump to thirteen million.  That's more than a 50% increase!

And where are all the horrible things that were supposed to happen?  The "death panels", for example.  Au contraire, mon cher.  There aren't any. Nobody in government is ordering sick people be killed. Further, and aside from Obamacare, good old Medicare is apparently going to start quietly paying for doctor/patient end-of-life conferences to let grandma make pre-decisions about any future plug-pulling.  Some insurance companies are beginning to do so for the rest of the folks.

Nor did the other horrors happen that the GOP fanatics predicted.  That's why the GOP has completely dropped the subject.  This election year was supposed to be about Obamacare's "failure" and it isn't.  BECAUSE OBAMACARE HAS SUCCEEDED!

Let's look at another great piece of good news that has been virtually ignored by the media.  Medicare is NOT bankrupting the country.  The cost of Medicare has been dropping drastically even with Baby Boomers beginning to flood into old age. And this isn't a one-year fluke or a product of the now-ended recession.  It's a steady, heartening trend.  How nice for us elders to know we are not "robbing our grandchildren" by going to the doctor, as the GOP claimed.  (Sounds like the GOP would like to pull the plug on us elders even before we get to the hospital!)

How wicked of the media to have buried this story that was reported recently on an inside page of the NY Times.  The reporter started off by saying virtually, "This is a big, big story", but the editor buried it anyway.  To my knowledge no other outlet gave the story any play.  If a government story doesn't get NYT big play, it isn't considered news by the rest of the media.

The story IS BIG, not only for what it says about Medicare but for what it says about the Big Lie the GOP told these past six years, the one about this country going bankrupt soon and the need to cut spending on infrastructure, food stamps, school lunches, student aid, national parks, and all other programs that help someone besides the rich. It was this looming and phony bankruptcy notion that triggered the near-disastrous GOP threats to default on our debt by not raising the debt ceiling. It was this non-issue that drove us into a government shut-down.  It was this fake gloom-and-doom narrative that slowed our recovery from the Bush Recession.

And let's look at another piece of good news.  The Democrats were right and the Republicans were WRONG about the path to get out of the Recession.  The Democrats wanted federal spending to pick up the slack in the private sector and thus stimulate the economy.  They got some of it, enough that we have climbed out of the ditch the GOP drove us into.  The Europeans, however, followed the GOP misguided idea of government belt-tightening.  We are out of the ditch now, while Europe is still spinning its wheels in a depressed economic condition.  Ten years from now Europe may be another Japan, a repressed economic power that was once a roaring lion.  May the GOP all move to the continent that pitifully followed the GOP advice.

As for us, get used to good news. I've got some more coming up for you. But there's a price. You have to promise you'll pass it along.  It's the least we can do for the man who made it all happen.  If the media won't tell the Obama story, we must.  Thank you, Mr. President.  You've done well.  So well that I have every confidence you will now handle the overseas stuff just fine.

And now into the Congressional elections!