Health Care/Health Scare - Pain for the GOP
Top Story: Health Care/Health Scare
While we all wallow in Shutdown Land, here’s some potentially surprising news:
Health insurance provided by the Affordable Care Act is… wait for it… very popular in GOP congressional districts.
Also popular in these Republican districts: The 2021 Biden healthcare tax cuts, which rendered ACA insurance premium costs a lot more affordable.
But those premiums are about to skyrocket, if House Republicans don’t agree to extend the Democrat-supported price cuts.
The result will be:
Millions among us dropping their insurance because —yup, people just can’t afford to pay the new fees.
What’s the Republican thinking behind this? We’re not sure.
And we suspect that a lot of Americans aren’t sure either.
That’s where you come in.
ACA STORY TIPS
He said. She said.
Tell stories about how local GOP politicians are explaining to their voters why they support health insurance price hikes.
Keep it simple.
Use charts, explainer grafs or vertical videos to easily indentify where representatives in your district stand on the price hikes.
Avoid cliche ledes.
Don’t start every article with a sad sack story about a family about to lose care. These can be boring, predictable, and frankly too long.
Fact or Fiction?
Don’t rely on politicians to tell you how their constituents feel. That’s not reliable information and likely to reflect what they want their constituents to feel, not what they really feel.
I asked a guy, here’s my story
Don’t rely on your own person-on-the-street reporting, which is purely anecdotal, to tell your community how people feel. People really don’t actually think those stories are accurate. Trust us!
Instead, prove it
Do rely on high-quality polls.
Voters in the middle
Do make it clear that the middle class is really going to suffer if these cuts are not extended.
Map a GOP lie
Find out what happened to the “Illegal Immigrants are getting ACA insurance” lie and explain why it is not longer a big GOP talking point. (We’re honestly curious!)
Suggested Sources
(From KFF — a reliable source of health info, research, polls, etc.)
This NYT article - which indicated that
In Kentucky, a 60-year-old couple making $85,000 per year could face an increase of $23,700 in annual premiums. In Nevada, a similar couple could pay an additional $18,100 in annual premiums, while in Minnesota, the cost might be $15,500 more and, in Maryland, an additional $13,700.
AND
A family of four making $130,000 in Maine would face an increase of $16,100 in annual premiums next year because they would no longer qualify for more generous subsidies, said Gideon Lukens, a health policy researcher for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which supports extending the subsidies.
Also in the news
There are a lot of GOP efforts happening around the country to curb voting rights.
If this is happening in your community, please report on it a lot!
Here’s an op ed from Maine about a ballot initiative there that could impact hundreds of thousands of voters.
Here’s info on a Texas initiative that would restrict voting for non-citizens, who are already restricted from voting. Confused? We are, too.
Bone up on the Voting Rights Act - it’s likely to be in the news a lot in the near future.
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Our Staff
Executive Editor Kyle Spencer
Our Board of Advisors
Alex Aronson, executive director of Court Accountability
David Armiak, research director for the Center for Media and Democracy
Connor Gibson, founder of Grassrootbeer Investigations
Maurice Cunningham, retired associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and author of Dark Money and The Politics of School Privatization.
Isaac Kamola, associate professor of political science at Trinity College, founder of Faculty First Responders and co-author of Free Speech and Koch Money, Manufacturing a Campus Culture War
Nancy MacLean, William H. Chafe distinguished professor of history and public policy at Duke University and author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America
Ralph Wilson, founder of the Corporate Genome Project and co-author of Free Speech and Koch Money, Manufacturing a Campus Culture War
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