Some DHHS Report Says Affordable Care Act Even More Affordable Than Expected. It's Also Better Than Ari Fleischer's Twitter Math

No matter how much Ted Cruz desperately tries to defund Obamacare with fake filibuster talks about spiffy black tennis shoes, or White Castle burgers, or his dad's dish pan hands, or even how much dead Dr. Seuss (he's a doctor, y'all) hates it, it looks like this Obamacare thing is going to happen. And guess what? It's maybe gonna suck even less than Ted Cruz lied about it sucking. It looks like, according to a report released by the Department of Health and Human Services, that the, ahem, Affordable Care Act is even more affordable than the government thought:

When uninsured Americans begin enrolling in Obamacare’s new health care exchanges on Oct. 1, the overwhelming majority -- 95 percent -- will face health care premiums that are 16 percent lower, on average, than the government had previously projected, according to a new report released on Wednesday by the Obama administration.

16% lower on healthcare premiums sounds like a good thing? And wait, this starts on October 1? We really do not know anything about Obamacare. Someone tell Ted Cruz that he can calm down, because we are sure when he hears about this he will understand and shut up? There are some particular things about Obamacare that make it cheaper by state too, like competition and choice. And Republicans always love competition and (anything not pro-choice) choice. Or, maybe only sometimes?

“The more choices you have, the lower the premiums,” a senior administration official said. “States with few insurance companies who didn’t get a lot of new competitors this coming year, still have higher premiums.”

Ah, it seems like maybe these big old insurance companies getting to set rates at whatever they like don't want some stupid laws or competition coming in and making them do things cheaper? So they pay all the Ted Cruzes in the world to go out there and grandstand with non-filibustering talkathons, and repeated votes to defund the thing to try to get a handle on this. Which means we have to listen to Ted Cruz screw up our favorite children's authors for 21 hours and remind us what the original face born for punching looks like. That is fairly dickish. But hooray for 16% less anyway.

You know what else is fairly dickish? Ari Fleischer. Always. And last night Ari did some Bush Administration empire style reality-creating, when he tweet-whined (twhined?) that the Prez's announcement of the lower than expected rates got special treatment (tweetment? haha, no.) in the form of extra characters. 

Conspiracy!

Yeah, how come Barry gets to use 136 characters when we only get 140? Hm, wait, that is less? Oh, Ari Fleischer it is so unlike you to be wrong all the time. It would have been a terrible thing if President Obama was hoggin up all the tweet characters, in some bizarre propagandistic sub-plot by twitter to make us all socialists. But instead you just cut and pasted the whole tweet to a word doc and included the @BarackObama and the auto-count screwed you over. Thanks a lot Obamacare.

[ Think Progress / Mediaite ]