The evidence continues to pile up that the Affordable Care Act is working, and conservatives on the defensive.

The post “This Thing Is Working” appeared first on ThinkProgress.

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A Slew Of Good Health Care News Has Conservatives On Their Heels

The evidence continues to pile up that the Affordable Care Act is doing exactly what progressives said it would: providing the peace of mind of high-quality and affordable health coverage to millions of Americans. Despite the initial bumps, the law is actually exceeding expectations when it comes to enrollment. What’s more, Americans are sick of Republicans who have voted over 50 times to repeal the law without even offering an alternative — the law is working better than expected and it is here to stay.

19 Million Americans Covered

With President Obama’s final announcement of enrollment numbers on Thursday, the tally for the total number of Americans getting coverage (so far!) thanks to the Affordable Care Act is in:

• 8 million people have signed up for health coverage through the state and federal marketplaces.
• 3 million more have signed up for coverage through Medicaid.
• 3 million now have coverage by staying on their parents’ plan.
• 5 million people have signed up for ACA-compliant plans outside the marketplace.

Altogether, a new Gallup survey reveals that 4 percent of all Americans are newly ensured this year.

Exchanges Working And Costs Down

Opponents of the law claimed that insufficient numbers of young and healthy people would enroll in the exchanges, causing premiums to skyrocket next year. These fears also aren’t panning out; in fact, just the opposite is happening.

For one, young people are signing up for health coverage under the law in droves. The White House reported that 28% of enrollees are between the ages of 18 and 35. That’s the same percentage as in Massachusetts, which has run a successful healthcare marketplace since 2007. Gallup echoes this point, writing that “the newly insured are, on average, much younger than the overall population.�

Additionally, worries about dramatic cost increases have also proven to be overblown. New Congressional Budget Office projections for 2016 insurance premiums are 15 percent lower than previous estimates, a reduction that they estimate to save $186 billion (not to say we called it, but…we called it).

The mix of massive enrollment and a young, healthy enrollment pool has insurers who “got their first taste of Obamacare this year [wanting] seconds,” according to Politico. In at least ten states, insurers that didn’t offer coverage through the exchanges this year have said they plan to in 2015. This creates more options for consumers, and signals the strength of the ACA marketplaces.

Conservatives On Defense

As millions of people experience real, and not just theoretical, benefits of the law, Americans are getting more and more tired of the political battles to repeal it. A recent Kaiser survey found that 59 percent of Americans want keep the law in place or improve it, while only 29 percent want get rid of it. Pew reports that even a “majority of ACA opponents – representing 30% of the public overall – want politicians to do what they can to make the law work as well as possible, compared with 19% of the public that wants elected officials to do what they can to make it fail.�

And constituents are showing their frustration with their conservative elected officials’ fixation on repeal. Without any alternative to point to, and an increasingly frustrated public, these politicians have nobody to blame but themselves.

Think Progress videotaped on one such interaction at a town hall for GOP Rep. Dennis Ross (FL):

Constituent: Why do you think it is so good to deny seniors on Part D to make them pay more, about $4,000 more for medicine, and people with pre-existing conditions get denied insurance, have 26-year-olds have a harder time getting insurance because they can’t get on their parents’? Why do you think those are good ideas?

ROSS: I don’t. I think one of the most unfortunate things my party did the last three years was not offer an alternative to health care.

Ross isn’t the only Republican to face criticism recently. Paul Ryan, Scott Brown, and Chris Christie have also had constituents tell them to end their focus on repeal. Meanwhile, states that have refused to expand health care to low-income residents are also starting to face the music: the uninsured rate is dropping three times faster in states that have expanded Medicaid compared to those that have not.

BOTTOM LINE: We think just a look at a few of this week’s health-care related headlines provides the best summary: the ACA is working.

New York Times: Enrollments Exceed Obama’s Target for Health Care Act

New Republic: Obamacare Signups Hit 8 Million And both Young And Old Are On Board

National Journal: Obamacare Is On A Winning Streak

Politico: Insurers see brighter Obamacare skies

Washington Post: States embracing Obamacare are doing a better job of covering the uninsured, surveys show

Gallup: Uninsured Rate Drops More in States Embracing Health Law

The post “This Thing Is Working” appeared first on ThinkProgress.

One mother doesn't want her children to be killed in Mexico if she gets deported.

The post Court-Ordered Deportations Plunge, But This Mother Is Still Caught In The Deportation Dragnet appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Undocumented immigrants rally outside the White House to ask the President to stop deportations.

CREDIT: ThinkProgress/ Esther Y. Lee

Court-ordered deportations decreased by 43 percent between the 2009 and 2013 fiscal years, according to new Department of Justice data released Wednesday. That statistic, which includes the last four months of the former President George W. Bush’s presidency, may help to bolster the Obama administration’s argument that federal immigration officials are now focusing on detaining and deporting criminal immigrants, but other immigrants are still caught in deportation proceedings.

The data found that in the 2013 fiscal year, immigration judges ordered deportations for 105,064 cases, down 56 percent from 185,426 cases ordered in 2009. Fewer immigrants wound up in immigration court in 2013 (187,678 cases) compared to in 2009 (254,537). And the sharpest drop in court-ordered deportations came in 2011, after then-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director John Morton issued a memo directing federal immigration agents to focus on detaining criminal immigrants rather than immigrants without criminal records.

Department of Homeland Security spokesman Peter Boogaard confirmed to the New York Times on Thursday, that “the exercise of prosecutorial discretion had led enforcement agents and visa officials to file fewer deportation charges.”

Court-ordered deportations comprised about one-third of the 368,644 removals carried out in 2013. Border deportations accounted for the other two-thirds. As Dara Lind at Vox.com explained, “border” deportations can include immigrants living within 100 miles of the actual border, regardless of length of residency. Lind wrote that while those immigrants caught at the border are theoretically provided an immigration hearing, the Obama administration had increasingly deported people in the “border zone” through a process known as “expedited removal.” It is unclear from the DOJ data how many court-ordered deportations were a result of these border apprehensions. Although the DOJ report shows that President Obama has slowed down the court-ordered deportation rate, he is on track to deporting more immigrants overall than any other president.

The DOJ data doesn’t go into specific charges, but the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) found that since 2008, the most serious charge for nearly half all deportees was for an immigration or traffic violation.

According to the New York Times, “the share of cases in which judges decided against deportation and for allowing foreigners to remain in the United States has consistently increased, to about one-third last year from about one-fifth in 2009.”

An increase in court victories can partially be attributed to better access to legal representation to fight deportations: New York launched a pilot legal representation program to provide public defenders for immigrant detainees and a 2013 federal ruling required ICE to provide legal representation to immigrants with mental disabilities. One study found that 97 percent of immigrant detainees without legal representation lost their case, while 74 percent of those with legal representation had successful outcomes.

Despite the drop in court-ordered deportations, undocumented immigrants who would otherwise qualify for discretion, like those having strong familial ties, are still getting caught in the deportation dragnet. Maria Esmeralda Cornejo, an undocumented parent of three U.S. citizen children under the age of ten, may become another deportation statistic by the end of April if an immigration judge decides that she should go back to Mexico.

Border officials first apprehended and deported Cornejo in 2000 when she was caught coming into the United States without papers. She reentered the country later that year and had been living and working in Ohio until 2013 when police pulled her over for speeding. After running a background check, police found her illegal entry charge and handed her case to ICE, who put her in deportation proceedings. By federal immigration standards, the illegal entry charge qualified as a felony, so Cornejo has become a high-priority deportation case. Her lawyer, Julie Namecek, is hoping that immigration officials will exercise prosecutorial discretion and has requested a stay of removal.

Cornejo told ThinkProgress on Thursday that she was afraid of going back to Mexico not only because she would have to uproot her children. “The little one cries a lot,” Cornejo said. “She doesn’t want to go to Mexico because someone can kill her.”

“She’s a very involved parent,” Namecek added. “Her daughters were getting bullied and she actively sought out a bilingual school in Columbus. Her daughters aren’t just good students. They’re the role models for the school. Every time a new student comes in, they’re the ambassadors.”

“Sometimes in my class, I look up news and they say lots of bad things about Mexico,” Carnejo’s nine-year-old daughter, Jocelyn said. “I have my friends and my school here. I speak a little Spanish, but writing and reading is hard for me.”

The post Court-Ordered Deportations Plunge, But This Mother Is Still Caught In The Deportation Dragnet appeared first on ThinkProgress.

There are no recorded cases of HIV being transmitted through sports.

The post HIV-Positive Basketball Player Kicked Out Of City Rec League appeared first on ThinkProgress.

CREDIT: Shutterstock

More than 20 after Magic Johnson returned to the NBA following his HIV-positive diagnosis, a player in a Kissimmee, Florida recreational basketball league was pulled off the court and temporarily banished from the league because he is HIV-positive.

The Orlando Sentinel told the story of 21-year-old Dakota Basinger, who was playing in a recreational basketball game as part of the Kissimmee Parks and Recreation league on Sunday, was taken from the court into a private room and told by a city employee that he wouldn’t be allowed to play anymore. “I feel humiliated and discriminated against,” Basinger told the Sentinel. “I felt horrible walking out of that gym.”

Thursday, the city of Kissimmee announced that the employee, Dale Boston, has resigned from his position with the Parks and Recreation Department, and that he had “acted independently and without supervisor approval.” Basinger will be allowed to return to the league, but he told the Sentinel he was unsure if he would:

Basinger is welcome to continue playing with the league, she said. But Basinger isn’t sure whether he will. “I’m going to have to think about that,” he said.

Upon learning of Boston’s resignation, Basinger said, “I’m pretty upset. I feel like it wasn’t his fault.” He said Boston told him the city had asked him to remove Basinger from the game and from all future games.

When Johnson, who announced he was HIV positive on November 7, 1991 and promptly retired from basketball, returned to the sport for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, there were fears that he would spread the disease to other players. Utah Jazz forward Karl Malone, Johnson’s teammate on the 1992 Olympic Dream Team, responded to rumors that Johnson was returning to the NBA with concern. “Look at this, scabs and cuts all over me,” Malone said after a game in 1992. “I get these every night, every game. They can’t tell you that you’re not at risk, and you can’t tell me there’s one guy in the N.B.A. who hasn’t thought about it.”

Those fears were misplaced then, though perhaps Malone had an excuse then because the public was still largely uneducated about the disease (Malone apologized to Johnson a year later). But such concerns are even more misplaced today. The Centers for Disease Control says that HIV cannot be spread by casual contact, saliva, or sweat, and it is “extremely rare” for it to spread through blood contact with open woods or skin. To mitigate what little risk exists, sports leagues and organizations have implemented policies for dealing with players who are bleeding, both when they are HIV-positive and not. In 1994, when the NFL implemented its HIV policy, it noted that the CDC had “not attributed one AIDS case to athletic competition.” A 2004 study of HIV and hepatitis B and C found similarly that “there are no confirmed reports of HIV transmission during sport.”

The responsibility of limiting whatever small risk exists should be on parks and rec departments to have first aid policies to prevent the spread of HIV or any other transmittable disease. But there is no more reason to keep an HIV-positive player off the court today than there was to keep Magic out of the NBA 20 years ago.

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