It's All About Healthcare

Business Insider talked to The Debt Ceiling Deniers In Ted Yoho's District "The vast majority of those in Yoho's district — one that is heavily rural and conservative outside of the liberal Gainesville and blue Alachua County — are driven by the belief that the nation's debt is out of control."

Someone needs to not just talk to them, but to show them numbers that cutting foreign aid, arts, "grants", the departments of Education, the EPA, FCC, the NIH and CDC (which seems remarkably stupid) wouldn't come close to balancing things. Also they need to understand the debt and deficit in the context of the nations economy and GDP and understand that a government isn't the same as a household.

Also, America’s Projected Deficit Is Entirely About Health Care Costs

The conservative reply is that the way to get health care costs under control is to simply have less health care. We must “reform” entitlements; meaning raise the Medicare retirement age, cut Medicaid, etc. We can’t afford to be generous, and some people are just going to have to go endure hardship or we’re going to bankrupt the state.

But as the Monthly has long shown, this is nonsense. In fact, the United States’ world-record health care costs are driven by a combination of policy factors, both on the private and the government side. In 2010 Mariah Blake showed how a cabal of medical supply behemoths keep the innovations of smaller companies off the market. In 2011 Phillip Longman showed how getting Medicare out of the fee-for-service business would improve things, and earlier this year showed how a GOP effort that kept cost-benefit research out of Obamacare is harming the health care system. Finally, again this year Haley Sweetland Edwards showed how a secret committee of doctors heavily weighted with specialists fixes the prices of Medicare.

So this is why Obama wanted to tackle healthcare, it's not just good for health, it's good for the budget.

Here's an explanation for Why Your Asthma Inhaler Costs So Damn Much

Here's an unusual perspective from someone with great health insurance. My Skin in the Game: How Ted Cruz and the Right Want to Help Cancer Kill Me, and Maybe You. "So we don't have to just beat Ted Cruz so hard he flees back to Alberta. We have to get rid of the parts of Obamacare that may help the private insurance industry keep squeezing us like an anaconda. And we have to keep and improve the good parts, so the Affordable Care Act is just the first step to the only system that's ever worked anywhere on earth: universal, high-quality health insurance and healthcare for everyone."

So how's Obamacare doing? Well Sarah Kliff points out Four things I learned about Obamacare from shopping on HealthCare.gov. Things are getting a bit better. And Oregon cuts tally of people lacking health insurance by 10 percent in two weeks.