Apparently the answer to the question "How many times will they vote to repeal the ACA before giving it up already?" is "67" (or in the mid-50's, depending on your definition).

After five years and more than 50 votes in Congress, the Republican campaign to repeal the Affordable Care Act is essentially over.

GOP congressional leaders, unable to roll back the law while President Obama remains in office and unwilling to again threaten a government shutdown to pressure him, are focused on other issues, including trade and tax reform.

Less noted, senior Republican lawmakers have quietly incorporated many of the law's key protections into their own proposals, including guaranteeing coverage and providing government assistance to help consumers purchase insurance.

And although the law remains very unpopular with GOP voters, more than 20 million Americans now depend on it for health benefits, making even some of the most conservative Republicans loath to cut off coverage.

Thanks to Jesse LaGreca for the heads up on this piece of idiocy from The Daily Signal, aka "One of the heads of the Heritage Foundation Hydra":

Forcing States to Recognize Gay Marriage Could Increase Number of Abortions

In a nutshell: A reduction in the opposite-sex marriage rate means an increase in the percentage of women who are unmarried and who, according to all available data, have much higher abortion rates than married women. And based on past experience, institutionalizing same-sex marriage poses an enormous risk of reduced opposite-sex marriage rates.

So, my family finally got around to watching Monsters University, the completely unnecessary prequel to Monsters, Inc. Thoughts:

--It was actually a lot better than I was expecting. No, it's not in the upper echelon of Pixar's library, but it's a solid addition. I'd rank it about 10th out of the 14 Pixar movies to date (below Ratatouille and WALL-E, but above Brave, A Bug's Life, Cars or Cars 2).

--Pixar's biggest problem these days is twofold: First, they set the bar so high with masterpieces such as Toy Story 2 & 3, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo and Up that when they make a movie that's "merely" very good it seems "disappointing" by comparison.

At the same time, when Pixar was kicking ass and taking names, they also had very little serious competition; the other studios tried to ape Pixar technically, but without having the storytelling/character/dialogue chops. That's changed over the past few years, however; movies like How to Train Your Dragon, Tangled, the Lego Movie, (the first) Despicable Me, (the first) Ice Age and Wreck-It Ralph have proven that the other studios have seriously upped their game. That's good for everyone, but it also ups the ante further for Pixar these days.

After one botched vote, two years and an all-out resistance blitz by the Koch Bros and their ilk which was so obnoxious that they managed to alienate local Republicans, the Medicaid expansion provision of the Affordable Care Act has finally officially passed both the state House and Senate of Montana, and should be signed into law by the Democratic governor any moment now.

HELENA (AP) – The state Legislature has passed a bill expanding Medicaid eligibility to about 70,000 low-income Montana residents.

The bill approved Saturday heads to Gov. Steve Bullock, who is expected to sign it into law.

• Florida to sue over Obamacare Medicaid expansion

Florida Gov. Rick Scott announced Thursday that his administration will file a lawsuit against the federal government for threatening to withhold more than $1 billion in funding for hospitals if the state fails to expand Medicaid.

“It is appalling that President Obama would cut off federal health care dollars to Florida in an effort to force our state further into Obamacare,” Scott said, citing a 2012 Supreme Court ruling that said the federal government couldn’t put a “gun to the head” of states to force them to expand Medicaid under the health care law.

The Obama administration quickly accused Scott of misconstruing that court decision because the state is not being forced to do anything. And White House spokesman Josh Earnest blasted the governor for putting politics above people.

I'm kind of geeked about this as it's my first real speaking engagement:

Society of Actuaries - Best Actuarial Practices in Health Studies Seminar

1:00 – 2:00 p.m.
Session 1 – How Making Numbers Accessible and Data Visualization Made One Person’s Website Newsworthy at the National Level

The Supreme Court King v. Burwell decision is expected to be announced "sometime in June", which means for all I know, the announcement could be announced in the middle of my presentation...although it's more likely to come out a week or so later. Guess I better prep 2 sets of notes...

The HHS Dept. reported that exactly 97,079 people had selected private policies in Idaho via their all-new state-based exchange during 2015 Open Enrollment (including the "standing in line" period).

Unlike most states, Idaho chose not to participate in any sort of special tax filing season enrollment period (MA & CO are the other two which didn't do so; every other state is still allowing enrollment for people who had to pay the fine last year and didn't make the cut this year until April 30th, except for WA which cuts things off today and VT which bumped theirs out until the end of May).

While Idaho, like every state, does still allow people to enroll during the off-season if they have a major life change (getting married/divorced, having a baby, moving, losing other coverage, etc), that tends to be cancelled out by other people dropping their coverage for similar reasons.

NOTE 11/3/15: This post is actually from last spring, but given Marco Rubio's recent climb in GOP primary polling, I figured it was worth dusting off...

NOTE 6/17/16: OK, I'm dusting it off again in honor of Rubio's glorious return to the political scene after his humiliating defeat in the GOP Presidential primary... 

Now that Florida GOP Senator Marco "Dry Lips" Rubio has officially launched his 2016 Presidential campaign, my long-time obsession with his ill-fated "Florida Health Choices" project from his days as the Speaker of the FL House has taken on a bit more relevance.

A little while ago, Greg Sargent of the Washington Post asked the following via Twitter:

Serious Q for wonks: If O'care expanded coverage by 16 million, & SCOTUS guts 5 million, Ocare still covering over 10 million, right?

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) April 16, 2015

As I recently noted, I actually question the 16 million number; by my count it's actually more realistically like 14-15 million, so there's that.

I also noted in response that the fallout of the plaintiffs winning King v. Burwell will cause a lot more than 5 million people to lose their healthcare coverage. Technically speaking, here's the hard numbers:

Yesterday a good half-dozen people sent me the link to this video, posted by a guy named James Webb a couple of days ago. Talking Points Memo gives an overview of the 3 1/2 minute clip:

"Hello, YouTube. I'm kinda having a difficult decision," Webb lamented in the 3-minute video. "I don't know which party to vote for. ... I don't know whether to go for a Republican or a Democrat -- and I'm serious. Because I asked myself, I said, 'Which party has helped me out the most in the last, I don't know, 15 years? Twenty?' And it was the Repub-, err, Democrat Party. The Democrats."

"I mean if it wasn't for Obama and that Obamacare, I would still be working," Webb continued. "With Obamacare, I got to retire at age 50. Because if it wasn't for Obamacare I would had to work till I was 65 and get on Medicare because health insurance is expensive."

Webb stressed how valuable it was that he'd been able to retire so early and still had health care coverage. He also noted that Obamacare reimburses him for his gym membership.