Senator John Cornyn would have you believe he would repeal Obamacare in an instant to keep the size of government 'small'. There he is, right there in that video from 2012, telling all who would hear about it.

But Cornyn, like other colleagues, is a secret admirer of Obamacare. Lee Fang has unearthed their appeals for grants to bolster health care services in their states, and there are many, from all those loyal GOP Obamacare haters.

Texas Senator John Cornyn, the Republican whip, wrote to the Centers for Disease Control to recommend a grant for Houston and Harris County. Congressman Michael McCaul, a Republican and the chair of the Homeland Security Committee, wrote a letter praising the same grant request, calling the effort a “crucial initiative to achieve a healthier Houston/Harris County.” Senators Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Mark Kirk of Illinois and Thad Cochran of Mississippi also recommended grant request approval for public health or health clinic funding.

House Republicans and the Senate Republican Policy Committee have trashed the ACA’s Community Transformation grants as an Obamacare “slush fund.” In the letters seeking these grants, however, GOP lawmakers have heaped praise on their potential. Cornyn writes in his letter that the grant would help “improve the health and quality of life of area residents.” Congressman Aaron Schock, a Republican from Illinois, congratulated a local nonprofit for winning a Community Transformation grant, noting that the program will give “people the tools to live healthier and longer lives.”

Wait, what? It will give people tools to live healthier and longer lives? This is a Republican talking?

Yes, yes it is. Go read the whole article and be sure to look at all those letters written by Republicans who pound their chests over Obamacare.

Moochers shouldn't bother if they live in Texas:

Perry, a Republican, notified the Obama administration last summer his state would not expand Medicaid, which provides healthcare for low-income people. He repeated his opposition in an April news conference at which he called expansion "foolish."

The proposal, an amendment to a Medicaid-related bill, says state health officials "may only provide medical assistance to a person who would have been otherwise eligible for medical assistance or for whom federal matching funds were available under the eligibility criteria for medical assistance in effect on December 31, 2013."

In other words, not only will they not expand Medicaid in Texas, but they'll make it illegal to expand Medicaid, ever.

Because liberty! Liberty to suffer, liberty to die. Good job, Texas.

News flash! Obamacare is already working for people, despite Republicans' doom and gloom predictions.

In California, Obamacare's implementation is already well underway and benefiting residents already. Insurance rates are lower than expected, and the exchange implementation is proceeding according to schedule. Whether this is due to some of the large for-profit insurers opting out of the exchanges or the requirement that at least 80 percent of the premium be spent on actual health benefits is still unknown, but the consensus is that California's exchange will be of great benefit to the uninsured residents of our state.

In Arizona, an interesting twist. Governor Jan Brewer has laid down the law to the Arizona state legislature, first threatening and then carrying through on the threat to veto every bill that crosses her desk until they approve the Medicaid expansion. An unexpected, but welcome development! I haven't quite figured out whether her motivation is purely financial or there is something more there, but whatever the reason, it's welcome.

Meanwhile, in the red states, a different and far sadder story is unfolding. Daily Kos:

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With Michele "Crazy Eyes" Bachmann leading the charge, freshmen Republican tea party whiners got their opportunity to register that all-important vote to repeal Obamacare yet again.

Because 2014 was so much like 2010, right?

The real news here is the narrowing margin. The last time the House voted, it was by a much wider margin than this. Only two blue dog Democrats joined the Republicans -- Jim Matheson (UT) and Mike McIntyre (NC) making the final count 229-195.

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As I predicted awhile back, Kochheads in Florida have managed to step between poor people and health care by yanking puppet strings in the Florida legislature to block Rick Scott's proposed Medicaid expansion. See how that works? Rick Scott looks magnanimous because AFP and the Florida legislature gave him cover to pretend like Medicaid would be expanded.

In the words of Florida Rep. Matt Hudson in that AFP video above, it wasn't "just no, it's heck no!"

Seeing all those obese Medicare recipients waving signs about their liberty and the like did absolutely nothing to keep my blood pressure within acceptable parameters:

Wonkblog:

Scott wouldn’t be the one to “deny Floridians” a part of the health care law—but the Florida legislature had other plans. Lawmakers adjourned Friday after passing a budget that does not include funding for a Medicaid expansion. Unless the Republican-controlled legislature comes back for a special session later this year—which some Democrats are calling for—Florida will not expand Medicaid in 2014.

In Florida, where one in five non-elderly residents lack insurance coverage, the consequences are especially large: An estimated 1.3 million Floridians were expected to gain coverage through the the Medicaid expansion. About a quarter of those people—Floridians earning between 100 and 133 percent of the Federal Poverty Line—would still be eligible for tax subsidies on the health insurance exchange.

These selfish pigs make me want to stage a legislative revolution to expand Medicare to all right before their very eyes just so I can see them weep about people's hands being on their Medicare. Tell ya what, liberty fans. You renounce YOUR health care and I might just believe you're sincere. As it is right now, you're just a bunch of misguided, ignorant tools who don't mind claiming your "entitlement" while shoving everyone else out into the cold.

Grrrrrr.

Despite what Max Baucus said, Obamacare is not a 'train wreck' rolling toward a head-on collision. But Republicans are trying and will continue to try to make it as hard as possible to implement. This is not unlike what they did with Medicare back in the 60s when it was implemented. In fact, I expect them to take some pages right out of that playbook despite Medicare's obvious success.

Jonathan Cohn has an excellent article in The New Republic this morning outlining the potential pitfalls in implementation. There will be pitfalls. Make no mistake. There is no way to open up this system to everyone without glitches. Remember, there are balky insurers still trying to undermine it behind the scenes, and opportunistic politicians waiting to pounce on any failure, no matter how small, to capitalize in the 2014 midterms.

Cohn:

As even Obamacare’s most ardent defenders have said from the start, the law is far from ideal. The architects of reform had to make all sorts of compromises, just to get the law past lobbyists and obstructionist Republicans. And then, after finally enacting the historic legislation in early 2010, they had to spend most of the next three years fighting repeal. In Washington, Republican congressional leadership has repeatedly blocked funding for implementing the law. At the state level, conservative officials are at best indifferent to its success and at worse outright hostile to it. This last part is no small thing, given the leeway state officials have over the law's implementation. In states like Florida and Texas, officials have already indicated they won't be expanding eligibility for their Medicaid programs—depriving millions of health insurance.

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After last week's insanity with regard to the political end-run around the Affordable Care Act and subsequent withdrawal of what could have been a horrible political quandary for Democrats, Republican freshmen are making loud whining noises over the fact that they haven't yet had their chance to vote to repeal it.

Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) urged leadership to hold a repeal vote so freshman members can serve up the same anti-Obamacare talking points for their conservative constituents that more senior Republicans enjoy.

“If you’re a freshman — the guys who’ve been up here the last year, we can go home and say listen, we voted 36 different times to repeal or replace Obamacare. Tell me what the new guys are supposed to say,” he said. “We haven’t had a repeal or replace vote this year.”

“We have not had a chance as freshmen to do that,” said first-term Rep. Trey Radel (R-FL). “Even if it’s just symbolic — and even if we understand that process-wise we are not going to be able to say, okay we want repeal, it’s done, and it’s over. But this is the issue that so many people around the country who love the Republican Party are frustrated with.”

Poor babies. It breaks my heart that they're frustrated over not being able to brag about denying sick people access to health care. I know I will lose sleep over it every single night, won't you?

Of course, the reason they want the vote is because they're stupid enough to think that 2014 is going to be 2010 all over again, which it will not be. Evidently they didn't learn that in 2012, when people did not vote for full repeal of the ACA, and wholeheartedly embraced the principle that pre-existing conditions should not exclude people from getting health care.

They were able to get traction in 2010 because no one actually benefitted from the reforms passed at that time. It is three years later now, and many young people have access to health care because of the ACA, and many, many more people will be able to get health insurance and access to health care on January 1, 2014.

But hey -- let them have their vote, Speaker Boehner. I welcome such a vote, so that every nutcase Republican who voted for it can be ousted from office on 2014 by angry voters yelling at them not to touch their Obamacare.

I have to admit, Eric Cantor came up with a cynical, but politically effective way to hose Democrats over Obamacare last week. He came up with the idea of extending the federally-funded high risk pools for people with pre-existing conditions by pulling earmarked funds out of the Prevention Fund. The Prevention Fund was the brainchild of Senator Tom Harkin, who believes that public education and prevention efforts are as powerful as treating the diseases themselves.

Because funds for the federally-funded high risk pools have been exhausted earlier than expected, Eric Cantor hatched his plan. He would introduce a bill called the Help Sick Americans Now Act, which would extend the federal high risk pools with funds taken from the Prevention Fund. Democrats would then be forced to vote against a measure that would fund pools to insure them from now until January 1, 2014 when the pre-existing conditions exclusion disappears and the exchanges open for individuals to purchase health coverage.

It's important to point out that those who are already covered in the high-risk pools won't lose coverage, but because funding is exhausted, no new entrants can use that program. That means some people will be without access to insurance coverage for the next eight months or so, unless they are employed by someone who offers group insurance.

Ted Cruz and the Tea Party purists threw a hissy fit over it, and Buzzfeed has the leaked emails to prove it. Here are some snippets of the catfight:

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If there's one thing I can't stand, it's companies that claim to be "socially responsible" while they shove a knife into the backs of women across the nation. Eden Foods qualifies. It pretends it's a crunchy company, full of organic goodness and "social responsibility" but really, it's run by a libertarian who just doesn't like government regulations very much.

Michael Potter, Eden Foods' CEO, didn't care for the birth control mandate in Obamacare, so he paired up with the Thomas More Center, a conservative legal services non-profit, in order to weasel out of it on religious grounds.

Check out the image at the top. That small print up in the right hand corner says "Organic, Independently Owned, Socially responsible, And UNDER ATTACK. As if slapping the term "organic" on your packaging somehow makes your product magically attractive to liberals who object to eating pesticides with their green beans.

At any rate, Mr. Pious Potter's religious sensibilities were so rocked by the meanness of the birth control mandate that he felt compelled to go to court, where he swore his faith would just be too harmed by having to include birth control as a benefit to employees under the Affordable Care Act. Uh huh. Sure.

Salon interviewed Mr. Potter about his Catholicism and fervent religiosity, and they had quite a conversation. It began this way:

“I’ve got more interest in good quality long underwear than I have in birth control pills,” the unfamiliar voice on the phone said to me.

Oops, who was that masked man? It was Mr. Potter, calling the reporter to offer a comment to an earlier story about his quiet lawsuit. And then he went on...

It wasn’t that he was upset about my reporting or what his company was doing. He was just sorry my request for comment had gone unanswered due to an oversight. I accepted the apology, and asked why he said he didn’t care about birth control, since he filed a suit about it and all.

“Because I’m a man, number one and it’s really none of my business what women do,” Potter said. So, then, why bother suing? “Because I don’t care if the federal government is telling me to buy my employees Jack Daniel’s or birth control. What gives them the right to tell me that I have to do that? That’s my issue, that’s what I object to, and that’s the beginning and end of the story.” He added, “I’m not trying to get birth control out of Rite Aid or Wal-Mart, but don’t tell me I gotta pay for it.”

Oh, I see now. It's not about being Catholic or having a religious objection. At least, it's not if you're talking to a publication that is read by a mostly-liberal readership who might actually be a large chunk of those who consume your product. No, what it's about is having to pay for birth control coverage. Never mind that it's cheaper than maternity coverage. Oh, he had an answer for that contradiction too:

Potter replied, “One’s got a little more warmth and fuzziness to it than the other, for crying out loud.”

I guess that depends on who you ask. Women might disagree.

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Obamacare is nearly upon us, kids. That means the PR firms for insurers are revving their engines and laying the foundation for the next big tea party riot at town hall meetings. We will have them shaking their fists at everything from Obamacare to education reform to gun laws.

Chaos is what they intend to make, and they're out of the gate with Ms. Disgraced Tobacco Lobbyist Betsy McCaughey, who should be jeered off any stage she's on instead of glorified by the likes of Mike Huckabee.

It's almost predictable now. A quick Google search shows Fox News let her out of her cell in August, 2009, again in December, 2010, and again in November, 2011. Even though by 2012 Obamacare's provisions were popular enough that it was an asset and not a liability in Obama's re-election, they're dragging her out again.

But now we're six months away from signing up for the exchanges, and we're eight months or so away from an end to pre-existing conditions. The monsters are hungry, clawing at the bars, so they let her out again to go at it on Huckabee for the entire show. Because I'm merciful (and so is Heather), we're just bringing you the best of the best.

To warm the audience up, they started with a little dose of IPAB, the panel that will actually work to contain costs, which they like to call a "death panel." Personally, I think there should be one panel for...never mind.

The heart of today's episode is "Oh noes, all the doctors are gone!!!! Dead seniors will be everywhere!" Added bonus: Spending more money automatically means better care. (insert audience groan here)

MCCAUGHEY: I wouldn't take my beloved dog to the vet that spends the least per animal, but I'm supposed to take my mother to the hospital that spends the least per senior. We have a lot of evidence that the hospitals that are the lowest spenders have higher death rates. For example, if you're a senior and you've had a heart attack, you have a less chance of making it home after that heart attack if you're in one of those lowest spending hospitals.

Yawn. YES. OH God, yes, please let's spend 20 percent of GDP on seniors' health care. Because better!

And then we get to the "ZOMG they're gonna keep you. Or not. Or release you early. Or not." Ultimately it's just a conversation indicating a consultation with a psychiatrist might be in order.

BLACKBURN: And that readmission policy will penalize the hospital if within thirty days you're readmitted and so the hospitals are going to be a little bit more judicious in how they approach that. But it all boils...

MCCAUGHEY: I think you used a misleading phrase though. It's recklessly denying care, because when you reward the hospitals that spend the least per senior, right, that means hospitals are not going to want to do the expensive procedures like a hip replacement or a knee replacement.

And the way they count this includes the thirty days after the patient is discharged, so hospitals are not going to want to prescribe that rehab you need after your knee surgery, or even that return trip to the cardiologist.

Betsy, you ignorant slut. Rehab services are not hospitalization services. They're rehab and even when they're done at a hospital people aren't admitted for it.

Holy God, someone please hand them a stick of reality?

Later in the show but not in this clip they start pimping Health Savings Accounts, which of course makes tons of sense because people have so much extra money to put into those HSAs which are limited by law to something that doesn't even cover prescription deductibles, much less hip replacements.

It must really drive insurers crazy to know that most employers will be keeping their employees' health insurance, that young adults age 19-26 are receiving needed, critical health care services, and Medicare spending has dropped by $500 billion without elderly folks dropping dead right and left all over the place. Why else would they drag out the same old dead, buried, withered, and dusty arguments over and over again?

Wake up, Fox News. Wake up, health insurers. Wake up Tea Party. Obamacare is here. And it's not going anywhere. Get over it.