August 21, 2013

No, Health Care Premiums Are Not Soaring and Full-Time Jobs Are Not Disappearing


John Boehner today, explaining the GOP’s strategy on Obamacare:

[We’re] looking at all options to reach our ultimate goal of repealing this law that is causing premiums to soar and full-time jobs to disappear.

Now let’s leave fantasyland and see what’s happening in the real world. Here is the Kaiser Family Foundation’s latest data on premiums:

Health-insurance premiums to cover working Americans rose 4 percent this year, less than the previous two years in another sign that the cost of employee benefits for U.S. companies may be slowing.

And here’s how full-time employment has fared in the three years since Obamacare was passed:

More here on the supposed implosion of full-time jobs thanks to Obamacare. As with the soaring premiums, it just hasn’t happened. You probably won’t hear about this on Fox News, though.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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