Bill O’Brien launches congressional campaign by misreading results from landmark Medicaid study

In a statement released by the O’Brien for Congress campaign, former state House Speaker Bill O’Brien blasted Congresswoman Ann Kuster for not voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

“If fully implemented, Obamacare will hijack and wreck not only the finances of the federal government, but also our state’s finances,” he wrote. O’Brien also took the opportunity to trash Medicaid. Obamacare “will throw millions of Americans on Medicaid,” he complained:

Medicaid relies on substantial contributions from local taxpayers, yet it doesn’t even pay for half the cost of service to its recipients. It does all of this — or, none of this rather — while failing to provide better health outcomes than being uninsured, according to a study of Medicaid expansion in Oregon.

About that Medicaid study.

O’Brien was referring to the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, a landmark, randomized study of the effect expanding public health insurance has on the health care use, health outcomes, financial strain, and well-being of low-income adults.

O’Brien cherry picked the early results to declare Medicaid a failure. Ezra Klein explains the results of the study, so far, are decidedly more encouraging:

So here’s what happened in the first two years of the Oregon Medicaid experiment: Medicaid proved itself good health insurance. The people who got Medicaid used more health care, and seem to have done so smartly — they got preventive care, they got their diabetes diagnosed and began managing it, they treated their depression, and so on. But the health care itself didn’t work as well as we hoped — at least not in terms of cutting rates of hypertension and cholesterol. …

We don’t know why hypertension and cholesterol levels were unchanged, writes Klein. “We don’t know if the results speak to the health care you get through all health insurance or just Medicaid or if they’re just an artifact of the study’s timeframe and sample size,” he explained.

Regardless, Klein notes there is “voluminous evidence that managing diabetes and treating depression and being able to go to the doctor improves health. You have to be willing to throw quite a lot of existing theory and evidence out the window to believe that stuff won’t pay off down the road.”

Bill O’Brien on Bill O’Brien: ‘He’s a crazy. He’s gotta go’

Former state House Speaker Bill O’Brien, who has formed an exploratory committee to run for Congress in New Hampshire’s 2nd District, gazes into his crystal ball and imagines his future as a Congressman:

I’ll get down there. I’ll take a vote on one or two bills like that and they’ll say, “He’s a crazy. He’s gotta go.” And I’ll go.

h/t: GraniteGrok

Quote of the day: Anti-American dogma

Our public elementary and high schools are too often failing to teach while continuing to indoctrinate forced attendees into the leftist world of government dependency and anti-American dogma.

— Former state House Speaker Bill O’Brien on New Hampshire’s public schools

Portsmouth Herald: ‘O’Brien for Congress is a bad joke’

An editorial in the Portsmouth Herald doesn’t mince words. The paper says the announcement by former state House Speaker Bill O’Brien that he is considering a run for Congress in the 2nd district “is a bad joke:”

O’Brien’s two years as N.H. speaker were some of the most divisive, spiteful and unproductive in recent memory.

As House speaker: he pushed gun laws that would allow felons and the mentally ill to possess weapons in their homes; he tried unsuccessfully to repeal same-sex marriage, which is now the law of the land in New Hampshire and is poised to gain further federal recognition; he worked hard to take away women’s hard-won legal reproductive rights; and he treated with contempt not just Democrats but members of his own party who didn’t drink the same Kool-Aid he was drinking.

O’Brien’s possible candidacy for the Second District Congressional seat serves as a litmus test for whether Republicans learned any lessons in the 2012 elections. Clearly, if he’s nominated, it will be proof that the N.H. GOP didn’t hear the voters’ clear message.

Bill O’Brien: Don’t confuse me with the facts

Today, former House Speaker Bill O’Brien announced he is forming an exploratory committee as the first step in a possible campaign against Congresswoman Ann Kuster for the 2nd District congressional seat. O’Brien told WMUR’s Josh McElveen that it was Kuster’s recent vote in favor of the Senate budget that “forced his hand.”

Oops. As UNH political scientist Dante Scala points out (and we noted earlier), Kuster didn’t vote for the Senate budget.

Bill O’Brien forms campaign cmte to run against Annie Kuster in 2nd CD. Says Kuster vote for senate budget forced hand. @wmur9 #nhpolitics

March 28, 2013

@joshmcelveen Kuster did not vote for the Senate Democratic budget. thehill.com/blogs/ballot-b…

— Dante Scala (@Graniteprof) March 28, 2013

Bill O’Brien categorizes the opposition

In an open letter to his House colleagues, former Speaker Bill O’Brien categorized those lawmakers who oppose his highway funds amendment:

1. They don’t like him.
2. They blog.
3. They’re smarty pants.

Now there are those who, while mouthing the rhetoric of bipartisanship, first look at who is making a proposal before they decide what to think about that proposal. And for others, they can find legislative relevance only by taking to computer rooms and look up blogging synonyms for vile or rising on the House floor and explaining how they are opposed because they have a corner on determining constitutionality among laws and honor among House members.

Bill O’Brien: Making it up as I go along

On WMUR’s Close Up, former state House Speaker Bill O’Brien explained his opposition to raising the state’s gas tax, which would generate additional revenue to repair and maintain the state’s roads and bridges. “We don’t need the money,” he declared.

The state’s bridges are in great shape, he wrote on Facebook:

I have been told most are red-listed because the approaches don’t comply with federal highway standards as they have evolved over the years. It’s like calling our houses red-listed because they no longer comply every time the housing or electrical codes are updated.

It’s an outright lie. Here’s the criteria the Department of Transportation uses when it places a bridge on the state’s “Red List:”

Bridges where one or more major structural element is rated as poor condition or worse, or require weight limit posting.

A study by a national transportation research group notes there are 152 state-maintained bridges in New Hampshire that are currently rated poor for one or more structural elements. By 2016, that number is expected to increase by 15 percent under current funding.

Lee Quandt: O’Brien acolytes plotting palace coup

Yesterday, state House Rep. Steve Vaillancourt warned of a GOP House leadership team seriously at odds with its caucus. Today, former Rep. Lee Quandt writes that conservatives are plotting to replace Republican Leader Gene Chandler with none other than former Speaker Bill O’Brien.

Quandt fingers the House Republican Alliance as the plotters behind the coup attempt:

The latest going around with the remnants of the once respected House Republican Alliance is that they are circulating a letter for signatures, to Gene Chandler; the minority Republican Leader, requesting that he removes Shawn Jasper from his Republican leadership post….

Evidently Jasper offended the Free Staters who have taken control of the HRA and they want him removed.

What Chandler isn’t aware of is HRA is supposedly going to make a move of removing him from his position and replacing him with none other than Bully O’Brien.

The conservative HRA caucus, once headed by O’Brien, is now run by O’Brien’s Deputy Speaker Pamela Tucker, O’Brien confidant Rep. Al Baldasaro and Free Stater Rep. Carol McGuire.

Quandt, who was considering a challenge to O’Brien before he lost his seat in the 2012 election, says the coup could be successful. “I don’t think Gene has as many old guard Republicans in the House to back his play or defense against the Free Staters.”

GOP conservatives plot return of ‘bloviating buffoon’

When state Rep. Roland LaPlante (D-Nashua) announced his resignation from the New Hampshire House, archconservative Republicans moved quickly to bring back one of their own, former Majority Leader Peter Silva.

Rep. Al Baldasaro (R-Londonderry), co-chair of the conservative House Republican Alliance, posted a message on Silva’s Facebook page asking for a public show of support:

Mr. Majority Leader, you ready to get back in the game? Rumor has it that a Rep from your district resigned, am I correct?

LIKE, if you think Honorable Pete Silva should run for the open seat?

Those who “Liked” the message include former House Speaker Bill O’Brien (R-Mont Vernon), state Reps. John Burt (R-Goffstown), Regina Birdsell (R-Hamstead), Peter Hansen (R-Amherst) and Gary Hopper (R-Weare). Former Republican state Reps. Spec Bowers, Bob Giuda and Paul LaCasse also signaled their support.

Silva, you may remember, replaced D.J. Bettencourt as Majority Leader last year near the end of the session after Bettencourt resigned in disgrace following an academic scandal.

The new Majority Leader was then immortalized in an email sent by fellow Republican state Rep. Jon Richardson that blasted him as a “Grade A, Class One, Top Tier, bloviating BUFFOON.”

Richardson’s email was a response to Silva publicly criticizing Republican lawmakers who voted against an educational funding amendment that had been favored by the GOP leadership.

Quote of the day: They will be thinking Waterloo

In interviews he talks about “gun free killing zones,” calls Democrats “the party of slavery,” and complains of conspiracies to commit voter fraud on a mass scale. … One has to think the Democrats would love to run against O’Brien in a general election. O’Brien may be thinking comeback, but they will be thinking Waterloo.

— Fergus Cullen, former New Hampshire Republican Party chair, on former state House Speaker Bill O’Brien, who is considering a congressional race for the 2nd District seat held by Democrat Ann Kuster.

O’Brien’s boorish and petulant House performance

The New Hampshire House today rejected right-to-work legislation by a 212-141 vote, with lawmakers generally voting along party lines. At the end of the debate, former Speaker Bill O’Brien, who sponsored House Bill 323, stepped to the rostrum to deliver closing remarks.

There’s a House tradition in which brief parliamentary inquiries are allowed after the last speech. These final comments, which summarize the issue for each side, typically are limited to two or three points.

O’Brien stunned lawmakers on both sides of the aisle by flaunting the tradition and delivered a long, defiant speech. GOP state House Rep. Steve Vaillancourt documented the boorish performance. “High drama once again in the New Hampshire House thanks to the Bully Without a Pulpit,” he wrote:

Today, even Republicans in the back of the hall realized O’Brien was going on far too long with his inquiry. I sat quietly in my seat, just wondering how long Speaker Norelli was going to allow him to ramble. When she first cautioned him about the form and purpose of a PI, O’Brien simply ignored her and kept asking a series of questions, arguing the issue of how we need the right to work bill.

When Speaker Norelli interrupted O’Brien to second time, again he ignored her and reverted back to his prepared remarks. Wow, I said to myself, how long is this going to continue? Is she going to let him continue on and on? He would have been gaveling a Rep (including yours truly) into silence had such insolence been displayed when he was Speaker.

The third time Speaker Norelli interrupted O’Brien; she informed him the purpose of a PI was to pose a question to the chair…briefly. By this time, O’Brien became petulant. Rather than simply continue reading his inquiry, O’Brien lectured Norelli that she should be attentive to his questions.

Wow! “People were just stunned,” [a fellow Republican] Rep tells me. “If he had been the Speaker and it were Terie Norelli doing that, he would not have put up with it at all,” this Rep tells me. “I was surprised by his lack of discipline.”

O’Brien’s shocking tirade targets teachers

As former House Speaker Bill O’Brien begins positioning himself for a statewide campaign, his public pronouncements have become even more vicious and venomous. But his Facebook tirade condemning public schools and blaming teachers is shocking even by O’Brien’s standards:

Government schools are failing in NH and throughout the country for one fundamental reason: teacher unions.

Teacher unions maintain incompetence and inefficiency on the local level through collective bargaining and school district-based political activism. They don’t bargain for the children. Like any union they bargain for more pay for less work.

Teacher unions constantly fight to structure our state laws to obtain funding for their jobs and monopolistic control of our children. … Our public high schools are viewed internationally as abysmal failures.

Who would not, if they could afford it, get their child out of a government school so he can obtain a useful education?