“GOP Crocodile Tears On Obamacare”: Their Entire Strategy Is To Create Noise, Not Solutions
One of the strange things about politics is that it is considered “smart” to make every conceivable argument against your foes, even when your arguments are contradictory or reveal you to be indifferent to people leading desperate lives. But rarely is this “throw the kitchen sink” tactic pursued with such hypocritical gusto as with the GOP’s primal scream over the Obamacare Web site’s rollout.
To listen to Republican laments about Healthcare.gov’s terrible launch, you’d think the GOP was deeply concerned that people who need affordable health insurance are being denied this essential protection thanks to the administration’s incompetence.
But of course nothing could be further from the truth. What conservative officials, pundits and advocates are screaming is closer to the following:
How dare you totally screw up something that we think shouldn’t exist!
How dare you make it hard for poor, uninsured workers to get health coverage we don’t want to subsidize them to purchase!
What did Kathleen Sebelius know and when did she know it, when it comes to the wreck of a train we’ve prayed would be a train wreck all along?
This is what the “logic” of a party of “no” sounds like — where the entire strategy is to create noise, not solutions.
I get that a chunk of the GOP thinks discrediting government’s competence is a political winner (many of these critics are themselves lifers in elected office, but nevermind). But please spare us the fallacious leap to the idea that these Web site snafus reveal that the left’s “technocratic hubris” in “taking over a sixth of the American economy” was bound to fail.
There’s a reason everything about Obamacare is unduly complex, but it has nothing to do with a federal takeover. It’s precisely the opposite. Obamacare is complicated because it seeks to expand coverage largely by relying on private insurers, and also by honoring our tradition of federalism.
The need to check an applicant’s eligibility and income, and to use this information in light of locally offered private health plans to compute associated levels of potential subsidy — all of which requires tying together a bunch of huge databases that weren’t designed to communicate instantly with each other — comes from the need to subsidize the purchase of private coverage in a tailored way.
If we just gave every American a wallet-sized card like they do in single-payer nations — or even an identical universal voucher folks could use to help pay for private health coverage (as diverse voices from Zeke Emanuel and Victor Fuchs to Pete Peterson have championed) — the system, along with its technology backbone, would be far simpler.
This isn’t an excuse; it’s a piece of an explanation.
Meanwhile, when Republicans argue that the Web site’s initial failure means we shouldn’t go forward with extending affordable coverage to the uninsured, it’s like saying that the other high-profile tech failure this month — of the Web-based Common Application used by hundreds of colleges — means we should tell this year’s high school seniors to put off college. I mean, if that nonprofit can’t get the application technology right, what other reasonable choice is there?
The phoniest tears come from conservative analysts who “fear” that the Web site meltdown will trigger an adverse selection problem. The meme of the month is that only the sickest people will be desperate enough to persist in getting coverage, leaving the whole system subject to actuarial implosion.
As my daughter and her friends might say, “Chill, people.” Let’s see how the next few months go. There’s something sad and misguided about talented right-wing wonks devoting immense energy to criticism, yet seeming unable to spare a brain cell for actual public problem-solving. Even a conservative mind is a terrible thing to waste.
The problem, as always, is that once the GOP turns to health-care solutions, they’ll be forced to fess up that Romney-Obamacare was theirs. And it works. That’s something Republican voters are now finding out beyond just Massachusetts.
Like Butch Matthews, 61, a former small-business owner and lifelong Republican from Little Rock. Matthews and his wife, too young for Medicare, had been paying over $1,000 a month in the individual market for a Blue Cross Blue Shield policy with a $10,000 deductible.
“I did not think that Obamacare was going to be a good plan,” he told the (highly functional) Web site ThinkProgress. “I did not think that it was going to help me at all.”
He thought wrong. The policy Matthews just bought from the Arkansas Obamacare marketplace will cost him nothing after income-based subsidies and has a deductible of $750. Doctor visits will cost him $8 instead of nearly $150. He stands to save at least $13,000 a year
“I still am a very strong Republican, but . . . I am so happy this came along,” Matthews said.
If enough Republican voters have happy endings like this, it won’t be long before the GOP’s crocodile tears turn real.
By: Matt Miller, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, October 23, 2013
“The Cry Of The True Republican”: As Seen By A “Genetic Republican”, Today’s GOP Is A Virulent Strain Of Empty Nihilism
I am a genetic Republican.
Five generations of Tafts have served our nation as unwaveringly stalwart Republicans, from Alphonso Taft, who served as attorney general in the late 19th century, through William Howard Taft, who not only was the only person to be both president of the United States and chief justice of the United States but also served as the chief civil administrator of the Philippines and secretary of war, to my cousin, Robert Taft, a two-term governor of Ohio.
As I write, a photograph of my grandfather, Senator Robert Alphonso Taft, looks across at me from the wall of my office. He led the Republican Party in the United States Senate in the 1940s and early 1950s, ran for the Republican nomination for president three times and was known as “Mr. Republican.” If he were alive today, I can assure you he wouldn’t even recognize the modern Republican Party, which has repeatedly brought the United States of America to the edge of a fiscal cliff — seemingly with every intention of pushing us off the edge.
Throughout my family’s more than 170-year legacy of public service, Republicans have represented the voice of fiscal conservatism. Republicans have been the adults in the room. Yet somehow the current generation of party activists has managed to do what no previous Republicans have been able to do — position the Democratic Party as the agents of fiscal responsibility.
Speaking through the night, Senator Ted Cruz, with heavy-lidded, sleep-deprived eyes, conveyed not the libertarian element in Republican philosophy that advocates for smaller government and less intrusion into the personal lives of citizens, but a new, virulent strain of empty nihilism: “blow it up if we can’t get what we want.”
This recent display of bomb-throwing obstructionism by Republicans in Congress evokes another painful, historically embarrassing chapter in the Republican Party — that of Senator Joseph McCarthy, chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, whose anti-Communist crusade was allowed by Republican elders to expand unchecked, unnecessarily and unfairly tarnishing the reputations of thousands of people with “Red Scare” accusations of Communist affiliation. Finally Senator McCarthy was brought up short during the questioning of the United States Army’s chief counsel, Joseph N. Welch, who at one point demanded the senator’s attention, then said: “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.” He later added: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
Watching the Republican Party use the full faith and credit of the United States to try to roll back Obamacare, watching its members threaten not to raise the debt limit — which Warren Buffett rightly called a “political weapon of mass destruction” — to repeal a tax on medical devices, I so wanted to ask a similar question: “Have you no sense of responsibility? At long last, have you left no sense of responsibility?”
There is more than a passing similarity between Joseph McCarthy and Ted Cruz, between McCarthyism and the Tea Party movement. The Republican Party survived McCarthyism because, ultimately, its excesses caused it to burn out. And eventually party elders in the mold of my grandfather were able to realign the party with its brand promise: The Republican Party is (or should be) the Stewardship Party. The Republican brand is (or should be) about responsible behavior. The Republican party is (or should be) at long last, about decency.
What a long way we have yet to go.
By: John G. Taft, Op-Ed Contributor, The New York Times, October 22, 2013
“Humming Along Today”: Despite Rocky Beginnings, 5 Other Government Programs Suggests Glitches Get Fixed And Forgotten
The Obama administration’s struggle with debugging the HealthCare.gov website is causing critics to ask whether ObamaCare is “Obama’s Iraq war,” and to dismiss Obama’s signature policy achievement a “quagmire.”
Media coverage is becoming increasingly hysterical, meaning some historical perspective is in order. Many large-scale government programs that are now embedded in American society also began with rough rollouts that are now mostly forgotten.
Here are five programs that are humming along today, despite their rocky beginnings:
1. Social Security
In the program’s early days, many employers failed to include worker names and their new Social Security numbers in their earnings report, leaving the government without the basic information needed to calculate benefits and cut checks. Syndicated columnist Drew Pearson turned the “John Doe” problem into a crusade, writing about the snafu once a week for two months and stoking panic that the government would be unable to pay out the promised benefits to millions. But new procedures were established to follow up with delinquent employers, and within a year the number of John Does was slashed. Today, the crisis is dismissed as a blip, while Social Security historians view the effort to build a nationwide social insurance system from scratch before the age of computers as “Herculean” and “amazing.”
2. Medicare
Last week, historian and Bloomberg columnist Stephen Mihm chronicled the myriad problems that beset the 1966 Medicare rollout. More than 700,000 eligible seniors initially refused to sign up because they mistakenly believed it meant giving up Social Security. Some Southern cities were left without any participating hospitals because the Medicare law required hospitals to comply with the new Civil Rights Act, yet many in the South remained segregated. It was more commonplace at the time for doctors to bill patients directly, and excessively long waits for Medicare reimbursement checks frustrated seniors. But as Mihm notes, “The government and the private insurers worked out most of the kinks, and by the late 1960s the system was working reasonably well.”
3. Medicare’s Prescription Drug Benefit
It wasn’t all that long ago that another presidential health care initiative ran into an online buzzsaw. In 2005, the Bush administration rolled out its new Medicare Part D program, providing seniors coverage for prescription drugs. But the debut was bedeviled by website problems. The Washington Post noted at the time that the launch was delayed twice over the course of a month. Then on the day it actually launched, “Visitors to the site could not access it for most of the first two hours. When it finally did come up around 5 p.m., it operated awfully slowly.” The glitches continued throughout the open enrollment period, but as Jack Hoadley of the Georgetown Health Policy Institute reminded in a blog post this month, “The program added both phone lines and customer service representatives and implemented other upgrades over the weeks. The website — both its functionality and the accuracy of its information — was the source of ongoing frustration for its users, but it did get better over time. By the end of open enrollment in May 2006, over 16 million successfully enrolled for drug benefits in Part D … And today, Part D enjoys widespread popularity.”
4. The Peace Corps
President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps by executive order shortly after taking office in 1961. Skeptics worried that the program would be overrun with immature draft-dodgers. And that concern was seemingly confirmed when one of the first volunteers mistakenly dropped a postcard before it could be mailed, telling her stateside boyfriend that her host country of Nigeria suffered from widespread “squalor and absolutely primitive living conditions.” A horrified Nigerian student discovered the postcard, made copies, and distributed it widely. It sparked an international incident. Riots ensued, and the volunteer had to be sent home “cloak and dagger” for her safety. Still Kennedy forged ahead, shrugging off the setback by joking to a new batch of volunteers, “Keep in touch, but not by postcard!” And two years later, the Christian Science Monitor reported that foreign governments were “so pleased with [the Peace Corps’] work they have called again and again for more … Although the ‘postcard incident’ in Nigeria seemed to confirm some fears that the program might do more harm than good, that has been far from the case…”
5. The income tax
It was 100 years ago this month when President Woodrow Wilson first enacted the progressive income tax that finances much of our government today. Now, few Americans would claim to be fans of our current tax system — but many of them are fans of what the income tax system helps pay for. In the early days of the rollout, however, plenty of people were sent over the edge because of the forms’ perceived complexity. As tax historian Joseph Thorndike noted, one lawyer made headlines in 1915 by saying of the forms, “It is so complicated that it is utterly impossible to understand its meaning save by consulting a palmist.”A 1915 The New York Times headline characterized the forms as “Income Tax Riddles.”
Now, some may say the tax forms have only gotten worse over the last 100 years. But by and large, the public has accepted the nature of tax forms as a governing necessity, and no politician has gotten very far in the past century campaigning against the progressive income tax. As Thorndike noted in Barron’s, “The income tax has survived because it does two things reasonably well: It raises money, and it satisfies popular notions of economic fairness.”
The lesson? History suggests that glitches get fixed and forgotten, people get acclimated to new programs, and policies rise and fall on their merits. If past is prologue, ObamaCare will be judged on the quality of the coverage, not on the first incarnation of the website.
By: Bill Scher, The Week, October 23, 2013
“Unclean Hands”: Beware Of Notable Republican Villians Presuming To Make Themselves The Objective Arbiters Of Obamacare
Maybe the healthcare.gov website mess will ultimately damage the implementation of the Affordable Care Act of 2010. Maybe it was an avoidable crisis that those in authority should have anticipated and addressed. Maybe heads will roll. Maybe one of those heads will be or should be that of the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius.
But you know what? The judge and jury and executioner in such a case should not, cannot, must not include those who have fought the successful implementation of ACA, who have lied about the law, have obstructed efforts to “fix” its inevitable lapses (some caused by Republican filibustering in the Senate that prevented its enactment via “regular order”), and who are at this moment using the healthcare.gov problems to discourage people from obtaining health insurance. But even as they celebrate every word typed in vain on healthcare.gov and every bit of faulty data, Republicans are presuming to make themselves the objective arbiters of Obamacare:
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Tuesday afternoon became the highest-ranking lawmaker to call for Sebelius’s resignation — part of a movement that picked up steam after she declined to appear at a scheduled House hearing Thursday, though she has committed to one next week. But even before the shutdown and debt ceiling standoff ended, the Republican National Committee launched its “Fire Sebelius” campaign, trying to use holding her responsible for the problem-plagued rollout as a way of redirecting the conversation back to doubts about the Affordable Care Act.
Sorry, boys. Accepting even the worst-case-scenario of Sebelius’ responsibility for the enrollment website problems, she’s done far less to mess up the implementation of this law than the GOP, and most especially Paul Ryan, whose high-profile lies about Obamacare’s impact on Medicare alone make him a notable villain of this drama.
It’s an ancient principle of the Anglo-American legal tradition that one cannot come into a court seeking equity with “unclean hands”–bad behavior or bad intent concerning the subject in dispute. Extended into politics, this sensible objection to bad-faith complaints means that having devoted itself to the destruction of the Affordable Care Act, the Republican Party needs to stay out of efforts to assign responsibly for the internal management of efforts to implement it. That’s particularly true of a political party that refuses to offer any real alternative path for health reform other than systemic efforts to make sick people bear more of the burden of their own misfortune.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, October 23, 2013
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