“It’s Not All Doom And Gloom On Obamacare”: Just A Matter Of Time Before Republicans Start Criticizing Something New
Condemning the Affordable Care Act and its problem-plagued rollout is easy, but when the White House insists things are getting better, that’s not just spin. Brett Norman reports this afternoon:
Tech surge czar Jeff Zients said that HealthCare.gov will be able to handle 50,000 users at a time by the end of this month – up from 25,000 now, thanks to hardware additions and software additions the team is putting in this weekend and next week.
He said that will enable the site to handle 800,000 people a day – “a conservative estimate,” he said in a conference call with reporters.
It’s important to note that handling increased traffic, while clearly important, is not the resolution to all of the website’s troubles. Accurately connecting consumers to insurers and providing reliable data on subsidies is just as important, and to date, these are areas with which healthcare.gov has also struggled.
That said, Zients told reporters all of these issues are being addressed, and the increased website capacity should – should – keep the larger enrollment system on track towards its 2014 goals.
Indeed, even before Zients’s media briefing, Sarah Kliff highlighted reports of a “November surge” in enrollments.
By the end of October, the federal government had counted 106,000 people enrolled into private coverage through the new health insurance marketplaces, a small percentage of the projected half-million sign-ups.
By mid-November, though, with the 14 state-based marketplaces reporting fresh data, that number had just about doubled to more than 200,000…. State officials say they are seeing an uptick in sign-ups this month. California, which has had about 80,000 sign-ups, is now reporting about 2,000 enrollments per day. New York and Washington reported double-digit enrollment numbers as of this week.
Kaiser Family Foundation President Drew Altman told Kliff, “It’s not all doom and gloom.”
Reports from several states where officials want the system to work are reporting impressive numbers for the first half of November. California, in particular, appears to be leading the way – and given that the Golden State is the nation’s largest, that’s good news for the overall totals.
The law’s proponents shouldn’t be Pollyannaish about any of this, and we have not reached the point at which the system can fairly be described as “adequate.” It’s just not there yet.
But the administration can credibly say they’re putting out the fires; they’re making steady progress; and they’ve moving closer to their goals. The panic is subsiding. The recent chatter that “Obamacare” is going to destroy the president, Democrats, the health care system, and the idea of progressive governance on a conceptual level hasn’t quite gone away, but it’s looking increasingly silly.
And while I’m reluctant to look too far ahead with so much uncertainty still surrounding the system’s functionality, I can’t help but wonder about what the political world’s conversation will look like if, in the near future, healthcare.gov is working as it should, enrollment is strong, costs are contained, millions are gaining coverage they previously lacked, and millions more enjoy health care security that previously didn’t exist.
I have a very strong hunch we would, under this scenario, see very few headlines that say “Obama fixes problems, brings health care security to nation.” Rather, folks would just move past the hysteria of the last month, start criticizing something new, and Republicans could return to saying, “Now, about Benghazi….”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, November 22, 2013
“Real World Consequences”: Why The Senate’s Nuclear Option On Filibuster Reform Matters
If you care about reproductive rights, the environment or worker rights, the decision by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the chamber’s Democrats – including courageous votes by this state’s senators, Mark Udall and Michael Bennet – Thursday to reform the filibuster on presidential appointments matters. A lot.
This is not just inside-the-Beltway jabberwocky. Invoking the “nuclear option” so that a simple, 51-vote majority is all that’s needed to confirm judges below the Supreme Court level and other presidential appointments will have a profound effect on the everyday lives of many Americans. Courts are missing judges thanks to an unprecedented refusal by Republicans to confirm the president’s nominees. This is purely political, not about qualifications: as Senate Republicans have bluntly admitted, all Obama nominees are bad.
And this obstruction has real world consequences both in terms of shorthanded courts and the decisions they make.
So, for example, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is located here in Denver and handles all federal court appeals for not only Colorado but also Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming, has two vacancies thanks to GOP filibustering. And as Colorado Ethics Watch has noted, 98 percent of all federal appeals are decided at the Circuit Court level, meaning that, “decisions of the 10th Circuit on important issues such as the environment and federal land policy, reproductive freedom, voting rights and money in politics, and civil rights are often final and binding for the states in the Circuit.”
In addition to refusing to act on qualified judges to the 10th Circuit, Republicans have repeatedly blocked qualified judicial nominees to the District of Columbia Circuit Court. Per Ethics Watch, “The D.C. Circuit is a traditional stepping-stone to the U.S. Supreme Court, with four of the current justices having previously sat on the D.C. Circuit. Currently, three of the D.C. Circuit’s 11 judgeships are vacant, including one that has been open since its previous occupant, John Roberts, was confirmed chief justice of the United States in 2005.”
Judicial vacancies and court rulings matter. Without fair courts that have diverse and impartial judges, we won’t have justice when it comes to women’s health and reproductive rights.
To wit, on November 1, with three judicial vacancies thanks to Republican obstruction and no Obama nominees on the bench, the D.C. Circuit Court ruled that the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employers provide contraception in their health insurance plans violated religious freedom. Denver’s 10th Circuit, with two Republican-blocked vacancies, decided a similar case the same way, setting up a Supreme Court challenge on whether or not women have the right to birth control regardless of their employers’ religious beliefs. This has profound and dangerous implications even beyond reproductive rights: it threatens to upend the very notion of secular labor law. What if an employer decided their religious beliefs meant they didn’t have to pay Social Security taxes, follow wage and hour guidelines, or hire workers of a different race?
So this isn’t some arcane procedural maneuver by the Senate, it’s the end result of the Republican Party refusing to respect a Democratic president. As for the argument from the right that a future Republican majority will use this move against Democrats: Republicans have broken every deal they’ve made so far to avoid the “nuclear option.” There’s little doubt that they’d change the rules anyway if they magically got the majority.
At least this way a Democratic President, Barack Obama, sees that he, his judicial nominees and appointments, and the American people get a bit more justice.
By: Laura Chapin, U. S. News and World Report, November 22, 2013
“When Ideology Collides With Reality”: Irrational Republican Exuberance Over Obamacare’s Problems
In these days of hyper-polarization, some readers may wonder why I always treat with great respect the findings and analysis of conservative number-cruncher Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics. I don’t always agree with what he says, but he’s willing to say uncomfortable things to people on his side of the barricades when data and history so indicate, as he did in a column today pouring ice water on the popular conservative idea that a collapse of Obamacare would lead to some sort of “existential crisis” for liberalism or “the welfare state.”
I’ve said before that our press corps suffers from histrionic personality disorder, and this is but the latest example. Wasn’t it just weeks ago that we were told the government shutdown could cost Republicans the House? But elections and the ideological orientation of the country don’t turn on such immediate, short-term events. The arc of history is long. Both parties, and both ideologies, have plenty of wins ahead of them, and neither is likely to suffer a knockout blow.
Let’s start by observing that we’re barely 50 days into Obamacare’s launch. While the program is clearly in much graver political danger than was the case a month ago, it’s still unclear that the ship won’t eventually be righted. Maybe the so-called “young invincibles” will sign up in droves, or maybe they won’t and the program will go into a death spiral. We just don’t know yet.
But even if the Affordable Care Act does collapse, I’m not sure that the liberal project will be kneecapped, much less destroyed. Americans have very short memories, and the pendulum will swing back quickly if Republicans mess up their next opportunity to govern.
Trende then goes through a long series of historical examples (dating back to 1890) of big political calamities for one party or the other that was followed in relatively short order, and sometimes almost instantly, by a big recovery, often because the other party over-estimated its advantages and overreached. And he notes that even in specific policy areas a misstep or defeat doesn’t necessarily take issues off the table:
Even the last failed attempt at health care reform, in the early 1990s, didn’t actually spell the end of reform efforts for the next two decades, as many suggest. It just proceeded incrementally, with some fairly significant steps. Congress in 1996 passed the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill, which established health insurance portability. The following year, Republicans helped to establish the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which today provides health care for almost 8 million children. In 2001, before the 9/11 attacks, Congress was consumed with a debate over the Patient’s Bill of Rights, with the only major disagreement involving whether plaintiffs should be able to collect punitive damages while suing their HMO.
Sean even suggests an Obamacare “disaster” could produce an even more ambitious Democratic health care initiative:
[E]ven if Obamacare does collapse, the most liberal aspects of the American health care system — Medicare and Medicaid — will still be around. Democrats have already been pretty straightforward about what their “Plan B” will be: Medicare/Medicaid for all. Both programs are still very popular, and the Democratic standard-bearer in 2016 would almost certainly campaign on expanding them, perhaps to those over 55 for Medicare and under 25 for Medicaid. I’m not sure that would be a losing issue, even with an Obamacare collapse. In 10 years, I think it’d be a winner.
That is indeed the “silver lining” that a lot of single payer advocates have been seeing in the troubles involving the Obamacare exchanges, which are complex and hard to administer in no small part because of their reliance on a managed competition model many liberals never favored in the first place.
Trende thinks the major lesson here is that the ideological clash of ideas that activists often perceive in political events just isn’t shared by that many voters:
The American electorate is not intensely ideological, and is more motivated by things such as the state of the economy, whether there is peace abroad (or whether we’re winning a war), and whether the president is suffering from a major scandal.
I would agree in part, but would go further to say that today’s radicalized Republican Party has goals that have never commanded a majority of the electorate, and are even less likely to do so in the future. It is capable of making big gains when Democrats screw up, but is determined to risk them immediately to pursue an unpopular agenda. If the worst (or from their point of view, the best) happens and conservatives gain the power to implement that agenda, then the odds are extremely high they will, as Trende puts it, “mess up their next opportunity to govern.” And in that respect, ideology really does matter–when it collides with reality.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, November 20, 2013
“From The Party Of No To The Party Of Oops”: How Republican Intransigence Keeps Backfiring
Exasperated with repeated Republican stonewalling of President Obama’s executive and judicial nominees, Senate Democrats on Thursday went nuclear, striking down two centuries of precedent regarding the chamber’s arcane filibuster rules.
By a 52-48 vote, the Senate voted to allow confirmation of federal judge and Cabinet nominees with a simple majority vote. The move did not, however, change the filibuster rules regarding legislation and Supreme Court nominees.
For Republicans, it was the latest defeat to come as a result of the party’s refusal to engage with their Democratic colleagues on even minor issues. The GOP has earned a reputation under Obama as the “party of no” for its intransigence, which in recent months has proven self-defeating more than once.
Take the filibuster.
For a full year, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) threatened the nuclear option to circumvent Republican inaction. Most recently, Republicans blocked three nominees to the powerful U.S. District Court of Appeals, not because of any qualms with the candidates’ credentials, but merely because they didn’t want Obama filling vacancies on an influential court that tilts conservative.
With the GOP refusing to back down, Reid finally dropped the bomb, ensuring Obama’s nominees could get an up-or-down vote — and, as a bonus, handing liberals a procedural reform they’ve long sought.
“The American people believe the Senate is broken,” Reid said on the Senate floor Thursday, “and I believe the American people are right.”
Outraged Republicans vowed retribution, saying they would use the process to stack future courts in their favor once they’re back in control. Except to do that, they would need to first retake the Senate and White House, which may not be so easy by 2016.
In the meantime, Democrats have a little extra muscle to help Obama staff his administration as he sees fit (which, let’s remember, used to be common practice). That could be immensely important, since House Republicans have shown no interest in dealing with the president on anything substantive like immigration reform.
As New York‘s Jonathan Chait detailed more thoroughly here, “Obama has no real legislative agenda that can pass Congress,” so his “second-term agenda runs not through Congress but through his own administrative agencies.”
With the filibuster tweak, Obama can now more readily advance his administrative agenda — and Republicans allowed that to happen by forcing Reid’s hand on the filibuster. At that point, he didn’t have much choice: Had he set the precedent of allowing the minority party to prevent judicial vacancies from being filled, Republicans would only have been encouraged to do it again.
“Eventually this escalation would have become untenable,” wrote Salon’s Brian Beutler, “and somebody would have had to go nuclear.”
That’s the same argument Democrats made during the government shutdown, another instance of GOP obstinacy backfiring spectacularly. Had Democrats and President Obama acceded to the GOP’s hostage-taking, it would have established a precedent that government shutdowns and threats of debt default were the norm for legislative negotiations.
And by letting Republicans dig in, Democrats reaped the political benefits of seeing the GOP’s approval ratings tank.
The same dynamic could soon play out on health care, too.
ObamaCare face-planted out of the gate, and Republicans have rightly criticized the administration’s extensive failings in implementing it. However, the GOP has yet to offer a credible alternative health-care plan. The party’s playbook for winning the PR battle over the law, outlined Thursday by the New York Times, is heavy on strategy but light on substance.
“Rather than get out of Obama’s path of self-destruction and focus energy on creating and promoting a positive, forward-looking health-care agenda” wrote National Journal’s Ron Fournier, “the GOP has chosen to cement its reputation as the obstructionist party.”
Republicans will keep stepping on rakes if they opt merely for “no” instead of “no, but instead.” And with ObamaCare possibly set to make something of a comeback in the coming weeks, the clock is ticking.
By: John Terbush, The Week, November 22, 2013
“The Party Of Zilch”: The GOP Is Out To Destroy The Country
Yes, the headline is rather hyperbolic. It’s as over-the-top as some of President Obama’s most unhinged critics, who believe he is running the nation without care or concern for the Constitution. But when you look at the actions of the Republican Party, particularly its members in Congress, my headline seems appropriate.
Three different pieces highlighted how the GOP is grinding just about every sector of the federal government to a halt. And it is doing it through a cynical combination of obstruction, saying no and failing to have viable alternative proposals worthy of national debate. Whatever political gains Republicans achieve in the short-term come at the long-term expense of the country. That’s simply unacceptable.
Even though the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) is much more than a Web site, the disastrous roll out of Healthcare.gov has done a number on the president’s standing with the American people. According to the latest Post-ABC News poll, Obama’s overall approval rating sits at 42 percent. His 55 percent disapproval rating is the highest of his presidency. This would be the perfect time for the opposition to step forward with those alternative proposals. But the GOP is “The Party of Zilch,” as Ron Fournier so accurately described.
Rather than be the party of solutions in a gridlocked capital, appealing to a leadership-starved public, the GOP is the party of obstruction, ensuring that its putrid approval ratings nose dive apace with Obama’s.
The country needs sensible immigration reform that brings 11 million or so undocumented residents out of the shadows. No, says the GOP
The country needs to tame a massive debt that will be 100 percent of the gross domestic product by 2038 unless Congress raises revenue and trims entitlements. No, says the GOP.
The country needs fair debate and compromise around existential issues such as climate change, income inequality, and a deteriorating 20th century infrastructure. No, says the GOP.
“Other than hard partisans on the left and right, the majority of the public—moderate, fix-it Americans who simply want a sensible government—now have nowhere to turn, because the GOP is the party of nothing,” Fournier correctly concludes.
The New York Times editorial board delivered its own party-of-zilch disquisition using opposition to the ACA as the jumping off point.
What is the Republican alternative to this government program, flawed as it is right now? There is none. Party members simply want to repeal the health law and let insurers go back to canceling policies at the first sign of a shadow on an X-ray. They have no immigration policy of their own. They have no plan that will stimulate job growth. They are in favor only of shutdowns and sequesters and repeals, giving the public no reason to believe they have a governing vision or even a legislative agenda.
That congressional Republicans have no “governing vision or even a legislative agenda” was proven in a Politico story on Sunday. The headline said it all: “House GOP 2014 agenda starts with blank slate.”
Last Thursday, a group of House Republicans filed into Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s Capitol office suite and received a blank piece of paper labeled “Agenda 2014.”
The blank slate just about sums up where Republicans find themselves after a year marked by the first government shutdown in 17 years, futile efforts to repeal Obamacare and the inability to pass spending bills at the levels set by Republican leaders.
As bad as that is, what a Republican aide said is worse. “What we have done so far this year clearly hasn’t worked,” the GOP aide involved in the planning sessions told the Politico reporters. “Cantor wants to take us in a new direction, which is good. The problem is we don’t know where we are headed, and we don’t know what we can sell to our members.” This no way to run an enterprise as large and as important as the United States.
The judicial branch is crippled as qualified nominees go unconfirmed due to “unfair hurdles in the Senate.” As a result, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the nation’s second-highest court, has three vacancies on the 11-seat court that handles cases involving federal regulations and national security. Half of the legislative branch is in thrall to a band of right-wing zealots unmoved by facts as much as they are motivated by hatred of the president. As a result, the threat of government shutdowns and default is constant. Inaction on pressing issues is now routine. And the executive branch finds its agenda held hostage by an opposition that schemed against it since before its inauguration in 2009, even though said agenda was approved by the American people — twice.
That the Obama administration has been able to get as much done as it has speaks to the president’s determination to move this nation forward. Yet it’s not enough. Ours is a government that requires two functioning parties that produce good public policy through the necessary friction of governing. Neither party is perfect nor has all the ideas or the answers. But no good comes from a party that gives up completely on governing.
At the end of its editorial, the Times noted, “Democrats may be stumbling right now, but at least they are trying.” Would that Republicans did the same. It is long past time they did.
By: Jonathan Caphart, The Washington Post, November 20, 2013
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 