We have been seeing leading Democrats going public recently with their views that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or “Obamacare” was a political blunder or a simply poorly drafted mistake. This included the third-highest ranked Democrat, Chuck Schumer, who said that it was a mistake to even try to pass the legislation in the first term when most Americans did not place health care as a priority for action. Now the highest ranked Democrat, Senate majority leader Harry Reid, is saying that the Obama Administration may have doomed Democrats in Congress with its poor management and blunders in the rollout of the program.
Reid told the New York Times: “We never recovered from the rollout because the election became one that was directed toward the president. We couldn’t overcome that.”
What is curious is that at the time many Democrats adopted largely a denial approach that borders on delusion. There were no widespread calls from Democrats for Sebelius to be fired, the subject of a past column. The rollout failure was one of the most costly in the history of his country and there were ample indicators of the coming failure. I still remain unsure why the Democrats were not more open about such views at the time. As they plunged in the polls, there continued to be a circling of the wagons around the Administration on what was a legitimate criticism of its management.
In the end, I am not sure whether it was the rollout alone that doomed the Democrats given other issues like immigration. With the defeat of Landrieu, there is not a single national-level Democrat in any office in the Deep South. The Democrats are now at their lowest level of representation since World War II in Congress. That seems more than just the rollout. Schumer blames the ACA itself, but there still appears division among the Democrats as to the cause.
Ms Jettexas I am glad you have had a third year all clean pronouncement.
There were never “death panels” this was a right wing lie of the most egregious kind. In fat it was included and then withdrawn because of the lies and misrepresentations that end of life counseling and discussion was covered such as do you have a living will, what are you wishes if you do become in a situation where you cannot speak for yourself. That is not a death panel, no matter how often Palin et al called it such, it was appropriate discussion for a doctor and patient to have and should be covered by insurance. As it is it is the insurance companies who have essentially death panels when they refuse to pay for procedures a doctor feels is correct/necessary..
leejcaroll – the only way Obamacare pays for itself is to have death panels. Don’t be silly. They have moved to death panels in the UK now and have been doing without the families permission.
There is only so much money. You have to have healthy young people to pay for the sick ones and you have to have the older ones die off as they start to run up heavy medical bills. Death panels are cost efficient.
another click: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/45231-ACA_Estimates.pdf
and
http://kff.org/uninsured/fact-sheet/key-facts-about-the-uninsured-population/
The ironic hypocrisy of Harry Reid, midwife to ACA, is fabulous. Who is next? Pelosi?
JimC – Surely Harry Reid could blame ACA on the Koch Bros. It has to be their fault.
JetTex,
Your friend the teacher should move to Wisconsin. Even after Walker we have better unions and salaries and benefits for our teachers. Texas doesn’t treat their teachers very well it seems.
Thank-you, Rafflaw and Isaac for your highly insightful comments.
@Aridog ~ I agree with your post @12:06. Of coarse I was concerned about their panels labeled ‘death panels’. I too have battled cancer and just got a 3rd year clean bill of health last week. My concern was, because I’m north of 40 and had a serious illness, how will this ACA bill affect my available choices for staying healthy in the future. So if I have a relapse and because of my age, will this ‘panel’ decide what I can and cannot get for care? That’s what scares me most.
I’m lucky to have the old fashioned healthcare through the APA. However, American Airlines has tried to shed our insurance recently in a bankruptcy filing. The judge denied their relief, but it doesn’t mean they won’t try it again. If successful, I’ll be forced onto the ACA. Since July, I’ve had both back & neck surgery. I’m thankful I was able to get it done now, because who knows what AA will do next to try and drop our insurance.
My best friend is a Teacher at Dallas ISD and she has the ACA. She pays a little over $600 a month for it and her deductible is $6000 and this on a teacher’s pay. She had to get two more jobs to make ends meet. That monthly cost used to be about $54 before the ACA. That is just for one person, imagine the cost with 3 or more. I’d go broke with a family plan.
msjettexas, It sounds like your best friend had health insurance through Dallas ISD which is why it was so cheap. They simply did what AA tried to do in getting rid of your health care plan. That is why her rates went up, NOT because of ACA. Think that Obama is to blame for AA trying to screw you too? Put the blame where is should be, on corporate elites who are stealing everything they can get their hands on.
Your friend is lucky since she had health care. I knew a teacher in the Valley, and he had to have a part time job at UPS as a driver to get his health care insurance since his ISD had NONE.
leejcaroll – Still no answer to this?
Also, can you give an exact number of people who weren’t insured but now are through Obamacare?
answer to what?
As to the rest of your comment re how many uninsured now insured: [1] Based on data collected in February, 2014, McKinsey & Company reported that 27 percent of marketplace enrollees were previously uninsured. See McKinsey & Company. 2014. “Individual Market Enrollment: Updated View.” McKinsey Center for U.S. Health System Reform. http://healthcare.mckinsey.com/sites/default/files/Individual-Market-Enrollment.pdf (PDF) from http://www.rand.org/blog/2014/04/survey-estimates-net-gain-of-9-3-million-american-adults.html
Aridog, I might have to agree with you on the ACA in part. When we allow private insurance companies to administer our healthcare system we are not in a good place. One reason I voted for Jill Stein in 2012 was because of Obama’s lack of interest in National Universal Healthcare and his disinterest in prosecuting war criminals and bank fraudsters. There are other social issues that Republicans are completely wrong on and they are wayyyyy too influenced by the religous right and tea people for them to win a national election again, IMO only.
“Ms Jet rolls out “scandals” that have been repeatedly not scandals but that is the republican mantra again,. Keep telling the untruths in the hopes it will turn out to be tru.”
The IRS did target Conservative groups and about 2 Liberal ones. I also stated that these were debacles, not “scandals”. That might not be your truth, but it certainly is the truth of many.
I contributed a lot of money to a Republican campaign in 2008. I was audited in 2010 and 2011. I have never been audited in my entire life until I made that contribution. Many of my friends that contributed to conservative campaigns in my town were being audited too. Even back then, I wondered about it.
Perception is the name of the game, and that’s what it got Democrats, on November 4th.
I have insurance based upon one of the alternatives proposed several times, and it prohibits denial of coverage due to pre-existing conditions.
Insurance companies could NOT drop you from coverage if you got sick. This has been the law for decades. http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/obama-health-insurance-whopper-misleading-country-key-reform-proposal-article-1.386152
Insuring people against events that have ALREADY happened is not part of the definition of insurance. If your house is already on fire, will your P& C firm be required to insure you for that event? If your car has been wrecked…..do you really think that the car insurance company should issue an insurance policy and pay for those damages.
The idea that insurance companies should insure for PRE existing conditions is frankly retarded.
It is hard to not be insured. I can attest to that as my husband who is diabetic and self employed was not able to get insurance for years…..20 years. We paid out of pocket for any medications or procedures. Fortunately those were not that onerous. Our biggest fear while walking the tightrope without a net was that he would have some severe occurrence that would literally bankrupt us. Now that he is Medicare age eligible, we have Medicare A (free) Medicare B ($108 monthly) and a supplement plan ($120 monthly). Obama care was so expensive that we couldn’t afford it and the deductibles were so high that we were just better off paying out of pocket and continuing to fly without a net.
Even though we were unable to get insurance before O-care……I understand the reason why. PRE EXISTING CONDITIONS are not insurable.
Instead of blowing up everyone’s adequate insurance and removing doctors from the plans….. a better alternative would have been to set up some sort of a high risk insurance pool funded by the government and not to force insurers to pay for UN-insurable events at the cost of everyone else by raising premiums on the healthy to unsustainable levels.
This is a straw man argument obscuring the fact that the Democrats as a party has become utterly corrupt. They have been traitors to their so called “brand” of representing the interests of the working class. The ACA, a program that mandates fealty to the profligacy of private enterprise – the insurance and pharmaceutical companies, is just one example of that – not the primary cause. Moreover, people such as Reid, making noises now, were all for it as the toxic brew of ACA was being created.
Inga…please, you cannot get much more regressive than the PPACA and its impact on middle income Americans. (Well you could if you advocated for a VAT tax, which to my knowledge you have not). I’ll be watching with morbid interest as the full mandates are enforced and to see how the various union health care plans with employers are treated under the *Cadillac Plan Tax (Penalty)* since most would qualify as “Cadillac Plans”. Just as Dr Gruber said, the plan is a tax based income transfer, nothing less…and I include the transfer out of the Medicare funding (paid by all rich or poor if they have income as the IRS defines it), which otherwise is decried for already being at risk for going broke. The threshold level bandied about originally was $250 AGI…but actually impacts incomes much lower than that. The fool thing could not even be passed by up/down vote, so it was “deemed” passed by the Senate as they wrote it and sent to the President.
You too must accept part of the blame, Harry… Under your ‘leadership’…. the entire Democratic Party has become a hollow shell of what it used to be!
I’d fault both the Dems (more) and the Repubs as well. As late as yesterday a senior Demoract (Elijah Cummings) said no one offered an alternative to the ACA. That was a patent falsehood, pure and simple.
Randyjet … I do understand your contentious issue with the prior condition matter. I, too, am a two time cancer survivor….most recently last month. However, I have insurance based upon one of the alternatives proposed several times, and it prohibits denial of coverage due to pre-existing conditions. Unfortunately it is not available to everyone, but it could have been and with much less nonsense than the PPACA. Fact is it has worked for 50+ years and already had the administrative infrastructure to boot. The proponents of the PPACA focused on some trees and ignored the forest.
Aridog, The FACT is that we do not have any alternative now and DID not have any alternative then. The GOP had no plan either other than their long traditional opposition to ANY health care plan other than making insurance companies richer. I am covered by Medicare now thankfully, and I remember the virulent vicious campaign that was waged against it by the GOP and the AMA. Of course, it was won thanks to LBJ who was without question the best politician in US history in running Congress. To say that there was some alternative is simply not true.
I had one GOP partisan who opined that simply expanding Medicare to all would be the best alternative. This was before Obama was elected or a candidate. I was opposed to that since I prefer the Canadian style system and the New England Journal of Medicine is in favor of that as well. They are in the best position to know how well that system works since they are next door and can do a quick drive and DO go there. I fly into Canada regularly and I ask the people up there how they like their health care system. I have yet to find any person who does not like it. It also is a great conversation starter with the person driving me to the hotel since they will tell me all about how well it works for them or a relative.
The people reelcted a Democratic President in 2012 because there are issues beyond healthcare that Republicans are completely regressive on. When many as in a Presidential election come out to vote, we will continue to see Democrats being elected, because regressive policy doesn’t sit well with slightly more than half of all voters.
Somehow this reminds me of the other issue on the front pages, the big to do regarding torture. The real issue is the arrogant incompetence of the bush administration in their bungling of two wars, one of which was not only unnecessary but criminal. The issue of torture and that so many people can pontificate and take the moral high ground kind of diverts attention away from the fact that Americans, represented by both parties seem to think that blind military force is ok, for no other reason but, ‘We can.’
The stupidity of allowing the cost of health care to be administered by the private sector is now obscured by whether the ACA is this or that. The ACA is a double edged sword. It has helped millions and millions have seen their premiums rise. No one seems to focus on where the premiums go and who sets them. With government subsidies the private sector is laughing all the way to the bank. Before they could blame the high costs of medical care as they fleeced Americans. Pharmaceutical companies could cite the high costs of research and development for rising drug costs when in actuality their budgets allow 20% for advertising and only 16% for R&D. Now they can take the public’s eye off of the real issues by focusing those eyes in those vacuous heads on Obama.
Obama made the first move. It can be disputed that it resulted in a dog’s breakfast. What cannot be disputed and can be verified by simply reading the news in the past six years is that the Republican party sponsored by funding from the health insurance industry has not only offered nothing in the way of cooperation but contributed to the mess. The program can be amended just as all laws can be amended. The opportunity is here now to take the corporate health insurance monkey off of the backs of the American public.
The US pays five to eight times as much per capita for health care administration than citizens in other countries. This has nothing to do with health care. If everyone paid into the system, something Obama can be given credit for addressing, and the system were run by state governments, we would all pay close to half of what we pay now.
The only negative part would be that the subsidies we pay directly through our premiums to corporate America, and which we have been paying for decades, irrespective of the administrations, would stop. Unfortunately a couple hundred thousand unnecessary jobs in this quagmire of a system would be lost. That is the underlying reason why Obama did it this way. When he came to office the worst think he could have done would have been to increase unemployment. Well unemployment now could afford to increase by a few hundred thousand more.
So, instead of focusing on the by products of arrogance and incompetence why not focus on the big pictures. The health insurance industry loves to see the American citizen chase its tail and let them pad their wallets.
Jim,
I agree. People have become so dependent on the administrative state to manage their lives that they have forgotten the principle of self-reliance. Personal responsibility is what others are supposed to be doing on our behalf rather than what we are to do for ourselves. This article about Reid is just another example.
Reid is crying in his beer. The reason Dems lost the Senate was because candidates ran away from the good things Dems have been able to get through the obstructionist Republicans, including the ACA.
The story of the roll out of the ACA has been written and talked about more than torture, more than illegal wars, more than the destruction of our economy related to tax cuts for the wealthy and the obstruction of real jobs bills and the wedding of wall street and Washington.
The story of the roll out has been written and discussed more than the record breaking obstruction in the Senate which has resulted in over 400 filibusters and many presidential appointments left without an up or down vote.
While the waste of money is a big issue, let’s not forget about the waste of money in the House voting scores of times to kill the ACA. We also cannot forget how much money it is going to cost the taxpayers to sue the President.
Let’s not forget the waste in the defense budget and let’s not forget the continued purchasing of politicians by the wealthy and large corporations. These are all big issues, but they get little or no ink or airtime. I wonder why that is? Follow the money.
“Jonathan Gruber told some truths about health care that few people want to hear.”
http://thefederalist.com/2014/12/10/in-defense-of-jonathan-gruber/?utm_source=The+Federalist+List&utm_campaign=4837093582-RSS_DAILY_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cfcb868ceb-4837093582-79248369
What’s disheartening about all of these democratic leaders stating this opinion is, the American people tried and tried hard to tell them this, but they ignored our cries. I know I was very angry about how they went about this and how they treated Republicans and Americans. They shut out all of the Republicans when they put this bill together because they had a super majority, creating a partisan bill. They have to own it.
It was extremely arrogant of them to shut out Republicans and turn a deaf ear to the American people. This is partly why I found Obama’s re-election so surprising, he is Obamacare. I think this debacle and other issues like the IRS, Fast & Furious, Benghazi, racial divide, immigration and more, contributed to the turn over in the senate and added Republican padding in the house and new Republican governors across the country.