Politics, Society

Reid: Administration’s Mismanagement Of Obamacare Rollout Cost The Election

225px-harry_reid_official_portraitPresident_Barack_ObamaWe 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.

163 thoughts on “Reid: Administration’s Mismanagement Of Obamacare Rollout Cost The Election”

  1. Here is the part of the Wikipedia which probably offends WordPress and I will drop some letters on the n word.

    Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, “Ni r, n r, n r.” By 1968 you can’t say “n r” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N r, n r.”[8][9]

  2. I posted something several hours ago in which I quoted Wikipedia on the Lee Atwater contribution to the Republicon Party and the present day solid South. It is awaiting moderation. Everything in moderation. Including moderation.

  3. I believe the cause of the Democrats losing the Senate was because those who voted chose enough candidates from the Republican Party to secure a majority.

    The collective number of their individual reasons for their voting Republican, and specific nuances for them voting as they did is exactly equal to the number of votes they cast.

  5. Inga – we still need the John Birch Society. Putin is hard-line Communist KGB.

  6. Most MD practices limit Medicare to less than 1/3rd or 1/4th of their total patient population.
    Anything higher is not financially feasible.
    This is far lower than their demand, however, even though they make up less than 12% of the population overall, due to their burden of disease.

    So Forbes may be correct, except that ‘access’ is rationed by lengthy delays.
    You can have an appointment, just not right now.

  7. “David Hogberg, a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research, pointed out that 17 percent of US physicians are “no longer taking new Medicare patients,” according to a recent National Ambulatory Medical Care survey.

    This is due in large part to “Medicare’s Sustainable Growth Rate [SGR] formula, one of the worst features of Medicare, and one Congress should have eliminated long ago.” Hogberg observed, “A 2010 American Medical Association survey found that over three-quarters of the physicians who limit the Medicare patients they see cited this as a reason: the ‘ongoing threat of future payment cut makes Medicare an unreliable payer.”
    NOVEMBER 21, 2014

  13. I’m wondering ¿Quién es más narcisista?
    Reid o Obama?

    Neither of them seem capable of taking the blame for anything that goes wrong, ever. It’s a very child-like defense.
    Annoying in an adult.

  14. DBQ…I just noticed … think you misunderstood me when you said:

    Insurance companies could NOT drop you from coverage if you got sick. This has been the law for decades.

    The coverage plan I have does not deny you coverage for prior existing conditions before you were covered by them, not merely those you develop under their coverage.

  19. The first Gallup question wasn’t about the ACA, it was about “the responsibility of the federal government to make sure that all Americans have health care coverage”. That clearly includes any single-payer plan.

    Your position has now evolved from “Americans really want single-payer” to “Americans will like it after we Dems have forced it on them.”

    IOW, you’ve revealed yourself to be exactly the sort of arrogant social engineer Pogo described earlier in this thread, convinced that you know better than those of us who disagree w/ you.

  20. I’ve never traveled down the ACA road Chip, so no walking in circles for me. I keep on marching in the direction of a National health CARE program.

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