October 15-17, 2013
Oct 15 14:20 Fighting the smart fight Oct 16 07:29 Glitches? Not really Oct 16 08:08 Deadbeats or not deadbeats Oct 16 14:01 If they build it, they still won't come Oct 17 00:43 When will the Affordable Care Act crash? Oct 17 21:18 President Obama's chutzpah
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Fighting the smart fight
Currently, all of the attention in DC is on the US Senate. That's understandable because that's where the action is. That isn't where the bottleneck is, though. Republicans who put a higher priority on the public good rather than the 'art of the possible' aren't likely to support the Senate compromise :
A flurry of phone calls and meetings last night and early this morning led to that consensus among the approximately 50 Republicans who form the House GOP's right flank. They're furious with Senate Republicans for working with Democrats to craft what one leading tea-party congressman calls a 'mushy piece of s**t.'
It's one thing to negotiate with Democrats in a divided government. It's another to outright cave to President Obama's demands.
Some important points must be made at this point. First, whether Republicans enthusiastically embrace the bill or whether they vehemently oppose the bill, Democrats will blame Republicans for the shutdown. They've already called Republicans anarchists (Sen. Reid), likened them to spousal abusers (Sen. Boxer) and called them legislative arsonists (Rep. Pelosi).
Why wouldn't Republicans expect them to drop their gloves during next year's campaign?
'What they'll come up with in the Senate will not get the support of most House Republicans,' predicts a House conservative strategist. 'And thus, after a lot of hand-wringing, it'll be DOA. Just like with BCA in 2011, the most important question is, what can pass the House? Everything else is subordinate to that. So, while the Senate is taking the lead right now, I expect the focus will soon shift back to the House, and back to the idea of doing a six-week extension of the debt ceiling. While Obama and Reid won't like it, they don't want to go past October 17, either. The politics of the debt ceiling are different from the shutdown. And so, we feel they'll reluctantly accept it as a stopgap measure.'
Republicans have some leverage, at least if Senate Republicans don't squander this opportunity. If Republicans insist that the individual mandate be postponed a year and that Congress and their staff don't get subsidies that other Americans aren't eligible for in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, they'll win that fight.
That's because President Obama can't afford a default on his watch, especially when there's a perfectly reasonable offer on the table. It isn't difficult selling people on the notion that politicians shouldn't get subsidies that aren't available to the average Joe or Jane.
Similarly, it isn't difficult convincing people that the health insurance exchanges aren't operational. Connecting that with delaying the individual mandate isn't that difficult either.
That's how Republicans win this fight and resurrect their standing with the American people. It's a win-win situation for the GOP -- if they don't let Senate squishies blow it for them.
Posted Tuesday, October 15, 2013 2:20 PM
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Glitches? Not really
President Obama and his supporters had been singing a happy tune even after the disastrous rollout of the health insurance exchanges. That's changing. This video shows why:
This partial transcript should highlight why the Obama administration should be firing consultants:
LUKE CHUNG: It wasn't designed well. It wasn't implemented well. It looks like nobody tested it.
JAN CRAWFORD: Luke Chung's company builds online database programs. He supports the new health care law. He says it's not demand that's crashing HealthCare.gov. The entire website needs a complete overhaul.
LUKE CHUNG: It's not close. It's not even ready for beta testing from my book. I would be ashamed and embarassed if my organization delivered something like that.
Couple that with this video of Robert Gibbs calling the rollout of the Affordable Care Act's health insurance exchanges and there's a disaster brewing:
These problems are fixable with time, though it'll take months, not days or weeks to fix what's been 'implemented', not to mention the beta testing and implementing the major fixes to the exchanges. The biggest problem is the product itself, which I wrote about here :
Another person shared a link found on the federal government's main Obamacare page listing premium estimates for small business employers:
The information is not very complete as I don't see anything about deductible or other detailed info, but it does given an actual price as to the 'Premium.' It is VERY SCARY! For example, my insurance plan right now for my spouse and I costs $545 a month with 100% coverage after my $2500 deductible. We are both 32 years old. When I looked at this site for 80% coverage it says it will be $954.78 a month!!!! So compare my old Plan: 100% coverage for $545 a month To New Plan: 80% Coverage for $945 a month. This is only only an estimate but it is VERY Scary for me to see this kind of increase in rates and reduction in benefits!
Yes, the individual mandate should be postponed for a year. No, that won't fix the problem. The problem, as we've just seen, is that the product being sold is too expensive. That won't change because of the number of different coverages required by the Affordable Care Act.
People should have a choice of what coverages they want to buy. The Affordable Care Act shouldn't dictate to families what coverages must be provided in their health insurance policies. Families and their physicians should make that decision. Period.
For 2 weeks, we've seen how disastrous the Affordable Care Act health insurance exchanges are. They aren't close to being operational. There's a part of me that thinks the inidividual mandate should proceed, then wait for someone to sue the government because it isn't operational by the enrollment deadline. It would be delicious to watch Sebelius announce that the individual mandate has to be postponed because the exchanges aren't functional.
Posted Wednesday, October 16, 2013 7:29 AM
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Deadbeats or not deadbeats
This LTE in the St. Cloud Times insists that we aren't a deadbeat nation:
There should never be any bargaining about raising the debt ceiling. We are not a deadbeat nation.
KrisAnne Hall has a different perspective :
On Friday, President Barack Obama told workers at a Ford plant in Liberty, Missouri, "if we don't raise the debt ceiling, we're deadbeats.' This is a prime example of 'fundamentally transforming' America. This is part of the strategy that leftists use, change the definition of words, seize the vocabulary. Obama wants you to believe that racking up bills that you can't pay for in the first place, and then borrowing money to pay those bills, and then passing on that debt to your children is the responsible thing. It used to be that people understood that if you robbed from your children you were, fundamentally, a deadbeat.
To Ms. Maizan's point that we aren't a deadbeat nation, I'd simply argue that a government that spends money it doesn't have on things it doesn't need is the quintessential deadbeat nation. Glenn Reynolds' column provides a fantastic solution:
With these lessons learned, here's my budget proposal: An across-the-board cut of 5% in every government department's budget line. (You can't convince me -- and you'll certainly have a hard time convincing voters -- that there's not 5% waste to be found in any government program.) Then a five-year freeze at that level. Likewise, a one-year moratorium on new regulations, followed by strict limits on new regulatory action: Perhaps a rule that all new business regulations won't have the force of law until approved by Congress.
Earlier in his column, Professor Reynolds stated something elementary:
As economist Herbert Stein once observed, something that can't go on forever, won't. And this can't go on forever.
Anyone that thinks federal spending can be sustained is foolish. By this definition, Ms. Maizan is foolish. Taxing the rich more to pay for irresponsible spending won't fix anything. In fact, I'd argue that raising taxes without questioning what politicians are spending money on is the political equivalent of a junkie scoring a fix for his addiction.
Professor Reynolds makes a string of fantastic points on the shutdown. Here's my favorite:
The big lesson of the shutdown is that, in a time when so-called "draconian cuts" usually refer to mere decreases in the rate of growth of spending on programs, America was able to do without all the "non-essential" government workers just fine. (The same AP poll cited above says that 80% have felt no impact from the shutdown; a majority also oppose increasing the debt limit.) Turns out that most of those nonessential workers really are non-essential. And it's a safe bet that some of those who stayed on the job, like the National Park Service people who chased veterans away from an open-air memorial, could be done without, too, in a pinch. Under the shutdown, new regulations also slowed to a trickle, suggesting that we can do just fine without those, too.
Let's not forget this point. If President Obama hadn't implemented his World War II Memorial strategy, taxpayers wouldn't have noticed that government is shut down.
I agree with Reynolds and KrisAnne Hall. It's time to stop spending like a deadbeat. It's time to say NO MORE!!! This administration's reckless spending isn't sustainable. If it can't be sustained, it won't continue. This nation can't afford 3 more years of President Obama playing the role of deadbeat politician.
Posted Wednesday, October 16, 2013 8:08 AM
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If they build it, they still won't come
Ed Morrissey's post about traffic at the HealthCare.gov website is today's top read. In his post, Ed cites this Washington Post article :
The number of visitors to the federal government's HealthCare.gov Web site plummeted 88 percent between Oct. 1 and Oct. 13, according to a new analysis of America's online use, while less than half of 1 percent of the site's visitors successfully enrolled for health insurance the first week.
Based on a sample of two million users, or 1 percent of all online users in the U.S., which Millward Brown Digital has permission to track, it suggests that the rush of traffic administration officials cited as the cause of the site's problems trailed off within a matter of days.
Of the 9.4 million unique visitors to the site during the launch's first week, according to the analysis, roughly a third attempted to register, and a third of that number, 1.01 million, completed registration. Ultimately, roughly 36,000 Americans signed up for an insurance plan online, the report said.
Then Ed included this commentary:
If any commercial web portal only ended up with a 0.384% success rate in its first week of operation followed by an 88% plunge in traffic, the project team would find itself out on the street. If it happened to a publicly-traded company that sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into the project, the CEO and the executive management team would be joining them on the sidewalk.
If the individual mandate and the penalties didn't exist, people would stay away in droves. To put it in Yogi Berra's words, it'd sound like this :
If people don't want to come out to the ball park, nobody's gonna stop 'em.
That's what happens when something is voluntary. This administration isn't into voluntary. Pointing a proverbial gun to people's head is more this administration's style. The Affordable Care Act isn't about free markets matching needs with products. It's about the federal government telling people what they must do:
Update: The schadenfreude has run deep on the Right over this Daily Kos entry from September :
My wife and I just got our updates from Kaiser telling us what our 2014 rates will be. Her monthly has been $168 this year, mine $150. We have a high deductible. We are generally healthy people who don't go to the doctor often. I barely ever go. The insurance is in case of a major catastrophe.
Well, now, because of Obamacare, my wife's rate is gong to $302 per month and mine is jumping to $284.
I am canceling insurance for us and I am not paying any f***ing penalty. What the hell kind of reform is this?
Conservatives have been predicting this since President Obama signed the bill into law. The only thing that's less surprising than finding out people's insurance rates are going up is that the federal government ran another deficit last year.
Posted Wednesday, October 16, 2013 2:01 PM
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When will the Affordable Care Act crash?
That's essentially the question Allahpundit asks in this post about the Affordable Care Act. First, here's what Charles Cooke wrote :
[T]he law remains pretty unpopular. That the government has demonstrated so publicly that it is too incompetent to run what is a glorified comparison website, even when given hundreds of millions of dollars and a three-year lead time, cannot have helped the progressive dream of single-payer one bit. Hopefully, Republicans will have the nous to hammer this home over and over and over again during the next few months. Americans hate the DMV. Obamacare's exchanges are currentlt worse than the DMV. Free marketeers, who may be tempted instead to talk abstractly about how bad things are in countries that most Americans have never visited, let alone lived in, should capitalize on that.
Simply put, the Affordable Care Act has been disastrous for quite awhile. This isn't shocking to people who've paid attention. Here's a key part of AP's commentary:
The longer he sticks with it, the greater the risk that the whole universal health-care endeavor in all its statist glory will be jeopardized long-term. If Healthcare.gov becomes a punchline among young (and left-leaning) Americans, who knows what that'll do to the prospects of greater government power over health care later.
If people actually could access HealthCare.gov, there'd be protests in front of the White House and at the HHS building. The website's software problems (they aren't glitches) will eventually get fixed. I've said here for quite some time that the biggest disaster contained in the Affordable Care Act is the health insurance product.
Even if (when?) President Obama or Kathleen Sebelius announces that the administration is delaying the implementation of the individual mandate, some damage will have been done to the Affordable Care Act. How much remains to be seen but whether it hurt isn't debatable.
What's dead in the water is single-payer. Regardless of whether it's good policy (it isn't), the American people won't trust government after all of the recent fiascos. Washington, DC isn't popular these days. People trust DC less than they believe that unicorns existed.
Insurance premiums are skyrocketing but that isn't the worst of it. The deductibles through the bronze plan are super-expensive. After all of HealthCare.gov's software design errors have been fixed, the product will still be expensive. That part won't change regardless of whether the software design problems are ever fixed.
Posted Thursday, October 17, 2013 12:43 AM
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President Obama's chutzpah
It isn't a secret that President Obama has the temperament of a spoiled brat. That's why his comments in this article aren't surprising. They're just disgusting:
He said legislative change should be won at the polls, not through procedural hostage-taking that threatened the economy.
'You don't like a particular policy or a particular president, then argue for your position,' Obama said. 'Go out there and win an election.'
Mr. President, if you want to argue that DC politicians deserve special health insurance subsidies that aren't available to others making the same salary, let's have that fight on national TV. I'm betting that's a fight you don't to fight.
That's one of the things the GOP fought for.
Another thing they fought for was to postpone the individual mandate. It's disgusting to hear Kathleen Sebelius go out night after night, on show after show, and lie to the American people. That's right. I said she's lied to the American people. States know exactly how many people bought health insurance through state-run and federal-run exchanges but the HHS Secretary doesn't know? Forgive me if I don't trust her on that.
Obama, who gave up no notable concessions in a battle that started with House Republicans pressing to defund ObamaCare, scolded the GOP with his comments and reminded them of their defeat in the 2012 election.
President Obama is famous for "I won" type of statements. He's a sore winner. He simply can't help himself.
Notice, though, that President Obama never debates issues on the merits. It's always about winning elections. It's as though ideas don't matter whatsoever. Representing all of America doesn't seem to matter much to him either.
Mr. President, I triple dog dare you to tell the American people that having their health insurance premiums double and their health care expenditures skyrocket is the way to make life better for working families. In fact, I'd triple-dog dare you to tell the Teamsters that.
The thought of doing what's right for the entire nation apparently doesn't enter into President Obama's thinking. Great policies that make America more prosperous aren't part of his thinking. His administration can't end soon enough.
Posted Thursday, October 17, 2013 9:18 PM
Comment 1 by walter hanson at 18-Oct-13 04:38 PM
Gary:
You could've pointed out that while President Obama won reelection the House was also reelected and therefore if the President wants to claim win elections he should respect and sign what the House is voting for and wait until 2015 if he doesn't like it and a new House is elected (which despite how bad things are for the Republicans I don't think will happen) and work with the new House.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
