October 24-26, 2013
Oct 24 01:35 A Great Place to Work? Oct 24 03:13 SR-Online show highlights Oct 24 10:47 Affordable Care Act's problems just beginning Oct 24 12:15 Schumer: What Constitution? Oct 24 15:40 Mind-boggling Oct 25 08:09 Franken's follies Oct 26 11:04 WH Spin vs. reality
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A Great Place to Work?
A Great Place to Work?
More Lipstick on a Pig with Apologies to Pigs
by Silence Dogood
At Meet and Confer on October 9, 2013, Holly Schoenherr, Director of Human Resources at St. Cloud State University, announced that the university had signed a $50,000 contract with the Great Place to Work Institute to 'help' SCSU improve trust and morale among its employees. Three issues arise immediately. First the contract was signed without consultation with the Faculty Association. Second, MnSCU requires a request for proposals (RFP) for contracts over $50,000. Lastly, Minnesota Statutes require several procedural steps before being signed. Apparently, Holly did not know about that requirement for an RFP because almost immediately she tried to cover her misstep by then saying "the contract is a little under $50,000." It is also likely that she did not follow Minnesota Statues BEFORE signing the contract. It's too bad that the administration regularly displays such a lack of trust and respect for the Faculty at SCSU that they won't include the faculty BEFORE decisions are made. And too bad Human Resources didn't follow:
MnSCU Board Procedure 5.14.2 Consultant, Professional or Technical Services
Part 6. Consultant, Professional, or Technical Services Contract Definition. A consultant, professional or technical contract means any agreement entered into for consultant, professional, or technical services usually on a short-term basis for a finite period of time and for a specific purpose(s).
Subpart C. A two week public notice of Request for Proposals (RFP) shall be given for contracts over $50,000 in an official newspaper. The official newspaper may be the State Register. In addition to the public notice, requests for proposals may be solicited by directly notifying prospective bidders not less than seven (7) days before the final date of submitting bids.
I guess it should be easy for the administration to document where the RFP was published before the contract was awarded. However, if it is true that the contract was "a little under $50,000" ($49,999 comes to mind), the administration might still be able to slide by on the letter of Board Procedure 5.14.2 on a technicality but still clearly violating the spirit. However, it is hard to believe that Human Resources actually was aware, let alone followed Minnesota Statute 16C.08.
Minnesota Statute 16C.08 PROFESSIONAL OR TECHNICAL SERVICES.
Subd. 2.Duties of contracting agency.
(a) Before an agency may seek approval of a professional or technical services contract valued in excess of $5,000, it must provide the following:
(1) a description of how the proposed contract or amendment is necessary and reasonable to advance the statutory mission of the agency;
(2) a description of the agency's plan to notify firms or individuals who may be available to perform the services called for in the solicitation;
(3) a description of the performance measures or other tools, including accessibility measures if applicable, that will be used to monitor and evaluate contract performance; and
(4) an explanation detailing, if applicable, why this procurement is being pursued unilaterally by the agency and not as an enterprise procurement.
(b) In addition to paragraph (a), the agency must certify that:
(1) no current state employee is able and available to perform the services called for by the contract;
(2) the normal competitive bidding mechanisms will not provide for adequate performance of the services;
(3) reasonable efforts will be made to publicize the availability of the contract to the public;
(4) the agency will develop and implement a written plan providing for the assignment of specific agency personnel to manage the contract, including a monitoring and liaison function, the periodic review of interim reports or other indications of past performance, and the ultimate utilization of the final product of the services;
It would certainly be instructive to find out all of the university's responses for fulfilling all of the requirements of 16C.08. More likely, no one in the administration ever thought that any of this was necessary. Clearly, the university has hired a large number of consultants over the past few years so this kind of thing should be routine and it should be easy to forward copies of these documents for this and prior contracts.
OK, so SCSU is likely to have failed to follow both Minnesota Statute and MnSCU Board Policies, would performing a climate survey at SCSU be a good thing? Most of the campus community would probably agree it's a good idea. However, not being asked before the decision to conduct such a survey was made and being informed only after the fact is hardly a way to build trust.
From the Great Place to Work (GPtW) Institute website you can find out about the company the university has hired to perform the survey.
We partner with large and small organizations in the private, public and non-profit sectors. Our clients employ diverse workforces that are both non-unionized and unionized, professional and entry-level, with permanent and temporary staff. These organizations have both single and multiple locations, and operate in just one country or across borders. We've worked with organizations in all major industries, including healthcare, manufacturing, transportation, consumer product goods, professional services, technology, food service, hospitality, as well as the government, education and non-profit sectors.
So if the GPtW website is to be believed, it looks like they have extensive experience with a lot of different types of organizations. The GPtW website displays a number of the logos of the companies which with they have worked.
As you read further, the material on the GPtW website is almost exclusively directed at the corporate world. The information says that they work in the "education and non-profit" sectors but does not list a single university as a client.
Reviewing the questions that are asked in a GPtW survey, almost all seem directly related to the corporate sector - the word student does not appear in any of their questions! A sample of the questions in the GPtW materials are listed:
Leadership encourages me to participate in company activities.
Management's actions are consistent with our company's values
We have enough staff to provide high-quality customer service.
We provide a safe environment for our patients.
The faculty at SCSU are certainly not sure where the idea to perform the survey was germinated. However, most likely President Potter was sitting in first class next to an executive from the Great Place to Work Institute on a plane to China, Turkey, Malaysa, South Africa, Chile, or England where he was entranced by the salesman's pitch and decided to drop 50K of the university's money. Since the university can't print money, anything spent on one thing can't be spent on another. In other words, the $50,000 the university is spending on the GPtW contract might have been used to hire an Office Administrative Assistant for one of the departments on campus that does not have one, or to hire thirteen adjuncts, or a fixed-term faculty member to teach needed course offerings.
In light of declining enrollments, and declining budget revenue, it might have been wise to consult with the faculty BEFORE committing SCSU to an expenditure that did not have to be made. Who knows, those whining complaining faculty might have come up with something more useful and ultimately less expensive. Since true consultation on this matter did not occur, the opportunity for some collaborative governance was missed and an opportunity to engender trust between management and labor has been lost. And that's a shame because easy opportunities such as this don't come along too often.
Posted Thursday, October 24, 2013 1:35 AM
Comment 1 by Patrick at 24-Oct-13 09:14 AM
[cue Gomer Pyle voice: "surprise, surprise"] SCSU Administration not following MNSCU policy and procedures. now where have we seen that before - oh yes when President Potter made the decision to close the highly successful, nationally accredited Aviation program.
Comment 2 by Crimson Trace at 24-Oct-13 09:31 AM
A great place to spend money would be more appropriate. The new SCSU 45 million dollar empty science building (most expensive building ever built on a MnSCU campus) recently covered by Channel 5 really takes the cake.
http://kstp.com/article/stories/s3194890.shtml
Response 2.1 by Gary Gross at 24-Oct-13 10:16 AM
How did KSTP scoop the St. Cloud Times on ISELF? Hint: They had help from a real reporter. The Times didn't.
SR-Online show highlights
One of my favorite shows each week is the online version of Special Report With Bret Baier. It's affectionately known amongst followers as SR-Online. Each Wednesday after the regular show, the panelists from the show to discuss various topics, with Bret Baier moderating the discussing much like he does during the regular roundtable. This week's panelists were George Will, Julie Pace of the AP and Tucker Carlson of Fox & Friends Weekend. Here's the first highlight from the show, courtesy of Mr. Will:
GEORGE WILL: Well, it is a solution a) to the immediate problem, which is, as Tucker said during the regular program, you can't say that you're going to get penalized for not buying X and b) we've made it impossible to buy X. That's untenable.
Mr. Will says that position is untenable. I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Will. Shortly after that, Will said this:
This one, being the signature achievement, this focus over the struggle of the government shutdown, to end the government shutdown and then go immediately into this fiasco, actually sorta erases the government shutdown.
Immediately after that, Bret Baier brought Julie Pace into the conversation, asking her how ironic would it be if, after Republicans first tried defunding the Affordable Care Act, then delaying the individual mandate, the thing that delays the individual mandate was the Affordable Care Act. Here's Ms. Pace's reply:
JULIE PACE, AP WH CORRESPONDENT: Doesn't it just feel like the government shutdown was a really long time ago? I mean, we just went through that and it feels like the conversation in Washington, especially on Capitol Hill and at the White House has turned very quickly.
I've written, along with others, that Republicans didn't clothe themselves in glory during the shutdown. I, along with many others, essentially said that the end of the government shutdown would quickly turn into the White House's worst nightmare. For the White House, the worst is yet to come. As Mr. Will highlighted during the regular show, the disastrous rollout will "seem like the good old days" because, as I and others have said, the disfunctionality of HealthCare.gov is preventing people from the worst nightmare, which is the product.
The term sticker shock is quickly becoming Washington's newest favorite buzzword. Unfortunately, it's becoming lots of families' worst nightmare because they're getting dropped from the plans they'd been enrolled in and liked. They're getting dropped because the policies that they liked don't live up to the federal government's demandments in terms of coverages.
I wrote here about how the government is the predator to be protected from. If people want to purchase health insurance policies that don't have coverage for neonatal care or other government-mandated coverages, they should have that option. The government shouldn't be telling me and my physician what coverages I must purchase.
Now that Washington's biggest battles are being fought on the Democrats' turf, the government shutdown seems, like Ms. Pace and Mr. Will have said, to have happened in a prior century.
As more people get cancellation notices from their insurance companies and families see dramatic spikes in their health insurance premiums and they find out that they can't keep their doctor, Democrats will increasingly come under attack for having voted for the law or for not voting to limit the damage to families. That's hardly dealing from a position of strength.
Posted Thursday, October 24, 2013 3:13 AM
No comments.
Affordable Care Act's problems just beginning
George Will's explanation of the Affordable Care Act's problems is fantastic:
Here's the transcript of what he said:
GEORGE WILL: It is breaking and they're echoing what the president said with his body language and his action when he said the employer mandate is going to be delayed. From then on, we're all operating on the same premise, which is that the Affordable Care Act cannot be implemented as written. So now we're just arguing about the details. There's no great principle involved here.
So far as I can tell, what the administration is trying to do is sell something online and it can't do it. Get Jeff Bezos. He's bought the Washington Post, let him buy the Department of Health and Human Services. He knows how to do this. The difference is that people go to Amazon.com, a, voluntarily and, b, because they know what they want to buy. People go to healthcare.gov because they're under government coercion and they're confronted with something that poll after poll indicates they don't want to buy. So the Bezos model, I'm afraid, won't work.
###
WILL: When they fix the website, their real problems will begin. They're going to look back on the last few weeks as the good old days. When people hack their way through the thicket of difficulties and get to the real choices that Obamacare offers, particularly the 2.7 million young people they're counting on to sign up and the young people say, 'this is awfully expensive for something I don't want,' and recoil, That is the difficulties today are actually keeping people from seeing the bad choice they're going to have to make once they get onto the site.
Twice, Mr. Will highlighted what's wrong with the HealthCare.gov website. First, he said that people go to "healthcare.gov because they're under government coercion and they're confronted with something that poll after poll indicates they don't want to buy."
Then he said "the 2.7 million young people they're counting on to sign up and the young people say, 'this is awfully expensive for something I don't want.'" I've consistently said that the portal is the smallest of the Affordable Care Act's problems. That isn't to say it's a tiny problem. It's a big problem. It's just that getting the portal working will let people see how much their health insurance premiums will increase.
Even that, though, isn't the Obama administration's biggest problem. Their biggest problem, I think is happening this week. Insurers across the country are sending out cancellation notices to hundreds of thousands of customers. The notices tell people that they cant keep the policy they chose and they liked because President Obama knows what health coverages the people need better than the people themselves.
That's just part of it. The other part of getting these cancellation notices is that the people are being told that their health insurance premiums are increasing, most at a steep rate. This won't put people in a good mood. It'll cause people to question why they're being subjected to these price increases.
Who would've thought that the massive disaster called the HealthCare.gov rollout would be the least of the administration's worries?
Posted Thursday, October 24, 2013 10:47 AM
Comment 1 by J. Ewing at 24-Oct-13 11:28 AM
I just had a look at Romneycare and was surprised to learn that it has been mostly "successful." The differences are that there is more competition in MA and fewer uninsured to begin with (only 7%). The similarity is that 80% of those newly covered are getting their insurance free or subsidized. It's a high price for those actually footing the bill, especially if we knew what it REALLY cost. Add to that having our own costs go up and it is a real "stinker" of a program. The question becomes how long Obama and his MSM minions can continue putting lipstick on this pig.
Schumer: What Constitution?
It isn't surprising that Sen. Schumer thinks the Constitution should be ignored when it inconveniences President Obama and Democrats. Thankfully, former NY Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey isn't letting Sen. Schumer's bad behavior off the hook . Here's the opening sentence to her article:
Last Sunday on Meet the Press, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York announced he will propose legislation to permanently take control of the debt limit away from Congress and give it to the president.
After that, Ms. McCaughey took Sen. Schumer to the proverbial woodshed:
It's a dictator's dream come true. The framers of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress alone power to borrow, tax, and decide how public revenues are spent. They wanted to prevent a president from spending excessively and saddling the public with huge debts. That's what the despotic kings of Europe had done.
Article 1 Sect. 8 states that 'Congress shall have the Power To lay and collect Taxes: to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general welfare of the United States; To borrow Money on the credit of the United States.' Schumer's proposal stuffs the Constitution in the waste basket.
Sen. Schumer's legislation won't even get a hearing in the House so it'll never become law. Sen. Schumer knows that. Still, it's stunning to hear that a senator is proposing a bill that he knows is unconstitutional. It's stunning because this is the text of the oath senators take :
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
It's exceptionally clear that the Founding Fathers intended Congress to obey the Constitution they wrote. Sen. Schumer apparently thinks that obeying the Constitution is just a formality.
Even if Sen. Schumer's legislation became law, which it won't, it wouldn't take long for it to get struck down. Here's why it's doomed:
Schumer's proposal goes against 226 years of American history. Until 1917, the president had to ask Congress's permission for each borrowing and frequently acquiesced to conditions. That year, Congress devised the debt ceiling, which allowed the president flexibility to borrow up to a certain amount in order to fund a world war. Ever since then, presidents have come to Congress once or twice a year for a debt ceiling hike, often making political concessions to get it. Until this year, Congress had never abdicated control over the nation's indebtedness.
In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that Congress can't surrender its powers to another branch of government or change how laws are made. (I.N.S. v. Chadha, 1983)
Sen. Schumer should be thrown out of the Senate for violating his oath of office this openly. That won't happen but that's what should happen. Sen. Schumer, like several other Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, think that the Constitution's principles are antiquated and should be ignored. That isn't surprising. It's just disgusting.
Posted Thursday, October 24, 2013 12:15 PM
Comment 1 by walter hanson at 24-Oct-13 04:48 PM
Chuck:
Why didn't you propose this when George Bush 43 was President?
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Mind-boggling
According to John McCormack's article , tons of people will be losing their current health insurance policies:
The U.S. individual health insurance market currently totals about 19 million people. Because the Obama administration's regulations on grandfathering existing plans were so stringent about 85% of those, 16 million, are not grandfathered and must comply with Obamacare at their next renewal. The rules are very complex. For example, if you had an individual plan in March of 2010 when the law was passed and you only increased the deductible from $1,000 to $1,500 in the years since, your plan has lost its grandfather status and it will no longer be available to you when it would have renewed in 2014.
These 16 million people are now receiving letters from their carriers saying they are losing their current coverage and must re-enroll in order to avoid a break in coverage and comply with the new health law's benefit mandates - the vast majority by January 1. Most of these will be seeing some pretty big rate increases.
Twenty days into the HealthCare.gov disaster, a total of 129,000 people had purchased health insurance through state and federal exchanges. That's 6,450 people purchasing insurance through the health insurance exchanges per day.
At this point, we don't know what percent of these 16,000,000 people live in states with federal-run exchanges. People who a) lose their insurance because their policy doesn't meat the Affordable Care Act's minimum required coverage and b) live in states with federal-run health insurance exchanges will experience massive health insurance premium increases. What's worst is that they won't be eligible for federal subsidies that were meant to hide the health insurance premiums' cost.
That's before talking about the Obama administration's goal of universal coverage. There's an estimated 50,000,000 uninsured in the United States. Thanks to these cancellations, that figure will jump to 65,000,000 uninsured Americans.
At the rate of 6,450 people per day, it'll take 2,480 days just to re-insure the people getting kicked off of their insurance. That's just a little over 6.75 years to re-insure the recently uninsured. Multiply that figure by 3 to get to universal coverage. That's just 27 short years to reach universal coverage.
That's assuming that people don't decide to pay the fine rather than buy the insurance. That isn't an assumption I'm willing to make. With its high prices, there's little incentive for healthy families to rush out and buy health insurance. California liberals are blaming the high costs on evil insurance policies:
Jamie Court is accusing insurance companies of using the rollout of the Affordable Care Act to frighten people through price-gouging. That's intellectually dishonest. The reality is that the Affordable Care Act's provisions require additional coverages that people don't always want. As a result, health insurance premiums will "necessarily skyrocket."
I wrote here that government is as big a predator as the insurance companies are. The notion that government is benevolent and corporations are evil isn't dealing with reality.
Debra Cavalarro liked the policy she had. She's currently paying $292 a month for that policy's premium. Because the Affordable Care Act requires additional coverages that she might not want, the price of her new policy will be $484 a month, an increase of $192, which is a 66% increase. That's a difference of $2,304 annually.
If President Obama were being honest, he'd have to admit that lots of people can't keep the policy they liked and that their health care costs will rise. That isn't what he promised when he 'sold' it to the American people in 2009. Then again, expecting honesty from this administration is like trusting Rod Blagojevich or Bernie Madoff to act honorably. Anything's possible but I'm not holding my breath.
Posted Thursday, October 24, 2013 3:40 PM
Comment 1 by walter hanson at 24-Oct-13 04:46 PM
What happened to if you like your plan you can keep your plan? No Democrat in Congress who voted for this bill that is still there shouldn't be given a pass on that!
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Comment 2 by J. Ewing at 25-Oct-13 07:03 AM
Paying the fine is an even better choice once word gets out that the IRS can not enforce those fines! All they can do is take it out of your refund, so a little tax planning and they get bupkis, which is way more than Obamacare deserves! Again, it's just a question of how long Obama and the MSM can keep smearing lipstick on this pig. Hopefully they will keep it up through November 2014, and then the GOP can clean out the stables.
Franken's follies
During the last 3+ weeks, we've seen Al Franken make one terrible decision after another. Actually, we've seen Chuck Schumer make his decisions for him. Prior to and during the Obama Shutdown, Al Franken voted on multiple reasonable Republican proposals. Each time, Al Franken was a good little mind-numbed soldier for Sens. Reid and Schumer.
For instance, Al Franken voted against a proposal that said Congress shouldn't be exempted from the laws they've written and voted for. When he did that, his vote said that he's fine with getting special subsidies that aren't available to anyone except Congress.
That's classic stand-up-for-the-little-guy stuff, Democrat style.
According to Kimberley Strassel's article , Al Franken is supporting Jean Shaheen's proposal:
Jeanne Shaheen doesn't sound like a Democrat who just won a government-shutdown "victory." Ms. Shaheen sounds like a Democrat who thinks she's going to lose her job.
The New Hampshire senator fundamentally altered the health-care fight on Tuesday with a letter to the White House demanding it both extend the ObamaCare enrollment deadline and waive tax penalties for those unable to enroll. Within nanoseconds, Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor had endorsed her "common-sense idea." By Wednesday night, five Senate Democrats were on board, pushing for . . . what's that dirty GOP word? Oh, right. "Delay."
Now that it's Jeanne Shaheen's proposal, Franken is supporting delaying the individual mandate:
CNN reports that all 16 Senate Democrats up for re-election are expected to support Ms. Shaheen's proposal.
This is partisanship at its worst. Saying no to the right ideas simply because he didn't want to admit that Republicans were right in calling for delaying the individual mandate is doing the wrong thing for the worst reasons. That's Al Franken alright.
Since the Affordable Care Act was passed, Al Franken has promised he'll vote to repeal the medical device tax. During the shutdown, Franken voted against repealing the medical device tax. Again, that was when it was a Republican proposal. I'd bet the proverbial ranch that he'll vote for it the minute it's a Democratic proposal.
That isn't just foolish policymaking. It's vindictiveness and pettiness at its worst. Worst, it's proof that Al Franken doesn't represent Minnesota. He represents Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer. Certainly, Medtronic, Boston Scientific and other Minnesota-based medical device manufacturers and their employees would appreciate seeing the tax repealed.
Doing what's right for these companies didn't matter to Franken. When Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer come calling for Franken's vote, it's their's.
Franken professes great admiration for the late Sen. Wellstone. While Wellstone was a partisan, he fought first for Minnesotans. Thanks to the last month, we know that that isn't a priority for Franken. We know that because there's a litany of votes proving Franken's partisanship-first mindset.
Posted Friday, October 25, 2013 8:09 AM
Comment 1 by NA at 25-Oct-13 06:48 PM
Having worked for a large medical device manufacturer prior to the 2008 election and while Obamacare was being cobbled together...I have no sympathy or compassion for the medical device industry (or at least one of the major manufacturers). Prior to the 08 election the CEO "suggested" thinking about who the employees should vote for since it would effect the bottomline - thereby encouraging people to vote Obama since Obama was pushing government health care. Then during the push to get Obamacare passed we were told that the language centered around medical device was "100%" our language..."ironically" the CEO then went on to say publicly that the company was against the bill (trying to play both sides). I recognize that taxes aren't paid by companies and that medical devices can measureably improve and save lives, but I can't help but to think that at least one medical device company deserves infinitely high taxes for the crap (Obamacare) they helped to force upon us.
Comment 2 by Poli Posse at 25-Oct-13 08:00 PM
Whoa Gary! Franken has never said he supports a delay. Don't give him any credit until it is due. Your blog might hinder people who might otherwise be prompted to call Franken (If he would accept a call from a constituent, it is impossible to leave a phone message.)
Take a look at this information from 10-24.
Franken: Fed Health Care Website Getting Better
http://kstp.mn/7029k
http://truthmattersmn.org/?p=1006
Response 2.1 by Gary Gross at 25-Oct-13 10:29 PM
Actually, I read yesterday an article, either by the AP or the Washington Post, that said all 16 Senate Democrats up for re-election in 2014 are officially taking the stance of delaying the individual mandate for a small period of time.
WH Spin vs. reality
For years, literally, President Obama has said that "If you like your health plan, you can keep it." According to this CBSNews article , that isn't reality:
Natalie Willes is a sleep consultant who helps parents in Los Angeles train their newborns to sleep. She buys her own health insurance. "I was completely happy with the insurance I had before," Willes said.
So she was surprised when she tried to renew her policy. What did she find out? "That my insurance was going to be completely different, and they were going to be replaced with 10 new plans that were going to fall under the regulations of the Affordable Care Act," she said.
Her insurer, Kaiser Permanente, is terminating policies for 160,000 people in California and presenting them with new plans that comply with the healthcare law.
"Before I had a plan that I had a $1,500 deductible," she said. "I paid $199 dollars a month. The most similar plan that I would have available to me would be $278 a month. My deductible would be $6,500 dollars and all of my care after that point would only be covered 70 percent."
That's inferior coverage at a more expensive price. People might buy insurance through the individual market but they'll be upset with it. This won't start a great stampede for the HealthCare.gov portal to buy insurance.
If anything, these types of stories will keep people away.
Why wouldn't young, healthy people stay away after hearing this story? They need health insurance the least. They won't pay high prices for health insurance. That's the administration's worst nightmare.
Gerry Kominski, director of public health policy at UCLA said: "About half of the 14 million people who buy insurance on their own are not going to be able to keep the policies that they had previously."
He says higher premiums help insurers pay for new requirements including accepting patients with pre-existing conditions and providing preventative care like check-ups and vaccines. "You're paying more for a better product and for more protection and you won't understand the value of that until you need it," he said.
But many can't get past the sticker shock.
"Now I'm being forced to choose from a bunch of new plans that I don't want to choose from that are all more expensive," Willes said.
The high prices caused directly by the Affordable Care Act are upsetting enough to most people. Being initially told that you can keep the health plan you have, then being told that your plan doesn't meet the government's standards must be infuriating. Democrats have started with a new spin, saying that government has to mandate minimum coverages to protect people from the evil insurance companies.
What isn't said is that the Affordable Care Act will replace the evil insurance companies as the tormenter of the working class. Hardline progressives insist that they, not families, know what's best for people.
This isn't the only difficulty that Democrats will face as a result of the Affordable Care Act. In fact, I'd argue that the Democrats' difficulties are just starting. Appearing on Fox News yesterday, UVA professor Larry Sabato posited the same thing, noting that the 17 days of shutdown have almost disappeared from people's memories. Later, Professor Sabato said that the various Affordable Care Act fiascos will be with us well into next year.
If that's the case, Democrats will have a tough fight to hold the Senate. I've never thought that they had a realistic shot of retaking the House. If Democrats lose the Senate, they won't retaked the House because the people voting for a GOP majority in the Senate won't say that House Democrats are more trustworthy of controlling the House than Senate Democrats are worthy of running the Senate.
Posted Saturday, October 26, 2013 11:04 AM
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