Posted on 04/18/2014 9:15:44 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The number of people signing up for private insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act has now reached eight million. While primarily symbolic, it does represent a victory after initial projections of seven million were reduced to six million due to the problems when the exchanges opened. We know that if they failed to meet these projections, Republicans would be making a big deal of them. In addition, late enrollees included a high percentage of young people.
Good news means more positive head lines, such as National Journal writing that Obamacare is on a Winning Streak. The political climate is changing, with some Democrats now being more willing to run on its success. I think it is essential that they do this to reduce the risk of the loss of a large number of seats this November. The evidence shows that Obamacare is a success but if Democrats don’t defend it, voters will only hear Republican attacks. Hiding from Obamacare will only make Democrats look weaker, and will not protect them from voters who vote against Democrats based upon Republican misinformation.
Ezra Klein writes that the right suffers from Obamacare Derangement Syndrome, being unable to admit that it is working:
Republicans used to talk about Bush Derangement Syndrome. Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer defined it as “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency?— nay — the very existence of George W. Bush.” Republicans like Krauthammer understood that BDS helped the Bush administration in two ways: it fired up their supporters and it distracted liberals from more modest, but effective, critiques.
Today, the right struggles with Obamacare Derangement Syndrome: the acute inability to see Obamacare as anything but a catastrophic failure that the American people will soon reject. For those suffering from ODS, all bad Obamacare news is good news, and all good Obamacare news is spin. In this world, delays of minor provisions in the law prove that the entire structure is collapsing, while surges of millions of people enrolling in insurance don’t prove anything at all…
But it’s coming at a moment when Obamacare’s successes are getting tougher and tougher to deny. The law signed up more than 7.5 million people in the exchanges, more than 3.5 million people in Medicaid, and it led millions more to get health care through their employers or directly through insurers. Premiums are lower than the Congressional Budget Office predicted when the law passed, and insurers are already thinking about how to compete for applicants in 2015. The White House has a much better story to tell than anyone — including me — thought possible in December.
For Republican pundits it might not matter that Obamacare is a success. Republicans show more intensity in their views, and very little concern for the truth. Campaigning against Obamacare might still motivate Republicans to get out and vote.
Andrew Sullivan might be a bit overly optimistic about the political effects of the success of Obamacare, but I hope he is right:
There’s simply no denying that the law has been rescued by an impressive post-fiasco operation that did to ACA-opponents what the Obama campaign did to the Clintons in 2008 and to Romney in 2012. Obama out-muscled the nay-sayers on the ground. I have a feeling that this has yet to fully sink in with the public, and when it does, the politics of this might change. (Since the law was pummeled at the get-go as something beyond the skills of the federal government to implement, its subsequent successful implementation would seem to me to do a lot to reverse the damage.) There are some signs that this is happening. A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds the following:
Nearly one-third of respondents in the online survey released on Tuesday said they prefer Democrats’ plan, policy or approach to healthcare, compared to just 18 percent for Republicans. This marks both an uptick in support for Democrats and a slide for Republicans since a similar poll in February.
That’s mainly because of renewed confidence and support from previously demoralized Democrats. But it’s also a reflection, it seems to me, of the political vulnerability of Republicans who have failed to present a viable alternative to the law, and indeed seem set, in the eyes of most voters, merely to repeal ACA provisions that are individually popular. And this bad position is very likely to endure because of the intensity of the loathing for Obama/Obamacare among the Medicare recipients in the GOP base. It seems to me that right now, the GOP cannot offer an alternative that keeps the more popular parts of Obamacare without the air fast leaking out of their mid-term election balloon. And so by the fall, the political dynamics of this may shift some more in Obama’s direction. By 2016, that could be even more dramatic. One party – the GOP – will be offering unnerving change back to the status quo ante, and the other will be proposing incremental reform of the ACA. The only thing more likely to propel Hillary Clinton’s candidacy would be a Republican House and Senate next January.
It’s that long game thing again, isn’t it? Like the civil rights revolution of the Obama years, it seemed a close-to-impossible effort to start with, and then was gradually, skillfully ground out. It also seems true to me that the non-event of the ACA for many, many people will likely undermine some of the hysteria on the right. The ACA-opponents may be in danger of seeming to cry wolf over something that isn’t that big a deal. Yes, they may have premium hikes to tout as evidence of the alleged disaster. And every single piece of bad news on the healthcare front will be attributed to the ACA, fairly or not. But the public will still want to know how premiums can go down without people with pre-existing conditions being kicked out of the system, or without kids being kicked off their parents’ plan, and so on. I think, in other words, that the GOP’s position made a lot of short-term political sense in 2010 and even 2012. But it’s a much tougher sell in 2014, let alone 2016. Once again, they have substituted tactics for strategy. Every time they have done that with Obama, they have failed.
Sullivan described how he has benefited from the Affordable Care Act and concluded, “Yes, I am just one tiny, and rare example. But for me, at least, Obamacare has over-delivered and over-performed. If my experience is replicated more widely, then I suspect the polling and politics will shift yet again.”
Dr. Ronald Chusid
He already has those votes.
Well, it might if it ever succeeds.
...Oh, wait. Are they saying this is what success looks like?
:-D )))
In addition to all the organizations and corporation putting out propaganda for Obamacare we can now add the investment firm of Edward Jones. Why in Hades are they supporting it when so many of their customers hate it?
Sad to say it but this guy is ‘correct’.
All BO and Co have to do is keep 40% or so happy, and there is at least 10.1% of the faithful (probably higher than that - but that runs on all sides) that would vote for a pile of horse apples if it had a D by its name -and they come out ahead.
Along the lines of the two guys in the woods stumble on a bear.
One bends down, ties his shoes and flexes while the other says “It will take more than that to outrun that bear”.
“I don’t have to outrun the bear, I just have to keep ahead of you”.
Nearly one-third of respondents in the online survey released on Tuesday said they prefer Democrats’ plan, policy or approach to healthcare. Keyword online -- also why didn't he specify ACA instead of some ideal "Democrat approach to health care"?
Republicans who have failed to present a viable alternative to the law No one had a "viable" health care plan through the years of massive advances in technology and medicine -- it's called free enterprise, you idiot "doctor". That's the basis of America's plan.
.. or is this a Obama Jivethon Lying Circus skit?
Well either that, or a young percentage of high people.
Everytime I see that stock photo of obamafoam lady, my eyes fixate on the chewing gum in her mouth. Our cities are human sewers.
It's not insurance, it's medical welfare.
Depends on what the meaning of success is. Or what some paraphrased definition is. Is you know what if means.
Or something like dat.
I wonder what kind of Dr. he is, and who pays his salary?
Your government lies to you and your press is no longer free. What country are we in again?
Let’s roll another one!
These idiots sure are running the same story over and over right now.
Even Low IQ voters know Obamacare is horrible.
Pray America wakes up
So it is successful because people signed up for the coverage they were forced to do so as a matter of Federal law, and many did so because their previous policies were made illegal by the law. That’s “success.” No mention of course in the article how the law has endangered things like volunteer fire departments, businesses have had to scale back operations or not go forward with planned expansions, cut back on employees and their hours, etc. No mention of the fact a key part of the law went bankrupt and had to be scrapped before it was ever implemented (CLASS Act). No mention of the fact entire sections of law are being unilaterally delayed by years by Obama such as the employer mandate to avoid additional disaster headlines going into an election season, healthcare providers scaling back services and operations and raising their prices, etc. Could go on and on. What an embarrassingly false article that just omits all relevant key issues with the law and declares that because people are going through with what they are forced to do by Federal Law as a huge “success” to sign up on the exchange.
Then of course we have all of this far left wing propaganda, complete with citations of Ezra Klein, in a publication called the “Moderate” voice - LOL!
He’s a D.O. who specializes in internal medicine in Muskegon, Michigan.
Was it Obamacare in 1994 when Hillary and the Dems were trying to ram this through?
IT’S DONKEYCARE!
Obama is not running for office anymore. Why are people on the right always trying to protect the other Democrats by letting them off the hook for passing this law?
Yes, cancer and MS patients (like William Rivers Pitt’s wife) being denied the medicines they need, because they’re not covered by CommieCare. Those numbers, even were they true (and who can believe anything coming from the cabal of liars known as Democrats), don’t tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But the msm won’t ever tell “the rest of the story”.
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