Thoughts on the failure of the Blue model from Walter Russell Mead:
Obamacare was supposed to be the capstone in the arch of a new progressive era. The Dems were going to show us all that government really does work. Smart government by smart people, using modern methods and the latest up to the minute research from carefully peer reviewed articles in well regarded social science journals can solve big social problems. Obamacare was going to be such a big hit that even the bitter clingers would have to put down their guns and their Bibles long enough to thank the Democrats for this wonderful new benefaction.
But even if the Supreme Court doesn’t pull the trigger and kill the law in June, the darn thing won’t fly. The public hates it, and the longer it’s on the books the less popular it gets. This isn’t like Social Security, a program the public fell in love with early on and still cherishes today. It isn’t like Head Start, which remains dearly beloved even though there doesn’t seem to be much evidence that it helps anybody other than the people it employs. Obamacare is only marginally more popular than the Afghan War; already its estimated cost has doubled and we all know these numbers are likely to continue to increase. Obamacare so far is a political flop and shows ominous early signs of being a policy misfire as well. The benefits don’t seem to measure up to the hype, more people are going to lose their existing insurance, premiums are going up and the impact on the deficit is going to be worse.
This is a horrible piece of legislation — as misbegotten and useless to its friends as it is menacing to its enemies. The question is: why? Why did the blues write such a bad law? Why, given a once in a lifetime chance to pass a program that Dems have longed to achieve ever since the New Deal, did they craft a sloppy mess that nobody understands and few admire, and then leave their law so unnecessarily vulnerable to constitutional challenge?
The answers tell us much about why blue progressive thinking is losing its hold on the body politic — and why blue methods generally aren’t working as well as they used to.
It can’t lose its hold fast enough for me.
I am puzzled by who removed the sever-ability language from the bill. Could it be someone back then realized that Frankenstein needed an emergency off switch.
It’s playing “Chicken” with the SCOTUS by passing a 2,700 page bill that’s “too big to fail.”
I think the problem is the ‘who’ part of who wrote it.
Think about how long it took to get from beginning to end, writing this behemoth. 2100 or 2700 pages are the two references I just found. Even if it is ‘just’ 2100, imagine how the *&#* long can it could take to write 2100 pages of interlaced, legalize, weasel worded BS. If the original reports are right, the roots of this thing have Hillary Clinton’s finger prints on them.
So it was written, amended and rewritten time and time again over 14 or 15 years? I know Hitlary was the ram rod in 1993, but I don’t believe that she started empty handed in 1993.
And I’ll go to my grave wondering what was ‘hidden’ in this mess. I honestly don’t think any one person could ever know. And that means the guy who does know the most is in charge.
And silly me, I thought we got to vote for he is in charge!
Yes, the evial L*I*B*E*R*A*L*S have been hiding all information about the healthcare bill, so good conservatives will never learn The Horrible Facts About Obamacare!
Well, too bad, chum. Y’know why liberals leave conservatives so poorly informed and make fun of their ignorance? It’s because liberals have a couple of secret weapons on the internet. They go to a strange uncanny place called http://www.google.com and type in bizarre words like “obamacare” and “text” — mystic phrases that would never occur to you or me — and click on various responses which magically transport them to other websites which have posted the text of the healthcare bill. Wow! who’d ever have guessed that liberals, being without god and familiy and loyalty and respect for liberty, could ever have devised such a thing!
its estimated cost has doubled
Anyone who repeats that falsehood is hopelessly misinformed, and can safely be ignored.
Jim, I thought liberals were supposed to be the masters of nuance. In a sense, yes the cost hasn’t doubled, but in another sense it has. You know as well as I that the only way the administration could keep the 10 year price tag under $1T was to structure the bill so that the inputs (taxes, fees, etc) would start on day 1, while the benefits wouldn’t start until 4 years later, IOW collecting 10 years of taxes and only paying 6 years of benefits. Everybody who followed it knew that costs were going to go way up once the CBO had to account for a full 10 years of benefits, but the administration downplayed that, dishonestly, to hide the true costs. So, technically, yes the costs haven’t doubled, but nobody would be able to say they did if the administration had been honest when they were trying to get the bill passed.
Anyone who repeats that falsehood is hopelessly misinformed, and can safely be ignored.
Do we ignore the people that called the mandate a tax? Or do we ignore the ones that call it a penalty?
What about that guy who told people if they like their current plan, they could keep it?
In a sense, yes the cost hasn’t doubled, but in another sense it has.
No, nothing has doubled, in any sense. It’s a plainly false statement.
was to structure the bill so that the inputs (taxes, fees, etc) would start on day 1, while the benefits wouldn’t start until 4 years later
No, that’s another thing that never happened. Just look at the 2010 CBO report, specifically Table 2: the total revenue increase for the first five years is $73B, compared to $400B for the second five years. The major revenue kicks in together with the benefits. If they’d front-loaded a revenue “head start” the projected deficit reduction would peter out once the head start was spent; instead it accelerates.
the administration downplayed that, dishonestly, to hide the true costs
The numbers are right in the CBO report from 2010, as plain as day. If you’re looking for dishonesty, look to the people who told you that “the inputs would start on day 1, while the benefits wouldn’t start until 4 years later.” Or the people who convinced Mead that costs had doubled. You’re both being played for fools.
Another Jim, last name Durante, once said something similar in the movie ‘Dumbo’ – “What elephant?”