OBAMACARE: POLITICS, HYPOCRISY, LIES AND FACTS.

As Jay H. Ell has blogged on several occasions that the attacks on Obamacare has more to do with Obama and his Democratic Administration’s policies than Healthcare as such. (Blogs: Obamacare and Obamascare Explained, September 9, 2013 and Washington’s Fiscal Chaos Explained, October 16, 2013). The issues concern GOP internal politics as well. (Blog: The GOP Fight - The Gloves are Off, October 20, 2013). As will be explained the debate reached  new lows as the opponents to Obamacare became more and more desperate with reality being replaced by fantasy and hypocrisy. 

THE POLITICS

The Republicans have seized on what they consider a golden opportunity to continue to attack the Affordable Health Care Act, (AHCA) - this just when it looked as if they had exhausted every possible avenue to oppose it. The AHCA website, where the 40 million uninsured Americans were to enroll, has experienced some major technical problems. This situation is serving as the basis for continuing the four-year attack on the legislation.

The Republican argument that Obama had three and a half years to perfect the program is hollow when they have placed obstacles in the way throughout. These include a Presidential election, 10 months ago, where they made Obamacare the defining issue, 40 legislative attempts to reverse the act, multiple legal assaults culminating in a 5-4 Supreme Court decision that the AHCA was constitutional and the most recent disastrous tactic - closing the government and threatening the country’s financial foundations – all just to derail Obamacare. All these attacks focus on the ideological argument against the introduction of the AHCA. The sucking up of all the media attention with this debate meant that the dissemination of information of what the act actually entailed was neglected.

The attacks on Obamacare were used as the mantra to claim that Obama was a foreigner who wanted to introduce Socialism into the United States. It was also the only glue that held the Republican Party and its dominant Tea Party faction together. So rather than face the reality that there was a major philosophical split within the Party the establishment soldiered on and bought into the extremism that led to their humiliating defeat in the fiscal crisis. (Blog: Washington’s Fiscal Chaos Explained, October 16, 2013)

THE HYPOCRISY

Obama compromised on what finally became the AHCA. There were options such as a single payor or one Federally managed program for the uninsured. Instead he adopted a plan that had its genesis in the Heritage Foundation. - the very same Foundation that has masterminded the current anti Obamacare campaign with the appointed choirmaster being, Ted Cruz. When the then Republican Governor Romney introduced the plan in Massachusetts, the Heritage Foundation applauded the introduction of their free enterprise plan. The Heritage CEO, Tea Party Godfather, Joe DeMint, when endorsing Romney as the Republican Presidential Candidate, stated that one of his reasons for doing so was his adoption of Romneycare. 

When it became absolutely obvious that the Republicans financial brinkmanship for the defunding of Obamacare would fail they switched to postponing its introduction for a year so that citizenry "could become more acquainted with the details". 

Having failed with all these attempts they have now taken up their constituents’ woes that they could not register for the plan as the website was a farce!

The nation is now going to be exposed to Republican crocodile tears in endless hearings about the failure of the website. These same people, after nearly throwing the country into fiscal chaos in their desire to end Obamacare and had vowed to continue to fight to remove it, are now ostensibly worried about its mechanism to enroll members!

THE LIES

There were repeated assertions that the AHCA was socialized medicine and that the government was taking over “your” health care. - this in the teeth of the fact that the plans would be provided by competing private insurance companies and that those who presently had insurance coverage, if satisfied, could continue with it.

Michelle Bachmann maintained that AHCA " - would literally kill seniors, women and children"! Further she and others maintained that the Act contained Death Panels that would decide whether patients would live or die. This was an “interpretation” of the provision in the Act for the establishment of an independent committee of medical experts to establish “standards of care”.

Another common lie is that the Act has resulted in the raising of  insurance premiums of everyone else.
No meaningful evidence of this is provided and in fact is patently untrue. This latter lie is usually accompanied by the lie that employees have been let go as a result of Obamacare. In addition employees have had their hours reduced so that they are “part – time” and not entitled to benefits. Over the past year part – time employees have decreased and for the past 43 months there has been an increase in the number of jobs and the unemployment rate presently is at lowest since the recession at 7.2%,

One of the largest lies relate to the experience of other bureaucratic governmental health care systems being total failures and “nightmares”. Every comparative health care system whether it is in Europe, Scandinavia or Canada has central governmental control. All of them cover all their citizens and have higher positive health care indicators than the USA. Yet the percentage of Gross National Product spent on health care in these countries is half or less than the USA.  Even in the USA the government run Medicare and Veterans Medical system has far greater inclusive coverage and less administrative cost than the private insurance companies.

THE FACTS.

         *The website of Obamacare has major systemic problems. The administration needs to tell it as it is and if necessary delay the cut off date for registration. This may cause problems with insurance companies but surely these can be met as a successful enrolement benefits insurance companies as well.

·      The fact that the website is experiencing these problems is because the Republican controlled states have behaved in a fashion no reasonable person could have predicted. The AHCA allows each State to set up its own health care exchange. In return for so doing the Federal Government would pay for the expansion of the Medicaid program in that State thereby paying the premiums for those who could not afford to pay for insurance in the AHCA.  This involves a total of eight million souls. In addition each state would receive a payment for setting up its own exchange.

* Of the 50 states, 26 Republican Governors refused to set up their own exchanges. Fourteen states set up their own exchanges and 10 set up combined exchanges with the government.  This meant that the Government had to have a website that had to deal with 36 exchanges. It also meant that near on 8 million citizens would be left without Medicaid insurance so that their Republican controlled States could continue to use Obamacare as a weapon to fight the Obama administration.

Ironically, Texans whom Ted Cruz claims to represent has a total of 22.5% of its population uninsured. To make a political point he would be happy to keep them that way.

To date there have been 20 million “hits” to the Federal website and nearly a million “applications”. The latter have not necessarily bought insurance. The Administration has a goal of recruiting 7 million citizens to the AHCA by March 31, 2014. That means they have to sign 37,000 patients a day.

The most successful exchanges, not surprisingly, are State exchanges that have a limited number of citizens. Interestingly the most triumphant State in recruiting citizens is Kentucky that is profoundly Republican with their Senators being Rand Paul and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. The Republican Governor of Ohio is also one of the Republican Governors who bucked the line by maintaining that he could not face his maker if he failed in his responsibility to the 275,000 poor in Ohio who would now get Medicaid.

However, the most efficient State to date to insure its whole population is Massachusetts where Romneycare started. Romneycare is the same as Obamacare or the AHCA. Nearly a 100% of the State of Massachusetts citizens have insurance.

Crucial to the success of this plan is that young people sign up. There is no education of the latter as to the advantages of having insurance. Do they know that if they have any assets they will loose them all if they get injured and break a bone or have to have their appendix out? Do they know they can run into a debts of the order of $20,000 multiples? 

If they are unlucky and have an accident in a boat and have a multi system injury the bill can run into the $100,000’s. If they have premature twins and are not to poor to be on Medicaid they need to find $250,000 or go bankrupt. Remind the young that the most common cause to go bankrupt in the USA is health care costs.

Some Republicans have been actively arguing against the merits of the youth signing up.

AT THE END OF THE DAY.

·      Republicans have to realize that this issue for Obama is also intensely personal. He writes when his mother got cancer it pretty much drained all her resources. Obama maintains that his mother was the dominant figure in his formative years. She also taught him the values about the way he goes in the world of politics. His mother by the way was white.

·      Establishment Republicans should avoid the temptation to focus on the lost cause of Obamacare . Their real issue should be to take on the Tea Party who is destroying their Party.

·      Expect Democrats to join in Obama’s anger at the Website’s woes. Obviously they will be doing so for different reasons than the Republicans. They will be tearing their hair out this has happened after over a century of trying to get universal care for Americans.

·      If Republicans somehow manage to stop Obamacare thereby    preventing 40,000,000 persons from obtaining Health Insurance, do they believe that, they, finally, have achieved something?

·      For what it is worth Jay H. Ell believes that Obamacare is here to stay come hell or high water.