Over at NRO, David French has written a post entitled “The Tea-Party Plan to Delay/Defund Obamacare Was Not Only More Realistic, It Was More Compassionate”:
Not only did the tea-party plan have a chance, it was far less cynical and far more compassionate than the Republican alternative. The Republican alternative to the tea-party plan boils down to this: Let the people suffer (also called ”let Obamacare implode”), then they’ll come to us, we’ll win a [bunch] of elections over several cycles, then we’ll make it better.
Well, step one is working (if that’s the right word to use). People are suffering. Over the weekend, NBC News reported that 460,000 Americans in just two states (California and Florida) face insurance-plan cancellations as they’re being driven to the non-functioning exchanges. That’s ten times more people facing cancellations in just two states than have (allegedly) enrolled in Obamacare plans nationwide.
Imagine being a middle-aged man or woman, staring at a cancellation notice, and desperately trying to sign up for new insurance through a website that doesn’t work. How would you feel?
I don’t have to imagine - I am staring at a cancellation notice and at a website that doesn’t work. And all the Republican glee about how bad the roll-out has been is making me, what’s the word, oh, yeah - bitter.
You know who else gets this? Ezra Klein, of all people:
A lot of liberals will be angry over this post. A lot of conservatives will be happy about it. But it's important to see the Affordable Care Act as something more than a pawn in the political wars: It's a real law that real people are desperately, nervously, urgently trying to access. And so far, the Obama administration has failed them.
I hate ObamaCare with a passion. If someone sat down to deliberately design a crummy health insurance plan, ObamaCare would be the result. But we’re stuck with it. We might have been able to kill it somewhat gracefully even a month or two ago; we might, possibly, have been able to kill it in the past two weeks; but now it’s too late. It’s certainly the case that the long-term effects of letting it survive are going to be unfortunate (to say the least) but by now the short-term effects of killing it are too visible to allow us to drive a stake through its heart.
And you know what else? The Republican plan, as outlined by French, isn’t going to work. There just aren’t that many people who are going to suffer from ObamaCare or who would suffer if it imploded. I think about three Left-leaning friends who consider ObamaCare the bee’s knees. One of them is on Medicare; one of them gets health insurance through a retirement package; and one of them gets health insurance from an employer. None of those people are going to suffer from ObamaCare, at least not anytime soon and never in any direct way. Any consequences they feel from ObamaCare or from an ObamaCare implosion are down the road (certainly past the 2014 elections) and will be explained away as the result of something else (Republican obstructionism being the most likely candidate).
I don’t expect Republicans to help fix ObamaCare: the Democrats created it, they own it. But I do expect the Republicans to stop doing touchdown dances at the news that their fellow citizens can’t buy health insurance. At least fake a little compassion. And if you could manage to suggest an alternative - a simple alternative - to letting people suffer, that would be nice, too.
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[I]f you could manage to suggest an alternative - a simple alternative - to letting people suffer, that would be nice, too.
You mean like the Republican Study Committee's offer?
Or Paul Ryan's vouchers for seniors, along with alternative insurance plans, of which at least one was to be guaranteed to be cheaper than Medicare, but with the same general coverage? With Medicare kept in the mix?
Or the alternatives that any number of Republican Congressmen are working up (my link because the WSJ source is behind a their paywall)?
Or the general thrust of Republican alternatives, which is to force market solutions for both health insurance and health services--which are virtually guaranteed to drive prices down to their natural level, leaving only a very few still needing assistance, and only a small subset of that needing government's assistance?
But none of these will come to fruition until Conservatives win enough elections to gain control of both houses of Congress and of the White House and can repeal Obamacare. Only when that happens will there be any public discussion of these plans, though. And that isn't the exclusive fault of the NLMSM.
Ryan's plan, though, was shot down by Democrats in the Senate because, almost in so many words, those Democrats insisted that seniors were just too dumb to be trusted with making their own decisions concerning their own health.
Eric Hines
Eric Hines
And am I hearing Republicans/conservatives say, "Look at the mess the exchanges are. People are suffering. Here's a better way."? No, I am not. I'm hearing Republicans/conservatives say, "Obamacare doesn't work - told you so. Ha, ha, ha - look at all those people struggle with it. Suckers."
Plus 2 plans or 3 plans or 4 plans are just about as bad as no plan - people need to hear an alternative that can be phrased as "get rid of Obamacare and transition to Plan X in this way"; not "we've got some stuff to try". Including one "stuff to try" that was introduced one - that's ONE - month ago.
I'm hearing Republicans/conservatives say, "Obamacare doesn't work - told you so. Ha, ha, ha - look at all those people struggle with it. Suckers."
You must follow different news outlets than I do. I'm hearing a lot of the former. A smattering of the middle. No celebration of any of it.
Plus 2 plans or 3 plans or 4 plans are just about as bad as no plan....
Yeah. Because an outwardly monolithic party, a party that makes all of its decisions secretively, behind closed doors, is proud of its leadership's ability to discipline those who speak out of turn, is better than a party that discusses with itself--argues with itself--publicly, is better than a party that lives the democracy it purports to support.
Eric Hines
You must skip Twitchy; e.g.:
http://twitchy.com/2013/10/21/perfect-obamacare-fail-pic-says-it-all/
Because an outwardly monolithic party, a party that makes all of its decisions secretively, behind closed doors, is proud of its leadership's ability to discipline those who speak out of turn, is better than a party that discusses with itself--argues with itself--publicly, is better than a party that lives the democracy it purports to support.
No, because if you want people to leave one plan you need to offer them an alternative. Sure, in the perfect world people would say, "Obamacare isn't working. Let's dump it and then figure out what to do instead." Heck, in the perfect world people would say, "Social Security is unsustainable. Let's dump it and then figure out what to do instead." But that's not how the real world works.
ObamaCare is junk but it was hammered out across the Democratic Party spectrum, complete with compromises, bribes, and sweetheart deals. The Republicans have had 3-1/2 years since Obamacare passed to pound out what they, as a Party, wanted to do instead. And they had years before that. But they didn't (perhaps couldn't) come up with a plan the Party as whole would support. So they got nothing. That's a nice indicator that there's all kinds of ferment going on and that no one "enforces" orthodoxy on Republicans. But not having a policy is not much help when you're asking the country to let you actually set policy.
You must skip Twitchy
Yeah, I do. Malkin too often just gets shrill. And so do her products.
Eric Hines
I have to agree with Eric - I can't take Twitchy seriously as commentary. It's Twitter, which is inherently superficial and appeals more to the gut than the brain (or heart).
What do you think Republicans should be proposing? They have floated several alternative plans - do you think anyone would vote for them now, with the ACA already in place? If they did, how long would it take to implement a new plan?
This strikes me as very complex stuff - not the sort of thing that can be easily patched on the fly in an ad hoc fashion.
There's a more serious problem here, in that part of conservative messaging is that centralized planning doesn't work. When I try to think of what Republicans could do to help, the only thing I can think of is for them to delay the penalties. I don't think it's practical to expect them to set up an alternative (unfunded and unsupported) system on the fly, and can't see what incentive insurers would have to cooperate with or support such a scheme.
I do think lots of conservatives are angry about this, and also that they feel bad for people who have lost their insurance through no fault of their own. I guess I don't see how refraining from pointing out the problems moves the ball further down the field, but I'd like to hear your ideas.
I don't have any problem with conservatives pointing out the problems with the exchanges. I have a problem with the attitude of: There are big problems with the exchanges and that's good for Republicans. In other words, I'm not hearing this:
they feel bad for people who have lost their insurance through no fault of their own
and I'm certainly not hearing that Republicans feel bad for people who haven't been able to get insurance in the past and still can't because the exchanges don't work.
In other words, I think French is right about the Republican strategy and my real problem with it is that the "and then what" after the "implodes" part is "we'll have won". Nice for them but not any more helpful for the actual people living in the actual country than ObamaCare.
I'm not suggesting Republicans should set up a system on the fly. I'm suggesting they should tie together:
1) real people suffering bad effects
2) because of ObamaCare (centralized planning) not insurance companies and
3) here's a better way to do it - or better to not do it at all and let the market take over.
Stop talking politics and start talking policy.
You know what this is for me? This is that whole "they care about me" dimension. I know Obama, the Democrats, ObamaCare supporters don't care about me (and people like me). I'm just someone they can push around to get their insurance plan going.
I now know Republicans don't, either. I'm just someone they can use as an aggregate statistic.
I understand that "they care about me" isn't held in high regard on the Right side of the blogosphere. But it's really another way of saying: I believe that the people who represent me have my best interests are heart; that my concerns and struggles will be taken into account when making policy; and that, in the end, my representatives will do what they can to make my life better or, at a minimum, what they can to not make my life worse.
What I see, in Washington and in the writings on both sides of the political divide, is a lack of connection to the reality of human lives. I don't think that kind of connection necessarily manifests itself as Right-leaning or Left-leaning; it manifests itself as an understanding on some gut level that political struggles have repercussions outside the ballot box and the corridors of power.
So what do I want Republicans and conservatives to do? Simple.
I want them to be sorry the exchanges didn't work.
Do you want them to be sorry, or say that they are sorry?
I'm sorry they don't work, but I don't know that I've said so. That doesn't mean I don't feel that way. I haven't said I'm angry either, but I am.
My point is that people don't always talk about their feelings. I know I don't, and in general the more strongly I *feel* about something the less inclined I am to talk about it.
I actually think you've made an important point here, as conservatives are widely viewed as being uncaring and unfeeling. I guess I'm trying to understand why you're angry about this because I respect your opinion. I see it so differently that clearly I'm missing something.
What I see, in Washington and in the writings on both sides of the political divide, is a lack of connection to the reality of human lives. I don't think that kind of connection necessarily manifests itself as Right-leaning or Left-leaning; it manifests itself as an understanding on some gut level that political struggles have repercussions outside the ballot box and the corridors of power.
For some reason, I only say your 3rd (11:35) comment before I posted my last comment. This (quoted above) makes sense to me. I have heard/read very little commentary about this over the past two weeks, so it's hard for me to comment on what most folks are saying. I did hear Mary Katherine Hamm try to say exactly this "The ACA was supposed to help people, but instead it is causing suffering" last night, but I realize she's not a politician.
And only one 'data point'!
I understand that "they care about me" isn't held in high regard on the Right side of the blogosphere. But it's really another way of saying: I believe that the people who represent me have my best interests are heart...in the end, my representatives will do what they can to make my life better or, at a minimum, what they can to not make my life worse.
This goes to the heart of the difficulty even an honest politician faces. He works for a boss that's a committee of 30,000 people (if he's a House member, and the Constitution on this actually were being followed. His committee boss actually is much larger).
That's not even close to what this committee-member boss expects out of my employee. I expect my employee to demonstrate he has my best interests at heart by doing what I hired him to do. I'll take care of my own d**n life; I don't need a government man to do for me. And that'll go more smoothly if my employee does what he was told to do.
Eric Hines
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