In response to some comments on TMV and a few emails that suggest that yours truly and TMV are now somehow doing Republican talking points, or the site is being co-written by Sean Hannity, our Quote of the Day is from the Washington Post’s apparently (using that same standard) right wing columnist Ezra Klein on why Obamacare is in greater trouble than a week ago. We’ll just give you his first lines here in most cases:
1. The Affordable Care Act’s political position has deteriorated dramatically over the last week. President Bill Clinton’s statement that the law should be reopened to ensure everyone who likes their health plans can keep them was a signal event. It gives congressional Democrats cover to begin breaking with the Obama administration….
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2.The most serious manifestation of that break is Sen. Mary Landrieu’s “Keeping the Affordable Care Act Promise Act.” It’s co-sponsored not just by the usual moderate Democrats — Landrieu and Dianne Feinstein and Mark Pryor and Kay Hagan — but also by Oregon liberal Jeff Merkley…
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3. The argument Landrieu is making on behalf of the bill will appeal to many Senate Democrats. ..
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4. The bill Landrieu is offering could really harm the law.
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5. 5. Put simply, the Landrieu bill solves one of Obamacare’s political problems at the cost of worsening its most serious policy problem: Adverse selection…
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6. How much will premiums rise if Landrieu’s bill passes? No one knows.
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7. It’s useful to think of this in terms of who, on the margin, should be paying higher premiums: The people who’ve benefited from the various kinds of discrimination that undergird the current system, or the people who’ve been victimized by that discrimination?
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8. Insurers would also freak out.
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9. Nor is it clear, if the Landrieu bill passes, that that’s the end of it. “
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10. The biggest problem for Obamacare is that HealthCare.gov remains a mess. If HealthCare.gov was working smoothly, a lot of the people getting insurance cancellations would be learning that they’ll have better, cheaper insurance under the law.
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11. The biggest problem for the Obama administration in protecting the law is that they’re losing credibility with congressional Democrats — and, frankly, everyone else.
Anyone who’s not doing public relations for the new law has to agree with at least some of Klein’s point.
The bottom line question for historians will be: how could the Obama administration have handled the roll out of such a landmark law that they knew would be under intense scrutiny from Republicans looking for a way to undermine it be handled in such a frankly incompetent manner? It isn’t as if they didn’t have advance notice about the roll out of Obama’s signature law.
It’s not over yet. The law still could become popular and snap into place as envisioned, but at this point the Obama administration gives the impression as an administration talking about the law with flop sweat.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.