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Next time, hold the glass. (photo: jeffreyw)
For some reason, one of the most bizarrely persistent myths on the left is that the specifics of the new health care reform law are actually popular. The myth was again brought up today by Ezra Klein:
You saw this a lot during health-care reform, where the specifics of the law were popular but the law itself was not and liberals took that to mean they had a mere simple communications problem. What those polls really told you was that in a world where the two parties both agreed to support something like the Affordable Care Act, the Affordable Care Act would be extremely popular. But in a world where there was a bitter and endless fight over the Affordable Care Act, the Affordable Care Act wasn’t going to be very popular.
While it is true that the Republicans’ all-out attack on ACA most likely made the law less popular, on net, the actual specifics on the law weren’t popular.
The reality is that only a few of Affordable Care Act specifics have popular support, like guaranteed issue, Medicaid expansion, subsidies to buy insurance, and allowing children up to 26 to stay on their parents’ plan. But equally important is that some parts of the law are extremely unpopular, such as the individual mandate and the excise tax on employer-provided insurance.
These two provisions were also inherently unpopular well before Republicans started attacking the bill, that is why the Obama campaign used the mandate as a cudgel against Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and used John McCain’s support of the idea of the excise tax as one of their most common attacks in the general election.
This is the “no one likes a pepperoni and glass pizza” problem. Yes, I love cheese, dough and tomato sauce, but no matter how tasty the pepperoni is, I will consider the entire pizza terrible if you insist on also using broken glass as a top. Just like the glass on the pizza, only a few sufficiently unpopular provisions in bill built on popular ideas can make the whole thing unacceptable. This is a very basic principle of politics that ballot initiative campaigns need to deal with all the time. It also made Democrats stubborn refusal to replace the mandate when it was polling so terribly such an unbelievably foolish move.
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Well I must say; No shit Sherlock.
How was this a “slow news” day for Klein? Why’s he shooting off his mouth about this? To distract from how our Commander in Chief is a War Criminal and is supporting the torture of US citizens on our soil, making them guilty until proven innocent?
OR not talking about how Republicans just removed Tsunami oversight funding on a day where a huge tsunami wiped out swaths of Japan and may be causing a melt-down of a nuclear reactor?
Slow news day, much, Ezra? Like not talking about Gulf Oil sickness caused by the BP dispersant, that Al Jazeera is reporting on but you won’t find it on corporate-owned fascist “media” in the USA?
sheesh…
A mandate to pay the Insurance Companies? What a winning formula.
Medical cost reduction? Not happening.
All the remainder is lost in the noise.
Then again the ACA is going to be about as effective as a pepperoni pizza at controlling health care spending, which is what everyone really wants. If you just got rid of the mandate and did nothing else it would still be a failure.
I guess you didn’t know there’s a center-left echo chamber (EK, MY, etc.) where they just talk about whatever, as long as it’s not too threatening to the elite.
1) Ezra’s no liberal.
2) He speaks of liberals when he means supporters of corporate fascism.
Nice to see the basic points in print again though, thanks Mr. Walker.
I agree with you but small, nontrivial correction:
The President is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces by Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the US Constitution. He (putatively) commands the military – not us.
Center Left?
Please, you besmirch any of us left of Genghis Khan.
They are corporate fascists, work for corporate fascists and report FOR corporate fascist points of view . . .
*G*
But yeah, they suck for the elites . . . I’ll grant that!
LOL
Are we talking about President ThankYouSirMayIHaveAnother?
Shep Shepherd just reported the tsunami oversight cuts in the the Rethugs’ bill.
My, my.
The problem was that the argument of affordable health care was never framed correctly. The debate should have been between a public option and universal coverage. However, the “overton” window has been pushed so far right that the very idea of a public option was seen as abhorrent by the very people who lied about it to get elected and Rahm Emmanuel flatly saying the public option is not an option. Thus we get the shit sandwich legislation that in the long run benefits the corporatist and maintains the status quo of health care insurance monopolies. People who profit off of sickness and death.
yeah yeah I know all about the echo chamber… hence the reason why I avoid nearly anything on tv or radio these days (what’s the point?). just bitching about the obvious, per usual. time to go to the gym to sweat off my frustrations…
Not my problem – I supported the public option and wore out my keyboard warning of the consequences of Obama’s whoredom.
Mmmmmm…. glass…. D’oh!
Sure the law is bad, but at least the Democrats delayed its implementation so Republicans would have 5 years to attack it!
Ezra Klein…he has to cover his ass & so no surprise he is willing to lie
to sound good…this is the joker who was on MSNBC during the HCD urging liberals to support this piece of crap,you remember,”you have to let the Prez get a win” …not what’s good for Americans but what is going make the creep in the WH look good.
And one of their big selling point was….If you are under 29yrs old you can stay on your parents Insurance…well first of all if your parents can afford HC-insurance….moreover,If I am 29yrs old and don’t have HC-insurance,it shows how fucked-up the country is.Why do I still have to depend on my parents ?
Gee, I wonder how popular Medicare for All is?
“Public option” was never anything but an energy sinkhole. It never existed in any form but the imaginary. It was like arguing for a pizza covered with some super special topping we knew would be good even if no one had ever tasted it before.
Medicare is real. Medicare for All with a robust private option. That’s something people can actually see and taste.
Sort of like selling the people an extra-large pepperoni pizza, with extra cheese for them that wants it.
o
Stubbornly refuse to take out the mandate that was very unpopular with people (but the thing insurance companies really liked) and stubbornly refuse to fight for the public option that was very popular (but the thing insurance companies really hated). There was no glass on the pizza served to the folks that really mattered to Democrats.
We (working Americans) really, really, seriously NEED health care reform. If we didn’t we wouldn’t be so pissed off that we didn’t get it. What we got instead is a huge give away to the insurance companies who are the reason we really, really, seriously NEED health care reform.
Adding insult to injury, for those of us paying attention, the Democrats PRETENDED to debate the issues for a fucking year when Obama had already made the deal in the back room from the start. The icing on the whole shit cake was Obama’s victory lap in celebration of this colossal rip off.
I hope the Republicans rip this POS to shreds!
At least one Democrat gets it.
“Special interest money has taken control of the key policy issues facing our nation,” said Roemer. “It is time to be brutally honest. If we pass a health care bill that does not address frivolous medical lawsuits, fails to make insurance companies compete or provide real choice to our citizens, has someone bought too much access? If we pass a financial reform bill that does not tackle too big to fail, harmful derivatives that shifts the risks of Wall Street’s gambles to Main Street taxpayers, or fix the problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, have we really addressed the causes of our financial system’s collapse?…”
http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/story/fighting-campaign-finance-reform-buddy-roemer-jumps-2012-race
Actually, Roemer’s a Republican. He’s been out of politics for 20 years, but he’s definitely keeping it real.
It’s amazing how people like Klein come up with complete bullshit rationalizations about the success of health care reform. In reality it’s a complete failure and just another example of our government protecting the monopoly profits of a wholly corrupt and immoral industry. Even if you look at the so called benefits it’s a non-starter. Guaranteed issue is a red herring and something that isurance companies will price so high it won’t be accessible despite the mandate. Medicaid expansion was no doubt paid for by cutting Medicare and taxing other policies. Subsidies? Wait until we see the quality of the plans that are actually subsidized. It’s going to be the bottom of the barrel with sky high deductibles and exorbitant out-of-pocket costs. Keeping children up to 26 years old on their parents policy is the most inane reform imaginable, and only puts more burden on middle-class parents after they’ve gone bankrupt paying for the childs college educaton.
There really is no actuarial reason for the mandate. Costs will be higher if a set aside is needed for the risk of the uninsured buying your policy – but you do not avoid those costs with a mandate – you just make each company a little less likely to be hit, and that is not certain.
We have had group health policies for decades that had only an actively at work requirement for coverage – and then covered all in the family, regardless of health.
The Obama design was the GOP design which is the Insurance companies maximum profit “with the least effort or thinking” design – a requirement for today’s legacy CEO with “people skills” but no thinking ability. Interesting what “merit” means in the US.
Why does no one – other than Dr. Dean – note that Vermont’s non-mandate universal coverage draws the same percentage of the population into coverage as the Massachusetts mandate version does?