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The Obamacare Distraction
Sarah Lenti
For President Obama, the importance of passing Obamacare clearly trumped the pressing need of restoring our economy. The Supreme Court’s decision today merely reminds us of the scope of the president’s substantial squander and the importance of the election this November.
The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Obamacare on Thursday marks the continuation of a distraction which has plagued the Obama administration from its very beginning. President Obama assumed office in the midst of an economic crisis. He was, after all, elected to rescue our nation from the kind of economic trauma we had just experienced.
But instead of doing that, he ventured down a very different, and dangerous, path. He focused on pushing a top-down, federally-controlled health-care takeover through Congress. I would venture to write that he refused to work with Republicans on bipartisan, effective reform. Sadly, the President adopted the attitude that he held toward the stimulus, about which he famously told Republicans, “I won. So I think on that one, I trump you.”
And for President Obama, the importance of passing Obamacare clearly trumped the pressing need of restoring our economy. We can see the effects of his neglect today. We’ve seen staggering unemployment levels of 8 percent or more for over 40 months. There are currently over 23 million Americans unable to find a full-time job. People in quarters across the country are losing their homes to foreclosure.
When President Obama arrived in the White House, he possessed immense amounts of political capital. He chose to waste it on unpopular legislation that did nothing to assist our economic recovery. The Supreme Court’s decision merely reminds us of the scope of the president’s substantial squander and the importance of the election this November.
Sarah Lenti is the blogger behind NMPolitics.net’s The Savvy. E-mail her at sarah@nmpolitics.net. For disclosure, Lenti previously worked on Mitt Romney’s policy book, as a researcher, in 2008 and 2009.
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Ms. Lenti, firstly, Martin Luther King Jr. was not a Republican. There’s no need to lie about the dead.
Secondly, health care should not have been the President’s #1 priority upon entering office. That’s a fair point to make, but, as you’ll recall, that wasn’t his #1 priority. The stimulus needed to happen first, it did, and the fairest assessment of it was that it prevented the 2007-2009 recession from becoming a depression.
Every individual who is now able to get health insurance, who couldn’t before the passage of the ACA, is glad that the ACA passed. Their #1 priority was being able to afford being alive.
Here is the timeline for when the elements of the health care law takes effect.
http://www.healthcare.gov/law/timeline/
Polls show that the majority of Americans agree with and desire these elements of the ACA (Obamacare).
ACA – Affordable Care Act
*Now your health insurance can’t be cancelled just because you got sick. You can no longer be kicked off the insurance rolls after 20 years of paying into the policy just because of a typo or a pre-existing condition. The practice is commonly known as “rescission“.
*You can change jobs and move wherever you want without worrying about losing your health insurance.
*Insurance companies can no longer put lifetime limits on key benefits, such as hospital stays.
*Your kids can stay on your plan until they are 26.
*Your regular check-ups and screening exams are covered 100%. Preventive care will have no co-pay, deductible charge or charge for co-insurance.
*Your insurance company has to spend more on care and less on advertising, bureaucracy and fat salaries for executives. 80% must go into actual health care. You can expect a check in the mail if your insurance company fails to use 80% or more of the funds they collect from you for actual health care.
*The donut hole for seniors will remain closed. Years ago, Republicans purposely created the donut hole to “incentivize” the elderly not to use health care.
*The shortage of primary care doctors, nurses and physician assistants will begin to be addressed, as programs such as scholarships and loan forgiveness help bring doctors to small towns that lack health professionals.
*Small businesses that provide insurance for their workers will get a 50% tax credit on their contribution.
*You will not be denied access to the health insurance market because of a pre-existing condition.
Everybody pays their share as they can afford it at different stages of life.
Sorry, I meant to write physician assistants, although the $1 Billion will benefit physicians too.
And let’s start calling it the Patient Protection and Affordable Care LAW (PPACL).
AND notice that the Republicans, instead of focusing on Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, have scheduled a vote to repeal the PPACL on July 9th, just more grandstanding and confrontation.
The health of Americans is not an important issue for you, Ms. Lenti?
“A report by the US Census Bureau this week shows that household income is up, the poverty rate is slightly down for the first time this decade, but the number of people without health insurance went up by 0.5 per cent to reach 47 million in 2006.” http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/80897.php
“… The reasons for the rise to 50.7 million, or 16.7%, from 46.3 million uninsured, or 15.4%, were many: workers losing their jobs in the recession, companies dropping employee health insurance benefits, families going without coverage to cut costs. Driving much of the increase, however, was the rising cost of medical care; aKaiser Family Foundation report shows workers now pay 47% more than they did in 2005 for family health coverage, while employers pay 20% more.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-09-17-uninsured17_ST_N.htm
If New Mexico embraces the program and gets that additional $1 Billion, that will create a lot of good-paying jobs for basic health care professionals like nurses and physicians. Plastic surgeons, not so much.
Please stop channeling that tired old Republican mantra about how whatever the Democrats do will cost jobs. It’s not true. Try reading
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/06/01/493849/obama-bush-jobs-record/?mobile=nc (good graphs)
http://jerrykhachoyan.com/job-creation-under-obama-has-actually-been-solid/ (more good graphs)
The so called “healthcare debate” is another example of the failure of our two party political system in its current state. I appreciate Sarah’s point and think she’s always represented her party better than many… with courtesy and professionalism. Clearly she’s not going to change the minds of the lefty lever pullers, nor is the other side going to convince the right wing lever pullers. Too bad. While Obama wasn’t that inclusive in the process, it ironic that it’s a watered down compromise approach. It’s more ironic that the unerlying idea he leveraged is a conservative one, the basis for RomneyCare and developed by the Heritage Foundation, that Republicans now disavow completely. What’s next, R’s will endorse single-payer only to watch the D’s disavow that? The real problem with the plan is its complication and the fact that it does little in the way of cost control – the real threat to both our economy and our citizens access to healthcare. Efficiency and efficacy are not in the model – at least not yet.
Just noted a typo in my post. “Wait” should be What.
The USA needs to face facts on several fronts. The economy has been in a mess for a long time. We have to figure out a new strategy because the economy is more global. Wait affects other countries affects us. Jobs that went overseas, for the most part, will not come back. Both parties need to stop the hate speech and mudslinging and stick to issues. We need the truth not sugarcoated lies.
Here is Bishop Romney on the healthcare mandate in 2007 ——— “we’ll end up with a nation that’s taken a mandate approach.”
Bishop Mitt Romney has unsuccessfully tried to distance his Massachusetts health plan from the federal law, even giving a PowerPoint presentation to emphasize the differences. However, the truth is there is numerous similarities between his 2006 plan called Romneycare and the Obamacare.
Or as Governor Jindal called them – “Obomney” care!!!!!!!!!!!!
Republicans have done nothing, absolutely nothing to repair the damage done by Republicans over since 2000. They have absolutely nothing to say about fiscal responsibility.
Great Paul. That’s the kind of illogic that perpetuates the dysfunction. I guess all the Democrats have done to repair the damage is what? Blame Republicans. How many things could have been done in those two years when they had full control? Rise above the Blame Game Paul. What are you going to do? Pass a budget, end the tax cuts, end the Wars?
Republicans have done nothing, absolutely nothing to repair the damage done by Republicans over since 2000. They have absolutely nothing to say about fiscal responsibility.
Big-hearted liberals accuse us Republicans of hate and hate us for it as evidenced so often by the comments here. Defining and hating Rs is not a credible political philosophy.
No Sarah Lenti – Republicans have boxed themselves in. In your comment you basically made two directives. Republicans would do well to cease and desist with their ordering around people who are not like them, denying people their rights as equals, demanding actions which harm people, throwing temper tantrums when they don’t get their own way, stopping progress if it doesn’t politically serve them and them alone, dictating their beliefs on other per a book that was written years ago by a bunch of old gay men, abusing the poor to further enrich the wealthy and stop with the full on hypocrisy. For many Republicans it is time to shut up and sit down.
I don’t fault the president for the distraction of PPACA from the economy,
rather I fault him for the damage PPACA will cause the economy.
By making employers pay ( which maintains a known problem
with health insurance that it’s tied to employment ), the act discourages
hiring at time of persistent high unemployment.
By imposing a new unfunded mandate, Obama has further burdened
today’s young people with more debt load which they must pay in higher taxes.
Hopefully, the upholding of Obamacare will remind those independent voters
why Obama is unfit to be president.
You know, I respect the President and both parties. Everyone should. I simply take issue with people calling/suggesting that the GOP represent hate mongers and people who like ‘adversity.’ You can’t box people in like this. Recall that Martin Luther King Jr. was a proud Republican. Please think about that. Labels are for the insecure. Now, my issue is that health care should not have been the President’s #1 priority upon entering office. I think it’s a fair point.
Obama was incredibly skillful and was able to get the legislation passed on December 24th of 2009. Republicans were never able to make a dent in the broken healthcare system. Of course they hate that someone like Obama could get the job done. To suggest he spent much time on it after the success of the legislation passing is wishful thinking. He has spent the bulk of his time trying to work around an obstructive and recalcitrant house of representatives who have vowed time and again to see America burn in hell before giving the President a victory of even the most minor sort. If Republicans weren’t such abject failures at governing or legislating this piece of legislation would never have been needed in the first place. It isn’t perfect by a long shot, but at least the train is moving in the right direction and not sitting stalled in the damn station as Republicans would prefer. I’m so disgusted with the spiteful, hateful, ideological hate-mongers who prefer to see tens of millions of Americans suffer than to see Obama gain a victory. Hopefully with this landmark decision Americans will be able to see the benefits of the work. Republicans will, no doubt, spend the remainder of the election cycle denigrating progress, obstructing legislation like the jobs bills and whining at the same time that the economy stinks. Americans will hopefully begin to see the self-serving and mean-spirited nature of the Republican party and reject the hate, the fear, the extremism that it has become. We are a better country than that and this day might just be the awakening of that rejection.
So sorry Ms. Lenti…President Obama did indeed rescue us from the economic trauma we had just experienced. And he was able to do it in spite of YOUR party’s (the Republican’ts) continuing efforts to hold back the proven and phenomenal power of this country to overcome all kinds of adversity. And you do it simply for political gain. Why does any patriotic American continue to vote for today’s GOP? I stopped. Your argument seems to be that Obama is bad because he hasn’t cleaned up YOUR mess quickly enough.