I might be a victim of epistemic closure, but I’m seeing signs that HCR is becoming a non-issue.
First, facts: Steve Benen reports that the insurance industry has decided to scrap recission four months earlier than required by law. That’s on top of the already-established coverage for children through age 26, and the curbing of denial of coverage for kids with pre-existing conditions.
Second, messaging: I live in a pretty conservative Congressional district (the infamous NY-29), where tea partiers had a field day at town hall meetings last Summer. Democrats have finally picked a candidate, Matt Zeller, and I thought he had a pretty good gloss on the main benefits of HCR:
I think it achieved three things every side of the argument agreed needed to happen.
- You can’t have your insurance denied to you based on pre-existing conditions.
- You can’t have your insurance stripped from you as you are being wheeled in the emergency room.
- You are allowed to pool together with neighbors and small businesses and use your buying power to drive down the cost of insurance.
Zeller pissed all over the process that brought us HCR, but said he couldn’t support repeal unless these three topics were addressed. The repeal movement has only one message: back to the status quo.
A few facts on your side and a good message are all it takes to win an issue — I don’t want to declare victory on this one, but it’s looking pretty good.
Ash Can
Hell, I’m wondering how many Republicans will try to take credit for HCR this summer and fall.
Keith G
You don”t suppose that we can pull of a game changer where we can resonate and get traction so we can start using frames in a way that I never have to see the phrase ‘epistemic closure’ ever again.
Also. This.
bob h
Probably the insurers are adjusting their business models to the new law (all the deniers and recissers can be laid off), and will not want to revamp everything again. Blue Cross even supports the reform.
Reform will have massive institutional support behind it to frustrate the repealers.
MikeJ
@Ash Can: Found three that already have:
Cornyn TX Senate
Grassley IA Senate
Gresham Barrett (SC-03)
Probably some more, but found that without trying.
fucen tarmal
the repeal movement will get the media attention. meanwhile the ins co’s and providers will move one step ahead of the law taking effect, opening the backdoor argument that this was another useless piece of legislation because the ins co’s et al reformed on their own!
viva la free market!
beltane
HCR already seems like it happened a long time ago. Right now, the Republican party appears to be covered in white sheets, crude oil, a Wall Street lipstick marks.
Ash
I’m starting grad school in the fall and have been putting off getting all my check-ups done for as long as possible, waiting until I get put back on my father’s insurance, so wheeeeeeee, no longer will I have this weird itchy thing on my elbow here….
Kirk Spencer
Kristol was right. If (now once) Dems pass health care, there’ll be a brief period of fuss till everyone starts realizing benefits. Then the Reps will lose a small slice of the voters to the Dems. Specifically, those who realize it’s the Dems who got them what they needed, not the Reps.
We’re in that fuss period. I thought it’d go a whole year, but the majority of this may be no issue at all before this year’s elections.
Cat Lady
@beltane:
Win. Throw in some epistemic closure so they can’t even see that it might be a problem for them, and barring a dead intern in every Democratic incumbent’s bed between now and the midterms, I like our chances of holding on to the Congress.
joe from Lowell
@Keith G,
Are you saying we need to throw “epistemic closure” under the bus?
We need a Marshall Plan for political cliches.
gbear
Republicans in MN are picking their candidate for governor today. One of the two candidates believes that the AZ immigration law is ‘wonderful’ and a ‘good start’. He also picked up Sarah Palin’s endorsement via facebook and twitter yesterday. I can’t wait to see if this is the guy they go with.
jackie
I don’t know, I spent 10 minutes yesterday talking down a guy who had frenzied himself worrying about death panels. What he was worried about was his newly discovered diabetes would it render him uninsurable and so we would decide to kill him. It’s going to take awhile for reality to float down to folks.
cleek
as i see it, the repeal movement’s real message is the same one that underlies most of modern “conservatism”: “libruls are bad, mmk. what they like we must hate.”
Cat Lady
@jackie:
You should have told him that he should be glad stupidity isn’t fatal.
WereBear
@jackie: Judging from what you’ve described, it seems reality is quite a bus ride from where he is, and I suspect some transfers would be involved.
Bobby Thomson
Doesn’t matter. As the saying goes, it’s the economy, stupid.
Democrats’ best hope is that Republicans try to use repeal and other messages instead of a much simpler message that the economy has gotten worse since 2007. Yes, there are billions of explanations for that having nothing to do with anything Congressional Democrats have done. Doesn’t matter. The political thought process of the median voter is “squishy,” to say the least.
danimal
Some of us kept saying that once HCR passed, it would become more popular. It is. My close friend, a conservative leaning independent, has two kids who will both benefit from HCR. The benefits of the law will slowly filter through. I think all we need to do is credit Obama with killing the death panel provisions and the whole country will be grateful.
One big reason HCR will become more popular: there aren’t hundreds of millions of dollars frothing around the system to keep people agitated. The special interests will still do their thing, but the tea parties will need new funding. I’m not sure they’ll get nearly as much money to move forward; the business community doesn’t want tea partiers to show up for the immigration debate (and scare off cheap labor) and the GOP doesn’t want them to make policy (just give ’em money and votes and be good little boys and girls). Without money to prop up their lies, the truth will seep out, citizen by citizen.
kay
I wish they’d get the market up and running for middle aged people (50+) who lost their jobs and insurance and aren’t getting rehired.
They’re in real trouble. They’re likely to have one or another preexisting condition, and they aren’t going to be rehired at the level they were at because younger people are a cheaper hire, which no one wants to admit. It seems to be particularly bad for women. I don’t know if it’s child-bearing or what, but they can’t find a new job with insurance, and they can’t find insurance even if they find work. We’re not leaving them a whole lot of options. They can decide not to take any job and get on Medicaid, but that’s dicey at best (depends on the state program) and they want to work.
It’s supposedly due in September, but I wish they’d ramp it up. They’re really scared.
kay
Bravo. Good for him. Every Democrat in the country should be making this bet. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain, and striking some “kinda-sorta” middle ground just makes them look weak. They’re not going to persuade anyone else if they’re not convinced.
Randy P
Well, nobody else has stepped up yet, so I will.
That’s Nazi-ism! And Socialism! Also!
Seriously, didn’t everybody already agree HCR included these things, and they just got lumped in as part of the Stalin/Hitler stuff by the screamers?
Randy P
@Randy P: Geeze, that just got worse and worse as I tried to edit it. The underline trick made it even worse, then I put the three lines in three separate blockquotes and it blockquoted the empty spaces instead, and then it told me I don’t have permission to edit.
Sentient Puddle
The Republicans never found their stride on post-passage messaging. I would have thought that by now, we’d be hearing “Repeal and Replace” as often as you hear “9/11” from Rudy. Instead, you’ve got a dissonant mix of that, straight-up repeal, this bill is the worst thing ever but I have no idea what to do about it, it was me that put all the good stuff in the bill, and some incredibly strained notions that the bill is unconstitutional. Total mess.
So yes, as far as Republicans want this to go, it is a non-issue. Which means that Democrats should go on the offensive with this.
Chris Andersen
The conventional wisdom before HCR passed was that it would be a political disaster for Democrats. The polling so far shows it to be a wash. It has neither hurt nor helped the Dems (the benefits are either not well explained or they are to far in the future for most people to take into account).
This is a good thing, because history suggests that the polling will only get better on HCR as the years go by and more of it becomes a reality.
TooManyJens
@Ash Can:
You rang?