1 million visits to http://t.co/vQ74UBBs7F yesterday. Site stable, faster for users.
— HealthCare.gov (@HealthCareGov) December 3, 2013
Seems like the site is able to take large scale loads. The Monday after Thanksgiving is traditionally the highest volume day for Medicare Open Enrollment as mom and dad had a chance to talk to their kids over the break and have them fix the computer one last time before they make their decisions for the next year. There is a deadline in 3 weeks, so I am curious what the conversion percentage of visitors into buyers looks like yesterday and today. The numbers should start ramping up.
Also some more good news — the cost curve is bending for a variety of sustainable reasons (via Forbes, not a friend of PPACA so it is an admission against interest):
According to a New York Times report out Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office has quietly removed hundreds of billions of dollars from the projected costs of Obamacare, primarily the result of an anticipated decrease in the federal government’s contribution to the Medicaid expansion program along with the projected cost of the subsidy payments to those buying private insurance policies on the healthcare exchanges…
Do we have Obamacare to thank for this highly successful “bending” of the cost curve?
Naturally, the answer depends upon who you ask as there simply is no definitive way of knowing—yet….
Among Obamacare inventions that do appear to be paying off in lower healthcare costs is the government’s refusal to pay hospitals more when patients are re-admitted within 30 days of their initial discharge. Additionally, new plan designs engineered to reward providers for quality of care rather than for quantity of care may well be paying off in terms of lowering the overall cost of care.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation—widely regarded as an honest, non-partisan broker when it comes to healthcare issues and analysis—the declining increases in the cost of healthcare is 75 percent the result of economic factors and 25 percent a benefit of the cost cutting measures in the ACA that do, in fact, appear to be working. [my bold]
ranchandsyrup
*Farnsworth*
kindness
Sadly right wingers are still fuming and acting as if there has been no improvement. I suspect they will continue doing that through the 2014 elections.
ranchandsyrup
@kindness: Not only are they acting as if there are no improvements, they’re pimping a zombie lie that MILLIONS are losing their insurance/paying MOAR.
FlipYrWhig
@ranchandsyrup: Conservatism thrives on the notion that someone you’ve never met is getting a free ride, but someone else you’ve never met is getting jobbed, and that second guy is more like you, so watch out and get mad! If it were based on actual evidence it’d be liberalism.
MikeJ
@kindness:
Even nominally liberal websites are still saying things like, “maybe someday if they evr get the web site to work right…”.
MattR
@kindness: I think the new tactic is that website works, but has massive security holes so only a fool would actually use it since it will lead to your identity being stolen.
ranchandsyrup
@FlipYrWhig: Stealing that for trolling purposes. Thx magn.
El Cid
Ezra Klein seems to be convinced that the bad website rollout proved to everyone that government can’t do anything.
I’ve never seen the dude so emo.
Walker
This is an improvement, but still seems a bit lightweight. Isn’t that the traffic of a popular blog? It is still two orders of magnitude less than Amazon.
FlipYrWhig
@El Cid: he seems to be having a lot of mood swings on this topic.
@ranchandsyrup: enjoy!
googily
Ezra has been positively Sully-like throughout this. Just as I gave up Sully after his Denver debate meltdown, Ezra has now fallen off my reading list.
The Red Pen
May I be the first to say BENGHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAZI!!!!!!!
Kay
One of my son’s friends who tried to enroll when the site was broken (and couldn’t complete the process) got an email to “please complete enrollment, affordable plans are available”
They were very excited to tell me about this new development :)
Matt McIrvin
@MikeJ: I’ve noticed a lot of strangely histrionic bending-over-backwards by liberal essayists to acknowledge how terrible and disastrous the rollout of the ACA has been. They use language that is almost apocalyptic, and having watched this for a little while, at this point I don’t think I entirely understand it. Are they just trying to establish that they’re not fools for Obama?
I mean, I had my own mood swings early on, but most of that was my usual assumption that too many of the people would be suckers for disingenuous attack stories, not that the stories were all true.
There’s also often a failure to acknowledge how much of the trouble is the result of deliberate sabotage.
Roger Moore
@Walker:
It doesn’t matter if it can handle as many people as Amazon, since people don’t shop for insurance the same way they shop for physical goods. What matters is that it can handle all the people who want to sign up, and this seems like a sign that it can probably manage.
ranchandsyrup
@Matt McIrvin: They’re hedging. To mollify the Village and protect their careers.
JMG
Did anybody else here try to deal with customer support over a previous online transaction yesterday? The company I dealt with politely but frankly told me to try again on some other day, as they were too swamped to deal with it. The problems of healthcare.gov are not unique to the public sector.
Not many people will believe that. Once a bad idea gets into the American head, it never leaves. “The Obamacare Website doesn’t work” will soon enter the realm of accepted knowledge, just like “25 percent of the budget goes to foreign aid.”
FlipYrWhig
@Matt McIrvin:
Would you be surprised if that were the case? That’s been the m.o. of huge swathes of the blogosphere since about October 2007.
MikeJ
@ranchandsyrup:
When was the last time you ever saw a Republican hedge by saying even the mildest thing about the most extreme Republican?
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
I remember when Ezra Klein was quoted breathlessly about how awesome PPACA was going to be. Now he is an enemy of the people.
Ripley
@Walker: Whew, thanks for the post dudebro. I was concerned that no one would be concerned.
Bobby Thomson
@El Cid: Of course, it actually proves the opposite. Contractors fucked it up and the government had to unfuck everything.
Bobby Thomson
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: He was overwrought then and now. Gotta get clicks somehow.
ranchandsyrup
@MikeJ: Rarely. They don’t have to. IOKIYAR.
shelly
If you had a drinking game, doing a shot everytime you heard ‘disasterous’ and especially ‘train-wreck,’ you would’ve keeled over weeks ago.
Yatsuno
@MikeJ: Extremism in the defence of Republican ideology is never a vice. Defending libruls make you an unserious hippie unworthy of cocktail weenies at Villager parties. QED.
The Red Pen
@MattR:
That’s what I’m seeing on Free Republic.
I think they real problem that the wingnuts have created for themselves is that they’ve equated the website with the ACA. When the web site was failing, that meant Obamacare was failing. For a lot of people, now, the successful website means that Obamacare has been fixed. I think that they were actually expecting that the web site would never work.
Roger Moore
@JMG:
I had to do some stuff at my bank yesterday- some asshole tried to take over my on-line account, forcing me to migrate all my accounts to new account numbers- and it took well over an hour. That’s better than when I tried to do it over the phone, when I lost the connection and only managed to get my accounts locked, or on-line, where the thief was able to reset my username and password, and it was only the emails warning me about it that let me get the account locked down before something bad happened. So private sector customer service- and resistance to identity theft- is not high on my list of favorite things right now.
Richard Mayhew
@Walker: Balloon Juice on a good day gets 50,000 hits. Kos gets half a million hits — cut those numbers by 30% to 40% for unique visitors
1 million people who are spending some serious time on a website and putting data in is a lot of interaction,.
Jay S
@ranchandsyrup:
Actually, I’m not sure that is a lie, The numbers could be that high and still be less than 5% of the insured population. What is a lie is that ACA broke the insurance market for 85% of the population, and that is a fairly frequent talking point.
Patricia Kayden
So the Blah, Kenyan, Socialist, Communist, Fascist Thug has done some good vis-a-vis healthcare after all. Who knew?
I can hear the T’Baggers and their ilk moaning softly from the perch they share with the vultures (no insult to vultures intended).
Villago Delenda Est
Good news, everybody! I’ve repaired the poison slime pipes!
topclimber
Richard, I believe the kaiser model is six months old and based on health care inflation 2 to 3 percentage points higher than shown in figures released by Whitehouse economists last month. I think revised kaiser model would show much bigger cost control impact for ACA.
agorabum
@El Cid: Well, the website rollout was a major fumble. But (to continue the tortured analogy), it’s still early in the third quarter. So as long as they mostly right it by the end of March, and the Dems don’t lose the Senate in 2014, it’s ok. But let’s imagine another world, where the website didn’t have to be held together with duct tape and bailing wire two months late: it’s Oct 1, people flood the site, there are some long waits, but tens of thousands actually buy health care on day 1. Then people go back on non-peak times, and by the end of the month, there are 1 million enrolled, and all the news sites are talking about how easy the site is, how well it works, etc.
That sure would have been nice! And would have been a big boost to the Dems. If we could make this much progress in two months, why wasn’t it done from August to September?
Still plenty of time on the clock, but it’s a slog instead of a blowout…
El Cid
I’m not saying you have to have a certain opinion about ACA or the website for the Federal ACA marketplace (which is what the website is, it isn’t the whole of ACA).
I just don’t see the reason for either the freakout or the absolutely massive deductive leap — which Ezra Klein makes — that because of ACA website problems that Americans in general would therefore conclude that government doesn’t work.
Let’s see an argument that shitty and flighty make it into a political science etc journal without being torn to shreds.
I think your average person would expect of a massive government program that it would take a while. I don’t know of anyone who thought ‘Oh, yeah, massive federal program dealing with millions of people? It’ll be up & going INSTANT-LIKE’ — except maybe Ezra Klein.
It’s like getting approval for a bridge to be built. There can certainly be delays, many of them unjustified, but you don’t normally have people running out to the river’s edge and falling down and weeping ‘Oh no! It’s been DAYS and STILL NO BRIDGE! America will ne’er believe in government AGAIN!’
It’s only anecdotal, but when I’ve asked coworkers etc. of varying opinions if they had assumed it would take a while to get going (even ‘going’ to the extent they don’t like ACA anyway) they all seemed to figure it would.
I don’t know what it is, but there is something going on with him about this. It’s weird and way too melodramatic for his prior habits.
ranchandsyrup
@Jay S: Still a lie as to WHY that happened. Unless you believe that the ins. companies have no agency whatsoever. Agreed re: 2nd point.
Yatsuno
@Jay S: Imagine the freakout over single payer, even something familiar like Medicare. The hue and cry would have been enormous plus the massive change to the economy would have put us back a good point or so in GDP. But this is why we need transition laws like the ACA.
Walker
@Richard Mayhew:
Unique visits are irrelevant when you worry about the site staying up. And we do not know how many of those visits actually translated into transactions (where the backend actually matters). But point taken; seems like this should hold.
Matt McIrvin
@MattR: Also, the healthcare navigators are all scammers who will steal your precious bodily fluids. Buy Old Glory Robot Insurance instead!
El Cid
@agorabum: That’s the thing — I don’t know anyone who was banking on doing all of this ASAP ASAP NOW NOW NOW!
Everyone I knew who had mentioned they would take a look at it were saying that they’d do just that — take a look and see what the deal was.
I don’t know anyone who knew up front exactly what they would find and what they would get and then be willing to sign up BANG instantly like they were ordering a book from Amazon. (I assume occasionally people still do that.)
To me it seems reminiscent of people talking about paying their taxes online — they know the deadline is months away, and if they’re not sure what’s going on they sure as hell aren’t in a hurry.
Same here. To me what I heard was people wanting to (a) check it out, and if they made some decision (b) get it.
Who shops for health insurance in an all-out rush? Some people do, but I would have thought more might take a bit more time especially if it’s not kicking in for a couple months. Seemed to me like one of those categories of things which people fear making the wrong choice in haste.
I feel like somewhat like an outsider to this. Yes, I didn’t anticipate the levels of callous knuckleheadedness apparently displayed, but then I didn’t either have any assumption that it would be some sort of instantaneously successful experience.
Then again, I didn’t build up some narrative in my head about how one day this law would kick in and millions of people log on to a website and suddenly realize they loved the New Deal all along.
JMG
If you want a couple guesses about Ezra on this issue, here are mine. These are complementary opinions, not choose one from the above.
1. Washington journalism, an arena for professional hysterics, is getting to him
2. Ingrained belief in the technocratic merits of his Obama administration sources and subsequent disillusionment with learning their inability to transform American government was limited at best.
3. Lack of experience with really big organizations of all kinds resulting in failure to understand factors that make introducing new products or services hard for them.
Belafon
The top NewsMax headline is: One-Third of Obamacare Enrollees May Not Get Insurance. Don’t want to click the headline at work.
BAtFFP
Hi Richard, love these posts. I’m learning valuable things every time you put one up. My Family Unit is struggling to get some straight answers about subsidies and what’s considered “affordable coverage.” Perhaps you can help?
Long story sorta short: I get super-cheap insurance through my job. It’s well under the 9.5% of my income that would make me eligible to get subsidized insurance on the exchange. (Which is a shame, in a way, because we’re in WA State and have some great options available, frankly better than what I’m getting right now.) Unfortunately, work also gives me the option to buy it for the Spousal Unit — at $800 a month. My Insurance + SU’s = 25% of my monthly paycheck, which would leave us homeless. Whoops!
I have heard the following contradictory things: 1) because MY insurance costs are less than 9.5%, the whole Fam Unit is ineligible for subsidies; 2) I HAVE to buy insurance for SU through my work or pay the no-insurance penalty and leave SU without coverage; 3) because Me + SU = more than 9.5%, there are all sorts of fun subsidies available for SU to enjoy.
No subsidies would be a real bummer, especially as there is a Mini Spousal Unit on the way. Subsidies would make everything better (but not great). Are we stuck being the 3% of people who are gaining little and losing a lot under the ACA?
ETA: Christ, that’s still pretty long. Sigh.
Villago Delenda Est
Totally OT, but the Seahawks are now in the playoffs. The path to the NFC championship game almost certainly leads to Seattle.
Just had to note that, for the record. :)
El Cid
@JMG: Imagine the perceptual shock to his worldview, then, if the website had rolled out perfectly functional and it was still seeing roughly the same rates of enrollment as now.
Then who would E.K. be blaming for the failure of the technotopia-induced re-embraced of the possibilities of government?
Yes, we would all have been waaaaaaay better off in that scenario (even in the sense of not having to see the typical freakout by Democratic politicians shitting their pants & running away like they did after Scott Brown was elected OMG WE’Z DOOM’D).
But I simply don’t see that the alternative rollout scenario would have had the falling-in-love-all-over-again effect that Klein must have built up a lot of fantasies around.
Would a perfect web rollout really have transformed US politics? Would you really have had actual real people, and not bit-players in a wonk cosplay skit, wandering around saying things about how great government was?
No, it’d be like a successful rollout of a DMV program with some sort of vehicle-based benefit — people that had to go do it would go do it, still grumble about this or that, and after doing whatever it was they had to do, not talk much about it, and go do whatever else.
It seems to me like for some people a whole bizarre counter-fantasy was built up in which a smooth website rollout for ACA would have led to spontaneous choral performances of WWII-era solidarity in the streets.
Redshift
@MattR:
That may be Darrell Issa’s only success, since that whole story line comes from one of his deceptively edited committee transcripts. The actual testimony, IIRC, was that there was a security issue with one of the small-business related features that doesn’t go online until next year, and they expect to have it fixed well before then.
Kay (not the front-pager)
Is the reduced spending on Medicaid due to the states that did not expand it? If so, will these anticipated costs go up again when (I’m pretty sure it’s when, not if) Republican governors capitulate and finally expand Medicaid?
José Arcadío Buendía
I didn’t realize it was going to be bukkake.gov
MattR
@The Red Pen:
I think this is pretty much it. Republicans are so completely unable to control their desire to poke at Obama and magnify his every failure that they don’t ever consider if those criticisms run counter to the long term interests of the GOP. I almost wonder if they are still getting bad advice (ala the Karl Rove electoral math) that led them to believe the website problems actually were completely unfixable. Otherwise I just can’t grasp the logic behind trying to tie the entire success of a program you want to destroy to a series of relatively easily fixable problems with a user interface.
@Redshift: You don’t happen to have a good debunking link for that by any chance? I would like to respond to the, thankfully, small number of facebook posts.
(EDIT: This is the kind of article I am seeing posted on FB)
Keith G
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: Over the longhaul, Ezra is pretty good at analysis and is more likely than most to value empiricism over devotion.
But as his post noted above shows, he is not immune to the very common mistake of using a contemporary event to lock in a long term narrative. Yes this was a cockup, but I get the impression that most Americans get the reality that we expect government to tackle the most difficult of tasks so there will be screw ups. In the past we have seen those mistakes rather quickly forgiven, or at least quickly forgotten.
Klein might be well served to take a step back and take in the big picture.
Another Holocene Human
@BAtFFP: Seconded, Richard. I, too, have seen contradictory info on this.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Matt McIrvin:
@ranchandsyrup:
Unfortunately, this seems to sum up my interactions about the law outside of my family and this site. If they haven’t gone full winger because of it, it’s nominally liberal people jumping off the Third Way slope because the site somehow proved the total utter unforgivable incompetence of Obama and Dems in general and holy shit we need Repubs in there now now now now now.
And I’m just an awful abhorrent advocate or something, because as always, I find myself with the same result of ‘the more you try, the more they hate you and everything you tried to advocate for by extension’ I’m just….pessimistically apathetic at this point, and the poll numbers only dull the negativity so much when it seems like my personal experience is “OBAMACARE RUINED ALL HEALTH CARE AND THE COUNTRY!!!” I mean, fuck all, people are pining for the fucking shutdown because the website debacle somehow proved Repubs were in the right, and the Dems caused an apocalypse over not delaying the law ad infinitum.
And while I’m an admitted pessimist by trade, this just feels even worse than before. And unlike others, my experiences have lead me to believe that First Impressions are nigh unshakable unless a serious paradigm shift occurs. Otherwise, people will go with their first blush and never budge ever unless a personal catastrophe happens, or a blatantly massive blunder. And again, the more you try to shake their foundations, the more disservice you cause to your cause because the more they will hate you and said cause by extension.
Redshift
@MattR: Well, they’re not actually tying the entire success of the program to the website, since they’ll never admit it’s a success even if everyone agrees the website is fixed. They’re only tying the failure of the program to the website right now. It’s just the current target of opportunity; when it’s fixed, they’ll come up with another reason why it’s a failure.
japa21
@Kay (not the front-pager): That is the same thought I had. The non-expansion of Medicaid definitely reduces over all costs, but what is the impact long term? Many of these people, from what I understand, may not qualify for the exchanges. Of course I could be wrong on that. Wouldn’t be the first time.
ranchandsyrup
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: I hear you 5×5 on the frustration. I’ve been keeping these people talking and eventually we get to how “great” the status quo ante was.
The Red Pen
@Redshift:
They only tie failure to things at all.
Remember when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was such a complete measure of the Obama presidency that his effect on it could be measured starting with his nomination? I remember. You might remember. Wingnuts? They don’t seem to remember.
Redshift
@MattR:
Ah, that’s different. That’s just the standard line from computer security consultants that security should be the primary concern of any system, and if it isn’t, it’s not secure. (Having worked with such people, I’m willing to give the benefit of a doubt and attribute it to the expert’s worldview, rather than cynically noting that doing so would require hiring more security consultants.)
Yes, security can always be better. But no system is going to be designed “security first,” because being secure is never the primary function of the system. However, the fact that a security expert says it could be hacked doesn’t mean it’s any less secure than any number of other websites that you freely hand over personal information to every day.
(But anyway, one post debunking the Issa story is here. The others I could easily find are Maddowblog and Media Matters, which aren’t likely to be accepted by anti-ACA types. Wonkette is at least funny enough that it might get through.)
MikeJ
@Redshift:
It’s fixed. It works now. Today it is working. The website is fine. Fixed, she has been.
Another Holocene Human
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: This is actually incorrect. In a consumer transaction, people remember most how it ended. Thus, a horrible dinner can be remedied by an obsequious apology and lightening of the bill, but a completely satisfactory transaction can be ruined in someone’s mind by rudeness at the terminus.
The problem with first impressions is that sometimes after a bad one the other party will just slam the door in your face and refuse to reconsider. It seems, though, that like cable internet ([email protected]*$ those lying jackwagons with a rusty handsaw!!!!) that the product in question is so necessary that it will overcome that resistance. I’m seeing a lot of persistence. Most people realize they need health insurance.
Frankensteinbeck
@MattR:
They believe that Obamacare IS Obama. They cannot separate the two. Their complete freakout last minute attempt to stop the law is because Obama himself becomes law in January, in their twisted little racist brains. Since they’ve made that tangle, they might as well believe that the website is Obamacare. Mostly, I think they’re just desperate. Absolutely nothing has stopped the black guy. Their attempts to punish him have all gone down in flames.
Jay S
@Yatsuno: Yes single payer would have created a very different battle ground. It might have made the path for opponents to the Supreme Court more difficult though. It’s hard to game it all out.
Kay
@Kay (not the front-pager):
I think Medicaid spending will go up not because of that (although you may be right) but because people are going to be channelled into Medicaid in a way they weren’t before. Everyone has to pick a plan. That wasn’t true before.
I get this from my experience with SCHIP (the children’s program). A LOT of people don’t know it’s available so don’t sign up. The enrollment rate in SCHIP was something like 60% in Ohio in 2009. Kids who qualified and were uninsured weren’t enrolled.
But we have a mandate now. Everyone has to sign up for something. I think the participation rate will be far higher.
Redshift
@MikeJ: Yeah, I know that. I was using that as shorthand for “after they can no longer sustain the argument that it’s broken.”
rikyrah
As do-nothing Congress dithers, a million set to lose unemployment insurance
By Greg Sargent
December 3 at 12:31 pm
If Congress does nothing, and fails to extend a jobless-aid program, 1.3 million people will lose unemployment insurance only a few days after Christmas — perhaps leading to a series of stories about real people’s economic travails during the slow-news holiday season.
Meanwhile, Republicans are planning no fewer than four more House oversight hearings into Obamacare, even as observers are pronouncing this Congress the least productive in decades.
Democrats are hoping to turn that juxtaposition to their advantage.
I’m told House Dems will hold a hearing on Thursday into the plight of those set to lose unemployment insurance if Congress fails to extend the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, as part of an effort to pressure Republicans to agree to an extension. Sources tell me it will be presided over by Dem Reps. Nancy Pelosi, Chris Van Hollen, Sander Levin, and others, and will hear from witness who stand to lose those benefits.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/12/03/as-do-nothing-congress-dithers-a-million-set-to-lose-unemployment-insurance/
RobertB
@Villago Delenda Est:
Who doesn’t love Professor Putricide?
rikyrah
the CRIME was WAITING FOR A BUS WHILE BLACK.
so, what the fuck charges were there to drop?
…………………
Charges dropped against teens arrested at bus stop
12/02/13 06:00 PM—UPDATED 12/03/13 01:24 PM
By Morgan Whitaker
UPDATED – Charges were dropped against three African-American teenagers who said they were waiting for a school bus last week when they were arrested by police.
“After reviewing the facts associated with these arrests, I have decided to dismiss the charges in the interest of justice,” said District Attorney Sandra Doorley in a statement Tuesday.
The basketball players said they were waiting for a bus in Rochester, N.Y., to take them to a scrimmage when police asked them to leave the area. When 17-year-old Deaquon Carelock and 16-year-olds Raliek Redd and Wan’Tauhjs Weathers pushed back against the officer’s request, saying they were following instructions from their coach, police arrested them. The teens were later charged with two counts of disorderly conduct.
http://www.msnbc.com/politicsnation/were-teens-arrested-bus-stop-profiled
FlipYrWhig
@Jay S: not really. You can game it out this way: Senate Democrats were not going to support single-payer. The end.
Another Holocene Human
thanksobama.info is fun
Elie
@MikeJ:
I can understand the right wing need for this, but someone please explain the progressive butthurt attitude that has been so evident? They jumped aboard the doubters train at the same time as the rightwingers…. all he shoulda done this and he shoulda done that and so and so. They actually piss me off MORE than the right!
MattR
@Redshift: A belated thanks. Not surprising that there are mutliple security freakouts – some semi-legiitmate, some in Issa’s imagination. Agree with your take for the most part with your take on the security experts. I have found Avi Rubin to be pretty levelheaded but he is also coming from the worldview that there can never be too much security (and I would note that some of the “holes” only allow you access to names and addresses, but not anything more secure)
Matt McIrvin
@Elie: Well, as a general rule, you can’t get progressives to fall in line the way you can conservatives. Some fraction of single-payer and public-option supporters are never going to believe that the ACA as it is is anything over than a betrayal that kept their pet proposal from being passed, and the implementation problems just prove to them that they’re right.
But the thing is, they actually have a better argument than the conservative attackers do. Because the parts of the ACA that have caused the most trouble in implementation are the most “conservative” bits.
I actually liked a bit that Ezra Klein wrote a little while ago about what would have happened if Paul Ryan’s proposed reforms had gone into effect. Guess what: it relied far more on getting everyone to sign up for healthcare exchanges through a website!
And it would have yanked away essentially everyone’s existing health plan! Medicare would have been privatized through the exchanges, and it would have ended the favorable tax treatment for employer-based health insurance, which probably would have resulted in most of them getting terminated and everyone getting kicked onto the exchanges. It would have been all the worst trouble with Obamacare times a hundred.
I think that if progressives want to play purity patrol and stay rhetorically left of Obama, there is actually a constructive way forward. Point out that the worst-functioning parts of the ACA are the parts designed to keep free-market principles in the system, and the best-functioning parts are the supposedly socialistic bits, the new regulations and the Medicaid expansion. And, while they’re at it, point out that even the exchange system is working great in states that haven’t decided to crap all over it, since the program really gives a lot of latitude to states to go their own way, in accordance with another principle conservatives say they like.
Elie
@Matt McIrvin:
Good response — thanks
Kay (not the front-pager)
@Kay: I think you’re right:
Acording to TPM Medicaid enrollment is up 16% in SC because people who tried to get ACA insurance found out they are eligible for Medicaid even without the expansion. All the more reason these governors will have to back down.
It makes me smile to know people are getting healthcare because of ACA and in spite of their Republican politicians trying to prevent it.
eta I see they are projected to add 16% by 6/15, but have not currently added that number.
Patricia Kayden
@Frankensteinbeck: “Absolutely nothing has stopped the black guy. Their attempts to punish him have all gone down in flames.”
AMEN! But they won’t stop trying. I imagine that if in the distant future Obama is ever nominated for the Supreme Court, they’ll work themselves up into a frenzy to block him. They hate him on a personal level.
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: They should sue the police for that. Crazy.
Kay
@Kay (not the front-pager):
Oh, I’m glad. I thought that would happen. Unless you’re in the system for something else (food stamps, heating aid) you wouldn’t know you qualified for Medicaid. I think we’ll see tons of kids signed up who wouldn’t have been covered before this.
Poor people are hard to “find”. They move a lot and cell phones have just made it worse. I used to be able to contact them thru calling a (stable) family member’s house, but I can’t do that now because everyone got rid of their land lines. It’s sometimes faster to actually go visit in person. Progress! :)
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
One of the features of the PPACA that Yatsuno has been touting is that hospital ERs will now assume that uninsured people are eligible for Medicaid and sign them up for it automatically rather than expecting those people to apply for it. That will probably help a lot with people who are currently invisible to the system.
(Fix’d.)
mclaren
Brad deLong has a post up at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth suggesting that in 2009 president Obama’s health care policy should have involved
Since Obama threatening to pass a single-payer nationalized health care system if his negotiating opponents refused to come closer to his bargaining position on health care is essentially what I suggested, it’s now time for Richard Mayhew to proclaim that Brad deLong has ingested “LD-50 quantities of LSD” and that Obama would immediately be impeached and his cabinet officers would resign if Obama had chosen this negotiating strategy.
Richard Mayhew can then move on to explain why Professor deLong is brain-damaged, mentally ill, off his meds, and so on.
Richard Mayhew: smearing anyone who advocates genuine progressive reform in American health care since 2005. But what else would we expect from a craven toady who makes his money by working for a private for-profit health insurer?