Difficult at best, to some a disaster that was long in the making, the rollout of the new Healthcare.gov website has been exactly what the GOP/Teabully lie and obstruction machine?intended.
President Obama’s approval numbers are at an all-time low, matching the disapproval levels for President George W. Bush, at the same point in his second term.?Still, public support for the ACA is growing. Yes, President Clinton did say that:
The country is better off?with the?Affordable Care Act than without it.
Yes, President Bill?Clinton also compared the rollout of the healthcare.gov website to the 2006 Medicare Drug Benefit rollout saying?that:
Even though it was less complicated, it was considered a disaster ? but in time, it was fixed.
But, President Clinton also said, when speaking about President Obama’s previous statements that if people liked their present insurance, under the new ACA, they could keep it, that:
This is a promise young people heard clearly, and it’s one President Obama needs to keep ??even if it requires a change in the law.
President Clinton swung and missed on a number of levels with these comments.
The disaster that was the rollout of the 2006 Medicare drug benefit got fixed because the Democrats in Congress at that time never opposed the entire program in principal. Democrats were in favor of extending prescription drug benefits to seniors.? However, Democrats did oppose the fact that the program was unfunded,?dramatically adding to the deficit.? Democrats also objected as the Republicans in Congress, intending to benefit their friends in the Pharmaceutical Industry, did not allow Medicare to negotiate for lower prices.? Democrats worked with the Republicans in Congress to fix the glitches in the program instead of killing the entire program itself.
Romneycare, in Massachusetts, where 97 percent of all residents have health insurance, suffered similar glitches when their new law took effect in 2006.? A recent study by the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System?has shown the law is now working well.
This particular Republican House, which has now voted to repeal, defund, or otherwise neuter the ACA, will not work with this President or their Democratic colleagues in Congress on anything.? This has been their stated mission since Inauguration Day, 2009, which history since that time has shown them to have followed this plan to the letter.
If you are committed to killing the ACA and the presidency of Barack Obama, your objections to the rollout of the Healthcare.gov website and your Congressional Hearings on the matter, are irrelevant.? And you can’t negotiate to fix something that was sabotaged from the beginning by the GOP/Teabully Congress which refuses to negotiate on anything.
The comments made by President Obama regarding keeping healthcare insurance policies that you like, constituted an error in language, as the promise was not for President Obama to keep.? The President should have said that if you like your present policy, and it complies with the requirements of the ACA, you can keep that policy.? Still, it is up to your insurance carrier to offer current policyholders all options?to continue coverage before the current non-ACA compliance policy is canceled.
Republican/Teabully opposition to the new requirements contained in the ACA, which are causing insurers to cancel their junk, non-compliant polices, is based on a warped concept of freedom. They argue that people should be free to keep purchasing garbage, low cost healthcare policies, taking the odds against getting sick, while insurance companies should be free to continue to take advantage of consumers and let the taxpayers of America pay the bill.
Opposing the ACA requirements for new healthcare insurance policies is like wanting to be able to continue to buy automobiles that have defective brakes, are not crashworthy, and have no seat belts or airbags. They might cost less and will do the job, so long as you don’t have to make a sudden stop and don’t get involved in a crash.
Sorry, it is the role of Government to step in and establish basic requirements for products sold in the United States, such as automobiles and healthcare insurance policies, and it has been determined by this very Conservative Supreme Court, as far as healthcare insurance policies are concerned, that it is Constitutional.
Opponents of the ACA are gleefully exploiting the glitches in the rollout, the cancellation of junk policies by insurance companies, and the public mea culpa President Obama gave to NBC’s Chuck Todd during an interview?last week. And President Clinton joined with the opposition throwing President Obama under the bus. President Clinton surely could have expressed the point in another way simply by saying something like:
The promise is one that needs to be kept and could be kept if insurance companies and the Republican Congress were willing to work with this President.
To boil it down, President Clinton’s comments were not helpful to anyone, other than the possible exception of Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who might just be running to replace the departing President Barack Obama.? The comment regarding the promise that President Obama should keep was, in my view, intended to create a campaign issue for Secretary Clinton to use, pushing her further towards the right and closer to the field of Republican candidates who will surely moderate their views on the ACA, as the glitches are ironed out and future polls show the ever increasing popularity the law will have.
Edited by SS
