Even the Rats are Jumping Ship? Joe Klein: ObamaCare Incompetence

Seems that even Joe Klein realizes that this administration refuses to govern.

"Let me try to understand this: The key incentive for small businesses to support Obamacare was that they would be able to shop for the best deals in health care super-stores—called exchanges. The Administration has had 3 years to set up these exchanges. It has failed to do so.

This is a really bad sign. There will be those who argue that it’s not the Administration’s fault. It’s the fault of the 33 states that have refused to set up their own exchanges. Nonsense. Where was the contingency planning? There certainly are models, after all—the federal government’s own health benefits plan (FEHBP) operates markets that exist in all 50 states. So does Medicare Advantage. But now, the Obama Administration has announced that it won’t have the exchanges ready in time, that small businesses will be offered one choice for the time being—for a year, at least. No doubt, small business owners will be skeptical of the Obama Administration’s belief in the efficacy of the market system to produce lower prices through competition. That was supposed to be the point of this plan.

Certainly, the Republicans who have stood in the way of these exchanges—their own idea, by the way, born in the conservative Heritage Foundation—deserve a great deal of the “credit” for the debacle. But we are now seeing weekly examples of this Administration’s inability to govern. Just a few weeks ago, I reported on the failure of the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration to come up with a unified electronic health care records system. There has also been the studied inattention to the myriad of ineffective job training programs scattered through the bureaucracy. There have been the oblique and belated efforts to reform Head Start, a $7 billion program that a study conducted by its own bureaucracy—the Department of Health and Human Services—has found nearly worthless. The list is endless.

Yes, the President has faced a terrible economic crisis—and he has done well to limit the damage. He has also succeeded in avoiding disasters overseas. But, as a Democrat—as someone who believes in activist government—he has a vested interest in seeing that federal programs actually work efficiently. I don’t see much evidence that this is anywhere near the top of his priorities.

One thing is clear: Obamacare will fail if he doesn’t start paying more attention to the details of implementation, if he doesn’t start demanding action. And, in a larger sense, the notion of activist government will be in peril—despite the demographics flowing the Democrats’ way—if institutions like the VA and Obamacare don’t deliver the goods. Sooner or later, the Republican party may come to understand that its best argument isn’t about tearing down the government we have, but making it run more efficiently.

Sooner or later, the Democrats may come to understand that making it run efficiently is the prerequisite for maintaining power."

http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/02/obamacare-incompetence/

Obama doesn't want his fingerprints on anything that might make him look bad. This is the reason he doesn't govern and doesn't administrate. This is the reason he is in endless campaign mode. Community organizers only have ideas. They never have the intelligence, nor the skills/tools to implement their ideas.

And now, even Joe Klein sees it.

 

His criticism of Obama about the exchanges is puzzling. From the very get go they were supposed to go into effect in 2014.

 

Wouldn't have been nice if we had another major party to help push them to do it better....

But instead we spent 3 years arguing about death panels, contraception and obamacares constitutionality

 

They had 16 months to solve their own sequester, Joe.....did they?...no, they waited until the last second, turned it into a major crisis they could exploit and blame on Republicans, Joe....constitutionally required budgets, Joe...Benghazi, Joe....

Where the (*)(*)(*)(*) have you been, Joe....these are your progressives, Joe.

Jackass

 

Yes, the Republicans have been obstructionist and uncooperative. It wouldn't have been a problem if they didn't control the HOR.

 

Sorry lefties, you hitched your wagon to Obama and Pelosi. Now, you have to "eat your peas".

 

What I don't get is how we can have a free market health care system that costs more to run than public government system.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown...how-the-us-compares-with-other-countries.html

What they hay is wrong with this picture and what are our legislators doing to fix it ?

Our health care system is anything but "free market" .. it is an oligarchy that is bleeding us dry.

It is the governments job to deal with such monopolistic practices and they stand idle(arguing about stupid meaningless tripe) regardless of political color.

 

Obama has gotten the whole thing all wee wee'd up.


[video=youtube;Xi_ju0Bw0_U]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi_ju0Bw0_U[/video]

 

Sooner [hopefully] or later, ObamaCare will be unmanageable at the Federal level. They'll start asking states to pick up the slack and help them administer it. This is when the states start backing out and the house of cards collapses.

Unfortunately, there is going to be much pain and suffering before we get there.

 

How very strange. Obama wanted to implement this quickly, the Republicans wanted to drag their feet forever, and they compromised on a 4-year gestation period, the shortest Obama could get out of the Republicans, and even then kicking and screaming. And now Obama is being blamed for taking too long?

The Republicans also didn't want the Federal government (aka Obama) dictating the terms, so one of the compromises was to leave the exchanges and their design and construction up to the individual states. This was a Republican demand, and again Obama caved. And wouldn't you know, the Republican states simply sat there and did nothing, and never had any intention of doing anything.

The law said, if the states can't get an exchange set up in 4 years, then the Feds will do it for them. And the Republican states, having done nothing, then get to whine and moan that the Feds are abusing their power by overriding the states - who did nothing on purpose, but ignore that, OK?

Of course, for the last 2+ years the Obama administration has not managed to get ANY policies past the Republican-controlled House. The Republicans vote unanimously against everything. And now Obama is being blamed for not doing anything? Obama submits one policy proposal after another, the Republicans block every one of them, and Obama is "refusing to govern."

Has Joe Klein been on Mars the last couple of years? Is he STILL on Mars?

 

It is essentially an unregulated monopoly at the local level (no one shops for health care when they are dying) that is sucking the life out of our economy.

I did a little research and posted this on another thread, but it is relevant here:

+++


In 2006, (the latest data I've found so far), those 65 and older (and covered by Medicare) account for 38% of all inpatient hospital visits.


By 2006, 38 percent of inpatients were aged 65 years and over, with those aged 75 years and over comprising 24 percent of all inpatients.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr005.pdf page1

I have not found data that details variations in procedures, but the typical stay of those 65 and older is longer than that of other age groups:

The average length of stay for those aged 65 years and over was 5.5 days; for those aged 45–64 years, it was 5.0 days; for those aged 15–44 years, it was 3.7 days; and for children under age 15 years, it was 4.8 days.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr005.pdf page1

Furthermore, "The federal government estimates that 70 percent of health-care expenditures are spent on the elderly, 80 percent of that in the last month of life"
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_19905093

This data suggests it is unlikely that the hospital visits by seniors on average are less costly than those of younger people.

In 2006, total US health spending was $2.1 trillion.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/27/1/14.abstract

Medicare spending in 2006 was $373.6 billion.
Source: CBO Historical budget data. http://www.cbo.gov/publication/42911 Table F-5.

So what this means is that although Medicare covered 38% of inpatient hospital care, it spent only 18% of total health care costs.

Now, I don't know for sure whether hospitalizations is a perfect substitute for total health care costs, but it seems reasonable. It seems unlikely to me that the proportion of total use of health care procedures on seniors would be significantly different that the proportion of inpatient hospital stays, but I haven't found that yet.

But if we assume that the proportion of total health care use by seniors is equivalent to the proportion of hospital stays, and that the cost of services used would equivalent, then, extrapolating the data, we can say that if Medicare covered 100% of health care, the cost would be $938 billion. Or a savings of over $1 trillion compared to the $2.1 trillion total health care cost in 2006.

The vast bulk of Americans (and certainly most seniors) like Medicare, and the data suggests that it provides health care coverage far more efficiently than the private system. Essentially making the Medicare system available to all Americans, and reap huge overall cost savings, certainly makes some sense to me.

 

Kleins right however....if democrats are going to expand govt they have a responsiblity to ensure its as smooth as possible

 

Now maybe you should explain how to legally fulfill that responsibility, with the Republicans in the House voting unanimously against everything the Democrats try to do. So far, no Democrat has figure that out yet. Maybe poison gas...?

 

The implementation of obamacare will be botched. People will hate what obamacare does to their lives.

 

The article tries to put some of the blame on Republicans. We've all heard it before, The Heritage Foundation, Newt Gingrich, blah blah blah, they were for it, so Dims were just taking their idea.

Sorry, but you can point to a few, and thats it, the vast VAST majority of conservatives were and are against government healthcare.

More and more people are now starting to see what a cluster(*)(*)(*)(*) Obamacare is. You own it Dims 100%, you gave us Obama, you reaffirmed him in 2012, any negative fallout from Obamacare are all yours.

 

I think Americans are getting what they deserve for electing and reelecting Obama.

 

The health care system in the US was a complete disaster with skyrocketing prices and 50 million people uninsured before Obamacare. We will eventually need a single payor system like Medicare.

 

The article you quoted specifically states it was the Republicans idea that they then stood in the way of. Not sure if obstructionism is a new term for you or perhaps it’s hard to grasp but it's right there in black and white.

This is where I get labeled a liberal but the truth is I agree with the article in placing the blame on Obama as well but I'm not going to obscure the reality of it to support some political delusion I've chosen to accept.

Obamas fault is allowing the obstructionism to continue.

People left of the right have been screaming for him to force something to be done about many issues knowing that the right has never had any desire to work with him on anything but he has failed to take control of the situation and I agree that if he can't get this figured out and do something about the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration electronic health care records system his inability to govern will at the very least give the Republican party everything they need to regain their status, which incidentally may be what they wanted to begin with.

 

Something as I recall even Republicans were for right up until Obama was for it.

 

The closest American public health plan so far is Romneycare. While Romney tried very hard to distance his program from Obama's, in fact it served largely as a model. And it has been extremely popular in Massachusetts.

I think Obama was, early in his first term, under the naive impression that the Republicans wanted what was best for the American people, and didn't learn until after Obamacare was passed (and every Republican in both houses voted against it) that any sort of compromises and cooperation wasn't going to happen. But in an effort to be bipartisan, Obama listened to Republican requests and agreed to many of them. A longer period of time to implement, granting the power to set up exchanges to the states, etc. Obama (like a fool, perhaps) thought that including these compromises would encourage Republicans to help join in governing the country. Hasn't happened yet, but today Obama is wiser, and knows Republicans have no interest in the people, and are solely focused on discrediting all he does, EVEN WHEN it's what they ask for!

And so, finally, next year (after a 4 year delay, requested by Republicans, during which they did NOTHING. They requested delay for the sake of delay only), we get to see what the program actually does. If Romneycare is any predictor, people will really like it. I know it will reduce my wife's insurance from $3600 to $195 per year, for better coverage. If this is what we deserve, I'm all for it. I'm not expecting to hate what it does for our lives.

 

Your conservative political enemies want to see you destroyed along with obamacare. You should assume the that the rest of your life will be a terrible struggle against people who have concluded they have no alternative but to figuratively destroy you and everything you believe in. Get set for a long twilight struggle.

 

No maybe about it. The Republican strategy since 2010 has been to deadlock government, engineer crises (and the hell with the US credit rating), stymie all efforts to do anything, and then blame Obama for not doing anything. They've come right out and said it! And if it means voting unanimously against their OWN requests and positions, so be it.

 

Obamacare is going to be a catastrophic failure. In typical fashion, progressives and other Obama-worshipers will just blame its failure, not on the utterly flawed nature of the plan, but on their political opponents.

 

Well, the national demographics suggest otherwise. The conservative voting base is aging white males, while the Democrats had voting majorities among women, minorities, the highly educated, the young, even the very wealthiest! Having a decisive edge among the fastest growing demographics is a plus, isn't it?

I agree that the conservatives are willing to destroy the nation if that's what it takes to destroy Obama. Read any one of these threads, and you find that Obama is NOT seen as someone whose ideas need modification, he's demonized without even a suggestion of any redeeming character. Blind hatred, impervious to any relevant information. And what this suggests is the opposition to Obama isn't so much ideological (most of these posters don't even know his ideology), as it is religious. Politics is pragmatic; religion is ruthless, uncompromising.

 

Just so you understand the DEMOCRATS have been in power since Jan 2009, therefore they get sole credit for EVERY failure since then. And understand the REPUBLICANS are doing exactly what we elected them to do... block Obama's plan to destroy the country.

Understand those two things and you'll be up with the rest of us.