Obama has 3 options for how to modify Obamacare
Conservative strategists are now contemplating Obama's next move re the laughably-misnamed "Affordable Care Act." Right now congressional Democrats are reportedly unhappy about having to face voters angry over losing their health insurance, so the betting is that Obie will take one of three tacks:
First is to simply continue changing or just not enforcing parts of the law's language that are causing Democrat candidates such grief--which is what he did in delaying a couple of "mandate" start-dates by a year, until safely after next year's election. Obama has gotten very good at the mechanics of this: He knows the best way is by verbal instruction to his HHS secretary, with the announcement made at 5:30 pm on a Friday--too late to hit the evening news that day, and old news (thus of no interest to editors) by Monday. And of course almost no one watches the news on the weekend.
The second possibility is to rescind 95% of the thing--again by presidential order--and just keep the uncontroversial "goodies": kids could still be kept on parents' policies til age 26, insurance can't be denied due to pre-existing conditions, maybe one more. This would give him a PR win--"The ACA was a great law and a great idea, but the Republicans wouldn't support it. I fought the good fight but finally my aides told me too many people were losing coverage due to greedy insurance companies cancelling them, even though the law didn't require them to do that. [False but who'll check?] So I've listened to the people and you can have your old policies back."
The third possibility is that he'll use the debacle to go for the whole enchilada: to establish a full-on "single-payer" system, in which the government runs the whole shebang. Liberals and "progressives" are very open about saying this is what they want, and most Democrats are too uninformed to care one way or the other--as long as someone gives them free health care, they couldn't care less who picks up the tab.
Seems t' me the cleverest path would be #2, but I don't think he'll take that one because he'd consider it too much of an admission of error. And admitting any mistake--even a trivial one, and this isn't--doesn't seem to be in the narcissist's playbook.
I don't see how he can get single-payer without the support of congress, which doesn't seem to be likely. Oh, he could do it by yet another executive decree--and congress still couldn't impeach him because of Dem control of the senate. But I think he senses he'd lose a fair percentage of the normally-slobbering media if he does. For a narcissist, that's a bridge too far.
So I think we're left with Option 1: Applying a series of "patches" by ordering Sebelius to re-write damaging regs to make them more palatable to voters. Uncontroversial. Already accepted. Illegal as hell, but no one will stop him.
First is to simply continue changing or just not enforcing parts of the law's language that are causing Democrat candidates such grief--which is what he did in delaying a couple of "mandate" start-dates by a year, until safely after next year's election. Obama has gotten very good at the mechanics of this: He knows the best way is by verbal instruction to his HHS secretary, with the announcement made at 5:30 pm on a Friday--too late to hit the evening news that day, and old news (thus of no interest to editors) by Monday. And of course almost no one watches the news on the weekend.
The second possibility is to rescind 95% of the thing--again by presidential order--and just keep the uncontroversial "goodies": kids could still be kept on parents' policies til age 26, insurance can't be denied due to pre-existing conditions, maybe one more. This would give him a PR win--"The ACA was a great law and a great idea, but the Republicans wouldn't support it. I fought the good fight but finally my aides told me too many people were losing coverage due to greedy insurance companies cancelling them, even though the law didn't require them to do that. [False but who'll check?] So I've listened to the people and you can have your old policies back."
The third possibility is that he'll use the debacle to go for the whole enchilada: to establish a full-on "single-payer" system, in which the government runs the whole shebang. Liberals and "progressives" are very open about saying this is what they want, and most Democrats are too uninformed to care one way or the other--as long as someone gives them free health care, they couldn't care less who picks up the tab.
Seems t' me the cleverest path would be #2, but I don't think he'll take that one because he'd consider it too much of an admission of error. And admitting any mistake--even a trivial one, and this isn't--doesn't seem to be in the narcissist's playbook.
I don't see how he can get single-payer without the support of congress, which doesn't seem to be likely. Oh, he could do it by yet another executive decree--and congress still couldn't impeach him because of Dem control of the senate. But I think he senses he'd lose a fair percentage of the normally-slobbering media if he does. For a narcissist, that's a bridge too far.
So I think we're left with Option 1: Applying a series of "patches" by ordering Sebelius to re-write damaging regs to make them more palatable to voters. Uncontroversial. Already accepted. Illegal as hell, but no one will stop him.
posted by SF at
2:08 PM
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