{"id":3859,"date":"2013-11-24T12:06:46","date_gmt":"2013-11-24T17:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=3859"},"modified":"2013-12-15T14:10:22","modified_gmt":"2013-12-15T19:10:22","slug":"obamacare-sinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=3859","title":{"rendered":"Obamacare Sinking?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It looks like President Obama and the signature achievement of his Presidency, i.e. the Affordable Care Act which is commonly known as “Obamacare”, is experiencing some tough sledding. There’s a good article in the National Journal<\/a> that sums up what is really happening now. In a nutshell, the wealth redistribution effects of ObamaCare are now being realized. And it is very uncertain that political support for it can be maintained now that more and more ordinary citizens are feeling the effects of these re-distributions.<\/p>\n

These effects may get even worse in 2014 when the employer mandates fully kick in and a lot of people lose their employer health coverage (which is already starting, as some companies are dropping coverage of part-timers). The wealth redistribution from ObamaCare is generally from rich to poor, young to old, health to sick \u2013 and this has been allowable, up to a point, in US politics (Social Security and Medicare both do this).<\/p>\n

HOWEVER \u2013 at some point, the political backlash from the rich (and the somewhat better off), the young and the healthy can get very strong. The primary example being cited is the failure of the 1988 Catastrophic Care Medicare expansion<\/a> under Ronald Reagan. That initiative did not survive the objections of the better off people who paid higher Medicare contributions, even though it definitely would have helped the not-better-off<\/a>. So, in 1989, “Cat Care” was repealed.<\/p>\n

With 20-20 hindsight, it becomes clear that Obama picked a bad time for a major new social program \u2013 i.e., in the middle of an historic economic crisis. He probably thought or hoped that by the time the ACA really kicked in, e.g. now, the economy would be back to it\u2019s old self, humming along at 3% growth per year and creating over 250K new jobs per month. Instead, it\u2019s sputtering around at about half those rates. Unemployment has grudgingly come down from 10% to around 7.3%, but still has months or possibly years to go before reaching a more healthy 5%. There are way too many people who have been unemployed for way too long. And most people who are still working haven’t had a real raise in a long time, and are actually living on less<\/a>. It’s hard for them to get excited about making health care universally available to the sick and the working poor (and even the not-so-poor).<\/p>\n

And of course, Obama made a lot of personal enemies in the way that he muscled the ACA past all GOP objections in 2009. He threw all real compromise out the window and enacted the law without any minority support. Thus, he empowered a permanent opposition faction that is mechanically and heartlessly doing all it can to trip up the whole thing, regardless of its effect on real people. The sharks never went away, and thanks to a bad web site and the unforeseen number of existing insurance policy cancellations triggered by the law, blood is now in the water. Now that the GOP is stronger and controls the House, any legislative fixes are off the table.<\/p>\n

So, I am not entirely optimistic about Obamacare at this point. The reaction against it could go on for years (it is now more than 3 years old and its popularity ratings, which were negative when it was enacted<\/a>, are only getting worse<\/a>). If the economy is still dragging in 2015, ObamaCare could become the showdown issue in the 2016 presidential election. <\/p>\n

And unless Hillary Clinton can really come up with something better, the advantage goes to the GOP. Hillary already lost big on health care<\/a>, back in Bill Clinton’s first term. She may be in for<\/a> a second drubbing, unless she cuts bait and runs in opposition to Obama and the ACA (which ironically is similar to a semi-Republican alternative<\/a> offered in opposition to Hillary’s 1993 plan). <\/p>\n

And why not? Politics is a blood sport, and Barack Obama had no reticence about stealing the crown from Hillary in 2008. So don’t expect Hillary to embrace Obama and promise a continuation of his goals and initiatives in 2016. Obama’s final year in office could be quite sad, as the political parties and their candidates argue over how to best clean up the mess that he left. Just as Obama once promised to clean up George W. Bush’s mess. <\/p>\n

Ah, American politics! Another form of mixed martial arts, quite entertaining in its own vicious fashion. It’s too bad that real people living real lives are the real losers from all of this. Obamacare may go down in history as the right policy that was carried out the wrong way at the wrong time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It looks like President Obama and the signature achievement of his Presidency, i.e. the Affordable Care Act which is commonly known as “Obamacare”, is experiencing some tough sledding. There’s a good article in the National Journal that sums up what is really happening now. In a nutshell, the wealth redistribution effects of ObamaCare are now […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3859"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3859"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3922,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3859\/revisions\/3922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}