The End of the Beginning
Some of you may recognize the title of this post as part of a quote from Winston Churchill:
“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
Although Sir Winston was talking about the Battle of Egypt, the same could be said of Obamacare today. Since this is a holiday week, there is a good chance that you missed the announcement from the Treasury department on Tuesday afternoon. The Obama administration unilaterally decided to delay implementation of the employer mandate part of the law until 2015. Never mind that this is another example of a President who repeatedly decides which laws he’ll enforce (in direct contravention to the Constitution). That’s a another post for another day. No, this is yet another example of what was supposed to be the greatest thing since sliced bread is actually what a whole bunch of us realized it was from the beginning: in military parlance, a BOHICA SNAFU. (For those of you unfamiliar with military terms, this is a family blog. Feel free to use a certain search engine to look it up).
How bad has this been? There are bad laws and there are poorly executed laws. But this law was less about the stated intention (revamping the American healthcare system to provide easier access, with lower costs, for all Americans) than it was about a political power play between the two major parties. The result was a poorly conceived law, rammed through an indifferent Congress by a power-hungry administration, crammed full of pork and incapable of actually working. Every day seems to bear out the fact that nobody read the ACA before the final vote (even if they had, it would have taken a year more just to figure out the details).
To date, there have been 10 instances where the Obama administration has been forced to admit defeat on a particular program in the ACA. The reversal on the employer mandate is the latest, and one of the most critical. The reason they gave, that businesses needed more time to figure out the paperwork, is as believable as the tooth fairy. The real reason is that businesses already figured out how to avoid the paperwork completely: keep workers under the 30 hour limit which would trigger the mandate. Friday’s jobs report, which showed that more part-time jobs were created than full-time jobs, underscored this.
Score one for those of us who warned that Obamacare was an economy killer.
Unfortunately for the American worker, the individual mandate is still in place. The removal of the employer mandate means that some 36% of Americans are now going to be forced into purchasing private medical insurance. The employer mandate proved politically unworkable in practice, I suspect that by October (when everyone needs to start shopping) the individual mandate will prove even more politically impractical.
By the way, here are the 9 previous ACA failures:
- The CLASS Act: a long-term care insurance program that died last year. The reason? The law, as written, couldn’t be funded. The supposed budget savings amounted to 40% of the total deficit reduction attributed to the ACA.
- Federally mandated insurance exchanges: States were given literally unlimited funds to set up insurance exchanges that would allow uninsured folks to shop for coverage. The problem is that only 17 states have bothered with setting up the exchanges and the law requires HHS to set up exchanges for any state that doesn’t. But the ACA failed to foresee that states might not want to bother with the regulatory and administrative nightmares in trying to create a health care exchange and provided zero funds. HHS estimates it will cost at least $1.5 billion dollars to get the exchanges up and running. Good luck with that.
- Small business exchanges: along the lines of the individual exchanges, these were intended to allow small business employees to access the same rates enjoyed by employees at major corporations. They aren’t dead yet – but like the employer mandate, they have been delayed until 2015. The problem isn’t political here, though – it’s a real-world issue. Namely, how do you get the same actuarial certainty for an employee at a company with 10 employees as one who works with 1,000 other people? (Trick question: you can’t do it. But remember, the math geniuses in Congress who dreamed this up also raise government spending, then call it a “budget cut.”)
- 1099 reporting: This was a major funding tool for the ACA that was scuttled because it amounted to both a new tax and a reporting headache for every employer in the country.
- The Great Waiver Debacle: a provision in the ACA allowed HHS to issue waivers to organizations that could prove they needed them. Lo and behold, the Political Patronage and Payback Machine kicked into high gear. Over 1200 waivers have been granted (nobody knows for sure, because HHS stopped reporting the numbers a few months back). But if you gave to the Obama campaign or the DSCC, it looks as if you got a waiver. Funny how a law that was supposed to benefit everyone has proven so incredibly unpopular in core Democratic Party constituencies.
- The Pre-Existing Plans: great idea, on paper. Anyone who has a preexisting condition knows how difficult it is to find medical insurance. But once again those Congressional mathematicians didn’t realize how much it would cost to insure everyone – and the program has already run out of money. No more people are being accepted, even though HHS estimates that only 30% of those eligible are covered.
- Children Only Plans: under the ACA, if an insurance company sells child-only healthcare plans they need to offer coverage to kids with preexisting conditions. Somebody forgot to tell Congressional Dems the way the marketplace works (that companies do not willingly increase costs without some future benefit). The child only plans have virtually disappeared from the marketplace, a casualty of Obamacare.
- The “Basic Health Care Plan”: What’s that you say? You’re in perfect health, you’re young and you really don’t want to pay for full coverage that you can’t afford, even with the promised subsidies? Well, not to worry: the ACA mandated that states offer a basic plan – or essentially, catastrophic coverage-only. Except, as with the other mandates, it has proven unworkable and pushed back to 2015.
- “If you like it, you can keep it”: I saved the best for last! The greatest example of marketing hucksterism exhibited by the Obama administration was the President’s repeated assurances that if you liked you current health coverage, you would get to keep it after the ACA was passed. It’s pretty clear at this point that either the President is as dumb as rock when it comes to market economics or a bald-faced liar, because millions of Americans no longer have the health insurance options they had 4 years ago. Heck, HHS expects that some 126 million Americans will see a “significant” change to their health coverage as a result of the ACA.
The administration and Congressional Dems keep telling us that we’ll love Obamacare once it fully takes effect. They insist the law’s problems have more to do with poor marketing and Republican obstructionism than any basic flaws. But the record on implementation has more failures than successes and the law keeps proving to be more and more unpopular across all demographics.
Here’s a suggestion for the President. Admit that the latest reversal is, in fact, proof that the ACA is a disaster. Politically, it swept your party out of power in 2010 and is threatening to reinforce those losses in 2014. If you are truly interested in your legacy, which seems to be the general consensus among the DC elite, then do something no President has done.
Declare that your “signature accomplishment” is failing to deliver on the promises it made. Ask Congress to repeal it, scrap it and consign it to the dust heap of history. Ask Congress to work together to craft a healthcare reform package that actually works to improve delivery and reduce costs. In short, take ownership and command the respect true leadership creates.
This is the beginning of the end. The only question at this point is whether the President can rewrite the script and create a happy ending. If the past 5 years are any indication, he is politically incapable and (more importantly) personally unable to do so – and the nation will suffer as a result.
Is This It for Mitt?
Will this say "Romney Defeats Obama"?
Super Tuesday came and went, only it wasn’t quite so super. If anything, the results only served to muddle the outcome further in what was an already muddled Republican primary. If you listen to the MSM, Mitt Romney solidified his role as front-runner after expanding his lead in delegates.
Ah, if only it were so simple. But nothing about this primary season has been simple. The principle reason for quagmire is that the Republicans decided this year to change things up and award delegates proportionally, but left it to the individual states to decide how the apportionment would work. State party bosses, being state party bosses, largely decided that the popular votes wouldn’t matter and state political conventions would ultimately decide how many delegates each candidate would receive. Craziest of all these is Missouri, which held a non-binding primary last month and will hold non-binding caucuses next week. It’s a system only Boss Hogg would appreciate.
The net result of all this inside horse-trading (aside from having only a relative few delegates actually apportioned) is the current morass. If, as in the ancient past (read: 2008) delegates were awarded on a winner take all basis, Romney would have commitments from 513 delegates, Rick Santorum 197 and Newt Gingrich 101. Instead, we have estimated delegate counts. Depending on the source, Romney has between 379 (CBS News’ count) and 430 (Fox News) delegates. My own personal count gives Romney 386 delegates. Regardless of which count you take, there are only two I’ve seen that give the front-runner more than 50% of the delegates contested thus far.
And that brings us to the current problem for the GOP. It is becoming increasingly possible that they will arrive at their convention without a candidate who has amassed 50% of the delegates needed to secure the nomination. Not necessarily probable, but possible. After all, there are three winner-take-all states (New York, California and New Jersey) that profile favorably for Romney and they combine for 317 delegates. If combined with his current total, that would mean he would need to win about 40% of the remaining delegates in the other states not yet voted, in order to reach the 1,144 required. It should be a doable task for establishment’s preferred choice.
Only, therein lies the problem for Romney and the establishment. They want the primary season over so they can focus on the general election. New Jersey doesn’t vote until June 5th – and if Romney hasn’t secured the nomination by then, it will mean enough of the party isn’t supporting the eventual nominee to signal significant weakness to the nation. A comparison can be drawn to 1948, the year Harry Truman became the original “comeback kid” (sorry, Bill Clinton). By all normal election standards, Truman should have been walloped that year: unemployment was rising, the economy faltering, the Soviets detonated their first atomic weapon and Winston Churchill’s infamous “Iron Curtain” was now a reality Americans faced with fear and trepidation. But the Republican nominee, Thomas Dewey, was about as inspiring as dry toast and succeeded in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Not unlike Romney, Dewey was perceived by many fellow Republicans as aloof and calculating – a politician’s politician. Also not unlike Romney, Dewey was disliked by the conservative wing of his party (who preferred Ohio Senator Robert Taft). The intra-party fight lasted into the convention, where it took three ballots to nominate Dewey.
Some 64 years later, the Republican Party seems to be repeating history. Certainly, the political calendar isn’t favorable to Romney. What he needs is a convincing win outside of New England to demonstrate he can bring the party together and he seems to be pouring money into Kansas, in the hope he can get it there. But after Kansas comes Alabama, Mississippi and Missouri, three states that do not favor Romney. Since it’s also highly likely that Santorum and Gingrich will split the lion’s share of delegates from these four states, one or both will probably close the gap with the Romney. The GOP nightmare scenario gets that much closer at that point. If the voting holds as it has thus far, with southern and evangelical voters opting for anyone but Romney, the current front-runner can’t cross the 1,144 threshold before New Jersey’s June 5th primary.
But there are two other pitfalls Romney will need to avoid if he wants to secure the nomination, even at that late date. First, he’ll need to ensure that those party conventions are stoked to vote for him (far from a sure thing at this point). Second, he needs to wrap up as many of the uncommitted delegates as possible. There are currently 93 of them; current projections indicate there may be as many 255 by the convention. That will be a powerful voting bloc, one as capable of tying up the 2012 Republican Convention as those of Earl Warren (yes, the man who later became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) and Harold Stassen in 1948.
So, Romney still seems best positioned to become the Republican nominee. But party fratricide seems even more certain to deliver him as weak and badly wounded nominee. In 1948, the Republicans thought they could take on an unpopular incumbent presiding over a moribund economy and uncertainty on the world stage with an unpopular candidate and win. Will 2012 prove to be a repeat of that disastrous strategy?
Political Baseballs 