The US political merry-go-round

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/breaking-2014-republican-wave/

I haven't really been following the midterms, but just wanted to share some general concerns. It just seems like Groundhog Day to me. The incumbents screw up (real or perceived, but the more interesting question is: how was their performance vs. the hypothetical alternative?), supporters are demoralized and fail to mobilize compared to the fired up opposition, and the other party sweeps into power.

If it's a divided gov't, nothing gets done (and it's so unlikely for one party to control 60 Senate seats). If one party has a monopoly on the Executive and Legislative, then they invariably overstep their "mandate", attempt to reverse the recent progress of their rivals, and make their fair share of screw ups too. Then the whole cycle repeats in 2-4 years, and the American people (and the world) are stuck in this futile cycle. For example, the GOP has tried to repeal Obamacare dozens of times, even when they didn't have the Senate. Now that they do, I am sure they will try again, even though it won't get past the Obama veto. And all the while infrastructure, education, climate change, immigration, etc. initiatives just languish while the problems get worse.

The only exceptions to this pattern seem to be (hopefully) rare, unifying security events like Pearl Harbor or 9/11 (Bush's GOP gained seats in 2002), or an especially bullish sustained bubble economy combined with terrible behavior by the opposition legislators (Clinton's Dems gained seats in 1998).

I'm not sure what can be done about this in the short term. Obviously the usual ideas surface: a more active and educated electorate, voting rules reform, a truly popular vote, longer terms and/or term limits, less unlimited dark money in politics, more time on politics and less on campaigning/fundraising, more competitive districts, and frankly better parties and candidates who can behave like gentlepeople and put country first. Clearly our representative gov't is dysfunctional when a majority of the public want tougher gun control, but our leaders are much less amenable. Same goes for bipartisanship, climate change, pot, gay rights, taxes on the rich, even Obamacare (when you peel away the misinformation).

http://billmoyers.com/2014/08/14/a-study-in-plutocracy-rich-americans-wield-political-influence-the-rest-of-us-dont/

Obamacare fiasco discussion

If you thought Obamacare was bad...

As usual, China is way worse.

http://m.npr.org/programs/all/2/242344329

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Part of another conversation I had about the recent Obamacare troubles... would love to hear your thoughts if you have time.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/obamacare-fix-what-is-it-good-for

Yeah, I have been really saddened and disappointed by how the Obama admin. has rolled out heathcare.gov. When you know the GOP is looking for any little excuse to scuttle the program, you'd think they would be extra careful every step of the way! It seriously looks like it was put together in a week by interns. I know health care is complex as hell, with different laws in different states, so then maybe they should have fought harder for single payer from the start! And as you suggested, if this is a wacky attempt to convince America that single payer is the way to go, it probably won't worry either since trust in gov't is so low. Well, even if Obamacare fails and is repealed by President Christie (LOL), I think it got the health-industrial complex to pay attention and realize that Americans (and even some of our leaders) are tired of being gouged by a broken system that under-delivers on health outcomes for all the money it takes in. Companies/doctors are being more cautious and not just assuming they can raise prices, over-prescribe treatments, cherry pick "profitable" patients, and bilk Medicare and get away with it every time. So I guess that is some progress?

I agree with you about the misrepresentation. That is the problem when passing the bill becomes the goal rather than actually helping citizens. But unfortunately Obama has not been a very transparent president, despite his claims. I think that is a reflection of his and his admin's poor communication skills. While Obama is an inspirational campaign speaker on the abstract level, he is fairly poor in terms of leadership and on the practical policy level, as we saw during the Romney debates. He gets too academic and technical, and doesn't empathize with others. Most of us barely understand our own health care, much less gov't policy, and it can be an emotional issue. Obama relied too much on logic/macroeconomics, and didn't do enough to put people's fears and concerns to rest (especially in the face of the GOP lie machine). Unlike Clinton, Obama never "felt our pain." So there wasn't much trust from the get-go, which was reflected in Obamacare's persistent low approval numbers among the public (despite high public support for the individual parts of the law, like covering kids until 25, no rejections for pre-existing conditions, etc.). So if he communicated better from the start, I think the public could be a lot more forgiving of the glitches now. Customers mostly forgave the iPhone 4 for it's "death grip" dropped calls problem, because they loved the company and were addicted to the product. ;)

Speaking of the implementation, it is seriously his Bay of Pigs. Like Kennedy, I bet Obama was too trusting of his people that they would handle it properly, and wasn't skeptical enough. He did go on the national PR tour to drum up support and interest, but he didn't really manage expectations and prepare the country for what could go wrong. In 2013, there is just no excuse for a website that works so poorly. Testing and pilot sessions with real customers were severely lacking. I haven't had time to follow the media discussion, so I am not sure if the pundits and Sebelius already covered these points. But they had ample time to prepare for the website launch, so I don't know why their product is so crappy now.

In general, I think a website is supposed to launch small at first to mitigate risk (like 5% of expected peak traffic) and gradually ramp up as long as things are working. I am not sure, but did healthcare.gov suddenly turn on for the whole country all at once? That is a bad strategy. Maybe try it out with ISPs from a couple small states first, check the performance, collect feedback, and make necessary fixes before expanding the reach. It would have let them catch bugs (or maybe delay the 100% launch) before it became a national embarrassment with thousands of frustrated users. I heard an alternate rollout plan was first to make sure the site was stable and let users browse plans only (to make sure the info they got was accurate too!), then when registration/enrollment was ready and tested, they would add that functionality later. But Obama's people worried that users would browse plans, not like any, and never come back (if you are so worried about that, then maybe your product is not so appealing and you should fix that first!), so they wanted to require registration prior to browsing. There was also the political pressure to get as many people enrolled as possible during the initial launch period, so they required visitors to register up front. But that is bad for several reasons: web users often mess up the registration process, and if you mandate it at launch, you introduce a bottleneck and they will flood your customer support line all at once. Also registration is annoying, so that will cause many users to just drop off too (if they can even get the page to load). Plus let's remember that many uninsured Americans or those who buy individual plans could be lower income and less tech savvy, even if they have a helper to assist.

On the issue of the "deception" over keeping your old plan and old doctor, I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, if Obama knows that a major argument against Obamacare is a supposed loss of freedom, then "forcing" people to change plans/doctors (even to ostensibly better ones) is risky and plays into the GOP hand. But if they need to eliminate ineligible plans to make the whole system work, then I understand, but that is a major program risk that should have been addressed years ago. The doctor-patient relationship is sensitive and almost sacred, so if Obamacare really does prevent some people from keeping their old doctors (even if they are crappy or charge too much), then that is unacceptable to me. I think you can convince people to let the gov't upgrade their coverage (but again, Obama's people did a terrible communication job), but change is hard for some folks and you can't just drop their coverage suddenly and tell them to choose a new plan on a buggy website. All this mess plays into the conservative narrative that gov't is totally meddling in our lives and inept in providing services (which is unfortunately true at times). The 'fix' from the first link above is too little, too late. Maybe a better plan would be what companies do for new hires. They default you into a basic health plan, and you have the option to pick a different one within 60 days. At least then everyone is sure they are covered from the start, and there is no rush/panic/anger. Maybe that is impossible nationally, since health plans and laws are different in each state (another issue we probably need to address)?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/11/13/what-the-obamacare-enrollment-numbers-really-tell-us/?wprss=rss_homepage&clsrd

Health care Court decision

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/06/18/155269171/supreme-court-upholds-care-health-law-rules-mandate-is-a-tax
http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201206280900

I think the health care economics effects of this legislation are still too opaque to comment on (plus I am fairly ignorant), but in terms of effects on the campaign, it should get interesting. Obviously it's a win for the Dems, but it may become a rallying cry for the GOP. Though if you look at things logically, I don't think this legislation should be the prominent conservative issue that it is (and why is it so unpopular and getting more so? misinformation?). I guess the right doesn't really have much else to work with besides the economy, though. The candidate the GOP chose is obviously not in a great strategic position to advocate Obamacare repeal. But really, I don't think true conservatives should so dislike this health care reform. It's far from perfect (and we all had plenty of debates together 2 years ago), but look at the underlying principles:

- Conservatives don't like "free riders" right? Insurance only works by spreading out risk, especially if they are now not legally able to price discriminate (or reject) based on customer traits (which most of us feel is ethical - shouldn't pregnant women be the first to be covered and not blacklisted?). It won't work if the healthy and young skip out on health insurance premiums, leaving only the older and sicker (and gov't) to pay - another manifestation of the generational conflict? And then when the uninsured need care, they often burden the system by using emergency services and may not pay full cost. The sick don't get off Scot free either, since they will still pay more into the system in the form of copays.

- Conservatives feel that the Constitution is their 2nd Bible, right? The conservative-leaning High Court ruled that most of the Affordable Care Act is constitutional, with the Chief Justice siding with liberals and writing the majority opinion (so it's not like the liberal justices hijacked the ruling - they can't anyway). They keep accusing the Dems of trampling on the Constitution, but what about now? And no one questions Roberts' conservative chops. He said that the Court's job is to decide whether Congress acted within its powers, not judge the merits of what the bill would do. So if the GOP don't like it, write a better reform. But now if they want to repeal Obamacare 100%, they're going to piss off people who think it's not right that the current insurance market excludes pregnant women and unemployed adult students.

- This Act doesn't force anyone or "take away" any freedoms (the "mandate" was kind of a misnomer). Americans still have a choice whether to buy coverage or not. They just have to fork over a small (~$300/year) fine/tax to pay for the social cost of their decision. Those funds will be used to make health care more affordable to the needy, which benefits everyone. The young and healthy may take that choice anyway, since the cheapest individual health plans they could get would run $1-2K/year, until the health exchanges maybe become efficient some day. Employer health care will be preserved, and customers may even get rebates. This is no different than other laws: I can have a non-neutered dog if I want, but I just have to pay a higher registration fee due to the risk I am imposing on my community.

But the problem is the anti-Obama crowd doesn't care about these facts. Everything he does is automatically evil and un-American, so he has to be stopped. They want to go back to 2008 (minus the recession I hope). So how to convince them that this really won't be as bad as they fear (and were taught to fear by the right wing media)? But by all means, if they have better ideas on how to reduce our health care expenditures (which is the highest % of GDP in the world, and in terms of raw dollars, and growing much faster than inflation) and make it more available, we're all ears.

PS - I think it's funny that Romney and Obama probably both had 2 versions of speeches (or more) prepared for today

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http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57464549/roberts-switched-views-to-uphold-health-care-law/?tag=contentMain;contentBody
http://news.yahoo.com/roberts-switch-health-care-signals-leaky-supreme-court-195755275.html

There's quite a bit of chatter on the possibly clerk-leaked revelation that Roberts changed his mind mid-course on the health care reform decision. If true, this would be an unprecedented breach of confidentiality and a major betrayal in Court history (especially considering that the leak came just 4 days after the Court revealed its decision). I guess some conservative circles (and maybe even Roberts' right-leaning peers) viewed his act as betrayal as well, but does that justify this significant breach of decorum? Like the Wikileaks fiasco with the State Dept, I think this leak will only serve to erode trust and collaboration on the Court, and ultimately hurt our ability to govern. I think people are allowed to change their mind sometime, especially when confronted with new evidence and arguments. People don't have to vote along party lines all the time, otherwise why not just have the parties rule the nation? And even within each party, there is quite a diversity of opinions (maybe begging the question: why not have more parties like the rest of the developed world?).

The right chastised Obama for supposedly deliberately leaking details of his anti-terrorism decisions to shore up his defense chops, but where is the outrage over this SCOTUS leak? But getting back to the Roberts court, this leak is another public example of the right's disrespect and intolerance (Barton yelling "You lie!", ludicrous birther/Muslim accusations, etc.). I know the right feels that "gov. is the problem", but I thought they also believed in the sanctity of the Constitution, respect for American traditions, US exceptionalism, etc.? Begging your pardon, but they're acting more like trailer trash Republicans than Lincoln or TR Republicans. Though I wonder where Roberts goes from here. Will his future decisions be more conservative in order to get out of Scalia's doghouse? Or will he be so offended by this act that it will push him more centrist or liberal? I am not sure what cases await them in the next Court session, but it should be interesting. Though I think the SCOTUS is one of those institutions that does a good job if it seems "boring" and stays out of the headlines. It would be a real tragedy if this controversy becomes new precedent, and the already over-politicized Court becomes more so in the future.