Obamacare, Failing Ahead of Schedule

THIS is not the column about the Obamacare rollout I expected to write

If you had told me, months ago, that weeks after the health care law’s coverage expansion went into effect I would be writing about the problems its launch had exposed, I would have assumed I’d be writing about rate shock, rising premiums and the disappearance of many cheap insurance plans — basically, all the problems conservatives have worried will make Obamacare a ruinously expensive failure if they play out as we fear they might.

I may be writing about those issues soon enough. But for now there is a more pressing subject: The online federal health care exchange, the heart of the Obamacare project, is such a rolling catastrophe that it may end up creating a major policy fiasco immediately rather than eventually.

This fiasco has always been a possibility, for reasons inherent in the architecture of the law. When The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn, the most rigorous defender of the entire reform project, wrote up his “five Obamacare anxieties” in May, the first one was structural: The system’s sustainability depends on getting enough healthy people to sign up, he pointed out, and if they don’t then insurers “will have to raise everyone’s premiums,” which “could create what actuaries call a ‘death spiral’: Rising premiums prompt people to drop out, causing premiums to increase even more.”

Cohn thought such a death spiral was unlikely, and frankly so did I. Between the stick of the mandate, the carrot of subsidies and the planned P.R. blitz, it seemed as if enough Americans would sign up to at least postpone the cost problem and get the system off the ground.

Via: NYT

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De Blasio Will Continue Bloomberg’s Soda Cup Fight

After his mayoral campaign sent vague signals yesterday about whether he would maintain Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s legal effort to restrict soda cup sizes at restaurants, Bill de Blasio vowed to do precisely that this afternoon.

“I think the mayor is right and I would continue the legal process. We have to, of course, look at the specifics with our own lawyers to handle the mechanics, but there’s no question I want to see this rule go through,” the front-running candidate told reporters at a rally with Chinese-American supporters.

Yesterday, Mr. de Blasio’s spokesman, Dan Levitan, told The New York Times the candidate would “review the status of the city’s litigation” if elected.

Mr. Bloomberg’s proposed ban on sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces was struck down by a lower court earlier this year, following an intense lobbying effort from the soda industry, small business owners and some elected officials. The Bloomberg administration, however, appealed the decision to the state’s highest court, which agreed to hear the appeal yesterday.

Mr. de Blasio concurred with the mayor that the ban would help combat childhood obesity in particular.

“Right now it’s hard to be a parent in New York City. I have two teenagers, I’m surviving the experience, and Chirlane and I spent a lot of time working to make sure Chiara and Dante are healthy. That means encouraging nutrition, that means encouraging exercise. But, you know, it takes a lot of energy to keep on top kids and make sure they do the right thing,” Mr. de Blasio said. “Unfortunately, as parents, it feels like every day we’re fighting an enemy and that is the growing availability of bigger and bigger sugary drinks.”

Via: Politicker

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[VIDEO] Noonan and Senor School Krugman on the ObamaCare Train Wreck

Despite all the trouble ObamaCare has been having since health insurance exchanges opened about two weeks ago, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on ABC’s This Week Sunday predictably had nothing but praise for the law.

Fortunately the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan and former Mitt Romney advisor Dan Senor were present to set the record straight (video follows with transcript and commentary):

DAN SENOR: There's no doubt that this is damaging to the Republican brand. That said, a year from now, this will have been long resolved and I don't think voters will be talking about this shutdown and the dysfunction. What people will be talking about is the failed implementation of ObamaCare.

There are very few House seats that are really in play. There’s like a tiny percentage of Republican House members that are in districts that President Obama won. There are six Senate seats, Democratic Senate seats that need to be defended that Mitt Romney won by more than ten percent. So, the field both in the House and the Senate is much more favorable to Republicans.

I think this is a bad moment for Republicans. I think it will pass. I think the field, the history of the Party out of the White House winning midterms combined with the failed implementation of ObamaCare is going to be advantageous.

PAUL KRUGMAN, NEW YORK TIMES: I want to say something about that. The ObamaCare thing will also be long passed. They messed up the software for the federal version of it. But we have the exchanges working just fine in many states which means it’s fixable and it will be fixed. California has a perfectly well-functioning exchange which it’s running itself. If you can do it for 30 million people, you can do it for 300 million. So, that will be, ObamaCare will be working fine by next November.

Via: Newsbusters

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[VIDEO] Dan Senor: In 2014 People Will Be Talking About Obamacare, Not Government Shutdown

BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff
October 13, 2013 12:06 pm

On ABC This Week Dan Senor pointed out that a year from now during the midterm election, people will not be talking about the government shutdown. Instead they will be talking about the failed implementation of Obamacare.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman defended the rollout, suggesting the disastrous introduction of the law thus far could be fixed easily and calling it “a software glitch.”

Señor shot him down, calling it a “technology disaster.”

Via: WFB

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STUDY: OBAMA ADMIN MOST SECRETIVE SINCE NIXON

A new report issued by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) asserts that the Obama White House is the most insular in decades, and the worst since the Nixon Administration for its secrecy and lack of transparency. The report was based on interviews with upper echelon Washington reporters and news organization chiefs.

Even New York Times Washington correspondent David Sanger admitted, “This is the most closed, control freak administration I’ve ever covered.”

The study examined the Obama Administration’s fight with Edward Snowden, its “Insider Threat Program” that encourages government employees to spy on other’s behavior, and the lack of transparency shown by the administration.

Other factors leading to the journalists’ conclusions included the Justice Department's subpoenas of reporters’ phone logs and emails; the invasion of Associated Press phone records; and the White House’s charge that a Fox News reporter was an “aider, abettor and/or conspirator” of an indicted leaker who had been charged.

Many of the top journalists claimed that “officials are reluctant to discuss even unclassified information with them because they fear that leak investigations and government surveillance make it more difficult for reporters to protect them as sources.” R. Jeffrey Smith explained, “I worry now about calling somebody because the contact can be found out through a check of phone records or emails. It leaves a digital trail that makes it easier for the government to monitor those contacts.”

Other quotes from reporters included one saying that the Obama administration’s attitude toward the press was a “real problem,” and another stating that the Obama White House smacks of “unprecedented secrecy and unprecedented attacks on the press.”

Of course, the White House crew went into denial mode in the report; Press Secretary Jay Carney said that “the idea that people are shutting up and not leaking to reporters is belied by the facts.” National security adviser Ben Rhodes echoed, “We make an effort to communicate about national security issues in on-the-record and background briefings by sanctioned sources. And we still see investigative reporting from non-sanctioned sources with lots of unclassified information and some sensitive information.”

Via: Breitbart

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The ObamaCare Disaster Finally Hits Front Page of New York Times

Lower Health Insurance Premiums to Come at Cost of Fewer Choices

WASHINGTON — Federal officials often say that health insurance will cost consumers less than expected under President Obama’s health care law. But they rarely mention one big reason: many insurers are significantly limiting the choices of doctors and hospitals available to consumers.

From California to Illinois to New Hampshire, and in many states in between, insurers are driving down premiums by restricting the number of providers who will treat patients in their new health plans.

When insurance marketplaces open on Oct. 1, most of those shopping for coverage will be low- and moderate-income people for whom price is paramount. To hold down costs, insurers say, they have created smaller networks of doctors and hospitals than are typically found in commercial insurance. And those health care providers will, in many cases, be paid less than what they have been receiving from commercial insurers.

Some consumer advocates and health care providers are increasingly concerned. Decades of experience with Medicaid, the program for low-income people, show that having an insurance card does not guarantee access to specialists or other providers.

Consumers should be prepared for “much tighter, narrower networks” of doctors and hospitals, said Adam M. Linker, a health policy analyst at the North Carolina Justice Center, a statewide advocacy group.

“That can be positive for consumers if it holds down premiums and drives people to higher-quality providers,” Mr. Linker said. “But there is also a risk because, under some health plans, consumers can end up with astronomical costs if they go to providers outside the network.”

Via: New York Times

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[VIDEO] WashTimes Writer Miller Notes Media 'Obsessed' with Linking AR-15 to Navy Yard Murders

At the New York Times on Tuesday, Michael S. Schmidt claimed that "The suspect in the killing of 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday test-fired an AR-15 assault rifle at a Virginia gun store last week but was stopped from buying one because state law there prohibits the sale of such weapons to out-of-state buyers, according to two senior law enforcement officials."

The portion of that statement about being "stopped from buying" an AR-15 isn't true, writes Emily Miller at the Washington Times, not only because "state law" wouldn't have prevented such an attempt, but also because Aaron Alexis didn't even try to buy one. Miller asserts that the New York Times "should issue a correction immediately." She also decries the establishment media's "obsession" with tying the AR-15 to the Navy Yard shooting (bolds are mine throughout this post):

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New York Times gets it wrong, media obsessed with linking AR-15 with Navy Yard shooter

The liberal media is so obsessed with linking the Navy Yard shooter with the AR-15 rifle that it is making up false tales of Aaron Alexis trying to obtain one.

The New York Times attempts to give the impression that a so-called assault-weapon law stopped Alexis from buying a rifle in Virginia, but that is not true.

... Apparently neither the reporter nor his editors took the time to fact check their vague “law enforcement officials” sources.

“Virginia law does not prohibit the sale of assault rifles to out-of-state citizens who have proper identification,” Dan Peterson, a Virginia firearms attorney, told me Tuesday night. The required identification is proof of residency in another state and of U.S. citizenship, which can be items like a passport, birth certificate or voter identification card.

... John Frazer, also a firearms attorney in the Commonwealth, told me that, “State law in Virginia — like most states — allows purchase of rifles or shotguns by residents of other states. Virginia simply requires some additional forms of identification.”

Federal law is clear on this residency issue. A quick glance at the ATF website would have informed the New York Times journalists that a person may buy a rifle or shotgun, in person, at a federal firearms licensee’s premises in any state, provided the sale complies with state laws, which it would in this case.

... While it is true that Alexis rented and shot an AR-type rifle at Sharpshooters Small Arms Range in Lorton, sources close to the investigation tell me that he did not attempt to buy the rifle.

... Despite all the stories over the last 48 hours about the AR-15, it was never used by anyone but law enforcement at the shooting on Monday. The New York Times should issue a correction immediately.

Via: Newsbusters

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PUTIN: A Plea For Caution From Russia: "Recent Events...Have Prompted Me To Speak Directly To The American People and...leaders"

By: Vladimir V. Putin (Op-Ed; New York Times)

Recent events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies.
Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international organization — the United Nations — was then established to prevent such devastation from ever happening again.

The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.

No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.

The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders. A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance.

Via: Fox News

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How The New York Times Remembers 9/11 Aftermath: Flag-waving a 'Cousin to Intolerance'

Since it’s the twelfth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, here’s a slightly dated outrage. On September 4, TV critic Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times tackled a CNN documentary called “The Flag,” which focused on an American flag that three firefighters raised at Ground Zero late on the afternoon of the attacks. A photo taken for the New Jersey newspaper The [Bergen] Record “became a heartening, patriotic symbol for many on an otherwise awful day, and so did the flag itself.”

But the flag disappeared, and that story spurred the CNN program. Genzlinger ruined the review by dragging out the old leftist saw that flag-waving and “intolerance” are closely related:

The photographer rebelled at efforts to make him a celebrity, and so did the three firefighters. A plan to turn the photograph into a sculpture became a source of controversy. Nationwide, flag-waving was sometimes a cousin to intolerance.

This is the same critic who complained about the PBS series on the Constitution that put liberal NPR game-show host Peter Sagal on a motorcycle ride across America – that was an ecological offense: “

And when did Mr. Sagal’s vehicle of choice, a motorcycle, morph into a symbol of freedom, when anyone who has ever been awakened by one late at night wishes the Bill of Rights had something in it about freedom from noise pollution?

Anyway, what’s irksome about the format is that it has become so common that it just feels like an excuse for the host to do some traveling in a way that unnecessarily burns fossil fuel. If you’re making a travel show, sure, get in or on some eye-catching vehicle and drive across America. If you’re making a show about current constitutional debates, just read a newspaper. If you need to go someplace where such a debate has occurred, take public transportation.

You might call that transporation intolerance.

Via: Newsbusters

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Making Sense of Syria

This is what I think we’re seeing:

The president has backed away from a military strike in Syria. But he can’t acknowledge this or act as if it is true. He is acting and talking as if he’s coolly, analytically, even warily contemplating the Russian proposal and the Syrian response. The proposal, he must know, is absurd. Bashar Assad isn’t going to give up all his hidden weapons in wartime, in the middle of a conflict so bitter and severe that his forces this morning reportedly bombed parts of Damascus, the city in which he lives. In such conditions his weapons could not be fully accounted for, packed up, transported or relinquished, even if he wanted to. But it will take time—weeks, months—for the absurdity to become obvious. And it is time the president wants. Because with time, with a series of statements, negotiations, ultimatums, promises and proposals, the Syria crisis can pass. It can dissipate into the air, like gas.

The president will keep the possibility of force on the table, but really he’s lunging for a lifeline he was lucky to be thrown.

Why is he backing off? Because he knows he doesn’t have the American people and isn’t going to get them. The polls, embarrassingly, show the more people hear the less they support it. The president’s problem with his own base was probably startling to him, and sobering. He knows he was going to lose Congress, not only the House but very possibly—likely, I’d say—the Senate. The momentum was all against him. And he never solved—it was not solvable—his own Goldilocks problem: A strike too small is an embarrassment, a strike too big could topple the Assad regime and leave Obama responsible for a complete and cutthroat civil war involving terrorists, foreign operatives, nihilists, jihadists, underemployed young men, and some really nice, smart people. Obama didn’t want to own that, or the fires that could engulf the region once Syria went up.

His plan was never good. The choices were never good. In any case he was going to lose either in terms of domestic prestige, the foreign result or both. Likely both.

Via: NYT

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NY Times Blames Bill Clinton For Obama’s Drop In The Polls…

When the histories of the 2012 campaign are written, much will be made of Bill Clinton’s re-emergence. His convention speech may well have marked the finest moment of President Obama’s re-election campaign, and his ads on the president’s behalf were memorable.

POLITICAL TIMES

Matt Bai’s analysis and commentary.

But there is one crucial way in which the 42nd president may not have served the 44th quite as well. In these final weeks before the election, Mr. Clinton’s expert advice about how to beat Mitt Romney is starting to look suspect.

You may recall that last spring, just after Mr. Romney locked up the Republican nomination, Mr. Obama’s team abruptly switched its strategy for how to define him. Up to then, the White House had been portraying Mr. Romney much as George W. Bush had gone after John Kerry in 2004 – as inauthentic and inconstant, a soulless climber who would say anything to get the job.

But it was Mr. Clinton who forcefully argued to Mr. Obama’s aides that the campaign had it wrong. The best way to go after Mr. Romney, the former president said, was to publicly grant that he was the “severe conservative” he claimed to be, and then hang that unpopular ideology around his neck.

Via: NYT

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MSM Tipping Point On Obama in the Middle East?

The repercussions from 9/11/12—the day the roof fell in on the Obama administration’s Middle East policy—continue to rumble across the diplomatic and political landscapes. Before that day, much of the country’s political and media establishment had been studiously ignoring signs of trouble in the Middle East or, when problems were too serious to ignore, studiously refraining from drawing conclusions about the overall state of US policy in the region.

The anti-American riots that have been rocking the Muslim world since 9/11 have shaken the establishment out of its complacency. Increasingly, even those who sympathize with the basic elements of the administration’s Middle East policy are connecting the dots. What they are seeing isn’t pretty. It’s not just that the US remains widely disliked and distrusted in the region. It’s not just that the radicals and the jihadis have demonstrated more political sophistication and a greater ability to organize and strike than expected and that the struggle against radical terror looks longer lasting and more dangerous than thought; it’s that the strategic underpinnings of the administration’s Middle East policy seem to be falling apart. A series of crises is sweeping through the region, and the US does not—at least not yet—seem to have a clue what to do.

The New York Times and the Washington Post are both thoroughly alarmed by the state of the region after 9/11/12 and the reporters if not the editorial pages have moved on from the “Blame Bush” approach. The latest article by Helene Cooper and Robert Worth in the Times cites some pretty biting criticism about the President’s approach to the Arab Spring from (unnamed) top aides and associates. It even quotes an Arab diplomat who sounds nostalgic for the good old days of W to illustrate a criticism of the President made by an (unnamed) State Department official who said, speaking of the President:

Via: The American Interest

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Too Funny: Obama Spokeswoman Says Campaign Is Intentionally Limiting Crowd Sizes At Obama And Biden Events…

COLORADO SPRINGS — About 4,200 people of all ages and colors spread across a green at Colorado College on Thursday in this conservative city for a rally with President Obama. Hours earlier, 3,500 supporters did the same in smaller Pueblo, Colo.

Together with two events on Wednesday in Denver and Grand Junction, Colo., an estimated 14,100 people in this battleground state turned out over the past two days to cheer Mr. Obama.

Good crowds, especially compared with the hundreds that typically turn out to see Mitt Romney. But four years ago Mr. Obama often was drawing five-digit throngs, filling arenas’ nosebleed seats and overflow rooms and regularly requiring shutdown orders from the local fire marshals.

Which raises a couple of questions: Where are the crowds now? And what does it mean for the results in November?

“We have plenty of time for big rallies,” a campaign spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said between the rallies on Thursday. “Our focus right now is on exciting our supporters and winning over undecided voters and the smaller and medium-size events are the best venue to accomplish that because the president can closely engage with the crowd.”

Big rallies are expensive, especially given the logistical and security challenges for a president as opposed to a mere United States senator. And Obama campaign operatives, both at the Chicago headquarters and in swing states where Mr. Obama recently has stumped, say the campaign intentionally limits crowds by restricting tickets. The reason is to allow the president to better connect with supporters, aides say.

Pettie Quintana, an employee at the Holiday Inn Express in Pueblo, said on Thursday that she had gone earlier in the week to the state fairgrounds to get a ticket, but the ticket office was closed, its allotment gone.

Via: NYT

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