Government loves deadlines. Creating them must give someone a sense of efficiency — at least until they’re ignored. Spending cuts finally kicked in on March 1. Taxes are due April 15. Under the Affordable Care Act, as Obamacare is officially known, deadlines for creating health insurance exchanges crash like waves on a beach. States had until Dec. 15 to announce their own exchange; regulators were supposed to certify those plans by Jan. 1. When just 17 states opted to run their own pools, the government set a new Feb. 15 deadline to join a federal “partnership” overseeing the program.
Like the word “deadline,” “partnership” means different things to different people. In nature, bald eagles mate for life, often building and expanding the same nest for decades. The partnership between the elephant and dung beetle is much less majestic. And in any partnership between states and the federal government, we know who plays the elephant — and who’s left to pick through what it leaves behind.
Comments
Very good column, John. There seems to be an incremental way in which this law is encroaching on our lives. Each day seems to bring a new deadline, and new rule, a new tax, and utter uncertainty. It is sad that this was how the plan was designed. Each new step brings out new parties seeking an exception, and those politically connected to the president are getting them. But the big question is this: Have the costs of medical care gone down, as a result of all this? We all know the answer.
Costs would go down under the public option. A public option that was blocked by Republicans.
Giermund: Your theory about the public option lowering costs is interesting. Maybe you believe that if the government can run a plan that no one can compete with, it will force private insurers to lower prices, to compete. Sounds good on paper. But the risk to this is that it will simply drive insurance carriers out of the marketplace, and the "public option" will become a single payer system. The point is, it is an enormous leap to state that this outcome is pre ordained. It is not. If the government can say we will cover all your medical care, and your premium will be $100 per month, the private insurance industry is more likely to die than try and compete with a guaranteed money loser.
Everyone's an expert, except Republicans, who had no clue how to halt the ten percent yearly increase in insurance costs. Maybe many had enough money not to care.
What nonsense.
Obama said that rates would have gone down by now, and they've gone up.
The obvious answer is Medicare for all.
Yeah, probably the best thing. De-couple your job from your healthcare, federal government involved in payment/funding but private industry in healthcare.
ACA is coming! ACA is coming!. John tells me all about it. There's a "free enterprise" guy shilling a book on TV about it. One of my neighbors came to me because she knows I'm knowledgeable on the subject, because some guy was trying to sell her another medical insurance on top of her Medicare and supplemental because the ACA would gut her Medicare. Shame some folks have no shame. The women is 86 and they'll scare the living daylights out of her for a buck. I know she doesn't have to sign. Leave it to the libertarians to let someone steal her money.
How about this John. How about everyone co-operates, tries to make it work. It's not my favorite program, but once in awhile we could try to make something work and if it doesn't or if it needs tweaking, people of good faith try to make it work.
Nah, let's play politics. Let's call it "socialism". Let's blow it up. Who cares about the people? Who cares if it works or not? The point isn't to do the right thing is it? The point is to win. Some folks write about the Dems. propensity to build govt. and R"s go on about making it smaller. Yet it seems the desire to rule is more important that the desire to govern and make things work. Oh well, let the "socialist" nonsense begin again.
Hey, whenever John and his allies want to go to a sensible single payer system the such that they have in most first world countries we can be rid of Obamacare.
You are forgetting that our system of government is different than all those other countries you love to compare us to. In theory, we have limits on what the federal goverment can do, but I understand liberals do not like to acknowledge those limits.
Reading this you'd think that all these deadlines were new and no one had tome to prepare or do the background work necessary.
But the law is 3 years old now - surely that's enough time to prepare, unless you belong to a party that is so sure that they're going to win the big election and make all this go away. Why waste the time worrying about how to take care of your state's uninsured when you just know that Romney and a Republican-led Congress will make it all go away.
OOPS!
The big takeaway from this is that people like Sununu would rather do nothing than something, at the expense of the citizens who clearly voted otherwise.
The Sununu brand has damaged beyond repair by John H Sununu. Why evn read his drivel?
Having him as a columnist certainly hurts the Globe's reputation (and journalistic standards).
I prefer him to Jeff Jacoby though. John doesn't appear to phone it in as often as Jeff does.
John, please call ObamaCare what it really is, RomneyCare. Many Republicans and Conservatives ( it seems we have to delineate those two groups for now ) praised it to the hilt when then Governor Mitt Romney and the Massachusetts Legislature with great backing and input from the late Senator Ted Kennedy enacted it into law. a major example from none other than Fox News Website is the following: WASHINGTON – Newt Gingrich voiced enthusiasm for Mitt Romney's Massachusetts health care law when it was passed five years ago, the same plan he has been denouncing over the past few months as he campaigned for the Republican presidential nomination. "The health bill that Governor Romney signed into law this month has tremendous potential to effect major change in the American health system," said an April 2006 newsletter published by Gingrich's former consulting company, the Center for Health Transformation.
The two-page "Newt Notes" analysis, found online by The Wall Street Journal even though it no longer appears on the center's website, continued, "We agree entirely with Governor Romney and Massachusetts legislators that our goal should be 100 percent insurance coverage for all Americans."
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12/27/gingrich-supported-romney-health-care-plan-in-2006-newsletter/#ixzz2Nu3pzN6a
If it really was Romneycare then Massachusetts businesses would not be actively seeking a waiver saying that it is destroying the current system.
I like Dr. Carson's idea
I bet the person who "disliked" my pst does not even know what his proposal is
Perhaps, but they know you.
Employers are bracing for a little-noticed fee in the federal health-care law that will charge them $63 for each person they insure next year, one of the clearest cost increases companies face when the law takes full effect.
Companies and other plan providers will together pay $25 billion over three years to create a fund for insurance companies to offset the cost of covering people with high medical bills.
The fees will hit most large U.S. employers, and several have been lobbying to change the program, contending the levy is unfair because it subsidizes individually purchased plans that won't cover
"begolfing" Why is it so hard to give all the facts. "There will be a annual fee of $63 dollars paid by small business employers purchasing insurance. The ObamaCare small business fee is decreased by a small amount each year until 2017 when pre-existing conditions are phased out. These costs may get passed onto employees." That is directly from the law library. It further states, " Due to tax credits small businesses will still see a net savings, while larger firms will have more up-front costs which may get passed onto employees." Further, "Small Businesses can apply for tax breaks of up to 35% (25% for non-profits) of the cost of their employees premiums if they have fewer than 25 full-time employees." So factually speaking it could cost business nothing but could force employees to actually pay for the health insurance they recieive. You know a little personal responsibility. Now if your employer wants to give you a little boost all the more power to you.
I'm going to assume that you snipped that out of a Washington Times article. You would get a different take on a Huffington Post article. Regardless your post certain does not speak to what actually occurs.
I listened to Carson speak the other day. He is advocating a combination of health care savings accounts - set up at birth - and catastrophic insurance, but cites nothing about how or why that would work better.
I'm the second 'dislike' on your comment.