Pipe dream? Obamacare

[swchandler]

Well, NW30, I have to give you credit for finding a more credible source that appears to support your point of view. It would have a much better strategy for you to have posted it first instead of the Fox News article.

That said, I think that Klein was unfairly taking a lighter weight view of the fact that the Republican governors and the GOP have been fighting tooth and nail to defeat both President Obama and the ACA through the election and through the Supreme Court. Ironically, as we have learned right up to the election, the Republicans thought they had it all in the bag only to lose everything. Still though, the real risk was rooted in how the Supreme Court would rule. Nobody, and that includes the Obama Administration, was going to seriously invest in what was needed until that was determined. Klein's admonition that Obama should have been running an impeccable operation is a bit out of tune in my view. However, he is right about the need to ensure that federal programs are run efficiently, and I would add, effectively too.

Lastly, I'm with coboardhead concerning the ACA. The Republicans have accomplished nothing. To show that they have their act together, they need to be smart enough to change the ACA to a more perfect program, and in addition, work to cut health care costs. You know, I don't think the Republicans have the stuff to pull it off. It will be like their bold promises for more jobs if they were elected to Congress in 2010. They won the majority in the House of Representatives, but have they done? Absolutely nothing.

[isobars]

[coboardhead]

Interesting article NW. I have read Klein before, and he makes good points. There is no question that they are behind on implementation efforts and are playing catchup.

I will not go into details on problems that small practices are having (not going there again) meeting the hastily assembled new Medicare regulations, coding and record keeping. Suffice to say...organization is lacking! I have long had issues with an electronic medical record system program that relies on a number of vendors integrating their programs. As I have indicated many times, the federal government should have supplied this years ago in house.

I also agree with SWC, this administration has had to spend way to much time defending the law and not enough time working on it. This law requires (and it is a good thing) that the states come to the table. Many have been dragging their feet. The Feds can only force the states to do so much (another good thing).

[mrgybe]

[mac]

Irony and forgetfulness provide low brow amusement for us partisan lefties. We now have mrgybe and NW30 bemoaning the lack of progress on insurance exchanges. If I remember, and I'm old enough to forget a lot, mrgybe repeated one of the few substantive criticisms of ACA, and suggested robust insurance exchanges as a market-based alternative. To be sure, the concept is thoroughly red, proposed at one stage if not initially by the Heritage Foundation. I am just shocked that assembling an implementation plan for the ACA is more complicated than anyone ever realized--that has never before happened in any new ideas. I am equally shocked that defending the program politically and legally has diverted some of the Obama administration's attention. But I am mostly amused by how the right is now blaming Obama for the difficulty he has had implementing their idea. I offer this comment:

[coboardhead]

Mrgybe. I hope you will be wrong. We really have to get the cost shifting that occurs in medical care under control, make preventative care a priority and begin to contain costs. We have not maintained our health care system and it is time for us to do that work. It will cost us now to save later on.

Or, we will be forced into a single payer system. We cannot shoulder future generations with estimated health care costs that could eat up a third of our GDP.

[mrgybe]

[mrgybe]

[isobars]

[swchandler]

mrgybe, seemingly you feel it's wrong for the government to help poorer Americans by providing them with ACA coverage at reduced or no cost. What would you propose instead? It's not like poorer Americans will not require medical care, so the unavoidable issue is who is going pay for it? I think that most sensible folks understand that the system that we have been living with before passage of the ACA is not a viable solution.