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<DIV class=subheadlinestyle><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 16pt" size=4>The Poison of
Party Loyalty</FONT></DIV>
<H1 class=article-title>The Obamacare Disaster</H1><BR><BR><A href=""
target=_blank><FONT
size=3><STRONG>http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/11/18/the-obamacare-disaster/</STRONG></FONT></A><BR><BR><BR>
<DIV class=mainauthorstyle><FONT size=3><STRONG>by NORMAN
SOLOMON</STRONG></FONT></DIV>
<DIV class=main-text><FONT size=3><STRONG>Four years ago, countless Democratic
leaders and allies pushed for passage of Barack Obama’s complex healthcare act
while arguing that his entire presidency was at stake. The party hierarchy
whipped the Congressional Progressive Caucus into line, while MoveOn and other
loyal groups stayed in step along with many liberal pundits.<BR>Lauding the
president’s healthcare plan for its structure of “regulation, mandates,
subsidies and competition,” <I>New York Times</I> columnist Paul
Krugman </STRONG></FONT><A href="" target=_blank><FONT
size=3><STRONG>wrote</STRONG></FONT></A><FONT size=3><STRONG> in July 2009
that the administration’s fate hung in the balance: “Knock away any of the four
main pillars of reform, and the whole thing will collapse — and probably take
the Obama presidency down with it.” Such warnings were habitual until Obamacare
became law eight months later.<BR>Meanwhile, some progressives were pointing out
that — contrary to the right-wing fantasy of a “government takeover of
healthcare” — Obama’s Affordable Care Act actually further enthroned for-profit
insurance firms atop the system. As I </STRONG></FONT><A href=""
target=_blank><FONT size=3><STRONG>wrote</STRONG></FONT></A><FONT
size=3><STRONG> at the time, “The continued dominance of the insurance
industry is the key subtext of the healthcare battle that has been raging in
Washington. But that dominance is routinely left out of the news media’s
laser-beam concentration on whether a monumental healthcare law will emerge to
save Obama’s presidency.”<BR>Today, in terms of healthcare policy, the merits
and downsides of Obamacare deserve </STRONG></FONT><A href=""
target=_blank><FONT size=3><STRONG>progressive debate</STRONG></FONT></A><FONT
size=3><STRONG>. But at this point there’s no doubt it’s a disaster in political
terms — igniting the Mad Hatter Tea Party’s phony populism, heightening
prospects for major right-wing electoral gains next year and propagating the
rancid notion that the government should stay out of healthcare.<BR>That ominous
takeaway notion was flagged days ago on the PBS NewsHour by commentator Mark
Shields, who worried </STRONG></FONT><A href="" target=_blank><FONT
size=3><STRONG>aloud</STRONG></FONT></A><FONT size=3><STRONG> that “this is
beyond the Obama administration. If this goes down, if … the Affordable Care Act
is deemed a failure, this is the end — I really mean it — of liberal government,
in the sense of any sense that government as an instrument of social justice, an
engine of economic progress… Time and again, social programs have made the
difference in this country. The public confidence in that will be so depleted,
so diminished, that I really think the change — the equation of American
politics changes.”<BR>At this pivotal, historic, teachable moment, progressives
should not leave the messaging battle about the ACA to right wingers and Obama
loyalists. While critiquing the law for its entanglement with the
profit-voracious insurance industry, we should fight for quality healthcare for
everyone — definitely including the people who live in states where right-wing
officials are blocking expansion of Medicaid coverage. (In a recent
Nation article, historian Rick Perlstein cited a grim example of a chronic
mentality: “the policy wizards in the Obama White House build a Rube Goldberg
healthcare law that relies on states to expand Medicaid and create healthcare
exchanges, and then are utterly blindsided when red-state legislatures and
governors decline.”) We should challenge all efforts to deny the human
right of healthcare.<BR>What we should <I>not</I> be doing is
what </STRONG></FONT><A href=""><FONT
size=3><STRONG>MoveOn.org</STRONG></FONT></A><FONT size=3><STRONG> is now
doing — proclaiming that the Obamacare law is just fine. In a November 14 email
blast, subject-lined “Obamacare in serious trouble,” MoveOn acknowledged that
the rollout “has been badly botched” but flatly declared: “Obviously, the law
itself is still really good.”<BR><I>Huh?</I><BR>The problems with Obamacare
involve far more than simply bad website coding. They’re bound up in the
enormous complexity of the law’s design, wrapped around a huge corporate
steeplechase for maximizing profits. As a Maine physician, Philip
Caper, </STRONG></FONT><A href="" target=_blank><FONT
size=3><STRONG>wrote</STRONG></FONT></A><FONT size=3><STRONG> this fall,
the ACA “is far too complicated and therefore too expensive to manage, full of
holes, will be applied unevenly and unfairly, be full of unintended
consequences, and be easily exploited by those looking to make a quick buck.”
The ACA is so complicated because it has been so relentlessly written for the
benefit of — and largely written by — insurance companies.<BR>Along the way, the
“individual mandate” cornerstone of the ACA — required by government yet
actually enriching the private insurance industry — is a tremendous political
boost to demagogic GOP leaders. I’m not engaging in hindsight here. Like many
others, I saw this coming before the ACA became law, </STRONG></FONT><A
href="" target=_blank><FONT size=3><STRONG>writing</STRONG></FONT></A><FONT
size=3><STRONG> in March 2010: “On a political level, the mandate provision
is a massive gift to the Republican Party, all set to keep on giving to the
right wing for many years. With a highly intrusive requirement that personal
funds and government subsidies be paid to private corporations, the law would
further empower right-wing populists who want to pose as foes of government
‘elites’ bent on enriching Wall Street.”<BR>Obamacare is a mess largely because
it builds a revamped healthcare system around the retrenched and extended power
of insurance companies — setting back prospects for real healthcare reform for a
decade or more. Egged on by corporate media and corporate politicians, much of
the public will blame higher premiums on government intervention and not on the
greedy insurance companies which, along with Big Pharma, helped write the law in
the Obama White House and on Capitol Hill.<BR>It should now be painfully obvious
that Obamacare’s little helpers, dutifully reciting White House talking points
in 2009 and early 2010, were helping right-wing bogus populism to gather steam.
Claiming that the Obama presidency would sink without signing into law its
“landmark” healthcare bill, many a progressive worked to throw the president a
rope; while ostensibly attached to a political life preserver, the rope was
actually fastened to a huge deadweight anvil.<BR>In the process, the political
choreography included a chorus of statements by Congressional Progressive Caucus
members before ultimate passage of the Affordable Care Act. Having previously
removed the words “single payer” and “Medicare for all” from their oratorical
vocabulary while retaining the laudatory language — and after later excising the
words “public option” in a similar way — those legislators still pretended that
passage of the ACA would be an unalloyed positive triumph. Like the president,
they resolutely oversold Obamacare and made believe it would bring about an
excellent healthcare system.<BR>With such disingenuous sales pitches four years
ago, President Obama and his Democratic acolytes did a lot to create the current
political mess engulfing Obamacare — exaggerating its virtues while pulling out
the stops to normalize denial about its real drawbacks. That was a bad approach
in 2009. It remains a bad approach today.<BR><EM>Norman Solomon is co-founder
of <A href="">RootsAction.org</A> and founding director of the
Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents
and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” Information about the documentary based
on the book is at <A href=""
target=_blank>www.WarMadeEasyTheMovie.org</A>.</EM><BR></STRONG></FONT></DIV></DIV></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>