This week, the President paraded out the same old tired philosophies about the “middle class,” words that should curdle in his mouth when he speaks them whether it’s in honor of Labor Day or any other day because he has so injured the non-governmental middle class of this country that you’d have to be under hypnosis not to see it.
Obamacare’s been law since 2010, yet Republicans still argue repeal, Democrats still argue that preventive health benefits and no lifetime limits make the thousand-or-so page bill worth it, the same old dialogue. There’s no continued consideration taking us to the next level. Instead, each snafu and permutation becomes a momentary blip as the massive law moves forward as if nothing can be done about it, frequently creating related snafus and inconsistencies because of the failure to address the law as a whole instead of as a piece of this and a piece of that.
For instance, in “Dangerous Air: Mike Huckabee: Take the Quiz,” I discussed how Mike Huckabee was still chanting about getting people healthy as the cure for our health care woes. Hopefully people are beginning to realize that of course, if you don’t need health care, e.g. if you’re healthy then there is no issue with health insurance, or paying for needed medical treatment, or even finding a competent healthcare provider. But Mike Huckabee and others spout off this nonsense as a “solution.” Half-baked. Pretty much everyone knows that if you don’t eat salad you don’t have to worry about how we make sure that lettuce is safe.
Next, we had the next in the parade of administrative snafus of Obamacare, “OOP Max Delay: Room to Agree,” about the delay in the OOP Max provision regarding coordinating out of pocket copayment expenses when two providers are involved in your health insurance, one for your medical care and one for your drug plan. This one is significant because it will directly impact how much money we have to lay out before reaching out of pocket (OOP) maximums in certain situations.
I also wrote about the “Federal Health Exchange Options and Delay,” which is at this point purely administrative because it moved the health insurance company approvals for the Federal exchange from early to mid-late September, without indicating there would be a delay in the opening of the Exchange on October 1, 2013.
In a reminder that Obamacare is not static, “Will Obamacare Self-destruct?,” I illustrated the problems with half-baked thinking, not only in the original law but in the reaction to various snafus using tactics such as delaying the implementation of the law that could impact other parts of the law.
Finally, as we all worry about Syria, in “What Obamacare and Syria Plans Have in Common,” I expressed my concern that the half-baked approach that has and will continue to create problems with Obamacare perhaps should not be the approach taken for foreign policy.
In summary, we need to demand better of our lawmakers, newsmakers and those making a contribution on media to go beyond the simplistic, the hackneyed and the repetitive at the expense of fully informing and identifying, and therefore being able to meaningfully address any “headline” of the day. It takes work, the same work that we all do on a daily basis building a body of our work rather than a snippet here and a snippet there.
