The Atlantic’s website has an interview from yesterday with Scott Hogenson, the manager of a “Defund Obamacare” campaign being run by insane asylum association conservative grassroots organization ForAmerica. The interviewer was basically trying to get an answer to the question of why groups like ForAmerica, Tea Party Patriots, Heritage Action, and the Senate Conservatives Fund are all spending so much time and energy trying to defund Obamacare when it seems to be pretty much, well, impossible. I found my way to this interview by way of an Ezra Klein tweet containing the best of the exchange’s questions: “It sounds like you’re saying you have no idea, in practice, how this could actually get through Congress.” Classic.
A well-informed acquaintance of mine suggested it might not be such a worthy enterprise to spend energy engaging “a guy who works for a group that is a bunch of clowns, even by GOP standards,” which, well, fair enough. But for one thing, the clown caucus has gathered an unsettlingly high proportion of influence over the GOP; for another thing, I think the basic talking points that Hogenson advances are actually pretty in line with the “mainstream” GOP’s fanatical paranoia thinking about Obamacare; and for a third thing, it’ll be fun, and I think my seven or so readers will get a kick out of it (hi mom!).
And so let’s take a look at just the last question and answer from the interview:
Is there ever a time when one side of a policy debate has to admit they’ve lost? The vote was held, the other side won, and now it’s the law of the land and it’s time to move on?
That’s an interesting argument, but if it really is the law of the land, why is the administration making side deals with Congress to exempt them? Why are they delaying the employer mandate? How come they’re not putting the lifetime caps into place? How come the data hub is not yet secure? You can say this is the law of the land, but the implementations says otherwise. The implementation says, “We’ll do whatever we want.”
Let’s break this down piece by piece:
That’s an interesting argument…
“…which I’m just gonna completely ignore because obviously we won’t ever admit defeat. Didn’t you hear me before? ‘People’ are really furious about what they see happening here! How many people? What people? Fuck if I know. But it’s a lot of people, ok? I don’t need the ‘results’ of a ‘popular democratic election’ to know what people think about Obamacare. Unless those results validate my point of view, in which case the people will have spoken. But, like I said, the people are already speaking, so… um… where was I? Oh right, people. People are furious about Obamacare. Lots and lots of people. ”
…but if it really is the law of the land…
It is.
…why is the administration making side deals with Congress to exempt them?
It’s not. This point is just total bullshit; one which represents, as Chait puts it, “the toxic combination of ignorance and bad faith that has characterized the right’s approach to Obamacare.” I encourage you to read the whole piece because the truth behind this asinine talking point1 is a little subtle (Ezra Klein also has a useful synopsis).
The gist of it is that during debate on the healthcare bill, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) introduced an amendment he expected would fail so that Republicans could carry on about it later. The amendment basically says that Members of Congress and congressional staff have to get their insurance through the exchanges setup by the ACA. The idea was that the Democrats would refuse the amendment and then Republicans could go on Fox News and blather away about how Democrats didn’t have enough confidence in the exchanges to get their own health coverage through them. Then the Democrats decided to be cute and allowed it to pass.
The complication arises because another provision of the ACA says employers with more than 100 employees can’t get access to the exchanges until 2017, as 95% of large employers provide subsidized insurance negotiated based on group rates to their employees as part of their benefits package. The point of the exchanges is to facilitate access to competitively priced insurance plans for uninsured individuals that don’t have access to subsidized group rates from their employer. What the amendment means, though, is that the Federal Government, which has more than 100 employees, has to insure members of congress through the exchanges, even though the exchanges don’t currently have any procedures or mechanisms to facilitate the premium support contribution from a large employer. Currently the federal government pays a percentage of employees’ premiums though the federal benefits program, the same way a big company does. The Grassley amendment introduces a problem wherein there’s no mechanism by which the federal government can continue to provide congressional employees with health care premium support. Losing that support would effectively represent a major pay cut for all involved.
The “side deal” this dumbass is talking about refers simply to a decision made by the administration during implementation of the law that Members of Congress and their staff will get insurance on the exchanges as per the law, and the federal government will simply kick in the same amount it’s been paying in premium support all along. As Klein puts it: “This isn’t, in other words, an effort to flee Obamacare. It’s an effort to fix a drafting error that prevents the federal government from paying into insurance exchanges on behalf of congressional staffers who got caught up in a political controversy.”
So Hogenson’s dumb. Shocker. Let’s continue:
Why are they delaying the employer mandate?
Because, unlike the Republicans, Obama is actually interested in taking steps to make the healthcare bill work, and you know, help people. Because he’s not a dick. And the employer mandate, despite being a minor provision affecting only about one percent of the work force, has created a few legitimate problems. A lot of people, including on the left, would be in favor of repealing that piece of the law, and I haven’t seen anyone predicting that Obama would refuse, largely because, you know, he’s not a fucking dick. The problem is that the Republicans are dicks, and they aren’t interested in making the law better to help people, because that would undermine their fanatical insistence that the whole bill be repealed yesterday. Here’s how Chait puts it: “Major laws are routinely followed by legislative corrections to smooth out their glitches. But conservatives have steadfastly followed a strategy of the worse, the better, refusing to accept any changes to Obamacare short of repeal.”
So, Hogenson, they are delaying the employer mandate because it’s better for America to delay it, then hopefully get rid of it altogether and/or rewrite the provision to be less disruptive; and they’re delaying it because your team is being a bunch of dicks about the whole thing and won’t cooperate on fixing any of the problems they like to rant about. And yes, administrative delays hold up the implementation of major legislation all the time.2
Next:
How come they’re not putting the lifetime caps into place?
So, I suppose Hogenson probably just misspoke here, or he really just has no clue what the fuck he’s talking about, but I assume he’s referring to a recently announced delay in implementing the ACA’s provision which sets an annual limit on out-of-pocket expenses at $6,350 for individuals and $12,700 for families.
The lifetime benefits provision in Obamacare actually ends a common insurance company practice of setting lifetime benefit limits in healthcare plans. So before Obamacare, if your kid, say, needs open-heart surgery as a newborn, you might end up tapping out her lifetime benefit maximum before she turns 6, at which point the insurance company would say SORRY NO MORE HEALTHCARE FOR YOU GOOD LUCK MISSY (Organizing for Action has a recent ad telling just such a story). Obamacare puts an end to that practice because, you know, SOCIALISM. Also that provision is already in effect.
Now the annual caps were, in fact, delayed recently. Why were they delayed, Mr. Hogenson? Because in general it doesn’t make sense to force implementation of particular provisions in major legislation before the necessary preparations have been made. You’d think I wouldn’t have to tell you this given your apocalyptic fear mongering, but reforming our broken healthcare system is rather a large and complex undertaking. Flexibility and prudence in implementing the reform will help to minimize any unintended consequences and administrative friction.
As for the particulars, I direct you to Ezra Klein again for a run down. The main point:
Some insurers and employers lack the capacity to keep track of an individual’s out-of-pocket health costs. They often use different companies to administer medical benefits and pharmaceutical benefits — and those companies’ computer systems don’t speak to each other. Implementing the rule would require upgrading those systems — and that takes time.
I dunno people, that seems pretty reasonable to me. But I guess “THEY’RE DELAYING IT BECAUSE THEY’RE EVIL SOCIALISTS WITH NO REGARD FOR THE RULE OF LAW” is an okay way of looking at it too?
How come the data hub isn’t yet secure?
Because “data hubs” are really fucking hard to secure. The New York Times was hacked. Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page was hacked. Even Lockheed fucking Martin was hacked! You know, Lockheed Martin, beneficiary of tens of billions of dollars of US defense spending every year, manufacturer of the most advanced fighter jet on earth? Yeah, they got hacked. Probably by China. So we’re not talking about some trivially simple enterprise. And the Administration is taking it seriously, because they want to get this right.
Hogenson, by the way, isn’t even saying here that he’s concerned about the ability of the government to secure the exchanges. He brings up the data hubs in the context of saying that the administration is “doing whatever it wants” when it comes to implementation of the ACA, as if Obama is just sitting around in his office saying “well, you know, I could get everything up and secure today if I wanted to, but meh, whatever, maybe later, since I am after all a ruthless dictator and what I say goes.” Then he drowns kittens in a Hitler costume I assume.
You secure the fucking data hubs, Hogenson.
You can say this is the law of the land…
It is.
…but the implementations says otherwise. The implementation says, “We’ll do whatever we want.”
Well, no. The implementation says that there were always going to be unforeseen complications when this thing started going into effect, and the administration is soberly evaluating the problems that emerge and doing what it can to ease the transition. It says that there are always delays, be it in business or in government, when managing the implementation of major initiatives. It says that it doesn’t make sense to force every provision down everyone’s throat before the necessary steps have been taken for those provisions to work. It says that the administration is dealing with a bunch of petulant children in the Republican caucus who refuse to cooperate on any legislative measures to improve the bill because they’d rather bitch about every little thing they can. It says that the goal of the bill isn’t to score an unblemished political victory—the goal of the bill is to improve the lives of Americans by making sure that everyone has access to affordable health insurance, to eliminate the worst practices of the insurance companies, to establish a baseline level of coverage for every plan, to change the way we pay for healthcare, to make sure young people can stay on their parents’ plans. And it says that the Obama Administration is interested in doing it right.
Hogenson’s comments about the implementation of the plan, however, say that he and those of his ilk are either ignorant or liars.
NOTES:
1 A quick sidebar here, based on something a friend told me upon reading my first draft of this post, and alluded to by the rather lengthy title. Despite my tendency toward wordiness, I really tried to keep this section short, but it’s tough because the reality is a little subtle, and complicated, and requires the processing of a lot of tedious information about the legislative process to fully comprehend. This is a major problem that seems to recur quite often for Democrats: the truth is more complicated than the lie. This little political episode that went down during the long debate over the ACA resulted in a small amendment that generated big unintended consequences. Then the administration had to come up with a fix, and which gives the Republicans an opening to go on TV and say “Obama’s out there cutting side-deals with Congress to let them out of this train wreck.” It’s breathtakingly disingenuous and maddeningly cynical, but they don’t give a shit—they want to win. And as soon as they start talking about back room deals they’ve pretty much won, because most people aren’t going to take the time to read through hundreds of words of explanation required to give lie to every quip.
2 Chait runs through a couple of examples in his piece, the best being when the Bush White House managed to evade a Supreme Court order that the EPA regulate carbon emissions by refusing to open an e-mail; I was younger at the time, but I don’t recall hearing a cacophony of conservative voices screaming about “naked lawlessness” then)
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