Legacy

The NYT has an article up about the Obama administration's ever more complicated position regarding the legal problems they inherited from the Bush administration regarding terrorists and Guantanamo Bay.

And it occurs to me that the problems of Gitmo are a perfect image of the forthcoming problems that the Republicans are going to have in repealing the Affordable Care Act.

The politicians may think getting rid of it--whether Guantanamo or health care--is a top priority. They may think it's a moral duty. And they may think that's what they were elected to do. But ultimately by the time they inherit the policy, they find that easy answers aren't forthcoming.

I for one think that Gitmo should be closed, and I do hope that Obama will find a way to do it, but in a way I think the Affordable Care Act is going to be even harder to shut down.

The Power of Acronyms

Not that anybody cares what the professionals and the vulnerable think, but the largest association of physicians and medical students in the United States (the AMA) and one of the nation's largest membership organizations for people age 50 (AARP) have both endorsed the House health care bill.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is trumpeting endorsements from the AARP and the American Medical Association of House Democrats' health care legislation.

Making a rare appearance at the White House briefing Thursday, Obama told reporters that those endorsement are no small accomplishments. He urged Congress to listen to the AARP and AMA and pass the health care overhaul.

Obama says AARP, the nation's premier lobbying group for the elderly, has looked at the bill and is supporting it in the interest of seniors.

He also says the AMA wouldn't be supporting the bill it if would lead to health decisions being made by government bureaucrats or damage doctor-patient relationships. He says those medical professionals have seen firsthand the costs of inaction on health care.

fiscally and imaginatively conservative

My man Gerry links us up with Ezra Klein's article on the Republican health care plan, an article that deserves to be read in full:

Late last night, the Congressional Budget Office released its initial analysis of the health-care reform plan that Republican Minority Leader John Boehner offered as a substitute to the Democratic legislation. CBO begins with the baseline estimate that 17 percent of legal, non-elderly residents won't have health-care insurance in 2010. In 2019, after 10 years of the Republican plan, CBO estimates that ...17 percent of legal, non-elderly residents won't have health-care insurance. The Republican alternative will have helped 3 million people secure coverage, which is barely keeping up with population growth. Compare that to the Democratic bill, which covers 36 million more people and cuts the uninsured population to 4 percent.

But maybe, you say, the Republican bill does a really good job cutting costs. According to CBO, the GOP's alternative will shave $68 billion off the deficit in the next 10 years. The Democrats, CBO says, will slice $104 billion off the deficit.

The Democratic bill, in other words, covers 12 times as many people and saves $36 billion more than the Republican plan. And amazingly, the Democratic bill has already been through three committees and a merger process. It's already been shown to interest groups and advocacy organizations and industry stakeholders. It's already made its compromises with reality. It's already been through the legislative sausage grinder. And yet it saves more money and covers more people than the blank-slate alternative proposed by John Boehner and the House Republicans. The Democrats, constrained by reality, produced a far better plan than Boehner, who was constrained solely by his political imagination and legislative skill.

This is a major embarrassment for the Republicans. It's one thing to keep your cards close to your chest. Republicans are in the minority, after all, and their plan stands no chance of passage. It's another to lay them out on the table and show everyone that you have no hand, and aren't even totally sure how to play the game. The Democratic plan isn't perfect, but in comparison, it's looking astonishingly good.

Update: Think Progress reports "it’s unlikely that any of the members of the Republican House Leadership would be able to find affordable insurance under their own proposal, should they chose to give up their government-sponsored plans."

"Master race" has such negative connotations

Colbert was ON FIRE with last night's Word.

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Opting in and out

Nate Silver, political gem, explains why the clause being floated that may allow states to opt out of the public option aint all that bad. Here are his first four points:

1) If the public option is indeed popular -- and the preponderance of public polling suggests that it is -- we should expect the solid majority of states to elect to retain it. Perhaps some Republican governors or legislatures would seek to override the popular will in their states -- but they would do so at their own peril (and at Democrats' gain).

2) Behavioral economics further suggests that default preferences are extremely powerful. Making the public option the default would probably lead to much greater adaptation than requiring states to "opt in".

3) If the public option indeed reduces the costs of insurance -- and most of the evidence suggests that it will -- than the states that opt out of it will have a pretty compelling reason to opt back in. Say that Kansas opts out of the public option and Missouri keeps it. If a Kansan realizes that his friend across the border is buying the same quality health insurance for $300 less per month, he's going to vote restore the public plan in a referendum or demand that his legislator does the same in Topeka.

4) Even in states that do opt out of the public option, the fact that voters could presumably elect later to restore it creates an extremely credible threat to the private insurance industry that will itself help to create price competition.

Could we really be on the verge of making this happen?

See, Bob Dole gets it:

Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kans.) told a group of local Kansas reporters on Wednesday, that opposition to the president's health care package had been driven by knee-jerk partisanship and urged Congressional Republicans to get on board a version of reform.

The 1996 Republican presidential candidate also predicted, following a speech at a health care reform summit in Kansas, that "there will be a signing ceremony" for a reform bill sometime this year or early in 2010.

But the comments that seem likely to create the most ripples were those that dealt with congressional opposition to the White House. Dole, according to reports, framed the pushback to Barack Obama's reform agenda as almost perfunctory in nature.

"Sometimes people fight you just to fight you," he said, according to The Kansas City Star. "They don't want Reagan to get it, they don't want Obama to get it, so we've got to kill it...

"Health care is one of those things," he added. "Now we've got to do something."

Too bad nobody listens to Bob Dole anymore.