Hyping the scandals is not a game changer

The “scandals”  seem to be heaped one on top of another on the White House lately.   While there is some fire in the substance, the hyperventilated, over the top smoke  blown mightily   by the GOP   is also about the 2014 midterms. It is a political strategy that is  sound and fury likely to signify little in the end.

 The GOP seems determined to pin the problem on Pres. Obama, best if he can be found to be the actual perpetrator (and so far they have failed to do that), or at least the head of   an overreached, out of control, incompetent administration.  Therefore, the GOP hopes the President will be so wounded,  Congressional and Senatorial elections will go their way as voters become disgusted with anything tied to him.

The GOP views the  rollout of Obamacare   like a fox salivating at the possibilities of catching chipmunk in a rock garden.  They hope Obamacare will fail miserably.  They have laid the groundwork to self  fulfill their prophecy.    Whenever  some southern and Midwestern  governors and state legislatures were in  GOP control, they have refused to set up the state managed exchanges…resulting in the mistrusted feds having to do it for them and leaving a gap of millions who would not have access to expanded Medicaid or Obamacare. They have cut out funds slated  to encourage  currently uninsured into subscribe to  the subsidized exchanges,  hoping if  they built it, no one came.

Except where they have tried to sabotage the roll out, the GOP is taking a risk.  The roll out might work…because California, Colorado, and Massachusetts, and New Jersey  and Pacific Coast states are well prepared . The cost of the subsidized premiums in California have come in much lower than actuarial studies predicted.  Colorado is well ahead of the game, already testing  technology and with 17 private insurers signed on to participate.

 Where the GOP will be able to howl in protest and point to failure will be in states where they are  already  strong. All politics in electing representatives and s enators are local.  They will be preaching to their  choir,  safe  in gerrymandered non competitive  districts.    Any failures of the roll out could blowback on the GOP when the successes in other states could be contrasted with the bungling in the purposefully unprepared states.

The GOP has tried to inflate the “scandals”  by painting them as “Nixonian”.    In their zeal to try to draw  comparisons  of Obama with Nixon they  fall very flat.  Nixon himself  ordered the IRS to  audit politicians, groups and journalists on his enemies list.  It was not a case of  bungling by career service bureaucrats  and an overprotective White House staff, as it appears involved in  this current “scandal”.

 The attempt by Nixon  to hush up the Washington Post was not because the CIA or national security was  jeopardized by their reporting. The Watergate coverup was his directed attempt to cover his role in a criminal act. However, it  was AP’s and Fox’s reporting of the leak  that blew the cover off covert action against Al Qaeda in Yemen, endangering our war against terrorists, that triggered the Attorney General’s investigation.  

Nothing this year equals the Iran Contra Scandal in which the Reagan administration  skirted laws to run  Central American covert actions,  or the revenge seeking W Bush administration blowing CIA operative Valerie Plame’s cover.

As a strategy, even these more substantive  scandals have  not  changes the  party domination in the immediately following elections in the past. Economic issues were always larger factors.

So…fire away GOP.  Voters will begin asking where  is  your replacement  for Obamacare or what you will do about employment and the disappearing middle class. A GOP  blocking immigration reform will only feed  Democrats’ winning demographics.  Those are the real game changers.

For more, visit  www.mufticforumespanol.blogspot.com

This is a version of my column that will appear in the Sky Hi Daily News this week.

Urban myths: Obamacare costs trillions and will bankrupt us and patients will not have a choice of doctors and hospitals

The column 7/18/2012 in the Sky Hi News

The futile attempt by the House Republicans to repeal Obamacare last week prolonged the debate and kept it a hot topic. 

President Obama got a gift, a second chance to sell his health care reform law and to shoot down some urban myths.

Health care reform issues are extremely important to the more than 20 percent of Grand County residents who cannot afford health insurance now. Those of us who are already insured, including those on Medicare, should also sit up and take note of the impact on us if Obamacare is repealed and not replaced. 

The greatest urban myth concerns costs and the deficit. While Obamacare indeed costs trillions, the GOP has deceptively made an issue of only the cost side of the balance sheet, ignoring the sheet's other side, the savings and revenue offsetting federal expenditures Obamacare (aka ACA) requires. According to the Congressional Budget Office on March 13, 2012, “… the ACA will, on net, reduce budget deficits over the 2012-2021 period.” The Simpson-Bowles bipartisan deficit reduction commission examined the relationship of Obamacare to the deficit and recommended “Controlling health care costs by maintaining the Medicare cost controls associated with the recent health care reform legislation.”

Other urban myths: The GOP litany, that Obamacare would not give consumers choice of plans, doctors, or hospitals, or cut Medicare benefits is, horsefeathers. Nothing changes the choice employees have if their employers provide insurance. States have been given the option of setting up their own market exchanges to cover the uninsured. Colorado's exchange will give currently uninsured Grand County residents a choice of as many as 12 affordable private plans and will subsidize the cost based on their ability to pay.

For those insured, if Obamacare were repealed, closing the senior drug donut hole would be lost, covering pre-existing conditions for children and adults would be lost, keeping young adults on parents' insurance policies, eliminating co-pays for mammograms and other tests, or requiring insurers to spend greater percent of your premiums on actual health care services — all lost. There would be no protection against lifetime caps, outrageous co-pays or kicking a patient that got sick off their insurance.

Mitt Romney has departed a little from his House Republican brethren by proposing “common sense” alternatives, paying lip service to both the concept of covering pre-existing conditions and admitting that the uninsured should have more affordable access to health care. He may talk in fiery terms that he will repeal Obamacare day one — a difficult task unless he controls both houses of Congress — but he must also propose a way to fund the same popular benefits as some of the Obamacare provisions. So far he has come up nearly empty on the “how to” part.

The problem is Romney's “common sense” replacements, cross state insurance sales and malpractice reform, just add up to too few cents. They have already been scored by the Congressional Budget Office. They found that those measures would lower the cost of health insurance, but only enough for 3 million more to afford insurance, leaving 27 million still seeking health care in the ER and shifting the costs on to the rest of us. He has been silent on closing the Medicare donut hole. 

Romney's proposal to cover high risk patients by setting up state pools, as Colorado has done, is already funded by Obamacare until the law is in full effect in 2014. The cost of providing the subsidies is extremely high and unaffordable to consumers who cannot afford any kind of health insurance now. The mandate makes possible pooling high-risk patients with healthier insured so that the system is cost effective for all. In short, Romney's replacement plan is just another urban myth.

For more, go to www.mufticforum.com and www.mufticforumespanol.blogspot.com