Perhaps the worst thing about the Obamacare rollout…
…from the Democrats’ point of view is not that it will keep people from enrolling for a while.
After all, there’s no enormous rush, although it would have been nice to have gotten the ball rolling faster.
It’s the undermining of whatever lingering trust anyone might have retained in the federal government’s ability to run such a thing. It’s on that trust that Obamacare depends.
Some of you might say, “What are you talking about; who trusted the government even before this?” I contend that there are many people who did—although most of them are not on the right—and this has to make those folks feel a lot shakier about that trust.
And I wonder whether anyone except the right remembers—ah, it was so long ago—that part of the original argument for Obamacare and how it would be funded was that waste would be trimmed from other programs. Yes, you may laugh, but that was the drill. Now that we know about the huge waste of money that was the rollout itself, I wonder whether many of those who believed such savings would happen have managed to hold on to those ideas? I’m not talking about the bureaucrats and officials and pundits who either believed their own projections or were lying to cynically exploit what used to be called The Masses, but those ordinary voters who accepted what they were saying and thought it plausible. Do most of those voters still believe?
Now, it’s possible that all this messiness is just a passing phase and that the Obamacare website will get its act together soon enough. But at that point a lot of people will be getting some very, very bad news about their premium rates, their deductibles, their co-pays, and/or which doctors and hospitals are now out of their networks.
Others, of course, will be getting some good news.
Which group will be larger? And how many of the people who get bad news will be Democrats who might then begin to wonder about giving their votes in the future to a party that has so grievously betrayed its promises to them?
Many on the left prefer a government-run program, no matter how incompetent, over any corresponding private sector offering, no matter how competent, because, you know, RICH people getting RICHER, and we all know how evil those corporate fat cats are.
I read somewhere that most of the enrollees are people who will have there care completely subsidized. Others are suffering from sticker shock, especially as they realize the size of the co-pays.
Whatever the rest of the country is doing, it seems young people are avoiding Obamacare like the plague. The
ponzi schemesystem depends on their enrollment, so it doesn’t look good for O-care.expat:
Actually, no one is completely subsidized. But at the lower income levels, it’s very close. And most people are not yet aware, I think, that for those with the lower incomes not only are premiums paid for by the government but so are the deductibles and co-pays, except for a small amount.
However, those who are below 138% of the poverty level have to go to Medicaid. This is the expansion of Medicaid that was talked about, and that some states have rejected: the income levels eligible for Medicaid have been raised, and the categories of people eligible have been raised (now, any adult is included if income is low enough, whereas before the adult had to be disabled or a parent or elderly).
Watch for the States that accepted the increased medicaid to panic. The feds only agreed to help with the costs for a few years. Budget guys in most states have to project ahead and the structural deficit will be staggering. The doctor blowback will be equally as severe. My wife’s primary MD is already complaining that regular insurance patients are getter fewer (Here in CT) and more of her load is Medicare/Medicaid with much lower reimbursement.
Here’s an article reporting on the IT side of the debacle.
I work in healthcare IT. We spend more time testing than we do building, and that’s not counting the unit testing done by developers. This claim floored me:
Here’s some more reporting on the exchanges that is interesting. If accurate, then Obamacare is in a heap of trouble.
neo asks, in conclusion,
“and how many of the people who get bad news will be Democratics who might then begin to wonder about giving their votes in the future to a party that has so grievously betrayed its promises to them?”
M J R responds, in a mixture of utter disgust and petty annoyance,
Virtually none. Government run/regulated health care is a religion to them, and any “bad news” will be regarded as merely a tithe to their Church of Pee Cee Collectivism.
The IT issues they’ve been having should surprise no one.
Anyone remember the FDCA?
Government has a pretty long history of throwing good money after bad money, and it’s pretty obvious they don’t know anything about how IT works.
I remember reading an article a while back (which I can no longer seem to find) about the FDCA, and how much money was wasted.
The gist of it was that they spent all this money to develop a new handheld for the census, rather than buying iPhones or Androids or even Blackberrys, on the idea that doing this would somehow show that the government doesn’t favor a particular business.
The result? They threw billions down this particular hole, the end product didn’t work, had to be scrapped, and they had to allocate emergency funding to finance the old paper census forms and such that they had always used.
I’ll always remember the ending of that article… “Meet government. The only place where you are rewarded with more money for outright failure.” Or something to that effect.
I think that anyone who believes that this will fall flat on its face and be rolled back rather than have more money tossed at it to “fix” it is fooling themselves.
nyght has the right of it.
Continuing to throw good money after bad is remarkably easy when its not one’s own money. When there’s no personal loss involved, where’s the self-correction mechanism?
“Now that we know about the huge waste of money that was the rollout itself, I wonder whether many of those who believed such savings would happen have managed to hold on to those ideas? … Do most of those voters still believe?” neo
“Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd, evil and self-serving men. The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed. Hand the people a scapegoat to hate [repubs, insurance corporations and the evil rich] . Let them kill a scapegoat occasionally for cathartic release. The mechanism is ages old. Tyrants used it centuries before the word “psychology” was ever invented. It works, too.” R.A. Heinlein
“Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd, evil and self-serving men.”
And until the MSM gives up telling those lies, I would bet even those believers who see their premiums double, will still hang on to their religion until the NYT, LAT, and WashPost, tell them not to. A cold day in hell when those in the media turn around.
Saw a citizen panelist on TV last night. A pro-Obamacare lady. Her position was that this had to be a great law because — our very intelligent congressional reps had studiously scrutinized the law and determined it to be worthy. NEVER underestimate the ignorance of the average voter.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Some will pay more so others may pay less.
Adding tens of millions to insurance rolls while adding no doctors and nurses has to end badly.
Mr. Frank, 8:36 pm — “There is no such thing as a free lunch. Some will pay more so others may pay less. ”
Then those others who pay less get a free lunch.
[Couldn’t resist the urge to snark here.]
“The American Decline May Wind Up Doing What Republican Political Agitation Could Not: Arrest the Growth of the Government”
“Ace”
Ace of Spades HQ
October 18, 2013
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/344286.php
The best case against larger government has been the actions and inactions of the Obama administration itself. The Left always thinks someone else can come along and do it better. I wonder if people will remember that this guy was supposed to be The One.
Not only that, but . . . remember
“We are the ones we have been waiting for”?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=molWTfv8TYw
You all might be interested in this National Review article.
‘The nightmare scenarios, the “unthinkable options,” involve larger moves than that–like putting enrollment on hold or re-starting the exchange system from scratch at some point. No one seems to know how this could work or what it would mean, but everyone involved is contending with a far worse set of circumstances than they were prepared for.
‘This is a major disaster from their point of view, not a set of glitches, and they simply do not know how long it will take to fix. They dearly want to see progress day by day, but they are generally not seeing it.
‘The fate of these sites is the fate of Obamacare, for reasons that may not be immediately obvious. Health insurance is highly sensitive to the integrity and robustness of the market in which it is sold: though we don’t often think of it this way, health insurance is a financial service, a protection against risk, so the nature and structure of a given insurance plan is highly responsive to the scope and the character of the demand for it at any given time.
‘It is in this sense rather different from most consumer products. This means it is not possible to think of the exchange websites as just sites where products are sold, and to believe that the product is fine but the site has some glitches. If the site doesn’t work, the product cannot work, and the insurance market created by the law cannot be sustained. So a great deal is at stake here, and it now seems a great deal is at risk.’
Read the rest here: http://nationalreview.com/corner/361577/assessing-exchanges-yuval-levin
Levin interviewed several [anonymous] people in the govt. and the insurance industry intimately involved with this disaster, and they are Scared Stiff.
As one of those who is being crushed by hideously expensive, rotten “insurance” that barely covers HALF my catastrophic care needs — IOW, one of those “independent purchasers” whom Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, God bless them, were trying to save, I hope the liberal loons get it good and hard, until their eyes pop. I guarantee you that a Lot of people are going to be furious.
This is the big question: can the Washington Generals, I mean the Repubs, keep the Harlem Globetrotter Democrats from scapegoating them Again?
Anyone hear me? I keep telling people they AREN’T SUBSIDIZING THE WORKING POOR AT ALL.
Who ARE the folks getting the subsidies? People who make MORE THAN I do, for example.
You are all believing the Left’s lies: that they’re all about “taking care of the Po Folks,” even if they make a botch of it.
THAT’s NOT what this is about, people. Anyone hear me?
Freelance book editor, living in NYC, making, when I work, $20/hour. You feel me?
Subsidies I’m eligible for ? ZERO. ZERO. “You do not make ENOUGH to qualify for subsidies. But you might be eligible for Medicaid,” the site helpfully suggests.
Medicaid? Top income limit on Medicaid (which is Hell, anyway) in NY State: $953/MONTH. For an individual.
Anyone hear me out there? I’m supposedly one of the VERY PEOPLE the Liars are claiming they’ll “take care of”: No, No, No. I don’t want their rotten “insurance,” it will cost twice as much as what I buy for myself, thank you very much, and pay HALF the benefits. But I’m forced into the stockyard chute like an animal.
I give up. No one believes me. But you will see. When it’s your turn to go on the Exchanges, you will see.
I should add, the NON-working poor will get the usual Total Package, paid for by the rest of us. But folks like me, who have Never taken govt. assistance, are going to get swept over the cliff.
Beverly:
I don’t know why the site is giving you that information, but it’s not correct. Perhaps it’s because the sites are such a mess.
Poverty level for a single person is $11,490 per year. The OLD Medicaid income rule was that you had to earn 100% of poverty level or under to qualify. But the Obamacare expanded Medicaid rules are that you have to earn 138% of poverty level or under. That means that for a single person, anything under $15,856 a year qualifies.
But if you happen to earn more than that (between 138% to 400% of poverty level, which would be $15,856 to 45,960), you are eligible to go to the exchanges, and you get subsidies. The subsidy is quite high at the lower income levels, and lessens as your income rises and you approach 400% of poverty level. Above that, no subsidies.
But you would clearly qualify either for Medicaid or for subsidies (and by the way, the subsidies are not just for premiums, but for deductibles and co-pays as well).
I am not an Obamacare fan, as anyone who reads this blog knows. But this is the way it is slated to work. You live in NY, which has chosen to adopt the Obamacare Medicaid expansion. So whether your income falls under 138% of the poverty line, or between 138% and 400% of the poverty line, you get Medicaid if you’re in the first category and a subsidy in the second (a heftier one the closer you are to the lower end of the subsidy range).
Now, you might not want to be on Medicaid, which is understandable. But you either qualify for that or for the other. There is no gap in NY between them.
Beverly . . .
I believe you. I’m sorry this is happening to you (and to so many others). God bless . . .
So we’re back, yet again, wondering what it will take to get through to liberals and, as before, concluding nothing will.
Man, said Heinlein, is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal.
Had a dinner with three other couples last night. One of the diners was a loud&proud vegetarian, so the dinner featured not so much as a scrap of meat. She got going on some liberal obsolescence, with the usual–for her and for so many libs–that contradiction would generate anger and getting personal. IOW, like other libs I know, they skate on the edge of polite conversation and any contradiction by definition goes over the edge. Or causes them to go over the edge–but they’re righteous, so it’s okay.
But the rest of us rolled our eyes. No sense trying to talk sense.
Ms. Neoneocon-
As a liberal who comes here largely to read often over-the-top conservative reaction with a mixture of amusement and disdain, I have to take a moment to compliment your honesty and integrity in your reply to Beverly.
As you say, you’re no fan of the program, and could have easily let the incorrect statements stand – instead, you corrected the mistakes in her post while still conveying your disagreement with Obamacare as a whole. That kind of nuanced approach to disagreement is in short supply on the conservative side in my experience, and deserves to be called out and appreciated. Thank you.
Chris:
I appreciate you taking notice.
That’s what I aim for in my posts and comments on this entire blog.
I will add that one of the things that contributed mightily to my political change (I don’t know whether you’re read my “A mind is a difficult thing to change” series that’s on the right sidebar, but it describes it) was my growing perception that, although pundits, politicians, and people on both right and left distort and lie at times, the amount of lying on the left is far greater, far more frequent and widespread, and far worse than on the right.
This was a true shocker for me. But after a while it became glaringly obvious.
I felt betrayed by the lies of the left, and so I try very hard to get my facts as correct as I possibly can.
Ms. Neoneocon-
While I have read many of the posts in your series, I’m afraid I can’t agree with the general thrust of your statement that “the amount of lying on the left is far greater, far more frequent and widespread, and far worse than on the right.”
In fact, your own blog, with its frequent accusation that President Obama and the vaguely defined “Left” want nothing more than control and the debasement of the United States – not to mention the worlds of prominent conservatives like Ted Cruz and Ben Carson that Obamacare is one of the worst things to ever happen in United States history – strongly inclines me to believe the opposite is true.
That said, it’s probably best we leave it at that.
Chris:
I believe you misunderstand what we’re talking about: the definition of “lies.”
Opinions about how bad someone is as president are not lies. They are opinions. And that is not what I’m talking about when I use the word “lies,” either on the left or the right.
For example, I completely disagree with someone who would write that Obama is a great president and a moderate, but I would never refer to such a statement as a “lie” because it is not—unless, of course, that person really thinks the opposite and is lying about what his/her opinion really is.
I try to be very precise about my use of words.
Lies are misstatements of fact, misstatements that the speaker either knows or should know are untrue. They are committed either purposely (if the speaker knows his/her statement is untrue) or negligently and ignorantly (if the speaker hasn’t even done the most basic research to find out the truth or falsehood of his/her claim of fact—-in other words, what’s popularly known as “making shit up”).
When I write that the left lies more, that’s exactly what I mean: lies. Noticing that phenomenon was, as I said, one of the spurs to my change. I still notice it over and over and over: distortions of fact in the statements and written material coming from liberals and the left is FAR more frequent than on the right. And by “right” I am speaking of well-known writers and pundits and periodicals and politicians on the right versus the same categories of people on the left (not the extreme fringe elements of either group, which are even more inclined toward lying).
And you know what makes me pretty sure I am fairly objective in this evaluation? When I noticed it, I was a liberal Democrat. I was inclined to NOT notice it, to deny it, in order to hold onto my basic belief system and political affiliation. And so it had to be a very strong tendency to get my attention.
And of course you are “strongly inclined to believe the opposite is true.” That’s my point. I was “strongly inclined to believe” the right lied more than the left, too. But I did my homework. My observation was made on the basis of a large amount and pattern of evidence, rather than an inclination or a belief. And that was part of the reason for my change.
People are resistant to such facts and such change, in general. The evidence simply became too overwhelming for me to ignore, and I finally had to accept it.
I am very careful to marshal evidence for my opinions. And to differentiate between opinions and facts, and between opinions that I disagree with and lies. An opinion cannot possibly be a lie (unless a person says he believes one thing and really believes another). Only the facts or misquotes he/she uses to bolster that opinion can be a lie.
neo.
Doing your homework makes the baby Jesus cry.
Ms. Neoneocon-
It’s odd that you’re taking your stand on this particular definition of the term “lies” when so much of your own conversion story involved shifts in the perception of narrative rather than plain facts. (e.g. “I used to think these photos meant one thing, now I realize they really meant something else”… which is fine and good, but not really on the same level as ‘they told me 2+2 equaled 5, when it really equaled 4!”) Likewise, if you think the mainstream left told a bunch of whoppers about Vietnam, Israel and Iraq, as suggested in your series, it’s odd that you didn’t balance them against what the mainstream right says about the Laffer curve, or climate change, or evolution.
But that said, while you’re welcome to limit your consideration of “lies” to something you consider a purely factual error, it doesn’t mean that’s the right definition – or that you can or should be able to hide so much behind “it’s only an opinion!”. Saying Obamacare is the worst thing to this country since slavery is an opinion in the same way that me saying “I believe Kingman, AZ is the greatest metropolis in the world” is an opinion – someone could say it and honestly believe it to be true, and there’s no one real world test we could easily run to prove it otherwise. But in both cases some saying such a thing is evidence that the speaker is greatly ignorant, or has a judgement process that is so far off the norm as to be meaningless, or is being disingenuous. It may not be so in your judgement, but it is, in essence, a lie.
You use your conversion from a mainstream Democrat to a neo-conservative as evidence that you’re being objective in your assessment, but it’s a limited type of proof – your own description of your previous beliefs suggests ignorance, more than anything, of the wider context in which events happened. However, just because you personally didn’t know about the Hue massacre (or any other number of Communist atrocities) as a counterpoint to the My Lai massacre, doesn’t mean that there wasn’t, or isn’t, a liberal argument that could take both into account and still be against the Vietnam war.
It’s admirable that you’re trying to do your homework now; it’s a shame that you didn’t do so then, or that the homework you’re doing now looks at both sides unequally. (Kudos to what you said to Beverly above, but I have yet to see you make a similar pushback against several mainstream conservative complaints that Congress and their staff have some sort of Obamacare exemption.) And it should go without saying that one can be rational and factually rigorous in their political believes – liberal or conservative – without having switched from one side to the other.
Chris.
Since you mentioned climate change–aka anthropogenic global warming–here are a couple of items:
NYT and The Economist both have run articles on the subject of climate scientists struggling to explain/understand the level temps of the last sixteen years. James Hansen, late of NASA, who once called for energy company CEOs to be tried for crimes against humanity is now reduced to saying, in effect, “level now, hell when it breaks loose”
The British Met, tired of being laughed at for predicting warmer/drier while the citizens looked at colder wetter, has predicted level to 2017 and is not projecting thereafter.
Even the IPCC is getting the vapors about this, and this is their JOB on the line.
It isn’t that we know it. It’s that we know you know it and clearly hope we don’t.
Okay, couple of others: When my father was in Germany on government business, he didn’t see many of the indigenous personnel wearing sunglasses. And Germany is giving up on trying to produce power for the long winter nights by using solar arrays taking in juice from cloudy, short winter days. Something about arithmetic, I think.
Al Gore has admitted that corn-based ethanol is an energy wash and he began pushing it because he was fond of Tennesee farmers, and then, before the Iowa caucus, he was also fond of Iowa farmers. So it is at best a wash and it increases food prices, making things tough on the poor. But it amounts to buying votes with taxpayer money, so what’s the problem?
See? We know this, too.
You need a different audience.
Chris.
Oh, yeah. Regarding the Hue massacres. I made a serious attempt back about the late Eighties to find any liberal who would admit knowing about it, much less who would condemn it. Including various antiwar organizations.
It is not a matter of arguing one way or another on the war. It’s a matter of insisting My Lai exemplifies the US effort and that Hue…hey, look, a squirrel! The issue of Hue, aside from the omelet, is how the anti-war and liberals thought about such things. Which is the point.
Richard, even if we take everything you say regarding climate change at face value – and people shouldn’t, not without far better links, as well as perspective from science sites such as Ars Technica – it still doesn’t change the blatantly false things that people like James Inhofe say about climate change. And let’s be really clear that, whatever your position on climate change is, these are lies even by Neo-neocon’s criteria – things like Inhofe claiming the satellite record showed no temperature change when the opposite was true.
As for Hue, I can’t speak for what you did or didn’t find in the late 80’s, but whatever people did or did or didn’t say about it, it was undeniable that the Communists did lots of other terrible crap, just as it was undeniable that there were hawkish Democrats like Scoop Jackson or Charlie Wilson who were staunch opponents of Communism.
I’ll even finish your sentence for you: “My Lai exemplifies the US effort because it was our soldiers doing the slaughter, and Hue was one more item on a long list of terrible things that Communists did… but the mere existence of Hue didn’t actually address the tactical problems of having US soldiers fight in a proxy war, or the fatigue that was setting in by having the mess of Vietnam representing the Cold War as a whole.” (Next time you get pissed off about US Vietnam policy, you might stop to ask yourself if Reagan would have been able to move public opinion the way he did if there hadn’t been a ~5 year gap between the end of Vietnam and his election.)
All that said, you’re more than welcome to have the last word on this thread – one argument at a time is enough for me, and I’m more interested in what Neo-neocon’s saying than exchanging talking points with you.
Chris,
This is not MY definition of lying, this is THE definition of lying: a necessary element of lying is that you either must know that what you are stating is untrue, or you must have purposely left yourself ignorant of something and are stating it as a fact (in that latter case, you are lying about the fact that you know something when you are just guessing).
Lying is not the same as merely being mistaken or misinformed. Opinions themselves are not lies, if honestly held and stated. They cannot be.
So lies are about facts known to be untrue by the speaker/writer. The “facts” can even be something like the fact that you hold opinion A when in fact you hold opinion B (a fact about what opinion you hold; the opinion itself isn’t the lie). Or the “fact” can be that you looked something up when in fact you are just guessing at it.
As far as my “ignorance” goes—I was not ignorant before. I merely (prior to 2001) got my “facts” from liberal sources such as the NY Times, the Boston Globe, and the New Yorker, all of which I read very regularly. I was as well-informed, or more well-informed, than the vast majority of liberals. I consider myself as having been typical of a person who’s moderately well-informed without being a new junkie. “Doing my homework” post 9/11 meant reading much more intensively, and reading publications on the right as well (I always had read publications on the left).
And the advent of the internet allowed me to check the “facts” in those sources with original sources, far more easily than before. For example, if someone gave a speech, and newspapers wrote about it, then when I was able to check out the actual text of the speech online, I found to my surprise that the liberal papers constantly misrepresented what the person was saying, offering misleading truncated quotes and outright misquotes that favored the liberal “narrative” du jour rather than what had actually been said. The same thing sometimes happened in the media on the right (with a slant favoring the right, of course), but I noticed very much to my surprise that it happened far less often on the right. These “facts” (what a person had actually said in a speech, for example) were unlike a massacre in a far-off land that of course I had not personally witnessed, but about which we must all rely on secondary sources for reports. The lies I’m talking about—the constant, reprehensible lies on the left—were about facts that I actually could ascertain much more easily.
You mention that I haven’t made “a similar pushback against several mainstream conservative complaints that Congress and their staff have some sort of Obamacare exemption.” This blog is not a fact-check service. I haven’t discussed the congressional “exemptions” at all—haven’t taken either side—because I don’t consider it a major issue either way. There are plenty of other topics I haven’t discussed before because they do not particularly interest me. I prefer to take up the larger issues of Obamacare, of which there are plenty.
But the way you mention the Obamacare “exemption” issue and the fact that I should have offered “a similar pushback” against the conservative complaints about it indicates you think those complaints are false or wrong or even perhaps lies. Of course, I had previously been aware before that one side was saying one thing about it and one saying another, but I hadn’t read about it in enough depth to have an opinion on which side was more correct.
But since you mentioned it (although I have no intention of writing posts to order), I’ll say that if I were to write about it in-depth I’d follow my usual procedure, which is to research it first to try to find out what’s true and what isn’t. And a very quick perusal just now of the information indicates to me that the truth is somewhere in-between “yes, they have exemptions” and “no, they don’t have exemptions.” It’s actually a pretty technical subject, so in this case I don’t actually think most people on either side are lying in the sense of saying something they know is untrue, because I don’t think most people actually understand it too well (not that I have a perfect understanding of it, either).
But here’s my take.
To begin with, ordinary citizens who have employment-based insurance are welcome to go on the exchanges, but they either must pay full price, or prove that their premiums are “unaffordable” (or “inadequate,” which is irrelevant to the issue about Congress). The definition of “unaffordable” is premiums costing more than 9.5% of incomes. But premiums are calculated as though they’re only buying premiums for a single person (even if they’re buying insurance for a family, at higher premium levels) (this information is here, among other places).
Now to the next step: comparing what’s going on with Congress and staff to what’s going on with most people who get employer-based insurance but go on the exchanges anyway. It’s very complex, and most people (on either side) have not read the fine print, I strongly suspect. But as this article (which is the best I could find in a quick look for articles about the issue) states:
In other words, as best I can tell: Congress and staffers are not allowed to stay on their employer plan because they are forced by the law they passed to go on the exchanges. But they don’t have to abide by the usual rules of the exchanges; they get the best of both worlds: employer subsidies while on the exchanges. If they didn’t have this special “exemption” from the usual rules about what their incomes vs. premiums would need to be in order to be allowed to shop on the exchanges in the first place, then it is pretty clear that their incomes would be high enough and premiums low enough that they would not qualify for subsidies on the exchanges and would instead have to pay full price. So, they are special: sort-of kind-of on the exchanges but also getting their employer contributions as well. It’s a hybrid situation that allows them to be on the exchanges while still getting subsidies from their employer (which in their case is the federal government) and not having to abide by the income/premium restrictions that other ordinary citizens must follow.
I hope you understand what I’m writing here; as I said, it’s quite complicated and techical. If I tried to explain more fully I’d be writing for hours, trust me. The gist of it is this: I don’t think either side is lying (intentionally stating what they know to be false)—because I think hardly any pundits really understand the rule. But I think the Republicans are actually a bit closer to the truth in the sense that Congress is treated differently because Congress and staffers are getting some special treatment on the exchanges. On the other hand, the fact that they are forced to go on the exchanges in the first place rather than having the choice of keeping their employment-based insurance means they have fewer choices than most Americans with employer-based insurance, not more choices. So it’s a very strangely mixed bag.
This is not a good example of lying on either side, IMHO. And although now I’ve done enough research (because I became curious) to write a post about it, I still don’t feel inclined to, because I still think it’s a minor and ultimately less-than-interesting issue.
To “Chris”:
There were no “mistakes” in my post.
That is what the New York State Obamacare Exchange told me. My reading comprehension is as excellent as it ever was.
Peace out, Comrade.
Chris.
Liberals had no more interest in the evils of the VC/NVA than they did in the evils of Stalin or Pol Pot. Tried to find some libs to discuss Pol Pot, too. Waste of time. Hue was one more example.
Let me say I hit campus in 62, and enlisted in 69, and have followed military affairs before and since. And, for various reasons, been associated with the lib/left organizations off and on since then. So I’m wasn’t doing history, I was doing witnessing.
I should have said that first. Giving people enough rope isn’t actually fair.
As to climate change, the models all call for increases. So not only do we not have increases, which means no warming, the models on which we’re supposed to rely to go along with the libs’desired massive transformation of the economy and society are shown to be false. Surprise.
Ms. Neo-neocon-
W/r/t Congressional staff, you’ve got it about 90% right – I suggest you read up on Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog, among other sources for the rest of the story. Where you’re missing some detail is that Congress + staffers are not the only people who have been moved from an employer plan to an exchange while retaining at least some of the cash that their employers used to provide for insurance as a subsidy – to do otherwise would be an effective pay cut, since part of what an employee used to get for services rendered would be removed. (Some of these employee moves to exchanges occurred in private industry and predated Obamacare.)
But there certainly is a ton of lying from any Republican that embraced the “full Vitter” amendment. Ben Carson’s Values Voter speech has a fairly prominent version of this (around 14:30) where he claims that the executive and legislative branch exempted themselves from Obamacare… when in fact the opposite is true.
And what you’ve said above – that hardly any pundits really understand the rule – isn’t actually true either. Plenty of pundits do understand exactly what’s going on with the Vitter rule, whether we’re talking Matt Yglesias and Dave Weigel at Slate, or Klein at the WaPo, or Reihan Salam and Robert Costa at the National Review. it’s clear that the truth isn’t getting out through conservative news outlets due to either ignorance or disinterest in telling the truth, because that gets in the way of the larger narrative that conservatives are trying to sell (as Beverly shows us above) that the ACA is all about control.
There are legitimate questions and differences of opinion people can and should have on Obamacare – whether the number of people whose rates fall and benefits improve will outnumber those who find the opposite is true, and, assuming that the first scenario does come to pass, whether it’s a legitimate function of the government to improve coverage for many Americans by raising the costs for a few. But that’s all been swept aside in the sturm und drang about how Obamacare is basically a Communist takeover of the country.
You again state that purposefully misstating a fact is the only kind of lie, but this is simply not the case. Narratives can be lies, even if they contain some elements of truth and some pieces of opinion. Once upon a time large numbers of people sincerely believed that slavery was a force for good. There were those back in the day who called that first statement a lie, and had volumes of religious, economic and other arguments to back them up. I personally have no problem calling it a lie today, and I assume that holds true for you as well… but in doing so, you have to recognize that you’re calling something bigger than a mere misstatement of fact a lie.
As for the ongoing thread about your personal conversion to conservatism, I’m not sure what else to say. For all that you claim to have been well read, you seem to have picked up on only a very limited part of the story, one that fit your predefined liberal view of the world. You blame the “liberal” media for this, but there were plenty of people that read the NYT before the rise of Fox News who saw support there for their conservative viewpoints.
And today you blame the liberal media for liberal political success, but seem blind to how conservative falsehoods (as described above with Carson) and narratives feed into your existing conservative bias, and conservative’s inability not to make foolish political mistakes. Case in point, for all that you repeatedly call Obama an Alinskyite, based on people he worked with as a community organizer, it never seems to occur to you that in the recent government shutdown, it was the right wing that was engaging in Alinsky-derived political theater to allow a minority to disrupt the established political order.
So, again, while I appreciate the honesty you showed with Beverly above, I hope you continue to open your mind a bit more, and recognize that switching one blinkered political perspective for another isn’t a true improvement.
Beverly, if you believe that there were no mistakes in your post, it’s interesting that you’re more interested in arguing it with me, rather than Neo-neocon, who was the one who actually corrected your statement.
I’m sure you won’t agree with me on this, but I see someone whose rage at the left far outweighs her interest in the facts. I believe this is true of many, many conservatives today – hence the shutdown – but it’s very much worth your time to question how good a strategy this is, both for the right and for the country as a whole.
Chris.
If a narrative can be a lie, there’s always the Zimmerman-Martin narrative.
Not to mention the Roderick Scott-Chris Cervini narrative. (ed. The what?)
Chris:
The snark is uncalled for.
Note that I did NOT suggest Beverly was making a “mistake.” I wrote:
“I don’t know why the site is giving you that information, but it’s not correct. Perhaps it’s because the sites are such a mess. ”
That suggests the website was in error, not Beverly. Your original comment said, “you corrected the mistakes in her post while…” You didn’t say the mistakes were hers, either, but she took it that way, which is certainly a reasonable interpretation because you left it vague as to who was making the “mistakes” (“mistakes in her post”—no agent specified—but your phrase comes closer to blaming her for the mistakes than blaming the website).
So instead of assuring her you didn’t mean she made the mistakes—which you certainly should have done, considering how FUBARed-up the websites are—you come back with another and more insulting accusation:
“I see someone whose rage at the left far outweighs her interest in the facts.”
Unwarranted assumption, and lacking compassion for a person getting some very frightening information from the government website, and justifiably angry.
Where’s your liberal compassion, man?
Then you go on to generalize from your already-suspect assumption about Beverly, and you write:
“I believe this is true of many, many conservatives today — hence the shutdown — but it’s very much worth your time to question how good a strategy this is, both for the right and for the country as a whole.”
So high and mighty and above-it-all!
Beverly’s post showed no lack of interest in the facts. In fact, she is desperately trying to obtain the facts, and getting possibly incorrect and very frightening information.
As I discussed with you already ad nauseum in this thread, it has been my experience (starting even back when I was a liberal, when I expanded my reading post-9/11) that it is actually the left that more often has very little interest in the facts if the facts disrupt the narrative. “Fake but accurate” :-).
I think that, as you say, “it’s very much worth your time to question how good a strategy this is, both for the
right[left] and for the country as a whole.”Actually, though, it’s a great strategy for the left; I already know that. Because as propaganda, it works.
Ms. Neo-neocon-
To be clear – I do think Beverly, and not the website, was at fault. I’m quite positive about this because not only did she get the Medicare eligibility rate wrong (last I checked, it was $750/month, not $953/month – the later figure is for a couple) but she failed to note that the NY state Medicaid site clearly states all of these figures are for 2013. As you pointed out, the rates are changing for 2014. That error is on her, since the right data is trivial to find out.
And while you try to taunt me with appeals to “liberal compassion”, it is the case that she’s screaming in caps about the Liars and making attacks on the non-working poor. I feel quite comfortable calling that rage, as well as her “Comrade” attack on me. Between Beverly and myself, one of us is making ad hominem attacks, and one of us is not. Me pointing that out has nothing to do with compassion, or lack thereof.
You close by taunting me with the “fake but accurate” tag, but I’ve pointed out numerous misstatements made by prominent conservatives such as Ben Carson and James Inhofe which have gone unremarked on by you.
Meanwhile, the posts you point to as proof of the left’s mendacity are actually surprisingly vague on sourced details, and long on narrative observations. If you honestly believe that liberals and Democrats are lying their asses off, please do provide some further hard details – preferably with links – rather than endless recitations of your opinion that Obama is an Orwellian and Alinskyite president. As it is, you seem to be supporting an increasingly fractious and failing political movement, huddled together on insular websites, assuring each other that it’s all the media/academy/entertainment complex’s fault, rather than standing up and arguing these “real facts” you’re so proud of to the wider world.
Let me close with a direct challenge – where is the right-wing answer to Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog site? For all you complain about the left’s “fake but accurate” facts, I have yet to see anywhere that’s pointed out significant numbers of mistakes in his team’s reporting. In fact, you yourself were quick to link to is reporting on the failures of many state exchanges… although not his debunking of preferred conservative candidates like Paul Ryan, interestingly enough. (Although, again, I’ve seen no serious attempt to show that the latter articles are less accurate than the former.) On the right, on the other hand, the closest thing I’ve been able to find is National Review’s Agenda website, which does have credible spokesmen in the form of Avik Roy and Reihan Salam… but also has a real lack of hard data compared to Klein’s work, instead relying on selected (and arguably cherrypicked) bits of academic studies to suggest that there might possibly be conservative alternatives to Obamacare. (Alternatives that virtually no elected conservatives seem interested in advancing.)
In short, your propaganda claim against the left wing and mainstream media doesn’t look very strong when your preferred media sources have no answer to a data-driven mainstream media site (let alone actual left-wing media sites, such as Mother Jones or Think Progress.)
Chris:
So, the onus is on Beverly to find exactly the right site? If you go to the NY State website for Medicaid (a link you provided), which it would seem logical to visit to find the current information, the information there is outdated re Obamacare even though it reads to the casual observer as though it is current information and relevant to Obamacare (after all, it says 2013). It’s understandable that a person wouldn’t know that the information was outdated regarding Obamacare (and the website itself gives no indication of it) unless that person already knew a lot about how Obamacare works.
As for her error in reading the figures there re single people vs. families: I didn’t say Beverly had not made any errors—merely that the Obamacare website might be the source of misinformation, especially since everyone agrees it’s not working right. And then I gave her what I thought was the correct information. Meanwhile, you attack her motivation to find the truth. Someone can make an error while nevertheless trying to find the truth, so your comment was unnecessary and uncalled-for snark.
As far as the rest of your comment to me goes, of course you can point to people on the left who are stating facts correctly and people on the right who are not, and vice versa. The discussion we were having was not about whether this or that person was correct—no one said there weren’t people each side who are correct about facts and people on each side who are incorrect (and even lying). I was talking about pundits and the media on left and right as a whole, and which group is incorrect more frequently about its facts, and the particular example I gave had to do with quoting people properly.
I have neither the time nor the inclination to jump through hoops you set up that are irrelevant to what I’m saying: “prove this particular person on the left is wrong in his facts,” etc. etc.—when I never even said that that person was wrong about that particular thing in the first place. It’s irrelevant to what I was saying.
Just to remind you: the specific thing I did cite was that when I did research in the first few years post-9/11, over and over I discovered that the left misquoted people more than the right did, in order to make political points (and often got other facts wrong—I didn’t say what they were, but if you read my “A mind is a difficult thing to change” series you’ll find a lengthy discussion of them, particular in the post-9/11 parts of it). That has nothing whatsoever to do with Ezra Klein’s columns about Obamacare or the economy.
You are free to disagree with my analysis of which side is more often right or wrong, or lying; I would expect you to disagree. But don’t misstate what I’ve actually been discussing.
If you were offering me an advance and a book contract to present “the conservative challenge to Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog site” I might try to take up that challenge—although I doubt it, because it would require about a year of heavy research to write it properly. Short of that offer on your part, I’m going to decline to take on that task. I have no interest in jumping through hoops completely of your devising; when have I ever said Ezra Klein is wrong about number crunching?
I have, however, criticized Ezra Klein on occasion, but not because he’s a liar (I do not think he is), nor because he’s bad at number crunching (which I’ve also never said). Nor have I criticized his facts, at least not that I can recall. I’ve critiqued him however, about his understanding of certain philosophical/historical/political concepts, not about figures or facts. For an example of what I mean, see this.
I have written many thousands of words explaining some of the lies from the left that I found that perturbed me in the years post-9/11, and I’ve written countless posts here knocking down lies on the left as well as some on the right. I don’t feel there is any need to provide you with more, on command.
Ms. Neo-neocon-
Working from the top of your comment downward, anyone trying to purchase healthcare on the ACA exchanges is, by definition, trying to do so for 2014 – the policies don’t kick in until then. So yes, there is some reason to think that she should have been looking for the 2014 data. Furthermore, the Medicare expanded coverage has been widely reported for years – perhaps you find it unreasonable that I expect Beverly to know such information, or to be able to track it down, but I don’t. Most of your commentary re: Beverly boils down to giving her the benefit of the doubt, but I frankly see no reason to do so when she engages in ad hom attacks. Your mileage may vary.
As for the rest of your post, you are, of course, free to engage what I’m saying, or not, as you see fit. You are more than entitled to say that your work stands on its own, and that you’re under no obligation to address any specific points I’m making.
That said, what I assume is the whole point of your website is to advance a particular thesis or worldview. And if someone comes along and points out that your argument isn’t particularly good, I assume you’d want to address that – otherwise, what’s the point of all the thousands of hours you’ve put into it thus far?
If these assumptions are wrong, or you find the counter-argument I’m making absurd on its face, then you should definitely ignore me. But I’m guessing neither is actually true, based on the effort you’ve put in to arguing against me thus far.
So I’ll just reiterate that the argument you’re trying to make is not actually all that rigorous.* And for all that you’re congratulating yourself for seeing through all that dastardly liberal propaganda (and I actually do agree that the warmed-over 60’s pseudo-intellectual East Coast professional worldview you previously adopted was weak tea), you’ve put yourself in the position of buying into at least as bogus a narrative on the conservative side.
* Case in point, the linked articles in your “Jenin, Jenin” post don’t actually make the narrative you say they do – they start off with an article from the unabashedly left-wing Guardian which states that 100 or more people may have been killed, but also clearly states that they haven’t been able to get into the refugee camp to verify those numbers. By the time you get to the NY Times, you’re quoting articles that match the official stories of the UN and the Israeli government… but at no point are you actually demonstrating that there was an unfair or inaccurate narrative in the mainstream US media.
Don’t think about Ezra Klein, or Reihan Salam, or Ben Carson, or anyone else that I’ve mentioned if you don’t want to. But do take a look at what you’ve written over the past month, or year, or few years, and ask yourself if there’s anything there that anyone who hadn’t already bought in to the Fox News mindset would find particularly compelling. If the media is as biased as you say it is, it should be fairly straightforward to present the “real” facts in a way that will sway those with a genuinely open mind. Conservatism’s general failure to do so over the past ~10 years is, almost unarguably, a strike against conservative ideology or conservatives themselves. And that’s a real problem when the most vocal conservative faction – the Tea Party – is quickly approaching a point where they’ll age out of the population, and has been unable to transmit their ideology to younger generations.
Then again, maybe you’re just a few months, or a year away from huge electoral success, and you can prove me wrong that way.
Good luck with that.
“fox news mindset”
Another one of those THINGS which are supposed to mean something completely without evidence. Dropped into the punchbowl, so to speak.
WRT Jenin, if anybody still remembers it, they remember an IDF massacre. Rowing back the story later was a butt-covering tactic which, as was predictable, didn’t affect the desired result.
If it doesn’t work exactly the way chris says it will, he’ll tell Obama to bring another gun to the knife fight. That will solve things on healthcare
If the media is as biased as you say it is, it should be fairly straightforward to present the “real” facts in a way that will sway those with a genuinely open mind.
If the media is as Leftist deceiving propagandists as we all say it is, it shouldn’t be possible to find zombie eaters of the media propaganda who have an “open mind” to begin with. Since by definition anyone able to think outside the media propaganda, would have stopped believing in it by now. Thus, they no longer need convincing, since those that can think, will think for themselves, those that cannot, have to be told by the zombie media what is true first.
Chris:
I happened to come across an article that illustrates the left’s distortion of the points a writer on the right has made, and that writer’s response (the subject is whether Obamacare will lower or raise health care costs).
As I said before, I’ve taken more than enough time to respond to you. But I was doing research connected with another post today, and came across the article, and thought it relevant to the discussion here.
Were the people on the left who criticized Conover’s original article so heavily (calling it stupid, etc.) and misconstrued what it was actually claiming—were they experiencing a bona fide misunderstanding? Or were they purposely lying about the article? I don’t know in this case; I suspect a bit of each, depending on the authors.
That has nothing to do with whether they think Obamacare is good or bad, by the way. I’m talking about misrepresenting or misunderstanding what Conover was actually saying in his article.
Ms. Neo-neocon-
I’m not entirely sure why you think that “the left” (which in this case is actually a spread of writers, none of whom can be said to generally represent “the left” in the way that, say, Fox News or Glenn Beck might represent “the right”) is distorting Conover’s article.
Conover’s article is poorly written, and has some egregious logical errors that jumped out at me before I even read the critiques at the bottom of the article. In essence, Conover argues that:
1. Obama said premiums would be lowered by $2,500 per family uner the ACA.
2. Conover states that health spending will go up by $7,450 per family.
3. Conover’s post is clearly structured to imply that the premium quote by Obama is a lie, and the truth is that costs won’t go down by X amount, but will actually go up by 3X.
3a. Specifically, note Conover’s quote of the President, immediately followed by “Unfortunately…” which generally implies a direct logical contradiction. Furthermore, Conover’s chart clearly makes a direct and opposing distinction between Obama’s “Promise” and Conover’s “Reality”.
4. Conover’s argument is basically flawed because there’s a substantial difference between what a family sees in their premiums – that is, the money that they pay directly to insurance companies for their family’s health care – and the overall rise spending that the government sees from adding tens of millions of people to Medicare. The former – at least in theory – can go down due to the cost control measures in the ACA, while the latter is directly attributable to the huge coverage increases seen in the ACA. Conover doesn’t clearly recognize this difference until he’s rightly called out on it by Think Progress, Wonkette, Brad DeLong et al., at which point he tries to bring in some of the nuance missing from his original post.
5. Now, that said, some of the critiques of Conover have problems in and of themselves. The economist interviewed by Think Progress doesn’t explain his point as clearly as he could, and Avik Roy at the Corner rightly dings him for it. On the other hand, Roy’s own argument is not as rock solid as he suggests – there’s at least some arguments from ACA supporters that the number covered by the health care system can go up without causing prices to also rise, given how much inefficiency the system currently supports. All of which is to say, there’s a huge amount of uncertainty involved here, as even conservative writers like Salam and liberals like Klein will tell you. In light of that, Conover isn’t to be condemned for saying the ACA won’t work, but for making such a flawed ans simplistic attack on it.
All of that said, it is interesting that you bring this up as an example of “the left” distorting “the right”, given that – as I’ve tried to show above – there’s not actually that much distortion going on. You may not agree, of course, but I do see this as proof that the misunderstanding and misrepresenting that’s going on here is on your own part, Neo, where your gut reaction at this point is to see a conservative writer squawking that he’s been misrepresented, and instinctively give him the benefit of the doubt, regardless of the actual facts of the case.
That said, I do appreciate you bringing this up as a concrete example for us to discuss.
Chris:
Your first sentence is incredibly funny, I assume unintentionally so.
When I write “the left” it’s a shorthand for the left, liberals, progressives, socialists—in short, anyone not the right. I thought it should have been understood that I don’t mean they are all on completely or even substantially the same page; of course there is variety, and I don’t have to spell that point out every time I refer to that side.
You, however, explicitly indicate a greater lack of variety on the right. Glenn Beck and Fox News representing some monolithic right—it is to laugh!! You really can’t have done much reading on the right if you think it’s anything but riven with disagreement and factions.
But to get back to the substance of your argument–
I’m glad you put that phrase “at least in theory” after the words “cost control measures in the ACA.” Because I don’t even think most liberals believe that’s actually what will happen.
But more to the point, the misunderstanding/misrepresentation by Conover’s critics that I’m referring to concerns what he meant by using those figures about the savings and cost per family (as Avik Roy describes). Granted, Conover’s was not a particularly well-written piece—but really, it was still fairly clear what he meant: he was making fun of Obama.
This is what Conover said in the original piece:
In other words—Conover was conducting a sort of thought experiment to help show people how much a $621 billion increase actually is, using the family of 4 as a sort of “simplistic” metaphor (following Obama’s lead), a way for Conover to help the reader conceptualize the magnitude of the rise in cost involved. He further asserts that it is unrealistic to think this can be done while simultaneously and substantially lowering premiums for people across-the-board.
Now, a person can disagree with that point and argue how realistic or unrealistic it is (for example, that other cost-saving measures will offset it, or that the new costs will be borne in other ways and by other entities than consumers). But as Arik Roy writes, Conover was merely “employing the same arithmetic” as Obama had, to show how very unlikely Obama’s claim was to be true because of the magnitude of the gap, and to mock its simplistic nature at the same time.
Both Roy and Conover also rightly point out the double standards of the writers who criticize Conover for using the method (even though he used it sarcastically, acknowledging it was Obama’s method and a very simplistic one) and not criticizing Obama for using it seriously in the first place!
I now probably have to bow out of this interesting discussion due to time constraints. It I don’t respond again, it will be for that reason. I engaged with you for this long because I think that, despite your snark, you’ve been an interesting visitor raising some questions worth discussing.
Ms. Neo-neocon-
It is, as ever, entirely your call as to how much to respond to what I’m writing. That said, some relevant points:
– If you want to refer to a select number of writers on the left, you might do better to say so rather than just saying “the left”. Aside from the fact that I don’t know if Wonkette actually qualifies as a left-wing site (you do say “the left” is everyone not on “the right”, but I’m not sure that’s a particularly accurate partition… or a particularly useful one from a political standpoint), it does seem to be the case, based on other articles on this site, that you do lump everyone in the “the left” into a homogenous group. (See, for example, your health care post today where you put Obama and a USA Today writer into the same bucket.)
– I do indeed explicitly indicate a greater lack of variety on the right. For evidence of this, please do take a look at a 2010 Pew poll on media consumption by political party, which shows that 70% of Republicans are regular or occasional viewers of Fox News… a number that jumps to 80% when you narrow the focus to conservative Republicans. I have seen no similar data which points out anything that so unites liberals and/or Democrats. (As for Glenn Beck, it’s worth pointing out that, at the time of this poll, he was actually on Fox News.)
– I think most liberals believe that cost control measures will occur with the ACA – I know I do. There’s no hard data on this yet, unfortunately, but one interesting data point comes to us from this Fox News columnist, who points out that the New York state plan she selected will save her family approximately $400 a year less in premiums and $5000(!) a year less in deductables. I suspect that this kind of story will be more common than those where people pay more money for fewer benefits, but I freely admit it’s not something either side can objectively prove at the moment.
– You say that the gist of Conover’s piece was that he was making fun of Obama, and pointing out how simplistic the President’s math was on this issue. As for the second point, as the Fox News columnist showed, the numbers aren’t that crazy when you factor in lower deductibles. And as for the first point, that’s not actually the case – as I described in detail in point 3a of my last comment, Conover’s argument – his leading paragraph (which you’ve conveniently cut out) – was attempting to show a false contradiction between Obama’s remarks and the increased costs of expanding Medicare coverage.
Moreover, if you take a look at what his critics were saying, it’s clear that they were criticizing that exact false contradiction – take a look at Brad DeLong’s blog entry, for example, which states up front “AEI’s Chris Conover claims that, because total national health spending is going to be higher than baseline as a result of the ACA, it is not possible for the premiums paid by those who purchase health insurance to be going down as a result of the ACA.”
Simply put, you, Roy, and Conover are all trying to defend Conover from attacks that nobody was making, and as such, your accusations that people are misrepresenting him don’t stand up to scrutiny. That said, it is interesting, and instructive, that you continue to believe this is the case, despite the counter-arguments I’ve made.