Skip to main content

Passing the hot potato



It's sad when the Republicans take Kathleen Sebelius' resignation as a "victory."  From what I understand the Secretary of Health and Human Services was ready to leave at the end of the first term but stayed for the launch of the insurance exchanges.  As a result, she became the prime target for the Republican "oversight committee," which held her personally accountable for the "failed" launch of the exchanges.  To Sebelius' credit, she gutted out the launch, but was given a less than heroic endorsement for her efforts to resolve the website debacle.  It seemed the Obama administration had already tendered her resignation behind closed doors.

"Obamacare" has been a work in progress from day one, withstanding blistering attacks from all sides.  The Republican House voted no less than 50 times to repeal the historic act, and has voted to defund it in all the budgets it has presented.  Four years later, there appears to be no sign the Republicans will relent in their assault.  They have chosen to make it the centerpiece of the midterm elections, as they did in 2010.  Only problem now is that Americans have come to accept the ACA to a much larger degree.

The Republicans have had to rethink their strategy given that the exchanges yielded over 7 million enrollees.  It wasn't the unmitigated disaster they had imagined.  The program reached its revised goal after the poor roll out.  Medicaid expansion further added to the final enrollment count, reducing the total number of uninsured Americans to its lowest level since 2009.  Now, the GOP'ers are busily trying to cobble together an alternative health insurance program, which they can present to voters.

Their front man appears to be Bobby Jindal, who unveiled his plan after the close of the exchanges.  It seems to build on that proposed earlier by Republican Congressmen, who more or less cherry-picked from the ACA, taking those parts which they regarded as the least offensive, and added a few sour cherries of their own.  The only problem is that the ACA has been held up in the Supreme Court and is the law of the land, so unless the Republicans can turn over the Senate there is not much chance they will be able to enact their new health care vision. It would take 60 votes in the Senate to overturn the Affordable Care Act, which would mean they would have to win virtually every seat, a Promethean task to say the least.

In the meantime, the Republicans will try to block the administration's nominee, Sylvia Matthews Burwell, to replace Sebelius as HHS Secretary.  I assume the "nuclear option" is still in effect and all the Democrats need is a straight up vote on her nomination.  But, I'm sure the Republicans will use the opportunity to vent their ire for voter consumption.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

O Pioneers!

It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer.  Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions.  I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters.  Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs.  Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77.  I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not.  Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Colonel

Now with Colonel Roosevelt , the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud.  -- Janet Maslin -- NY Times . Let the discussion begin!