Of Torts and Obamacare

As usual I find myself locked into battles with some of my buddies on facebook over the ACA. Despite reports that health insurance premiums only rose 4 per cent in each of the past two years, my friends have posted audacious claims of 30 to 40 per cent spikes in premiums. These are the usual "personal" stories the Republicans like to indulge in so much these days, as if they have the "true" feel for the man in the street.

When I looked into the matter more closely I saw that the biggest spike in health insurance premiums occurred between 1999 and 2009. Health insurance rates rose a whopping 131 per cent over this ten year period, well in excess of any increases we have seen recently.

The cry then, as it has been for many years, is tort reform, despite no indication that it has worked in the states it has been implemented in, such as Texas. The Republicans believe the only problem with health care and health insurance is runaway lawsuits, even when the AMA and American Hospital Association have long singled out the inability to collect on uninsured and underinsured patients.

Several states addressed this issue by introducing individual insurance mandates. Notably, Massachusetts enacted individual mandates under Governor Romney in 2007. Funny enough, he got the idea from the Heritage Foundation, which had long championed individual mandates, but to hear his fellow GOP candidates rail against him in the 2012 Primaries, this was nothing less than "socialism," and the former governor soon found himself backpedaling on "Romneycare."

Of course, no one likes to have their ideas stolen by the other political party, but rather than claiming these ideas as their own, Republicans have disowned them all together, and tried to claim during the general election that what was good for 90 per cent of Americans was good enough for everyone and that somehow the hospitals could absorb these 10 per cent who insisted on using the emergency room for their health care.

It is hard to gauge yet whether "Obamacare" is working or not, but the slowing in health insurance premium increases would appear to indicate it is having a positive impact. This of course is the greatest fear of the Republicans, having spent so much time and money the past three years in their attempts to defeat the Affordable Care Act.

The GOP continues to flood television and the blogosphere with ads and memes decrying "Obamacare," hoping to unhinge Democratic incumbents in 40 states. The ads offer up the same old tropes, as the Republicans have yet to offer any alternative solutions (at least none that they admit to) other than their dear old tort reform.

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

Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan. Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose. Looks like only yesterday. Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

ShriftcatJanuary 13, 2014 at 11:22 PM
Quite so, James……
The Republicans were calling this program a 'train wreck' even before sign-up began. And so many of them, using the exact terminology…..almost as if had been written out for them by someone. How do you term something 'a train wreck' even before it has begun? Amazing clairvoyance?
James FergusonJanuary 14, 2014 at 8:16 AM
They've dug such a deep hole for themselves, especially with the economy picking up and more and more persons signing up in the state and federal exchanges. Even with so many Democratic Senate seats (21) up for grabs, I doubt the GOP will make any gains.

Dispatches from Vilnius

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