Barack Gump

Barack Gump: Dreadful is as dreadful does

LeRoy Goldman
The Shadow Knows

Published: Sunday, July 15, 2012 at 4:30 a.m.

I have been an advocate for health care reform since 1971 when I was the staff director of the U.S. Senate Health Subcommittee. I believe Its enactment is more urgently necessary now than it was then, as the spiraling costs of Medicare and Medicaid threaten to capsize the American economy. But the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) that has withstood court challenge is not reform. It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It’s a case study in the arrogance of power laden with naivete and stupidity.

Just prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling, Robert Samuelson, a brilliant and nonpartisan op-ed columnist for The Washington Post, penned, “The Folly of Obamacare.” Samuelson is no right-wing nut, no apologist for the Republicans, no tea party fellow traveler. He was educated at Harvard, and has written on business and economics for the Post and Newsweek. He does not vote in elections for fear that it might compromise his impartiality as a writer.

He calls the ACA “dreadful public policy.” Here’s why:

First, Samuelson argues that the ACA increases uncertainty and decreases confidence when the recovery from the Great Recession requires just the opposite. What he means is that the law is so complex that people don’t know where they will get insurance or how much it will cost.

Second, he states that the ACA discourages job creation by raising the price of hiring. Requiring employers to purchase health insurance for some workers makes them more expensive. And because the employer mandate in the law exempts firms with fewer than 50 employees, there is a significant incentive for firms to stop hiring at 49.

Third, Samuelson argues that the ACA exacerbates the nation’s main problem — uncontrolled health spending. The government’s own actuaries forecast that health care costs will rise from 17.9 percent of GDP in 2010 to 19.6 percent by 2021.

Fourth, Samuelson argues that the ACA will worsen the federal budget problem. Medicare and Medicaid will soon consume one-third of the entire federal budget.

And lastly, he points out that the ACA discriminates against the young in favor of the old. It does this by forcing some young people to buy health insurance at artificially high premiums in order to pay for the care of older, sicker people. In other words, the ACA takes the problem imbedded in Medicare and Social Security and doubles down on it.

And what about the political process by which this law was written and passed? Barack Obama was swept into office on his promise of hope and change. It was the promise of a new day — the end of the gridlock and polarization in Washington.

The president’s opening move on the Washington chessboard was health care reform. But his move gave lie to his promise and was ill-fated.

What should he have done? Consistent with his promise to change Washington, he should have brought together all of the Democrats and Republicans from the health committees on the Hill and laid before them a set of legislative specifications for this mammoth undertaking. Those specs should have had reform of Medicare and Medicaid as their centerpiece.

Then he should have challenged the Republicans to improve his proposal. For example, he should have invited them to add tort reform to the proposal. That would have made clear to them and to the nation that a bill of this magnitude had to have bipartisan support.

Now don’t give me this “But the GOP wouldn’t play ball” malarkey. In 2009, the tea partyers hadn’t yet come to power in the House of Representatives — Obama hadn’t yet handed them their victory.

But Obama did none of the aforementioned. It was an inexcusable strategic blunder by a neophyte who emasculated his signature program before the battle was joined. It’s what happens when you send an amateur to do a professional’s job. And then he sealed the bill’s fate. He turned the job of writing it over to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

And what did they do? They did the same old, same old. They slammed the door in the Republicans’ face and wrote their own bills. And then they found they could not muster enough Democratic votes to get them passed. And so they did what Washington does: They sold their souls to the devil. They went to the health industry lobbyists and let them write a bill to their own liking in order to get the votes needed to pass it. Thus, a bill intended to reform the health care industry became one the industry wrote.

And after 15 months of this tortured nightmare, the administration and the Democrats were cornered. Either they had to lie and say the bill was just what the doctored ordered, or they faced defeat of the president’s signature legislative initiative. Of course, they chose the former.

The stupidity of all of this is mind numbing — all the more so given the fact that the president had Joe Biden, Rahm Emanuel, Tom Daschle and Bill Clinton advising him.

Thus, the bill passes with no bipartisan support — none. During its consideration, the nation is torn in half over something no one understands. And, since its enactment, neither the president nor the Democrats will give voice to the monstrosity that is the ACA. They won’t because they know the ACA is fatally flawed and politically toxic.

And two years after the president was swept into office with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, the tea party chickens come home to roost on Capitol Hill. Obama’s blunder has given birth to those who will now stop at nothing to thwart him. In truth, this is a story so surreal that no one would believe it, except for the fact that it’s true.

So what’s the bottom line? The ACA masquerades as health care reform. It isn’t. It was written by the industry that it was supposed to transform — the health insurance companies, Big Pharma, the hospitals and organized medicine. The ACA masquerades as the solution to runaway medical costs. It isn’t. It will accelerate the explosive growth of Medicare and Medicaid, and that will strangle the federal budget and the budgets of the several states.

Given the tortured and polarized process by which it was created, it can’t be fixed. It’s got to be killed, and there is a way to do it. If the GOP retains control of the House, captures the Senate, and Mitt Romney is elected, the ACA can be thrown on to the rubbish heap of history.

But wait, you say, even if the Republicans take control of the Senate, they won’t have the 60 votes necessary to shut down a filibuster. Yes, you’re right. But there is a legislative process, called reconciliation, that applies to tax legislation and that only requires a simple majority, 51 votes. It grew out of our passage of the Budget Act in 1974. A reconciliation bill can’t be filibustered.

In the question period following a lecture I delivered at Blue Ridge Community College last January, I was asked how the Supreme Court would rule on Obamacare. I said I had no clue, but I believed that the side that lost the case would be the beneficiary in the November election.

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