Dirigo for Everyone

[Winter_123]

Obama endorsing a grab-bag approach to salvage Obamacare.

What a mess.

Obama Endorses Plan to Let States Opt Out of U.S. Health Law - Businessweek

 

[HealthGuy]

Wtf is really going on here?

 

[TxOnline]

"The law has a provision that lets states set up their own programs in 2017"

I copied this from the article that Winter posted.
Thanks, Winter!
Don't know HOW you (& others) find all of these articles (and keep up with it all). But, you keep ME up-to-date (when I don't have time to search, watch news, etc.).

My question:
What about states setting up their OWN programs by 2014?

2017 seems to be a bit LATE in their "game".

 

[HealthGuy]

Winter: Please provide the analysis as you do well...What is Obama really attempting to do with his high and mighty edict here? Deconstruct his health bill?

 

[Yagents]

Alan Katz just put out a blog on this topic:

President Obama Endorses Earlier State Opt-Out of PPACA « The Alan Katz Health Care Reform Blog

 

[somarco]

Passing the baton to the states does nothing to make health care, or health insurance, more affordable.

This is one mucked up fess.

 

[Ann H]

States just exercised power over Obama by suing, by asking HHS for waivers, by asking HHS to restructure the requirements for exchanges, and by passing legislation to make Obamacare illegal in their state(s). Obama is giving all 57 of them the opportunity to mess up their own style of health care reform, then he can blame it on them when his federal plan doesn't work. Nice blame shifting. Nice. Very well done. If they don't take the bait, he can say, "See, they don't have any answers, they can only say 'No' to my answers!"

 

[Winter_123]

Winter: Please provide the analysis as you do well...What is Obama really attempting to do with his high and mighty edict here? Deconstruct his health bill?

The larger picture is that it is a mess, and therefore one should guard against assigning too much strategy to it. A snake writhes around after having been run over. Maybe the snake is following a recovery plan, maybe not. He simply rammed something through without legislative and popular support that is being regurgitated up by congress, the courts and the people. He had some good luck outmaneuvering the republicans over a year ago but that did not build support. Just got him to make some good speeches until reality set in.

Shorter term though the best he can do is to preserve his legacy as being the president who implemented a national health care plan and then market that to his base as well in 2012. And, then pray like hell that neither the dems or the public remember that his plan, whatever that is/was got completely trashed.

If he can get the republicans to buy into something then he can duck out of the national mandate thing at some point and avoid a shellacking in the courts (and lets keep in mind again that it is no-win for him. He takes a shellacking if he loses in court and an even bigger shellacking if he wins and uses that as authority to implement something congress does not want to fund and the people don't want).

Obama is a bright guy but he is a socialist and all this fiscal and marketplace stuff does not come natural for him. He is powerful as long as he has goodies to hand out but if that stops, his power stops and we are there. Going back a couple years now, I have said that in the end, once Obama gets confronted with some of this, he will become a smarter socialist and discover that he really doesnt need or want some of what he has bitten off.

The smarter socialist that he is becoming will discover that he can make this whole thing look like a state-run, free-market program but put so many federal hooks, penalties, and incentives into it is basically a federal program- except when the costs get really nasty and are still rising it becomes the fault of the states and their burden too. Why the hell he is frigging around with mandate and all of that just to bite off a fight with 80% of America on this mandate thing when he could get there from another angle is and has always been beyond me. I think it is beyond him now too. Not workable but a smarter socialist can still get there- or rather that is his best chance. Problem is the states are tanking now and so are the feds. You don't necessarily get to go back and time in do it over again right or even another form of wrong. He has burned a lot of the public out on this.

Short anwer as to what Obama is up to: The pubs keep giving him victories to help him out when he is in trouble and that has worked beautifully for him several times. But he is scared as hell about going into the election with his four centerpiece programs being a complete and total flop: Health reform, job creation, reducing the national debt, and withdrawal from Afg. The only move he has left is to cave in to the republicans and the center and try to pass it off as bi-partisanship and see if he can get some points that way. Good luck with that.

It is not all bad for Obama. He started getting into a troubling little period there where he had no republicans to blame things on and people were getting tired of the George Bush routine. Thank God the republicans are back now so he can blame everything on them again.

My view anyway. Most likely I am wrong.

 

[HealthGuy]

Winter thanks for the further fleshing out of this mess....good stuff anyone else wanna take a stab on what is happening here?

 

[aheff]

Winter thanks for the further fleshing out of this mess....good stuff anyone else wanna take a stab on what is happening here?

Sure, here's my simplistic take. Obamacrap continues to be nibbled at and whittled down by states/congress/courts. In 2012, Obama gets reelected (his machine just too well-oiled and repugs don't have a strong candidate). Repugs take control on Senate. Obamacrap severely stalled at that point. It will suffer a slow death, with some of the BS kept in tact. I'm certain that I am wrong on much of the above.