Now that Obamacare has opened disastrously, many on the right hope it will fail “under its own weight”. Not a chance. No government program has ever been ended just because it did not perform as sold and cost more than originally estimated. Social Security is paying out more than it takes in already. Medicaid and medicare are both breaking their budgets. No government program ever stays within budget over the long term. But though wishful thinking mixed with logic dictate the need to end Obamacare by those on the right, the left will not let go of their dream so easily.
With Obamacare, the current plan is implement as much as possible in a piecemeal manner. The trick is to effect change in the healthcare system without disturbing too many people at the same time. A famous experiment found that if a frog is thrown into scalding hot water, it will immediately try to jump out but if a frog is put in room temperature water and the water is slowly brought up in temperature, the frog will not jump out– even when boiling. We are the frogs and the administration is adjusting the heat source with every postponement of implementation. The administration needs to keep Obamacare intact until they get enough people in the system that more people feel threatened by the loss of Obamacare rather than the implementation of Obamacare. And every day that passes means more people losing their health care with no real chance of getting it back– despite Obama’s waiving of minimum requirements and Congresses desire to pass legislation to keep Obama’s “promise”.
Juan Williams confirmed the Obama administration’s thinking on how to save Obamacare. Williams stated the administration wants to get past the next 6-8 weeks and by then they feel the program will be functioning well enough for the media to quiet down about the web site. Meanwhile the base of the Democrat party will be signing up as many indigent and lower income people as possible so any attempt to stop or repeal Obamacare will be considered another attack on the poor by the right wing. And the media will have to pay attention to other “stories” at some point. Harry Reid’s hypocritical power grab in the Senate didn’t change the subject so Kerry “negotiated” a surrender with the Iranian government and Obama felt it had to be announced immediately. Now the press can discuss what a bad agreement it is and that the US gave Iran everything it wanted and got nothing in return. But they won’t be discussing Obamacare as the lead story.
Their plan came as no surprise to me. The Democrats are experts at the “slow roll”. They have time and time again avoided taking responsibility for failure by simply hunkering down to weather the storm of criticism, have their clandestine informants put out half a dozen different explanations of what transpired in a compliant media– effectively dividing their opposition about who was to blame, then wait for (or cause) a news cycle change to a new subject. The Democrats simply outlast the attention of the media and are therefore never held responsible for their wrong doings. Who was punished for phone tapping reporters? Who was punished for the IRS being used against the political opponents of the administration? How about “Fast and Furious”? Benghazi?
The simple fact is their technique works.
The upcoming elections will give the Democrats pretending to be “reporters” the ability to start every “news” broadcast with the most recent poll results. This method of delivering “news” has successfully dumbed down the public by reporting polls rather than issues or policy when discussing candidates and campaigns. Then once the mid-term elections are finished, the press gets to go all in for Hillary. And she gets to run on “fixing” Obamacare. After all who knows more about national healthcare than she? It is her signature issue. And Bill already started her separation from Obamacare by declaring Obama should live up to his promise about people keeping their insurance. She can now run as an “outsider” and “reformer” who will rectify the short comings of Obamacare.
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