Richard Fernandez:
Administrations absolutely swamped by scandal have a defense unavailable to more competent administrations: dense pack. ”Dense pack” is a term used to describe a strategy proposed during the Cold War to deploy American ICBMs so close together that Soviet missiles trying to target them would run into each other in a process called ‘fratricide’. The Obama administration’s primary defense against any scandal taking root is that it must inevitably be displaced next week by a new one. So nothing lasts. All anyone can do is Move On.
The Financial Times actually believes that a Veteran’s Administration scandal may taint president Obama in a way that Benghazi, IRS, the AP wiretapping scandal, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Libya, NSA, Ukraine and Obamacare could not. In an article filled with outrage the writer thinks, this time it sticks. Why should it? Dense pack is alive and well.
For example, most people have lost track of Obamacare. Last word from the Media is that the debate over the program “is over”. Only crazy people talk about it now, like Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times who complains that unless Republicans save them the adminstration will be crushed over the uproar over employer mandates.
Already, many employers are cutting healthcare benefits and blaming Obamacare, even though the provisions that affect them won’t be activated for another year or more. Removing a provision that limits this impulse may be risky for employee health.
These effects would be proper topics for legislative study and careful action. We don’t live in a world where that takes place. If only the critics of Obamacare could shed their wild-eyed claims about the law and turn to fixing what needs to be fixed. If only.
That’s Hiltzik’s way of saying “save us from ourselves”. But the plea is delivered with a tone of confidence, as if by helping the Democrats kill the employer mandate which is rushing at them like a freight train, you will be doing yourself a favor. Obamacare is a cemetery littered with skeletons. There was the brouhaha over whether you can keep your doctor. You want a doctor? California is considering a bill that would allow illegal aliens to practice medicine.
Now if you don’t want to be treated by an illegal alien doctor, there’s always the “physician assistant”. Forbeswrites:
Though a physician shortage appears inevitable as more Americans get health coverage under the Affordable Care Act, new research indicates new primary care models using nurse practitioners and physician assistants could “eliminate” the scarcity of primary-care doctors.
Like the president said, “the debate is over”.
It’s official now. Your Obamacare premium is going to go up by about 9% this year. Ezra Klein admits it and, unable to deny it, gives six pitiful reasons why the program that calls itself the “Affordable Care Act” and promised to “bend the cost curve” is raising prices.