By John Fund
The Department
of Health and Human Services has just handed out a $3.1 million PR contract to
improve the public image of Obamacare. Advertising Age reports that the firm
Weber Shandwick will help “roll out a campaign to convince skeptical — or
simply confused — Americans the Affordable Care Act is good for them and
convince them to enroll in a health plan.”
Obama
officials insist the ads won’t be political, but critics recall that
just before the 2010 midterm election, HHS spent $3.2 million on
“educational” TV ads praising Obamacare. The spots featured the late
actor Andy Griffith, a favorite of seniors, who told his fellow retirees
that “more good things are coming” from Medicare. But FactCheck, a
nonpartisan project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, noted
that the ads made no mention of the dramatic cuts to 10 million
Medicare Advantage recipients, who are likely to see their privately
managed care scaled back. “The words in this ad ring hollow, and the
promise that ‘benefits will remain the same’ is just as fictional as the
town of Mayberry was when Griffith played the local sheriff,” FactCheck
concluded in July 2010.
Indeed, the facts today are that
Obamacare remains as unpopular now as when it was passed in 2010, and
Democrats are increasingly worried it will return to haunt them in the
midterm election next year, the first to take place after the stepped-up
implementation of the law. Reporters at the Cook Political Report, a
respected Washington watcher of election trends, noted this month that
“almost all” of the Democratic insiders they talked to “voiced concern
about the potential for the issue to hurt Democrats in 2014.” At no
point since its passage has Obamacare been viewed favorably by more than
45 percent of voters, and the latest Kaiser Family Health Foundation
poll pegs its nationwide support at only 37 percent.
The
administration is already preparing its excuses if insurance premiums
skyrocket next year and parts of Obamacare miss key start dates. HHS
secretary Kathleen Sebelius complained this month that “no one fully
anticipated” the difficulties involved in setting up Obamacare. She
blamed obstructionist Republicans for engaging in “state-by-state
political battles” to slow down the creation of health-care exchanges.
But many of her fellow Democrats aren’t exactly following her line.
West Virginia senator Jay Rockefeller, one of the main architects of
Obamacare, calls the bill “probably the most complex piece of
legislation ever passed by the United States Congress.” Referring to the
implementation of the bill, he says, “If it isn’t done right the first
time, it will just simply get worse.”
Senate Finance chairman Max
Baucus of Montana has an even gloomier assessment. “I just see a huge
train wreck coming down,” he told Sebelius in a hearing last week. “When
I’m home, small businesses have no idea what to do, what to expect,
they don’t know what affordability rules are, they don’t know what
penalties may apply. They just don’t know.”
Some backers of
Obamacare are even jumping ship completely. Kinsey Robinson, the
president of the 22,000-member United Union of Roofers, issued a public
statement last week calling for “repeal or complete reform of the
Affordable Care Act.” He explained that his union’s “concerns over
certain provisions in the ACA have not been addressed, or in some
instances, [have been] totally ignored.” Many of the bill’s quickly
drafted provisions, he added, “are inconsistent with the promise that
those who were satisfied with their employer-sponsored coverage could
keep it.”
The train wreck that Senator Baucus foresees could push
young people into “rate shock” as their premiums increase to subsidize
care for older Americans. Obamacare’s “community rating” rules and
benefit mandates might prompt employers to drop coverage or avoid hiring
new employees. “I talk with a lot of businesses that are thinking of
self-insuring or finding any loophole they can to avoid the most onerous
parts of Obamacare,” says pollster Scott Rasmussen. A study last month
by the Society of Actuaries predicted that medical claims per
policyholder will rise by 32 percent in the individual plans offered by
Obamacare’s health-care exchanges. In some states, the increase could be
as much as 80 percent.
The Obama administration is preparing for the worst. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute reports
that it is getting ready to spend $600 billion that Congress never
authorized on federally run state exchanges in order to ease any sticker
shock for consumers. But that may not be nearly enough.
Henry
Chao, deputy chief information officer at the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services, admitted his doubts to a group of health-care
executives recently. “We are under 200 days from open enrollment [in
Obamacare], and I’m pretty nervous,” he said. “The time for
debating . . . is it a world-class experience, that’s what we used to
talk about two years ago. Let’s just make sure it’s not a third-world
experience.”
Such comments must send spasms of fear down the
spines of several red-state Democratic senators who will be up for
reelection for the first time since they voted for Obamacare in 2010 —
Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Begich of Alaska, and Mark Pryor of
Arkansas among them. They and other Democrats in the Senate have already
voted to repeal key portions of Obamacare, such as the CLASS Act
long-term-care program, and the Senate also passed a nonbinding
resolution to oppose the tax on medical devices.
Don’t be
surprised if many Democrats in Congress join with Republicans later this
year in calling for a one-year moratorium on the implementation of
Obamacare. There’s even a chance the Obama administration will join them
if the behind-the-scenes chaos at HHS gets bad enough. That wouldn’t be
the kind of bipartisanship deal the establishment media has been
calling for lately, but it might just be one of the most popular moves
Washington could make.
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