The competent, indeed obvious, political move would be to cut a deal. He could have given them the year’s delay his own engineers were telling him he needed anyway, and gotten plenty of concessions on all kinds of stuff for it. Pubs would get the short-term political win, but it would go to the least competent and least electable members; Obama should be hoping Ted Cruz is the face of the GOP. Instead he got a two week win, and now a full year of fail.
Among professional managers, this is called “dealing with stakeholders.” Like it or not, and no matter how horrible they are, they are elected representatives. Obama’s job is to either win them over, compromise, or find ways to work around them. Throwing up your hands because the other side won’t quit is not leadership.
Anyone who thinks that its somehow inevitable that this thing will be fixed in a few months needs to read up on the FBI’s experiences developing the “unified virtual case file” system that was one of the agency’s top post-9/11 priorities. First project took five years before being abandoned. Second attempt took another five years and was a near thing. Ten years and better part of a billion dollars. And this healthcare thing is, AFAICT, waaay more complex.
Is that not *their *responsibility too? Obama is an elected official too, with the added strength of having been chosen by a *majority *of the people, who *wanted *ACA passed and implemented. Do the Congressional Republicans have no responsibility stemming from that reality?
Then perhaps you could tell us what approach *would *work with those children, given their demonstrated and stated implacability.
In my experience, this is a big problem with incompetent management. Perhaps it’s THE problem. First, the incompetent manager makes demands which are unrealistic or otherwise problematic. Next, the incompetent manager won’t pay attention to or address the warnings from his subordinates of the problems coming. Last, subordinate workers start shifting their efforts away from fixing problems and more towards making sure they won’t be blamed for anything. Which makes things quite a bit worse.
You can blame them all you want. If you want to convince others that your are justified in blaming them (which is what we’re supposed to be doing in this debate forum), you need to explain exactly what “obstruction” the GOP is responsible for wrt this web site launch. I’m just not seeing it.
What an astonishingly retarded question, did they seriously frame it like that? I am in favor of Obamacare, and don’t like that way it has been implemented. So I “disapprove”. My opposite number, who hates Obamacare with every fiber of his being, also does not approve of the implementation of Obamacare. He sure as hell “disapproves”!
I don’t think it’s a stupid question. It’s trying to separate out the implementation from the actual law. I think it also makes more sense if you look at the actual poll-- this was just one question among many. In fact, the very next question asks whether people approve of the law or not.
The amazing thing about that poll is that 33% of Americans approve of the way the web site rollout was handled. I guess those must be your hard-core partisan Democrats. If so, that’s a pretty big number for Obama’s ‘base’, and should worry Republicans. Usually the ‘base’ on the left and right is closer to 20%.
The website rollout was the *ACA *rollout. The rollout was a change from fuck-off to affordable health care access. And the majority of Americans do approve of it. Why are you surprised?
Perhaps your assessment is focused too narrowly? Or perhaps the tech problems aren’t as serious, much less intractable, as you have kept insisting for some reason?
Keep in mind that for most people won’t have to access the web site. In fact, at least this year, I don’t think most people are even affected by Obamacare, since the great majority of Americans get insurance through their employer. And not everyone is a news junky like we are.
Elvis: Unfortunately, the screw-up with the website and the “you can keep your insurance if you like it” issue have made the ACA even more unpopular. You can say it’s popular, but the polls show otherwise.
Now, I’m the first to admit that these polls aren’t as important as what we’re going to see one year from now, or two years from now. But let’s not pretend the polls right now say something they don’t.
What polls are you looking at that show that? The ones that conveniently leave out the “doesn’t go far enough” option? Or are you claiming those people are actually opposed to it?
Eh. If they think it doesn’t go far enough, they still oppose it. It’s a simple question; do you favor or oppose it? Most people oppose it. If you want to say a law is popular when most people oppose it, then I guess we have a different definition of what “popular” means. Mine definition means that people favor it. Not sure what yours means.
I don’t know about you, but if a law was passed that got me 50% of what I wanted, I’d favor it. Unless, of course, I thought we’d be worse off without it. Then I’d say I opposed it. So the idea that people who say they oppose it for not going far enough actual favor it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.
Please. Do you know of *anybody *, anybody at all, who doesn’t think it goes far enough who would agree with you that they *oppose *it? There are quite a few counterexamples on this board alone, as you *must *know, myself for one. Are you seriously of the view that somebody who thinks we need to go farther would want to repeal the amount we’ve already done? Is that what your “Eh” means?
So simple that it’s seriously misleading, to the point of providing falsehoods for answers.
Do you have some actual polls to cite for us, some that actually say what you claim as fact that “the polls” say?
Because it doesn’t go far enough, it doesn’t get the benefit that single payer plans can generate. Just for starters, the profit margin for health insurance providers is a built in inefficiency, that money won’t be invested in health care.
Now, mind: I don’t mean the money spent on personnel and equipment, there would have to be people to process claims and keep records regardless of who signs their checks. I mean actual profit which burden need not be borne by a single payer plan.
What worries us is that the mish-mash of motives and goals will be so inefficient as to overwhelm the inherent advantages of the single payer approach. Which would be bad enough by itself, dashing the hopes of millions of our people, but it would be mighty tough sledding to ever bring it up again. And we would have to.
So, yeah, I’m opposed to Obamacare because it doesn’t go far enough. At the same time, I’m aware that this wretched mess may well be the best chance we have to alleviate the worry and suffering of millions of Americans. I can’t in any good conscience hope to see it fail.
And if you find that confusing, imagine how I feel!
No. They think that the current problems can be fixed. That’s not the same as saying that the favor Obamacare. I think the current problems can be fixed, but I don’t favor the law.
It’s funny, because we’re told that “the website is not the law”, but when people say they think the website can be fixed, then suddenly the website is the law.
At any rate, you need to read what people are actually saying, It’s a pretty simple question: Do you favor or oppose the law. Most Americans oppose it. Parse that any way like, but the fact is… most Americans oppose it.