Medicare & The Affordable Care Act

As a month since healthcare.gov's launch comes and passes, consumers are left with many impressions. The President and his surrogates apologizing profusely, Republican opportunists leaping on the website, and the 24-hour news cycle naturally beating the subject into the ground, litigating the subject into ridiculousness.

An important feature of this story, however, is that while the numbers are picked from internal memos, very little editorial attention is paid to similar events in the past. One event in particular that is in recent memory is the launch of Medicare Part D under the Bush administration. Occasionally, you'll hear liberal commentators bringing this example up, along with the failed launch of Medicare in the mid-60's, but overall, the narrative ignores this historical precedent. This precedent is important because it gives credence to the idea that this is not a failure specific to the Obama administration, and that failures of this magnitude can be overcome with great success. When is the initial failure of Medicare mentioned when we discuss the program as a pillar of the American social contract? How about Medicare Part D, the program that effectively allows seniors to not have to pay an exorbitant proportion of their fixed income on their prescription drugs? These programs become extremely important aspects of the American character, but only if they're a sliver of a chance to survive the cynical resistance to mild reforms toward egalitarianism. I realize this is an editorial attitude to take regarding this article in particular, but as with every aspect of the coverage of the ACA, perspective is incredibly important.

http://news.yahoo.com/enrollment-obamacare-very-small-first-days-documents-011616468.html;_ylt=A2KJ2UhmjZpSFXIAW0TQtDMD

Leadership of Ted Cruz

The idea of a national media obsessed with conflict and dramatic narratives is not new. However, with help from this class, I personally have grown to blame just about every problem with our national political discourse on how the media frames our political climate.

Not only is Ted Cruz, a junior 9-month old senator the current star of the GOP, but the media is also padding his prospects for a 2016 presidential campaign. By placing such a tremendous amount of importance on conflict and dramatic actors on the political stage, the media is complicit in this entire shutdown debacle.

On a somewhat unrelated note, there is also a spectacular amount of bias in how the nationality of the senator is presented. During the first few years of President Obama's tenure, the media fell in love with the "Birther" narrative, despite being largely critical of it. Despite attempts to dismiss demands for President Obama's birth certificate and lawsuit after lawsuit challenging the legitimacy of his election,  the media's encouraging deluge of coverage ultimately validated the movement. However, such a conversation has been almost entirely absent regarding Ted Cruz's Canadian birth, which is wholly ignored by the former "Birthers" who tried to throw President Obama out of office on account of his formerly alleged foreign birth (polls as recent as late-2012 posit that 55% of Republicans still think Obama was born outside of the US), despite also having an American mother like Cruz. Not only does this double-standard exist on the right, but the media's coverage of this issue is also out of balance.

To be clear: I believe that Cruz is entitled to run for President, despite the claims previously made by prominent Republican activists and leaders to the contrary regarding the definition of a "Natural-Born Citizen."

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/power-players-abc-news/ted-cruz-faults-his-party-for-agreeing-to-lousy-deal-to-reopen-the-government-211727075.html;_ylt=A2KJ2UYaZZpSFVkAAAjQtDMD

Senator Booker

In a campaign that was fraught with negativity and frightening xenophobia, mayor of Newark Cory Booker defeated Lonegan on Tuesday night. Despite coming into this fall with a huge lead in the polls, a highly destructive campaign season broke the candidate down a bit, and the narrative surrounding the campaign for the entirety of this month has been, "Cory Booker is almost certainly going to win-- but does the fact that he's going to win by less than we thought mean something..?!" This narrative, that the Booker brand is somehow compromised because of the margin of victory, is bizarre and lends itself to hyper-negative methods of campaigning.

Similarly, pundits are fighting over the upcoming re-election campaign of Chris Christie in much the same manner. That campaign is about two and a half weeks away, and Christie is the obvious favorite to win the governorship of New Jersey. However, since there is such a tremendous amount of buzz surrounding his potential 2016 presidential candidacy, the big question is by how much he will win. Many pundits are saying that if he scoops up over 60% of the vote, then he will effectively secure his front-runner status in the Republican primary. I could go into a whole diatribe about how naive this analysis is, and how the current Republican party primary would chew up and spit out a centrist candidate like Chris Christie, but that should not only be left to another day, but another blog.

There's another element of this story that is not being played up, regarding Chris Christie's decision to have a special election to elect a new New Jersey senator after the passing of the late Senator Lautenberg. Several years ago, Governor Christie was asked if he would have a special election, or allow the election to fall on the same election day as all other election (first Tuesday following the first Monday of November), should Lautenberg pass while in office. Christ Christie balked at the question, saying that he would never want to waste taxpayers' time and money with a needless special election, and would instead opt to hold it on the same day as all other elections. However, with Christ Christie's re-election vote being held this year, and the presumed massive turnout of Democratic voters to elect a political superstar such as Booker, the Christie campaign opted instead to have a special election to reduce the turnout of Democrats. I've heard this fact brought up one single time on NPR, and have never heard it addressed again since.

http://news.yahoo.com/jersey-democrat-cory-booker-wins-special-election-u-015220410.html;_ylt=A2KLOzLk.39SThoAH3PQtDMD

The Nature of Compromise

A huge element of the current narrative relating to the fiscal crisis and governmental shutdown is the nature of "compromise." Each side, both Democrats and Republicans, are claiming that the other side is simply unwilling to come to the table without conditions and work out a negotiated deal.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of this is that the conventional media sources are not challenging this narrative. It is simply seen that both Democrats and Republicans need to put their pride aside and be willing to give some stuff up to get a deal. Democrats need to give up some of the ACA, and Republicans will raise the debt ceiling and re-open the government. Even typing that out, however, reveals the utter lunacy of this conversation. The debt ceiling, in its most basic definition, is allowing the treasury to pay for debts that the US government has already incurred. So, despite the GOP protesting that it has a vested interest in not raising the debt ceiling, that excuse does not stand up to a simple examination of the facts and reality of civic responsibility.

The narrative that, "Republicans are asking Democrats to abandon their signature legislative achievement in order for the GOP to do what is required of it," is rarely posited by anyone in the media other than far-left pundits. But regardless, the idea that there exists a pure equivalency between the two parties and what they are asking for is pursued without much critical thought.

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-republicans-continue-talks-white-house-meeting-000542177--business.html;_ylt=A2KLOzIq.39SjTEAz2jQtDMD

Healthcare.gov's Failure to Launch

As the first day of Healthcare.gov's existence came to a close, the launch was largely panned as a failure. Democrats dig their heels into the sand, defending the website, while Republicans see this as an important stepping stone to blast the law they've attempted to repeal more than 40 times in the past 3 years.

It's important to note that the government has a long history of technical failures. From Medicare Part D's miserable launch to relative incompetence in recruiting responsible third-party firms, there is a long-established history of governmental failures in the realm of tech.

I think that it's an extremely important point that the White House and surrogates are making: when the private sector has technical problems, nobody holds them to the same standard. When twitter used to crash on an absolutely constant basis, it was frustrating, but nobody ever said, "Twitter just needs to call it quits because they obviously cannot do anything right and shouldn't be in this sort of business." It's a double-standard of expectations. What's more, private sector glitches rarely deal with something as vital and important as insuring tens of millions of Americans who may or may not be able to receive treatment for their illnesses.

At the end of the day, it's all a matter of perspective. In this day and age, we all expect everything to work perfectly right out of the gate, but that sadly is rarely the case. The conflict-driven narrative that the media is hurling into the national political discourse is ultimately destructive and counter-productive to the actual intent and meaning of this piece of legislation. What's more, healthcare.gov being hailed as a failure is somehow being extrapolated into a larger indictment of the ACA. Granted, healthcare.gov is a huge instrument of the bill's implementation, but other states that have taken meaningful steps to seeing the bill's success (I'm looking at California) are seeing massive success. It's no surprise that states like CA and KY who have their own exchange website are thriving, while states that are being pulled into modernity kicking and screaming are bringing the ship down.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/world/19199202/obamacare-launch-hits-early-hitch-as-online-traffic-snarls-up-sites/