Obamacare deserves better

On December 6, Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana lost a run-off election to Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy.  Time magazine explains why:

“Landrieu didn’t lose because of a superior opponent, but because of her association with a deeply unpopular President and his health-care law. Landrieu—the daughter of a former New Orleans mayor and the sister to the current one—lost more so than Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy won. Even Cassidy, who cruised to a win Saturday, acknowledges that to some extent. When asked to define the campaign’s turning point, he pointed to Landrieu’s support of the Affordable Care Act, which passed four years ago.”

There were other factors in her loss of course. But the idea that an otherwise good, probably superior, candidate lost primarily because of her support of Obamacare remains baffling to me. To be clear, I’m not naive. I understand the politics of the matter, so I am not baffled at that level. It’s just that I remain convinced that Obamacare is a fundamentally good idea — at least one that significantly improves the prior status quo. It doesn’t deserve the intense level of hostility and resistance in inspires among the opposition. Not even close.

The basic idea of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) is this: There is an individual mandate, which means you must have health insurance. For those who can afford it, you (or your employer) pays for the insurance. For those too poor to afford it, government subsidies fill the gap.

What does the average citizen get in exchange for this?

You get guaranteed insurance coverage no matter what. Even if you lose your job and remain unemployed for an extended period of time, you remain covered. In fact, if your income drops significantly, your costs go down.

Plus, you are guaranteed that you cannot be turned down for insurance because of a pre-existing medical condition. No longer can an insurance company tell you that because you have a heart condition, or whatever, they won’t sell you insurance.

Additionally, there are more peripheral, but still important, benefits — such as allowing your children to be covered by their parents’ insurance until they are 26. This can save a family money at a time when their kids may be in school — or just getting started in a job — and unable to pay the cost on their own.

As for the people who are getting subsidized by the government, this will likely save taxpayers money in the long run. Why? Because poor people will no longer have to depend on emergency rooms in public hospitals as their primary source of health care. Seeing a general practitioner in their office (covered by Obamacare) is much less expensive than a uninsured visit to the emergency room. The overall savings here are likely to be huge.

Yes, it means that some people will be “forced” to pay for insurance that might otherwise have unwisely chosen to go without any. But it is essential that the system works this way. Otherwise, people will choose to get insurance only when they are sick (thus always getting more in benefits than they pay in) and the system would soon go bankrupt. In any case, people who already have insurance will be able to keep it, often at a lower rate than they were paying before.

That’s it in a nutshell.

Sure, I understand that this is a best-case-scenario vision of what Obamacare does. The devil, as they say, is in the details. And there are problems at the detail level. For example, for some individuals, the cost of insurance under Obamacare has turned out to be significantly more than they were paying before. In most cases, the reported problems are not intended consequences of the Act. They are the result of an imperfect implementation of the plan. No major legislation is ever perfect the first time around. Obamacare is no exception.

This doesn’t mean the solution is to repeal the act or gut its essential provisions. If Obamacare doesn’t work well in every instance, let’s improve it so it does. Let’s fix the legislation so it works as intended. In less contentious political times, this is exactly what would happen. But we do not live in such times.

It seems that the majority of those who oppose Obamacare do not view it even as a potentially good idea that needs fixing. Rather, they view it as a terrible idea that needs to be completely trashed. In many cases, I believe this is because the opposition has no clear idea what Obamacare does and does not do. They oppose it because they oppose everything President Obama does, or because they view it as an intrusion by a government that can’t be trusted, or as an expensive program that will raise taxes without any compensating benefit, or because its labeled as socialism. But these are sound-bite emotion-generating criticisms designed to get knee-jerk opposition from the Republican base.

Unfortunately, the attacks work. Which is is really frustrating — because I remain convinced that the vast majority of Americans, including most people who oppose Obamacare, would support the legislation if they could shed their political biases and really look at what it accomplishes. The truth is the vast majority of Americans will be better off, financially and healthfully, under Obamacare. It’s certainly a improvement over the pre-existing unfair and increasingly expensive system that still left millions uninsured. It’s not as if Obamacare is a case of “it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Polls have shown that most people support the individual components of Obamacare — if the question is asked in a way that does not link the component to the legislation. Similarly, recall that the basic ideas behind Obamacare were originally proposed by Republicans. Heck, even health insurance companies now see Obamacare as a potential win. And yet, opposition to Obamacare remains so viscerally intense that it can be the determining factor in a Senate election in Louisiana. Obamacare deserves better.

Sadly, it may yet turn out that Obamacare never gets the chance to prove itself — thanks to the fear-mongering and distortions by a Republican Congress abetted by conservative political action groups, a conservative-friendly Supreme Court and talk radio hosts intent on using the issue for political gain. If that happens, it will be a loss for all of us.

Macworld: The end of an era

It’s the sad end to a glorious era. Macworld magazine is dead. Over. Kaput.

The next print issue of Macworld will be the last.

But that’s not what is truly sad. Or surprising. The demise of Macworld’s print magazine has been expected for several years. Almost all other technology print publications, including Macworld’s PCWorld sibling, have already vanished. There was no way they could compete with the immediacy, ubiquity and free availability of the web. Macworld has now joined their ranks.

Macworld intends to continue as the macworld.com website. As this is where most Macworld readers were already consuming the content, the transition need not have been a traumatic one. But it is.

This is because, in addition to ceasing print publication, Macworld laid off almost its entire editorial staff. This is not an exaggeration. Dan Frakes, Dan Moren, Dan Miller, Phil Michaels, Serenity Caldwell (correction: Serenity resigned a few days previously; I have heard that she would have otherwise been retained), and Jason Snell (technically, Jason had planned to quit before he could be laid off, but the end result is the same). They are all gone — as are several others that I do not know as well. It is the end of the line for the greatest bunch of people I’ve ever had the privilege to work with. Only Chris Breen appears to have survived. He must be checking his shirt for bullet holes about now, wondering how he could be the only one left standing after the massacre.

After recovering from the shock of this news, my first question was: How can Macworld continue as a website? Who will be left to write the stories? Who will be left to manage the site? I’ve been told that a skeleton crew, perhaps headed by Chris, will attempt the job. There will be an increased dependence on freelance writers (disclaimer: I have already been approached in this regard). While this will assuredly save Macworld money, they will be losing the critical commitment of a full-time staff.

The focus of and range of topics covered by Macworld will inevitably narrow. But they intend to soldier on.

I wish them well. Truly. Still, in my heart, I feel like the Macworld I have known for three decades has effectively ended. It was the people who made Macworld great. And those people are gone. To be frank, I won’t be surprised if, within a year, the site has either vanished or morphed into something that is no longer recognizable.

Looking back

Macworld holds a special spot in the history of Apple and the Mac. It was the very first Mac-only publication, premiering in January 1984, simultaneously with the Mac itself (I still have a copy of every issue!). It outlasted numerous competitors, including MacUser (whose demise is what led me to become a writer for Macworld). It quickly attained and maintained a position as the #1 most respected and authoritative publication for everything Apple. I’ve been proud to be listed on its masthead.

With the rise of the web years ago, Macworld had to struggle to adjust. I give Jason Snell the lion’s share of the credit for successfully navigating the transition. Before he took over as editor, macworld.com was just a weak extension of the print magazine. Its content was largely limited to web translations of print articles. Even here, you had to wait about a month after an issue appeared on newsstands before those articles showed up on the website. Given the fast pace of the web, this was a recipe for disaster.

Jason turned Macworld around, making the website its focus. Everything appeared first on the web, typically within hours of breaking news. The print magazine became a curated version of what had appeared on the web in the previous weeks. It worked. I believe this probably saved Macworld from going under years ago.

Along the way, Jason assembled what became one of the best teams in tech journalism. That’s why it was heart-breaking to witness the near total collapse that occurred yesterday. I can only hope that the people laid off find other satisfying work very soon.

It is the way of the world today that people move on to the next thing at nearly light-speed. The 24-hour news cycle demands it. So I expect that, for most people, the news of the “demise” of Macworld will soon be barely a memory. Like the people at the end of The Truman Show movie, people will shrug their shoulders and ask “What else is on?” It’s inevitable.

For me, however, the aftershocks of this event will linger for quite some time. Perhaps it’s because I’m closer to the epicenter. Regardless, there’s been a shift in the ground beneath me. It will be long while before it all settles again.

Shutdown

So here we are. The federal government has been shut down.

The shutdown was not the result of a failure to reach a compromise between our two political parties. The shutdown was orchestrated entirely by the Tea Party, a minority wing of the Republican party. It was abetted by the remainder of the Republicans in Congress, who apparently do not have the fortitude to stand up to their extreme right flank.

Let’s be clear. A shutdown was the goal of the Tea Party from the very beginning. As I tweeted the other day:

“There is no debate over the shutdown. A majority of both houses would vote to end it today…if the House were allowed to vote on it……the ONLY issue is Tea-Party representatives wanting to use a shutdown as a means to extort a defunding of Obamacare.”

“When your opponents pass a bill and the bill withstands four years of repeated congressional and legal challenges…including the Supreme Court…what do you do? Admit that it’s time to move on? Not if you’re a Republican. Nope, you blackmail to shut down the government unless you get your way.”

Actually, it may be even worse than that. While Tea Partiers would have welcomed a Democratic concession to dismantle Obamacare, I believe most of them in Congress (although perhaps not their supporters at home) understood that this would never happen prior to a shutdown. Obama and the Democrats would never agree to such blatant extortion. So, instead, the Tea Party aimed to carry out a shutdown as the most likely way to achieve their goals. The potential destructive effects to the country would be acceptable collateral damage.

The idea that the Republicans and Democrats are playing some game of chicken, that both sides are equally to blame would be laughable if it were not repeated so often in the media. As @WillMcAvoyACN said on Twitter:

“Why is the debt ceiling a negotiating point? Why is paying our bills something Republicans think we should compromise for?”

I provided my own analogy to make the same point:

“If Democrats threatened to shut down the government unless all Republicans resigned from Congress…would the media criticize Republicans for an unwillingness to compromise? I mean…couldn’t Republicans at least consider a compromise where only half of them resign?”

Or, as Brian Tashman put it:

“…these notions of ‘compromise’ are based on the absurd premise that simply funding the government is itself a concession on the part of Republicans, and Democrats now should return the favor by agreeing to their objective of undermining the health care reform law.”

The totality of this is still hard for me to fathom. What is so terrible about offering the chance of health care to millions of uninsured Americans that makes it worth the risk of wrecking our economy, while breaking almost every accepted boundary of good governance, in an attempt to stop it? The word “crazy” keeps popping up.

The bigger question is: How did such a small minority wind up with the power to do this in the first place? How did our democracy get so derailed?

The answer can be found in a confluence of several shifts in our political landscape, shifts that have been building for decades:

• The increased willingness of some in Congress to use any routine function of government, from passing budgets to raising the debt ceiling to continuing funding, as a means to extort political gain. The result is a never-ending crisis, where the rest of what Congress should be doing is left to languish.

• The increased use of the veto in the Senate, especially by Republicans, to the point where majority rule no longer exists.

• The continuing polarization of political parties to the point where the most leftist Republicans are still to the right of the most right-leaning Democrats.

• The ability of corporations and rich individuals to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections, thanks to the Supreme Court.

• The increased gerrymandering of voting districts to an extreme that leaves most congressmen in “safe” districts where winning their primary guarantees their election to office.

• The rise of right-wing talk radio, Fox News and other extremist media (on both sides) that wall people off from ever hearing opinions that differ from their entrenched biases. Rather, it serves to confirm and inflame their biases.

• The increased acceptance of “truthiness” in news and in political ads, where fiction is claimed as fact and is left unchallenged.

• The increased cowardice of the general media, to the point where every political debate gets reported as “he said, she said” with equal blame assigned to both sides even when no such equality exists.

And more. The end result is a serious threat to the foundations of our democracy. I know this sounds alarmist. It seems every day someone claims that something is destroying our country. It makes such claims easy to dismiss as “the sky is falling” hyperbole. I can only hope this turns out to be true here. But I fear not.

Don’t believe me? I’ll conclude with excerpts from what several others (with more credentials and authority than myself) have written on this subject in the past few days:

The Shutdown and “He Said-She Said” Reporting by Joshua Holland

“This showdown is by far the most dangerous of a series of fiscal ‘crises’ that have been contrived during the Obama presidency.

Beltway reporters who see their professed neutrality as a higher ground bear an enormous amount of responsibility for encouraging this perversion of democratic governance. With a few notable exceptions, the media have framed what Jonathan Chait called ‘a kind of quasi-impeachment’ in typical he said-she said fashion, obscuring the fact that the basic norms that govern Congress have been thrown out the window by a small cabal of tea party-endorsed legislators from overwhelmingly Republican districts. The media treat unprecedented legislative extortion as typical partisan negotiations, and in doing so they normalize it.

But it’s not normal. Republicans are demanding that Democrats unwind their signature achievement – a piece of legislation that took 18 months to pass, survived a Supreme Court challenge and a presidential election – in exchange for a stopgap budget resolution. On Saturday, they tacked on a provision that would limit access to contraceptives.

The second reason the standard-issue Beltway framing is wrong is it doesn’t capture the nature of the so-called ‘negotiation.’ A negotiation is between two parties that want different things and come to some compromise. Nobody should want a shutdown or a default and passing budgets and paying the federal government’s debts aren’t Democratic priorities. Rather, what we are seeing now is a ‘negotiation’ in which Republicans are demanding a lot and offering absolutely nothing in return.”

Our Democracy Is at Stake by Thomas Friedman

This time is different. What is at stake in this government shutdown forced by a radical Tea Party minority is nothing less than the principle upon which our democracy is based: majority rule. President Obama must not give in to this hostage taking — not just because Obamacare is at stake, but because the future of how we govern ourselves is at stake.

What we’re seeing here is how three structural changes that have been building in American politics have now, together, reached a tipping point — creating a world in which a small minority in Congress can not only hold up their own party but the whole government. And this is the really scary part: The lawmakers doing this can do so with high confidence that they personally will not be politically punished, and may, in fact, be rewarded.

 The Reign of Morons Is Here by Charles Pierce

“There has never been in a single Congress — or, more precisely, in a single House of the Congress — a more lethal combination of political ambition, political stupidity, and political vainglory than exists in this one, which has arranged to shut down the federal government because it disapproves of a law passed by a previous Congress, signed by the president, and upheld by the Supreme Court, a law that does nothing more than extend the possibility of health insurance to the millions of Americans who do not presently have it, a law based on a proposal from a conservative think-tank and taken out on the test track in Massachusetts by a Republican governor who also happens to have been the party’s 2012 nominee for president of the United States. That is why the government of the United States is, in large measure, closed this morning.

We did this. We looked at our great legacy of self-government and we handed ourselves over to the reign of morons. This is what they came to Washington to do — to break the government of the United States.

What is there to be done? The first and most important thing is to recognize how we came to this pass. Both sides did not do this. Both sides are not to blame. There is no compromise to be had here that will leave the current structure of the government intact. There can be no reward for this behavior. I am less sanguine than are many people that this whole thing will redound to the credit of the Democratic party. For that to happen, the country would have to make a nuanced judgment over who is to blame that, I believe, will be discouraged by the courtier press of the Beltway and that, in any case, the country has not shown itself capable of making. For that to happen, the Democratic party would have to be demonstrably ruthless enough to risk its own political standing to make the point, which the Democratic party never has shown itself capable of doing. With the vandals tucked away in safe, gerrymandered districts, and their control over state governments probably unshaken by events in Washington, there will be no great wave election that sweeps them out of power. I do not see profound political consequences for enough of them to change the character of a Congress gone delusional. The only real consequences will be felt by the millions of people affected by what this Congress has forced upon the nation, which was the whole point all along.”

Moving the political spectrum

The most important lesson I’ve learned in politics is not a complicated or profound idea. It’s pretty simple actually. But it has helped immensely in my understanding of how things work politically speaking. It’s been especially useful when I have had to come to terms with why my (usually left-leaning) ideas, despite being so obviously wonderful (at least to me), too often do not succeed when put to a vote of the electorate.

The lesson is this:

Positions near the extreme ends of the political scale, right or left, almost never get adopted by the electorate as a whole. It doesn’t matter whether an idea is the most incredible one to come along since humans discovered fire. It’s doesn’t matter by what objective criteria one can prove that the idea is superior to any conceivable alternative. It’s not going to be implemented as long as the position remains seated at the far edge of the political spectrum. Why? Because, almost by definition, positions near the extremes have the support of only a small minority of voters.

In many cases, this restraint is a good thing. It acts as a protection against passage of laws that go off the rails by moving too far in one direction or alternating laws that wildly swing back and forth like an out-of-control pendulum.

But what about those times when an extreme idea is actually a great idea? Is there really no chance for such ideas to be implemented?

We needn’t be that pessimistic or cynical. There is a way for such ideas to succeed.

To obtain success, rather than push for your idea in the short run, you need to go for a long run shift of the political spectrum towards your desired direction — so that your “extreme” idea is no longer at the fringes.

Superficially, this approach may not sound all that different from what I just declared as impossible. However, the two approaches are very different. And this gets us to the core of the “lesson.”

Think of it this way: Suppose you could assign a number to all political ideas, using a scale of 1-100, with 1 being most left and 100 being most right. Let’s further assume that the range of ideas up for debate at any point in time represents only a portion of the total scale. After eliminating any “lunatic fringe” notions, let’s say the current spectrum spans from 35 to 65.

Now let’s say your extreme proposal ranks at 38 on the scale. For people in the middle or to the right of the middle (50 or above), your idea represents a shift of 12 points or more. This requires too big a leap for center and right people to make in one election cycle, no matter how compelling your idea or how persuasive your arguments. As you’ll need support from at least some of these people for your idea to win an election, you have no hope of getting your idea into law. At least not today.

So let’s try something else. Let’s work over the long term of several election cycles to move the whole political spectrum in your direction, step by tiny step. With a combination of skill, luck and shifting demographics, let’s say you manage to move the spectrum 10 points in a dozen years. In this hypothetical example, this would mean that the spectrum now spans 25 to 55. Suddenly, your “38” idea isn’t so extreme any more. In fact, it’s only only two points away from dead center. Put it up for a vote now, and you have a good shot at winning.

This is precisely what conservatives have been working to achieve ever since Barry Goldwater lost his bid for the presidency back in 1964. And it’s what’s they have largely succeeded in doing ever since Ronald Reagan was elected president. Most political analysts would agree that that today’s political spectrum is “center-right” and far more right-leaning than it was back in the 1960’s.

This is partially why “liberal” has become almost a derogatory word, with few if any Democrats wishing to describe themselves with the term. In contrast, as evidenced by the most recent presidential primaries, Republicans eagerly scramble to see who can grab the crown of being hailed as the most “conservative.” When it comes to legislation, Democrats remain largely on the defensive, trying to hang on to the status quo, while Republicans keep pushing for more and more conservative legislation — often with great success.

But this pendulum swing to the right may be coming to end. It’s still too early to say for certain, but signs are sure pointing in this direction.

This is a year when Colorado and Washington passed laws legalizing recreational user of marijuana. It’s a year when Maine and Maryland joined an increasing number of states that have legalized same-sex marriages.

Tammy Baldwin, an openly gay woman, defeated former Gov. Tommy Thompson to become the next Senator from Wisconsin. A clearly left-wing Elizabeth Warren defeated Scott Brown in Massachusetts. In other key Senate races, Claire McCaskill and Joe Donnelly defeated Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock respectively, defeats for those that believe in “legitimate rape” that is “God’s will.” More seriously, it was a defeat for those Republicans who mistakenly believed that women (or men for that matter) didn’t care about such issues.

This election almost certainly signaled the end of a strong push for more restrictive immigration laws, as even the most conservative of Republicans come to terms with how their anti-minority positions are hurting them at the polls.

And, of course, Obama won re-election in an electoral college landslide, taking seven of the eight swing states. And he did so on a platform that strongly asserted an intention to raise taxes.

Here in California, Democrats have a super-majority in both legislative houses for the first time in decades. And Proposition 30, a critical proposal to raise taxes, passed.

Perhaps most significantly, in regards to the point I’m making about shifting the spectrum, “Obamacare” will now be the law of the land. The dangers of a Supreme Court overturn or a Romney repeal are gone. Obamacare is still a far cry from the “universal health care” that those on the extreme left would prefer. But take heart lefties. The spectrum has shifted. Not too long ago, Obamacare was considered so extreme as to have no chance of becoming law. And yet here we are. I predict that, in another few years, Obamacare will be viewed as the “middle” position in the debate — making universal health care seem far less extreme than it is today. This doesn’t guarantee its passage — not by a long shot. But it moves universal health care from impossible to doable.

And that’s how formerly extreme ideas become law. You don’t get the country to support an extreme position. You get the position to no longer be considered extreme.

A few years ago, who would have thought that a gay couple could get legally married in this country, serve marijuana instead of wine at the reception, and not worry about getting arrested? Times change.

Heck, not too long ago, who would have thought an African-American could get elected President?