The president's precident

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

AKA "The Fix"

So in the lead up to the shutdown President Obama was telling his critics that the ACA was “settled” and “here to stay”. But in a effort to stave off growing backlash, and the threat of house Democrats siding with Republicans on the Keep Your Health Plan Act, the President is announcing that he will delay enforcement of the act's policy requirements and employer mandate until after the 2014 election cycle. (May 2015)

So in a seriously surreal moment Tea-partiers and the GOP establishment find themselves nodding in a agreement with Howard Dean...

So does the president have the authority to "fix" a problematic law? The short answer is no, he doesn't. If the President doesn't even get a line-item veto. He certainly doesn't get to rewrite or amend a statute without sending it back to congress.

Now I understand the desire to do "whatever it takes" to salvage the President's signature achievement but it sets a dangerous precedent. Would Obama, and his party as whole, be similarly supportive of a hypothetical pro-life president's attempts to unilaterally "fix" abortion law, or a libertarian president "fixing" the federal tax code? Personally I suspect that the vast majority of Democrats would be up in arms, and that calls for impeachment would on the speaker's desk before lunch.

And yet here we are...

Personally I find these developments deeply troubling.

I've been told that I put too much stock in "dead white slave-holders", but I still believe that the chief thing that stands between the US and a neo-soviet or fascist style police state is not the fact that we get to elect a new set of Ivy-League overlords every 4-8 years but the fact that there are, in theory at least, rules and standards that even our Ivy-League overlords must adhere to. "a government," as John Adams used to say "of laws not of men".

Only time will tell what sort of effect Obama's presidency will have on "rule of law" but unless there is some serious push-back and soon I don't see it being a good one.

I would hope that those who criticized Bush for his "Imperial Presidency" would see this as well.

Comments

[telemann.livejournal.com]

It was written by Avik Roy in July of this year, after SCOTUS allowed states to opt out part of the ACA, so the CBO had to redo its estimate. Roy was a consultant to Mitt Romey in the 2012 election and a scholar at the Manhattan Institute, not an academic institution of learning in the traditional sense of the word, but instead a Libertarian think tank funded by right wing groups including the Koch Brothers, and ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a "bill mill."

And to his points? Roy ends it with essentially a shrug. "Here’s what we don’t know: how will the CBO’s estimates change next year? Will we see a continuation of the trend toward higher spending, higher taxes, and more deficit spending? We might."

Matt Salo, at the Health Affairs Blog, writes that the finding from the CBO [the same report Avik references] might not be the last word from federal policymakers on the subject: “Ultimately state-level dynamics, such as the nuances of individual Medicaid programs, the Medicaid-Exchange interactions, and state fiscal conditions, combined with the Administration’s decisions about the optional aspects of the expansion will require policymakers to repeatedly revisit these estimates. … The ACA offers states many incentives. Nonetheless, the reality is that for some states, the Medicaid expansion may not necessarily or immediately be a “no-brainer” as some have suggested. … While numerous entities are tracking state officials’ public statements about the Medicaid expansion, it is likely the decisions will shift dramatically over time for both policy and political reasons” (7/25).

Dan Diamond, writing at California Healthline (http://www.californiahealthline.org/road-to-reform/2012/to-gauge-obamacare-impact-ignore-cbo-and-focus-on-aqc.aspx), says the numbers “reframe the debate over the ACA yet again. As I noted last week (http://www.californiahealthline.org/road-to-reform/2012/how-much-will-states-medicaid-expansions-really-cost.aspx), more than two-thirds of states are waffling on whether to participate in the law’s Medicaid expansion, and the new CBO numbers will offer new targets for supporters and opponents of ObamaCare to make their case. But the CBO score is also more of a political story than policy news. And as both parties continue to haggle over the ACA’s price and impact, keep in mind that the CBO’s projections about health law costs are often wrong (http://www.healthreformwatch.com/2009/08/30/cbo-wrong-on-health-care-reform-cost-numbers/)” (7/26).

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

The article was from Fortune magazine, so any claims that it's neutral are DOA, regardless of its author. I used it because the CBO just does comparisons the current estimate and the previous year, you can get, for example, the 2011 estimates compared with the 2012 estimates. They didn't have the 2010 estimates, which I'm assuming soliloquy76 was using, compared with the 2012 estimates. The 2012 savings as estimated by the CBO went pretty much to zero, or at least the perverse meaning of zero that $4billion takes on when talking about federal spending.

The 2012 estimates are almost certain to change. For example, my take is that the excise tax on Cadillac health plans will ever be put in place in any meaningful way. They are still about the best ones we've got to go by. However, if you've really got an issue with using CBO estimates, you should bring it up with soliloquy76, he started it.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Oh heavens no, I have no objections to CBO estimates. Just like I have no issues with Mr. Roy clarifying at the end of his own article that he wasn't sure if the CBO would change future estimates (based on other changing elements e.g. as more states decide to opt out or participate and the numbers of people who decide to participate in exchanges, etc, etc, etc)