Category Archives: Obamacare

News Flash: GOP Activist Reveals That Veteran GOP Consultant Is Supporting A GOPer for Governor

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Tom_HornerMinnPost reporter Cyndy Brucato is breaking the blockbuster news that 2010 Independence Party gubernatorial candidate Tom Horner is, gasp, crossing party boundaries to support Republican gubernatorial candidate Jeff Johnson!  The reporter breathlessly reports:

Another leader in the Minnesota Independence Party is gravitating toward support of a Republican statewide candidate.   Tom Horner, the Independence Party candidate for governor in 2010, is meeting this week with GOP candidate for governor Jeff Johnson to discuss joining his campaign.

Wow, if that happens, that does sound like huge news!

Unless you pay close attention to politics.

If you do pay close attention to politics, you know that Tom Horner is a long-time Republican staffer, supporter, consultant and pundit.  Before Horner spent one year as a right-leaning Independence Party candidate for Governor, he was the head staffer for Republican U.S. Senator Dave Durenberger, has advocated for Republican candidates like Norm Coleman his entire adult life, has long counseled Republicans, and served for many years as the Republican voice on Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) and other news outlets.

In short, for decades Horner has been one of the most visible Republicans in Minnesota. Reporter Brucato is aware of this because she was a lead staffer for Republican Governor Arne Carlson and Norm Coleman.  But she mentions none of Horner’s GOP bona fides in the article.

In other words, the real headline here is actually a wee bit less newsworthy.  It’s more like:

GOP Activist Reveals That Veteran GOP Consultant Is Supporting A GOPer for Governor

Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

I like and respect Tom Horner a great deal.  Though we disagree on many policy issues, Tom is intelligent, has integrity, and Mr. Johnson is lucky to have his policy and PR counsel.    But let’s get real.  This hardly qualifies as the blockbuster news the reporter makes it out to be.

I support MinnPost relying on a ex-staffers of politicians for opinion pieces. That’s an appropriate role for an ex-staffer.  But they shouldn’t rely on ex-staffers from either party for news reporting like this, because their advocacy background naturally calls their objectivity into question.

While  the lede was blown way out of proportion, I did find a few things intriguing about the article that left me hungry for deeper reporting.  On taxes, Horner says:

 “I wasn’t opposed to raising more revenue, but the way the governor went about it is not in the best long-term interest of Minnesota. Just adding fourth tier only reinforces a tax system that isn’t suited to a global market. Maybe we need more revenue but tilt the policy much more to tax consumption and more to reward investment.”

And on health care, Horner says:

“MnSure is where Republicans could play an effective role. It’s good that we’re expanding access and covering children and have a more robust marketplace.  Now how do we control the underlying drivers of health care?”

The fact that Tea Party-backed Republican gubernatorial candidate Jeff Johnson may be bringing in a pro-tax, pro-Obamacare consultant for policy advice raises additional questions that were not posed by the reporter:

  • Does Horner think tax increases were only needed in the past, or does he think that more may be needed in the future?  If so, which taxes would he favor increasing?
  • Which parts of health reform would Horner favor retaining?  Medicaid expansion?  Tax credits?  The insurance exchange system?  Pre-existing condition reform paired with the insurance mandates?  Other?  How would Horner propose Mr. Johnson could better control health care costs?
  • Does candidate Johnson share Horner’s opinions on taxes and health reform?
  • What do key Tea Party-friendly supporters of Johnson think of bringing in Horner to advocate for these positions?

The answers to those questions would have been informative, and would have qualified as actual news.

– Loveland

Reporters Let McFadden Have It Both Ways On Health Reform

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You can’t simultaneously support deism and atheism, or capitalism and communism.  Embracing one makes it logically impossible to simultaneously embrace the other.  They are mutually exclusive.  If a candidate came out and claimed to be for both of those ideological constructs at the same time, in an attempt to win support from supporters of each idea, they would be the laughing stock of American politics.

If you doubt that, imagine if you saw these headlines in today’s news:

Dayton Tells Congregation “I Support Atheistic Christianity”

McFadden Tells Business Group He Embraces “Capitalistic Communism”

The candidates would be laughed out of the race for taking such absurd positions.

I submit that the same should be true of simultaneously advocating to 1) outlaw denial of health coverage due to a pre-existing health condition and 2) make health insurance coverage optional.  It’s defensible to embrace either of those two positions.  But it’s not defensible to embrace those two approaches simultaneously.

Here’s why:  If you outlaw the insurance companies’ enormously unpopular ability to deny coverage due to pre-existing conditions, but simultaneously make purchasing health insurance optional, millions of people would stay out of the insurance market until the moment they got sick or hurt.  After all, why would anyone choose to pay high premiums for years to protect themselves against the expenses associated with treating an illness or injury when they know that the insurance company will be forced to pay the treatment expenses after they suffer from the ailment? And if millions of people refused to pay premiums until the moment they need insurance benefits, the insurance industry would very quickly need to dramatically jack up premiums, or go bankrupt.

There is broad consensus about this.  The Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance, the Manhattan Institute, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the Pacific Research Institute, the Manhattan Institute, The Concord Coalition, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Families USA and many others have all said that a coverage mandate and preexisting condition reform have to be paired in order for the finances of health reform to work.

Mike_McFadden_scissors_obamacareYet when GOP politicians endorse those two mutually exclusive positions, almost no political reporters note the absurdity of it.  When reporters allow politicians to get away with simultaneously endorsing the part of Obamacare that outlaws pre-existing condition denials and opposing the part of Obamacare that mandates insurance coverage, they effectively allow those politicians to say something every bit as absurd as “I’m for capitalism, but I also support communism.”

For example Minnesota U.S. Senate candidate, and millionaire investment banker, Mike McFadden (R-Sunfish Lake) says:

Before we can make the kind of changes Americans deserve, we need to repeal the “Unaffordable Care Act” (which would repeal the coverage mandates)

…when we repeal and replace Obamacare, we need to make sure that those with pre-existing conditions actually have access to affordable insurance plans that cover their illnesses.

Any actuary will tell you that if McFadden and other GOP pols simultaneously enacted those two policies it would lead to a complete and utter meltdown of the nation’s health care finance system.  But almost no political reporters will.

– Loveland

Note:  This post was also featured on MinnPost’s Blog Cabin.

McFadden’s New Ad Proposes Scissoring Health Care System’s Unhealed Wounds

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McFadden_Stiches_AdFollowing his sophmoric campaign ad about getting hit by a child in his, tee hee, senatorial privates, Minnesota U.S. Senate candidate Mike McFadden has a new metaphoric television ad about the harm he wants to inflict on Obamacare.

The ad opens with Mr. McFadden establishing his bona fides as a Common Man, just like us.  Sitting in a plush leather chair in a well polished den, the son of the CEO candidate — who is worth between $15 million and $57 million dollars — tells viewers about the McFaddens’ hardscrabble existence:

Conor McFadden (son of the candidate): “My dad, Mike McFadden? He’s cheap.”

Mike McFadden (candidate): “With six kids, it’s called a budget.”

In Romneyesque fashion, the “with six kids” and “budget” references are intended to imply that Millionaire Mike is struggling from paycheck-to-paycheck, just like a dang minimum wage worker.  This is as close to an obligatory “Honest Abe was raised in a primitive log cabin out on the wild frontier” yarn as Team McFadden can muster.   (Of course, the $2,000 hockey table on display next to junior doesn’t exactly support the Frugal Mike image.  But, hey, he didn’t get the kids the $3,000 table, now did he?)

Then comes the metaphoric meat of the ad:

Conor: “When I was 10 and had to get stitches out after a hockey injury, the nurse said it would cost one-hundred bucks. Dad was so horrified he grabbed the scissors and took them out himself.”

Mike: “You lived.”

Conor: “Trust me, nothing will stop Dad from trying to take out Obamacare.”

Mike: “Send me to Washington and give me some scissors. I’ll put ‘em to work.”

Mike_McFadden_stern_daddyNote the tough, no-nonsense daddy image that McFadden’s political consultants are constructing.  Linguist George Lakoff has documented how GOP candidates very consciously frame themselves as “strict fathers” of the  family — “you lived” — while portraying Democrats as the overly permissive mommies.

Wait until daddy comes home!  Daddy will stop mommy and and the children from spending irresponsibly. There is a lot of that patriarchal “father knows best” vibe here.

So, to recap the ad narrative,  strict daddy on a budget is so darn frugal he will remove son’s stitches with his own scissors to save money, and he will do that with Obamacare too!

There are at least a couple of major substantive problems with the mac daddy’s metaphor:

Problem #1:  America’s health care system is far from a healed wound.  In fact, America’s health care system is an open, festering wound.  According to the non-partisan Commonwealth Fund, the United States has the worst health care system in the developed world.  After Mr. McFadden “takes out” the ACA stitches in this gaping wound, what is he going to do about the bleeding:

  • The 99,643 Minnesotans newly enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) who would be uninsured again.
  • The 2,318,738  Minnesotans with some type of pre-existing health condition who would once again be denied insurance without ACA protection.
  • The 35,000 Minnesota young adults who, thanks to the ACA, are currently insured under their parents plans until age 26 but would be uninsured again without ACA.
  • The 2,043,000 Minnesotans who, thanks to the ACA, are free from worrying about lifetime limits on coverage, but would face such dangerous limits again.

Are we really prepared to let McFadden re-open that wound?

Problem #2:  “Taking out” Obamacare stitches with McFadden’s scissors doesn’t save money. In fact, it would cost a lot of money.  According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Joint Committee on Taxation (JTC), eliminating Obamacare would:

“…cause a net increase in federal budget deficits of $109 billion over the 2013–2022 period.”

In other words, McFadden may be cutting, but he is certainly not saving.  That’s an important little $109 billion detail to keep in mind.

Also, McFadden has made it clear that he wouldn’t use his scissors on fellow CEOs at private insurance companies.  McFadden opponent Senator Al Franken successfully authored an ACA measure that, for the first time, requires private health plan CEOs to spend at least 80 to 85 percent of the premiums they collect to pay for actual health care, instead of corporate overhead, salaries, bonuses, marketing and profits.  In 2012, Franken’s “medical loss ratio” provision led to the average Minnesota family with private insurance receiving a rebate of $303.

But Mr. McFadden has made it clear that he opposes Franken’s scissoring of private insurance companies’ overhead, salaries, bonuses, marketing and profits.   Instead, McFadden prefers to take his scissors to millions of Minnesotans benefiting from Obamacare.

So, McFadden wants to scissors an unhealed wound even though it will cost billions and cause massive bleeding.  Why?  Because the Minnesota GOP’s rabidly Tea Party base demands red-faced Obama-hating, and McFadden will say anything to curry their favor.  As McFadden’s son promises them, “Trust me, nothing will stop Dad from trying to take out Obamacare.”

– Loveland

Minnesota Senate Candidate McFadden Releases New Humorous Ad

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Mike_McFadden_groin_hilaritySaint Paul, Minn. — Minnesota U.S. Senate candidate Mike McFadden (R-Sunfish Lake) followed an earlier campaign television ad that ended with a child-inflicted injury to his groin with a new  television ad that uses thinly veiled flatulence-based humor to further make his case for election to the U.S. Senate.

“We’re just trying to have some good clean fun, while making a very serious point about Al Franken’s big government, job-killing stuff,” said McFadden.

The ad opens with a fog rolling over a grainy black-and-white photo of a frowning Senator Al Franken. Ominous music drones throughout the spot, and two 10-year old boys on a playground chime in in a sign-songy tone.

Male adult announcer: “Something is very, very rotten in Washington.”

Male child actor #1: “Al Franken says the Iraq War and Great Recesssion  are not his fault. But he who smelt it, dealt it.” (giggle)

Announcer: “Death panels.  IRSgate. Benghazi. Al Franken wants to keep it silent. But we all know, they’re silent but DEADLY.”

Male child actor #2: “Whoever rebuts it, cuts it.” (giggle)

Mike McFadden: (Giggling and holding his nose ) “I’m Mike McFadden, and I declare it, so Al can no longer blare it.”

(McFadden then sits on whoopee cushion. McFadden and kids giggle in unison.)

Mike McFadden:  “Oh no, not again, Al!”

The ad began running across Minnesota today. Like the groin ad, it was created by Washington-based Sophmoric Productions.

– Loveland

Note:  This post is satire and the featured ad doesn’t exist, for now.

Minneapolis Stepping On It’s Applause Line

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Betsy_Hodges_begs_for_applauseSo Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges is directing Minneapolitan social media mavens to tweet on over to #bragmpls to brag about Minneapolis, and run down other cities.

 “When you go to their cities,” she joked, “talk about how disappointing they are compared to Minneapolis.”

I can hear it now.

“Yeah, New York City is nice and all, but frankly Central Park is a little disappointing compared to The Yard.”

“Chicago? I hate to be mean, but I was a little disappointed that the architecture was all so old, kind of like Minneapolis had before we had the good sense to demolish it, and replace with a fresh 1970s look.”

“San Francisco, meh. I looked everywhere to find a Culver’s, but was sooooo disappointed to learn that they haven’t arrived there yet. I couldn’t wait to get home.”

Okay, I acknowledge Mayor Hodges was making a joke when she talked about expressing disappointment in other cities.  Still, the hashtag cheerleading campaign is no joke to Mayor Hodges and her public relations team.   And to me, her public begging for hashtags is a wee bit #pathetic.

Of all of the contrived things about contemporary professional sports stage management, nothing is more inauthentic than the Jumbotron exhortations for fans to “Make Some Noise!” The piped-in artificial rhythmic clapping and the mind-numbingly chirpy D.J. Casper song “Everybody Clap Your Hands” fall into the same category.   Inevitably these perky little pick-me-ups come when the bats are silent, the defense is porous, and the hometown ownership is starting to worry about meeting its beer sales targets.

But here’s the thing: Minneapolis’s bats are not silent.

rainbow_all_star_gameIn fact, Minneapolis is kicking some serious ass right now. Two new mega-expensive LRT lines are flowing through Minneapolis, and a third appears to be on the way. An iconic billion dollar football palace is rising out of the ground to replace the embarrassing  Metrodome. The metro area has the lowest unemployment of any metro area in the nation. Minnesota has the second lowest uninsured rate in the nation. The city’s population is growing, driven by a remarkable residential housing boom in the downtown area.  The Super Bowl, the most visible sporting event in America, is coming.  And baseball fans from around the world are watching professional baseball’s All Star Game in one of the best ballparks in the world, with a rainbow framing it, right here in our Minnie Apple.

The applause is happening organically. So turning on the flashing “Applause!” sign and publicly waving the mayoral pom poms in the midst of genuine, unprompted applause constitutes stepping on your own applause line.   Methinks we’re trying just a little too hard.

– Loveland

Note:  This post was also featured on MinnPost’s Blog Cabin.

State of the Obamacare Debate

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I’m too uninspired to write anything new, and am about to go on vacation, so I’m just posting the best recent distillation I have seen of the state of that Song That Never Ends, the Obamacare debate.

Take it away, Jonathan Chait from the New York magazine:

Republicans Finally Admit Why They Really Hate Obamacare

By JONATHAN CHAIT

Conservatives spent years predicting Obamacare would collapse in all manner of gloomy scenarios. But those predictions all occurred in the run-up to the law coming on-line, on the basis of sketchy, preliminary data or pure conjecture. But in the months since the law has come into effect, a steady stream of far more solid data has come in, and the doomsaying predictions are being hunted to extinction. The right’s ideological objections to Obamacare remain, but I can’t think of a single practical analytic claim they made that still looks correct.

Just within the last week, numerous predictions of Obamacare skeptics have suffered ignominious deaths. Consider a few:

1. Obamacare is mostly just signing up customers who already had insurance. The basis for this claim was a preliminary survey conducted by McKinsey last year, well before the first enrollment period for Obamacare was complete. It generated massive coverage in the right-wing media. Since then, newer data has shown much higher figures. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey finds that 57 percent of enrollees lacked insurance previously.

2. Obamacare isn’t even significantly reducing the ranks of the uninsured. This claim built on the previous one — it combined the prediction few people would sign up for new coverage with the prediction that those who did were mostly insured. “CBO has projected that 14 million previously uninsured Americans would gain coverage under the law. With about ten weeks left in this year’s enrollment period, we’re looking at a coverage expansion of less than a million,” suggested Republican health-care adviser Avik Roy.

Obamacare_uninsured_decline_chartMeasuring the population lacking insurance is historically complex and imprecise, but we now have a bevy of measures showing that Obamacare has already made a huge dent in the uninsured population. Gallup has showed the uninsured rate dropping by about a quarter. A report finds the uninsured rate in Minnesota has fallen by 40 percent. A study of numerous cities by the Robert Woods Johnson foundation projections projects declines of about 60 percent by 2016 in municipalities whose states expanded Medicaid, and half that in states where Republicans have maintained the party’s boycott of Obamacare.

3. Insurance will be so expensive that few people will want to buy it. We spent weeks and weeks debating “rate shock.” Also, nope. The average plan purchased on exchanges costs customers only $82 a month. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey of people who used to have individual insurance and now have the regulated insurance on the exchanges — finds that the number of customers reporting lower premiums exceeds the number paying higher premiums.

Obamacare_premiums_char

4. But premiums will shoot up next year! As premiums have turned out to be cheap — indeed, cheaper than initially projected — Obamacare skeptics slowly retreated to a new prediction: Rates would rise next year.

Another nope. As state-by-state information trickles in, it appears conservatives won’t get the premium spike next year, either. Insurers are jumping into the market, putting downward pressure on prices. Expected premium increases appear to be on par with, or perhaps a bit lower than, historic levels:

Will all this data produce a grand bipartisan consensus on Obamacare? Of course not. Nor should it. The practical objections to Obamacare are collapsing, but the philosophical ones remain in place. Suppose you strongly objected to the idea that your city should own a bunch of buildings where people can go borrow books for free. (Some people do!) If you couldn’t persuade a majority of fellow citizens of your conceptual objections to libraries, you might try arguing that the library scheme was doomed to collapse in cost overruns, or that nobody would ever use them, or that shelves of heavy books would be routinely toppling over and killing small children. But the fact is that running buildings where people can check out books, and running exchanges where people can purchase basic health insurance packages, are both things that governments can do.

And so conservative objections to Obamacare are finally turning from the practical to the philosophical. In response to reports that Obamacare insurance turns out to be affordable, Roy, who has spent months warning of rate shock, mocks that “other people’s money will pay for it.” Conservative columnist Byron York likewise argues “Obamacare’s ‘good news’ applies only to the poor.”

It is true that Obamacare is far more helpful to people lower down the income scale. The poorest people get Medicaid, which is free. Those higher up the income ladder get tax credits, which phase out at $45,000 a year for an individual, and $94,000 a year for a family of four. (I wouldn’t call people earning under those levels “poor.”) Of course, people who get employer-sponsored insurance also get their coverage paid for with “other peoples’ money.” The difference is that employer-sponsored insurance uses a tax deduction, which gives the largest benefits to those who earn the most money, as opposed to Obamacare’s sliding scale tax credit, which gives the most to those who earn the least.

But at least conservatives are now representing their true bedrock position on Obamacare. It is largely a transfer program benefitting people who either don’t have enough money, or pose too high a health risk, to bear the cost of their own medical care. Conservatives don’t like transfer programs because they require helping the less fortunate with other peoples’ money.

– Loveland, but really Chait

Stewart Mills’ Ad On Truth Serum

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This is the script of a political ad that was recently released by conservative Republican Stewart Mills III, who is running against DFL Congressman Rick Nolan in Minnesota’s 8th Congressional District.  The ad shows young Stew the third sporting the orange shirt worn by front line employees at the Mills Fleet Farm chain of big box stores that his family operates.

I’m Stuart Mills.  My family operates Mills Fleet Farm.

As a teenager, I worked here stocking shelves.  (chuckle)  Then I got promoted to mopping floors.

Now I run the health care program for thousands of our employees and their families.

Everyday, I see how Obamacare hurts small businesses and the middle class.

As your congressman, I’ll replace it.

I’m Stewart Mills and I approve this message, because we need to grow the middle class and get Minnesota back to work.

Stewart_Mills_III_orange_shirt

If Stew the third were injected with truth serum, the ad might sound more like this:

I’m Stewart Mills the third.  My family operates Mills Fleet Farm.

As a teenager, I worked there stocking shelves.  (chuckle)  Then I said,  screw this, daddy, make me a top executive faster than everyone else.  And he did.

In other words, I was born on third base, but think I hit a triple.

Now I’m fighting to protect my millions of dollars in inherited wealth.

But every day in Minnesota I see how 350,000 minimum wage workers have gotten a raise, 95,000 have new Medicaid coverage, and 2.3 million with pre-existing conditions have gotten their coverage protected through Obamacare.

As your congressman, I would oppose those things, and  offer no alternatives.

I’m Stewart Mills III, and a bunch of other folks with inherited wealth approve of this message, because they want a fellow silver spooner growing the upper class and putting ordinary Minnesotans back in their place.

 

Note:  This post was featured in Politics in Minnesota‘s Best of the Blogs.

Billionaire Purchases Naming Rights To Uninsured South Dakotans

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Sioux Falls, South Dakota — South Dakota billionaire banker and philanthropist T. Denny Sanford announced today that he will fund free health coverage for 48,000 uninsured, low-income South Dakotans.  The announcement comes in the wake of Republican Governor Dennis Daugaard’s continued refusal to accept $224 million in federal funding to cover the same group of citizens.

In recent years, Sanford has been lauded for donating large amounts of money to South Dakota health facilities, sports complexes, and other popular projects.   The high interest banker often has his projects named after him, such as Sanford Health™, Sanford Children’s™, Sanford Heart™,  Sanford Medical School™, Sanford Pentagon™, Sanford Sports Complex™, and Denny Sanford Premier Center™.

Sanford’s latest donation comes in the midst of a bitter political debate that has been intensifying in South Dakota for several years.

As part of the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA), sometimes called Obamacare, about 48,000 low income South Dakotans are eligible for Medicaid coverage.  By the year 2020, South Dakota was to have received a massive influx of $224 million due to this expansion of coverage.

Medicaid_ExpansionHowever Governor Daugaard has refused the $224 million to cover uninsured poor people, citing his  personal opposition to Obamacare and the cost of the expansion that would be paid by South Dakota.  The federal government is paying 100 percent of the total costs through 2016, and 90 percent after that.

The neighboring states of Iowa, North Dakota, and Minnesota are all expanding Medicaid coverage to uninsured citizens, while Nebraska, Montana and Wyoming are not.  States that are opting out of the program will leave over 5 million of the poorest Americans without basic health benefits, or shifting their health care costs to other citizens.

Under pressure from South Dakota physicians and 63% of South Dakotans who support the Medicaid expansion, Daugaard recently asked the federal government to cover a little over half of the eligible citizens, but deny coverage to the rest of eligible citizens. The federal government rejected Daugaard’s proposal, leaving all 48,000 South Dakotans without coverage.  The Legislature  refused to allow the Medicaid expansion question to be posed to South Dakota voters at the ballot box.

But Sanford stepped into the fray today, announcing that he is creating a new Medicaid-like health plan, which he is calling SanfordCare™.  Any South Dakota citizen who would have been eligible for the Obamacare expansion would be eligible for the free SandfordCare™ coverage, provided they agree to legally change their surnames to Sanford™.  Any children born while under the health coverage would also have to adopt the first name Denny™ or Denita™.

Note:  This post is, to the best of our knowledge, satire.  There is no SanfordCare proposal, but there are 48,000 South Dakotans being denied health coverage.

Franken Opponent McFadden Refuses To Confirm Own Existence

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invisible_manSaint Paul, Minnesota — Minnesota U.S.  Senate candidate Mike McFadden held a news conference today to announce that he would be announcing nothing.

“Minnesota is great, and I’ll do lots of great stuff in the Senate to make it even greater,” said McFadden, to roaring applause from his supporters.  “Beyond that, I promise that I will not do wasteful ungreat things that keep Minnesota from becoming greater.”

Under questioning from reporters, the wealthy businessman running to replace U.S. Senator Al Franken refused to provide positions  on the national policy issues that are debated in the U.S. Senate.   For example, McFadden declined to state his position on the minimum wage, the Paycheck Fairness Act and a “personhood” anti-birth control measure.

MinnPost reporter Eric Black recently attempted to profile the stealth Senate candidate, but struggled to find anything to profile beyond the over $2 million the former businessman has raised from enthusiastic conservative donors.  Black characterized the McFadden record like this:

I’m not sure what the record is for seeking a seat in the U.S. Senate without disclosing issue positions, but McFadden, who declared his candidacy nine months ago, may be giving it a run.

There is no “issues” section on his campaign website. He skipped the first three opportunities to debate his Republican opponents for the nomination.  On Monday, he appeared at the fourth debate, but that one was closed to the press and public.

The McFadden campaign maintains that the candidate has taken many position stands, such as his desire to “name way more awesome things after Ronald Reagan” and “repeal and replace” the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA).

When pressed for details about what he would replace the ACA with, McFadden said that announcement would need to wait until he begins his six-year term in office.

“We will help, not hurt Americans,” McFadden  explained.

The campaign did release a 12-page single spaced list of things McFadden would rename after Ronald Reagan.

When asked to name political role models McFadden listed Ronald Reagan, several Reagan impersonators and Chauncey Gardiner.

“By standing for no one, and Mike is appealing to everyone,” said Saul Loes, a conservative political consultant advising the McFadden campaign. “He just might be the most brilliant politician of our generation, if he exists, which we are neither confirming nor denying.”

Note:  This post is satire.

MN Congressional Candidates Take Note: 6 of 10 Americans Want To Keep Obamacare

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The reporting on Obamacare public opinion research has been consistently shallow, as I’ve noted for years.  Despite the many simplistic “Public Opposes Obamacare” stories and punditifications, a deeper dive into the polls shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans want to either keep the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as is, or improve it.

The latest Kaiser Family Health Foundation Tracking Poll, which was fielded prior to this week’s positive publicity about ACA insurance exchanges targets being met, finds that this trend is continuing.  Even after a pre-deadline deluge of anti-Obamacare advertising, Americans still oppose repealing the Affordable Care Act, by a huge 29% to 59% margin.  Independent voters, who will be so important in the upcoming mid-term elections, also overwhelmingly oppose the GOP’s repeal calls, by a 32% to 52% margin.

Survey__59_pct_want_to_keep_acaSo, nervous DFL congressional candidates, improvements to the ACA — a better exhange website, a more robust exchange call center, more exchange “navigators,” stronger enrollment incentives for young adults,  and/or a public insurance option — would be welcomed by voters.  But let your Republican opponents blather on about “repeal and replace” all they want, because it simply is not selling.

– Loveland

Note:  This post was featured in Politics in Minnesota’s Best of the Blogs.

MN GOPers Offer Bill To Insure More Families and Ban Preexisting Condition Exclusions

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Saint Paul, Minnesota (April 1, 2014) —  Republicans legislators in the Minnesota House of Representatives today released detailed legislation that would extend health insurance to 489,000 uninsured Minnesotans, and guarantee that Minneostans will never again be denied health coverage because of a preexisting health condition.

“Democrats have put their detailed health care plan out there to be analyzed by Minnesota citizens, so we decided that we should develop our own detailed proposal,” said Minnesota House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt (R-Crown).

republican_alternative_to_obamacare_GingrichThe Democrats’ Affordable Care Act (ACA) has made it illegal for private insurance companies to deny coverage due to pre-existing health conditions, something that impacts many of the 2.3 million Minnesotans who have some type of pre-existing health condition, and others who could develop one in the future.

The ACA also successfully helped 95,000 of Minnesota’s most vulnerable citizens get efficiently covered in Medicaid, including about 12,000 uninsured Minnesotans whose medical expenses were being shifted to insured Minnesotans.  In addition, the ACA covers 35,000 Minnesota young adults, many of whom otherwise would have been uninsured, but now are able to stay on their parents’ health policy until age 26.  Finally, over 150,000 Minnesotans recently enrolled into health insurance plans via the MNsure online insurance selection and comparison tool, in part because the plans offered on MNsure carried the lowest premiums in the nation.

Despite those findings, Republicans gathered at a news conference at the State Capitol today to declare the Democratic effort a “train wreck,” and to release their detailed legislative alternative  They note that their legislation will achieve more results at a fraction of the cost of the ACA.

“We’re proud of our party’s health reform ideas, and have no problem setting our detailed proposal alongside the Democrats’ detailed proposal,” said Daubt.  “In fact, we have already asked for a non-partisan third party analysis of our legislation, so that Minnesotans can see precisely how our bill compares with the ACA in terms of effectiveness, efficiency and affordability.”

In other April 1 news, a large group of boars was reported to be flying through a brutal polar vortex over the frozen southeastern Michigan town of Hell.  The soaring swine seemed to be disoriented by a blinding morning sunrise on the western horizon.

Note:  This satirical post was featured in Politics in Minnesota’s Best of the Blogs.

SD Senate Challenger Shows How Obama Should Have Led On Health Care Reform

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rick_weiland_head_shot-2President Obama and his supporters have struggled mightily to market the byzantine Affordable Care Act (ACA) reforms to the public.  But by uttering three simple words – “Medicare for all” –  U.S. Senate candidate Rick Weiland in neighboring South Dakota is showing President Obama how it should have been done way back in 2008.

The “Medicare For All” approach that Weiland proposed last week is much easier to sell than the ACA.  The Associated Press reports:

Weiland has proposed that citizens of any age be allowed to buy into Medicare, which now is generally open only to people 65 and older, as an alternative to private health insurance plans.

“People understand Medicare,” Weiland told The Argus Leader. “It works, it’s efficient, and all this other stuff that they’re having now to focus on is extremely complicated, and they don’t understand it.”

Clear.  Concise.  Compelling.  The same can’t be said about most ACA-related rhetoric.

Obama Framed Up The Wrong Comparison

In the book Predictably Irrational,  Dan Ariely, a psychology and behavioral economics professor, examines how we make choices.  One of the phenomena Ariely describes is research showing that humans tend to judge their environment in relation to things that are comparable.

For instance, let’s say you give newlyweds the choice of three honeymoon options – Paris with free breakfast included, Rome with free breakfast included, and Rome with no breakfast included.  Because the two Rome options are comparable, most will gravitate away from the single Paris option.  We are attracted to comparability.

The Comparability Obama Offered.  With that research in mind, consider what President Obama and congressional Democrats did on health reform in 2008.  He believed that Americans needed to have a system that was comparable with what they were familiar with, our American system of private insurers and private health care providers.  So, from 2008 to 2010, Obama framed the health care reform debate as the choice of two comparable things:

Private-centered status quo model.  The pre-2010 status quo system of private insurers and private health care providers.

vs.

Private-centered model, coupled with reforms..  The status quo system of private insurers and health care providers coupled with complicated reforms.

Affordable_Care_Act_infographic-2The ACA reforms were enormously complex, mostly because the underlying pre-2010 status quo health care system was so decentralized and entangled.  Obama’s reforms were narrowly enacted in 2010, primarily because the status quo was so overwhelmingly unpopular.

The Comparability Obama Should Have Offered.  But what if Obama had framed up  a different kind of comparable choice for the American people?  While it’s true that Americans are familiar with private health insurance, they are also familiar with Medicare.  So why didn’t Obama frame the debate up as a choice between these two comparable things:

Medicare for some.  A status quo system where Medicare is available only to seniors.

vs.

Medicare for all.  A new system where Medicare is available to everyone who wants it.

The Political Advantages of Medicare for All

Obama didn’t go with Medicare For All, presumably because he was afraid that Republicans would castigate it as “government run health care” and “socialism.”

As it turned out, the Republican spin machine was determined to characterize anything Obama proposed as “government run health care” and “socialism.” After all, it uses those terms to describe the ACA, which is  absurd, because the ACA relies on private insurers and private caregivers without permitting a single government-run option in the mix.

President Obama was never going to avoid this “government run health care” political attack , so there was no good reason to allow it to shape the proposal.

Moreover, Medicare happens to be “government run health care” that Americans really like.  About 56 percent of Medicare recipients give it a rating of 9 or 10 on a 0-10 scale, while only about 40 percent of Americans enrolled in private health insurance gave their plans such a high rating. An amazing 70% of Medicare recipients say they always get access to needed health care, while only 51% of people with private insurance say that.

A 2007 Associated Press/Yahoo survey showed that about two-thirds of Americans (65%) agreed that “the United States should adopt a universal health insurance program in which everyone is covered under a program like Medicare that is run by the government and financed by taxpayers.”

So demonizing the specific (“Medicare”) would have been much more politically difficult for Republicans than demonizing the abstract (“government run health care” or “socialism”).

Could Obama have passed a “Medicare For All” bill?  Expanding the nation’s most popular health plan was certainly possible.   After all, knowing that two-thirds of Americans support Medicare for All, what politician of either party would want to take to the stump arguing:

“For your parents, grandparents, neighbors, and friends, Medicare is terrific.   I’ll fight to the death to protect it for them.  But for the rest of you,  I am blocking you from accessing  Medicare.  Medicare for YOU would be radical socialism that would lead to horrific health problems.”

Huh?  That would be a head-spinning political argument to sell.

Still, because the insurance lobby is so strong, maybe Congress would have rejected Medicare for All, against the wishes of two-thirds of their constituents.  But if Obama had made  Medicare for All the starting point for the debate, the compromise at the end of the process may have been more progressive, such as a private-dominated marketplace with a Medicare-like public option impacting market competition.

Incumbents who voted for the ACA in 2010 need to defend that confusing law in the 2014 mid-term elections, and the ACA is certainly a vast improvement over the pre-ACA status quo that Republicans have effectively embraced by not offering alternatives for reducing the rate of uninsurance and outlawing preexisting condition bans.  The ACA, for all its warts, is the most significant health care reform since the creation of Medicare.

But even in a neon red state like South Dakota, challengers like Mr. Weiland are wise to adopt the clear, concise and compelling “Medicare for All” rallying call, just as Obama and congressional Democrats should have done back in  2008.

Loveland

Note:  This post was featured in MinnPost’s Blog Cabin.

MNsure Ads: 10,000 Reasons We Already Know About

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paul_bunyan_mnsure_tree-2For about five months now, MNsure ads have repeatedly told us:  “Minnesota is the land of 10,000 reasons to get health insurance.”  To educate us of this fact, the ads have portrayed a variety of health calamidies befalling Minnesota icon Paul Bunyan.  Incidents involving crushed private parts are particularly popular.

MNsure’s ad agency seems convinced that as soon as Minnesotans understand that they could face Bunyan-esque health problems without health insurance, they will surf on over to mnsure.com.  But at this stage of the game, that message isn’t sufficient.  Repeatedly telling Minnesotans that  coverage brings treatments is like telling us that parkas bring warmth.  We get that.  If Minnesotans somehow didn’t know that self-evident fact before the MNsure ads, they darn sure do five months into the multi-million dollar campaign.

So how about we share some motivating information that many DON’T know?

Sharing New News About MNsure

For example, the ads could tell Minnesotans that if they don’t get coverage by March 31st, they have to pay a large government penalty.   That would seem to be a pretty motivating piece of information, and research shows that about a third of the population doesn’t know about the penalty, and 8 out of 10 don’t know about the deadline.

Or the ads could explain how health coverage has never been more affordable for thousands of Minnesotans.  That also would seem to be a pretty motivating fact, yet research shows that a whopping 69% of Americans don’t know about new premium tax credits and other financial assistance.  Among the young  people who are so key to making the Obamacare risk pools stable, awareness about financial assistance is even lower.

Minnesota has a particularly good story to tell on the affordability front, because MNsure is offering the lowest premiums in the nation.  So, why isn’t MNsure telling that story?

“Newly affordable” and “mandatory a few weeks from now” are messages that are motivating and new news.  And as far as I can tell, they are missing from MNsure’s current ads.

Bye Bye Bunyan

So it’s time to retire the sophomoric Paul Bunyan hilarity.  As MNsure enters the home stretch toward the March 31st deadline, it should switch to  a much more utilitarian message.  Rough example:

Young adult:

Why did I use MnSURE to get health coverage?   Not because I think buying insurance is fun.  It’s no more fun than buying car insurance, which I also have to do.

No, I did it to avoid  a double hit.

First I did it to avoid a looming government penalty.  If you haven’t heard, there is a big penalty that kicks in March 31 for anyone who isn’t covered.  And it gets bigger over time.

Second, I did it to avoid the crippling medical bills that can come from being uninsured.

And the good news is, getting coverage on MNsure was more affordable than I expected.   Minnesota’s MNsure site offers the lowest average premiums of any state, and over two-thirds of the uninsured are eligible for help to make coverage more affordable.

So, no missed deadline.  No penalty.  No medical bankruptcy.  And more affordable than I expected. www.mnsure.com

I’m not an ad copy writer, so someone can write a much better ad than this.  But you get the general idea.

When the MNsure ads launched in September 2013, the light approach maybe made sense.  Five months later, WE GET THE JOKE ALREADY.  Now it’s time for MNsure to tell Minnesotans some things they don’t already know.

– Loveland

Note:  This post was also featured in Politics in Minnesota’s Best of the Blogs.

Now Is The Winter of Our MNbamacare Discontent

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So much political analysis is focused on the short-term:  “Which side won yesterday’s news cycle.” But unless it’s the day before an election, such short-term analyses aren’t particularly meaningful.

Hand_of_cards-2The more useful question to ask is this: “On the next Election Day, would I rather be playing the proponents’ or opponents’ hand?”     Applying that question to the issue of MNsure and Obamacare, I’d  much rather be playing the supporters’ hand.

Public relations-wise, MNsure has definitely “lost” many a news cycle over the last several months.  Security breaches, website crashes, protracted customer service waits, and data transfer blunders.  And as we all know, when the going got tough, the tough got going, to a Costa Rican beach, a particularly damaging episode.

These things all hurt, and I don’t mean to diminish them.  MNsure and Obamacare supporters have been dealt bad cards in recent days.  If you’re only focused on the short-term history, it looks like reform supporters might have a very bad political hand to play in the 2014 elections.

But forget about December 2013 for a moment, and consider how things will look like on November 4, 2014.

What GOP Will Be Proposing To Eliminate In 2014

By Election Day 2014, eliminating the reforms will be a more difficult sell, because by that time the reforms will have touched millions of lives in pretty significant ways.  Republican candidates will need to make the case “I will eliminate something that has…”

PAID MILLIONS IN REBATES.  Produced millions of dollars in rebates paid by insurance companies to thousands of Minnesotans and millions of Americans, thanks to an Obamacare provision authored by Minnesota’s U.S. Senator Al Franken.  The provision limits the proportion of premium dollars insurers can use for non-health care expenses, and requires that the difference be paid back in customer rebates.

HELPED THE MOST VULNERABLE MINNESOTANS.  Got 95,000 of Minnesota’s most vulnerable citizens efficiently covered in Medicaid, including about 12,000 uninsured Minnesotans whose medical expenses were being shifted to insured Minnesotans.

COVERED UNINSURED YOUNG ADULTS.  Covered 35,000 Minnesota young adults, who otherwise would have been uninsured and now are able to stay on their parents health policy until age 26.

MADE PRIVATE COVERAGE MORE FEASIBLE.  Offered lower costs in the marketplace to 382,595 Minnesotans who are uninsured or otherwise eligible for subsidies.

HELPED CONTROL HEALTH EXPENDITURES.  Contributed, along with state and health plan-driven reforms, to the slowest growth of health care expenditures since the state began tracking expenses in the mid 1990s, which will immensely help Minnesota’s future fiscal and economic outlook.

ELIMINATED CO-PAYS FOR PREVENTATIVE HEALTH SERVICES.  More than 1.4 million Minnesotans no longer have to shell out co-pays for preventative health care, because of an Obamacare requirement.  This includes things like flu shots, colonoscopies, mammograms and well-child check-ups.

DELIVERED LOWEST PREMIUMS IN THE NATION.  Created a simple-to-understand — though still not simple to use — apples-to-apples insurance marketplace that has prompted competitors to offer Minnesota consumers the lowest insurance premiums in the nation.

ENDED PRE-EXISTING CONDITION BANS.  Made it illegal for private insurance companies to deny coverage due to pre-existing health conditions, something that impacts many of the 2.3 million Minnesotans who have some type of pre-existing condition.

Presentation1Again, I don’t intend to sugar coat the current situation.  It’s been a rough few months for Obamacare and MNsure supporters.  The exchange website, call center, and management problems need to be improved as soon as possible.  Now most definitely is the winter of MNbamacare supporters’ discontent.

But come next fall,  Republican candidates, who offer no viable health care reform plan of their own, will have a very difficult time making the case for elimination of reforms that have been producing strong benefits for millions of Minnesotans.  “Elect me, to increase our rate of uninsurance again!”  “Elect me, to eliminate what you want to work better.”  “Elect me, to bring back pre-existing condition bans for your family!”

MNsure and Obamacare’s 2013 frailties aside, trying to take away those widespread benefits will be a very difficult political hand for the GOP to play in the 2014 elections.

– Loveland

Note:  This post was also republished in MinnPost, and featured in Politics in Minnesota’s Best of the Blogs.

About That Anti-MNsure Poster Child

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Emily_Litella_Never_Mind-2After writing a letter-to-the-editor to a weekly newspaper complaining about MNSure rates, Jennifer Slater of Mabel, Minnesota was used by Republican operatives as a national poster child in their anti-Affordable Care Act crusade.

In late November, the following Slafter accusation was all the rage in the national media and conservative blogosphere.

“All we ever heard about Obamacare is that it would lower our deductibles and premiums,” said Jennifer Slafter, 40 of Mabel, Minn. “That’s just not what’s happened.”

The exchange’s Blue Cross Blue Shield plan was $1,087 a month with a $6,000 deductible, while a Medica plan was $877 a month with a $12,700 deductible. Both are steeper than their current plan.

Conservatives ate this up.  Type the first few words of that quote into Google, and you’ll see it appearing about 10,400 times in news publications such as CNNMoney and conservative blogs. Slafter was everywhere.

But it turns out that Slafter was a premature poster child.  In paragraph 14 of a 16-paragraph Associated Press follow-up article, we recently learned something new about Slafter’s experience:

Since first going public, (Slafter) said the Fillmore County family found out it is likely eligible for more federal subsidies to help pay for coverage than initially thought. She now doesn’t anticipate the family losing money in the conversion next year.

If you search the first few words of that correction, you see that the article containing the correction appeared three times, buried at the end of a very long article.   As far as I can tell, the correction article does not appear in any of the publications that ran the original article reporting the false claim.

Slafter doesn’t seem to have political motives.  She just was confused by a confusing system and she was sincerely concerned.  It can happen to anyone, and it’s not her fault that she was used as a political pawn by cynical operatives.

Though Slafter’s much publicized assertion that she would be paying more now seems to be  false, she still finds the system too complex and worries about being able to pay the deductibles. I feel her pain on both fronts, though it should be noted that nothing her conservative promoters are offering would help on those two fronts, because they are offering nothing other than the badly broken status quo system.   The best way to reduce complexity for consumers and  remove deductibles would be a single payer payer system, which Slafter’s conservative promoters vehemently oppose.

Again, the false assertion gets over 10,000 placements in the conservative echo chamber, while the correction gets 3 hits in the 14th paragraph of the follow-up article.  As Mark Twain said, “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

– Loveland

Note:  This post was also republished on MinnPost.

The Daytonomics-Walkernomics Border Battle, MNsure and Our Addiction To Instant Analysis

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Because journalists believe their audiences won’t tolerate nuance and ambiguity, they recruit  political analysts who are certain, clear and decisive over those who are unsure, equivocal and astraddle.  As a result, a kind of Punditry Darwinism plays out, where only the cocksure survive to deliver a steady stream of provocative instant analysis informed by little to no evidence.

MNsure’s Premature Death Proclamation

Take MNsure, Minnesota’s fledgling online tool for comparing and buying health insurance. When MNsure enrollment started slowly in its first month, Minnesota’s conservative talk radio pundits immediately declared it a train wreck, and this instant analysis has dominated the coverage to date.

MNsure may ultimately be a train wreck.  After all, covering uninsured Americans has always been a very difficult task.  But the immediate post-launch period is not a sensible time to make that judgment.

Romneycare_enrollment_chart-2Historical data shows that consumers don’t tend to purchase health insurance the way they purchase Xbox 360s, lined up outside the store on launch day.  Quite the opposite, most consumers purchase insurance at the very last moment possible.  Purchasing an expensive service that you hope to never use is just not very satisfying, so most of us procrastinate.

I’m not pulling this assertion out of my pundit posterior.   In Massachusetts, just 123 early adapters stepped forward during their first month, and it didn’t get much better the second month.  Instead, the big rush came just prior to the open enrollment deadline, when people face the prospect of a missed deadline and financial penalty.

It turns out that pulling the plug on the Massachusetts exchange when it only had 123 customers would not have been a wise decision for Commonwealth citizens, because  Romneycare ultimately was worth the wait.  After a few years of growing pains, Massachusetts’ Obamacare-like reforms increased the ranks of the insured to 97%.  This puts states like Minnesota (91% insured) to shame, not to mention Chris Christie’s New Jersey (84% insured) or Ted Cruz’s Texas (76% insured).

Declaring a trainwreck just as a new train is lurching out of the depot is ludicrous.  As much as it pains the cognoscenti, at this stage they need to be saying the four little words that might  get them deleted out of reporters’ speed dials – “I don’t know yet.”

Daytonomics The Winner Already?

Then there is the Minnesota-Wiscoonsin border battle over state fiscal policy.  In a New York Times commentary piece that has been widely shared via social media, a University of Minnesota professor and pundit recently declared that Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton’s Keynesian approach to state fiscal policy has been more successful than Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s austerity approach.  His conclusion:

“The lesson from the upper Midwest is that rigid anti-tax dogma fails to deliver a convincing optimistic vision that widens economic opportunity and security.”

To his credit, the University of Minnesota professor does include  caveats, such as “firm answers will require more time and more data.”  But in the rush to be a clear and certain pundit who can get past the New York Times gatekeepers, the professor ultimately declared Daytononomics triumphant.

Here’s the problem with that:  Daytonomics is very much in its infancy.  Most of Governor Dayton’s most progressive policies are only now being put into effect, so the state of Minnesota’s economy can’t yet be attributed to the Daytonomics.

It’s true that Dayton has been in office for three years now.  But, with the exception of Dayton’s expansion of Medicaid to 95,000 uninsured Minnesotans, the lion’s share of his progressive agenda — the improvements to education and other government services funded by tax increases on the wealthy — passed just a few months ago, after the 2011-2012 GOP-controlled Legislature was vanquished and could no longer block Dayton’s progressive policies.

Just as President Obama could not be fairly blamed for the 2008-2009 economic meltdown that played out before he could put his policies into place, Governor Dayton cannot be fairly celebrated for a better-than-average state economy when most of his progressive policies are only now being put into place.  As a liberal, I hope Daytonomics bests Walkernomics, and expect it will.  But it’s much too early to declare a winner.

As a public relations guy, I understand why the media wants  commentators who give their audience instant gratification through instant analysis.  But as a citizen, I worry about what all of this instant gratification does to us.

Psychologists find that children who can’t learn to delay gratification at an early age are much less likely to succeed in later life.  The research indicates that the ability to delay gratification is absolutely key for success in school, marriages, friendships, health and jobs.  The young kids who can’t learn to stop themselves from consuming marshmallows become the adults who can’t stop themselves from consuming the adult versions of marshmallows.

Given that research, what kind of democracy will we become if journalists, pundits and voters can’t learn to wait to make policy judgements until evidence is available to inform our debates?

– Loveland

Note:  This post was also featured in MinnPost and Politics in Minnesota’s Best of the Blogs.

CliffsNotes On Minnesota’s ACA Implementation Debate

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Cliff_s_Notes_ACA_Debate_Implementation-2For those who haven’t been closely following the debate in Minnesota over implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. “Obamacare”), here are  CliffsNotes to get you up-to-speed.

Minnesota conservatives, whose presidential standard bearer’s greatest policy achievement was successfully pioneering the use of insurance exchanges in Massachusetts, desperately tried to stop the Minnesota liberals from implementing the federal Affordable Care Act’s Massachusetts-like insurance exchange, until they later criticized liberals for not making the exchanges effective enough, though they still wanted to eliminate them, even after Minnesota’s exchange produced the lowest premiums in the nation, are now criticizing the liberals for being, well, you know,” flip-floppers.”

Minnesota conservatives are outraged that liberals first wanted to require better health coverage for individuals imperiled by junk policies that don’t cover the type of preventative care services needed to avert expensive and lethal health problems, but then supported restoration of the old junk policies when the junk plan ban was criticized, but later decided to ban the junk policies after all, because they learned that banning them was unpopular with the insurance industry.

Make sense now?

– Loveland

MN GOP Gubernatorial Candidates Demand Target and Best Buy Shutdown Their Online Retailing

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Target_Missoni_crashMinneapolis, Minn. — Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidates today demanded that home state retailers Target and Best Buy  pull out of online marketing because of serious technical meltdowns associated with their respective commercial websites.

The Republican candidates’ criticism of the local private retailers was consistent with harsh criticism they have leveled at the government-run website MnSure.com, Minnesota’s new online venue for comparing and purchasing private insurance policies offered in association with the federal Affordable Care Act.  A Minnesota Department of Commerce analysis finds that MnSure offers the lowest prices in the nation and has proven to be a popular destination for Minnesotans, but MnSure website visitors have also been subjected to frustrating delays and bugs.

The three Republican candidates ordinarily stress that  private companies are superior to  government-run initiatives.  But today the candidates pointed out that Minnesota-based Best Buy and Target also experienced MnSure-like launch problems, and therefore also should terminate their online retailing operations.

In September 2011, Target Corporation was publicly humiliated when its website crashed during a crucial launch of  a much anticipated Missoni-designed clothing line, infuriating its  customers.  At the time, a New York Times article noted:

The Target.com site was wiped out for most of the day; the company said that demand for items was higher than it was on a typical day after Thanksgiving, and that is usually the biggest shopping day of the year.

A few months later in 2011,  sheepish Best Buy officials had to notify customers that it would not be able to fill their orders in time for Christmas, because the electronics retail giant had underestimated the initial demand for its products. USA Today reported:

The largest U.S. specialty electronics retailer said late Wednesday that overwhelming demand for some products from Bestbuy.com has led to a problem redeeming online orders made in November and December.

The Minneapolis company declined Thursday to specify how many orders are affected or which products are out of stock.

“I would do anything I could to end them,” said Minnesota Senator Dave Thompson, said of Best Buy and Target.

“I don’t believe it can be fixed,” added Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Johnson about the retail giants’ glitches.

“It just isn’t going to work,” agreed former Minnesota House Speaker Kurt Zellers.

Note:  This post is satirical, and not true.  Though the quotes above are the exact words the candidates used about MnSure in August 2013, the candidates have not, to the best of our knowledge, made the same demands of Best Buy and Target.

This post was featured in Politics in Minnesota’s Best of the Blogs, and republished on MinnPost.

When Government Ceases To Be An Abstraction

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shutdown__sign“Oh wait, don’t shutdown the monuments for millions of visitors.  That’s mean-spirited political theater.  Oh wait, don’t shutdown veterans benefits.  That’s un-American.  Oh wait, don’t stop protecting us against infectious diseases, food-borne illnesses and environmental catastrophes.  That endangers public health.  Oh wait, don’t delay passport and visa applications, bankruptcy court cases, small business loans and mortgage applications.  That hurts our economy.  Oh wait, don’t furlough workers in my home state who buy stuff from my home state businesses.  That hurts Main Street.  We only shut down a nameless, faceless abstract stereotype called ‘big government,’ not that stuff.”

This is the noise coming from the congressional Republicans who were reportedly “giddy” when they first shutdown the government, and now are blaming President Obama when confronted with the effects of an overwhelmingly unpopular shutdown.

Anatomy of the GOP Miscalculation

How did Republicans make such a massive miscalculation?  In large part, they misread public opinion polls that consistently say the American people want “less government spending.”   This emboldened them.

But what they apparently didn’t read were the public opinion polls that broke government down to its component services.  That research makes it clear that a majority of Americans absolutely do not want to cut government services.

According to one Pew Resarch poll, only 32% of Americans want to cut unemployment benefits, 24% want to cut aid to the poor, 22% want to cut environmental protection, 20% want to cut government research, 17% want to cut roads and infrastructure, 14% want to cut combatting crime, and 10% want to cut education.   The truth is, the fans of cutting government are a fringe minority of Americans.

It’s not just veterans and memorials that Americans want to protect.  A majority of Americans oppose cuts in any of the 19 major areas Pew asked about, and they most certainly don’t want to shut down those services altogether.

Obamacare:  Abstract v. Specifics

The same is true of the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare.”  As an abstraction, Obamacare faces some opposition, though less than most believe.  Only one in five (20%) Americans want to repeal it in its entirety, while a majority of Americans either want to keep it or strengthen it.

While there are concerns about Obamacare as an abstraction, a Reuters poll shows that the component parts of it are overwhelmingly popular.

  • Allowing 6.6 million young adults to be covered on their parents’ policies until age 26?  61 percent of American support it.
  • Requiring companies with more than 50 workers to provide health insurance for employees?  72 percent of Americans support it.
  • Banning insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing health problems?  82 percent of Americans support it, including 78% of Republicans.

If you think a government shutdown is unpopular, just try to shutdown Obamacare in 2014 or 2015.  As soon as Americans understand that repealing Obamacare would re-empower insurance corporations to deny coverage to their sick family members, friends, neighbors and co-workers, you would have 82 percent of Americans, and 78% of Republicans, up in arms.

Government in the abstract is quite unpopular, while government in the specific is quite popular.  If any good could come of this fiasco, it would be the Republicans learning this fundamental lesson about  the American people they represent.

– Loveland

Note:  This post was also re-published in Minnpost.

Which MN Candidates Will Sign The Pull-The-Plug Pledge?

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Pull_the_plugAs a general matter, I despise campaign pledges.  Candidates are continually badgered by interest groups to pledge in writing that they will always do X, or never do Y.

The Problem With Pledges

The problem with most pledges is the “always” or “never” parts of them.  The world changes, and policy positions therefore sometimes need to change with them.

  • Pledging to not increase taxes today may make sense at one point in history, but a few years later the circumstances may have changed dramatically.
  • Pledging to support a policy or project now may make sense, but not after surprising new information surfaces.
  • Pledging to tax millionaires may make sense at a time when they’re not paying their fair share, but not a few years later when circumstances may have changed.

So sometimes making policy shifts isn’t  a sign of weakness or dishonesty, as pledge enforcers often claim.  Sometimes, shifting is a sign of courage, vision and integrity.

That’s why I don’t like most campaign pledges.

Pull-the-Plug Pledge

But I came across a pledge the other day that fits our times, and has an infinite shelf life.  South Dakota congressional candidate Rick Weiland challenged all congressional candidates to sign this simple pledge:

“I hereby pledge that, if elected to represent you, I will never vote to shut down your government, or to place your government in default, in order to force it to act, or to prevent it from acting, on unrelated issues.” 

As a voter, I want to know where every Minnesota congressional candidate stands on this Pull-The-Plug Pledge.

Flat_line-2If there are candidates out there who think it is acceptable from them to pull the plug on the American people’s government and economy, that is their right.  But it’s also the right of the overwhelming 72% percent of Americans who oppose the Republicans’ current plug-pulling scheme to be forewarned of a congressional candidate’s position on that  issue, so that they can vote with their eyes wide open.

Yes, Americans and their policymakers must always be able to make their government a different size and shape as future circumstances dictate.  This pledge doesn’t prevent them from having such flexibility. It simply says it’s not acceptable to completely pull the plug on the American economy and government.

So, Tim Walz, Mike Benson, John Kline, Mike Obermuller, Paula Overby, Betty McCollum, Keith Ellison, Erik Paulsen, Tom Emmer, Rhonda Sivarajah, Phil Krinkie, John Pederson, Judy Adams, Collin Pederson, Rick Nolan, Stewart Mills III, Monti Moreno, Chris Dahlberg, Mike McFadden, Julianne Ortman, Jim Abeler, and Al Franken, will you sign the Pull-The-Plug Pledge?

– Loveland

Note:  This post was also featured in Politics in Minnesota‘s Best of the Blogs.