Author and deranged mental patient Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan had a piece last week, with a title that was apparently meant to describe the quality of the piece of itself:
A Catastrophe Like No Other
This is a pretty dramatic hook, but not all hyperbole is bad, and I can think of a number of ongoing and recent clusterfucks of historic proportion that could plausibly qualify as “catastrophes like no other.” There’s the situation in Syria, for example, or the truly harrowing violence taking place in the Central African Republic. There’s Crimea and the danger posed by Russia’s escalating aggression. There’s climate change…
The president tries to put a good face on ObamaCare.
…and then of course there’s the legislative effort of a duly elected democratic government to solve the worst problems of a broken healthcare system and reduce the number of uninsured citizens. That’s the historic catastrophe Noonan chooses to take on.
She lives up to the scale of the disaster with a bigger pile of garbage than you could find floating in the Pacific. Let’s have a look:
Put aside the numbers for a moment, and the daily argument.
WHAT A REFRESHING SENTIMENT. Alright, Peggy Noonan, I’ll play your game. Consider the numbers and the daily argument “put aside.” Proceed, madam.
“Seven point one million people have signed up!”
W-wait, what? I thought you said–
“But six million people…”
But… I thought…I’m sorry, aren’t these numbers? I thought we were putting them aside? They’re, like, over there now. You know, off to the side and stuff…
“…lost their coverage and were forced onto the exchanges! That’s no triumph, it’s a manipulation.”
That’s an argument, isn’t it? You told me to put my arguments over there, too! I don’t understand, is this where I explain why this is just a lie? Or are you the only one who gets to argue now?
“And how many of the 7.1 million have paid?”
I’m so confused.
“We can’t say, but 7.1 million is a big number and redeems the program.”
SO YOU ADMIT THAT 7.1 MILLION IS A NUMBER!
“Is it a real number?”
DAMN RIGH—wait, what? Oh… OHHHH… wait, no… so, er… wait… ok…
OK! I think maybe I’m starting to get it… so we only put real numbers aside before, is that it? So does that mean your 6 million number wasn’t real? (NOTE: it wasn’t)
But… hold on… I think you’d have to have the square root of -1 in there somewhere for it to be an imaginary number, right?
“Your lack of trust betrays a dark and conspiratorial right-wing mindset.”
Said who, exactly? Seriously I’d like to know who said this. Ever.
“As I say, put aside the argument…”
Will you please tell me what the fuck is going on? You’re obviously about to make a fucking argument. You’ve been making a fucking argument. Isn’t the whole point of this shit column to make an argument about Obamacare?
“…step back and view the thing at a distance.”
Is this so that we can’t see “the thing” clearly enough to recognize the hilarious absurdity of what you plan to say about “the thing”?
“Support it or not, you cannot look at ObamaCare and call it anything but a huge, historic mess.”
Challenge accepted!
CHECK AND MATE, MADAM.
It is also utterly unique in the annals of American lawmaking and government administration.
So, look, I’m not usually the sort of person to make a point of calling people out when they make the mistake of using an amplifying adverb to modify a word that describes a binary condition. The word “unique” means “one of a kind.” Something is either unique or it isn’t. It’s the only one of its kind, or it’s not. It can’t be very unique, or somewhat unique. It’s a binary condition; it’s 1 or 0.
Still, it’s kinda nitpicky to make a big deal out of it. Sure, you might reasonably expect one of Ronald Reagan’s primary speechwriters to know better, but again, in general my tendency with this sort of thing is just to chuckle to myself and move on.
It’s just… I mean… UTTERLY? It’s UTTERLY unique? That’s just fucking awful. Utterly unique? As in, like, completely unique? As in not partially unique? How can “a thing” be partially unique? Can it be, like, not one of a kind, but two thirds of a kind? There are only two thirds of the thing in existence, something like that? PEGGY NOONAN WOULD LIKE IT TO BE CLEAR THAT OBAMACARE IS MORE THAN 66.6% UNIQUE IN THE ANNALS OF AMERICAN LAWMAKING, PEOPLE.
Its biggest proponent in Congress, the Democratic speaker of the House, literally said—blithely, mindlessly, but in a way forthcomingly—that we have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it. It is a cliché to note this. But really, Nancy Pelosi‘s statement was a historic admission that she was fighting hard for something she herself didn’t understand, but she had every confidence regulators and bureaucratic interpreters would tell her in time what she’d done. This is how we make laws now.
First of all: LoL “forthcomingly.”
More importantly: this is UTTER horseshit of a truly classic vintage. It drives me fucking crazy that Republicans get away with routinely attacking the intentions and good faith of people they disagree with. You think the Affordable Care Act is bad policy, fine. But does anyone actually think it’s fucking reasonable to suggest that Nancy Pelosi fought so hard and risked so much to pass a historic piece of legislation the same way I accept the iTunes Terms and Conditions? That, rather than sincerely trying to better this country’s healthcare system, she was just mindlessly advocating for legislation she knew nothing about, with the expectation that a bureaucrat would give her some Cliff’s Notes on the main points after it was done?
Here’s Nancy Pelosi during the healthcare debate that took place in the alternate universe that Peggy Noonan occupies: “Durrrr I got this bill I don’t know what’s in this bill but it’s like super-ultra-MEGA-UNIQUE and communism and stuff, and maybe I’d read it but GAHHH SO MANY WORDS and anyway I really don’t need to read it because I’m pretty sure it’s got, you know, regulators and bureaucratic interpreters and Bolshevik agents and all that good shit, plus you know healthcare and handouts and making Americans dependent on government and HEIL OBAMA and anyway those regular—sorry, regulation—sorry those REGULATOR dudes will be super FORTHCOMINGLY with me and I’m sure they’ll fill me in later about the HOW we destroyed freedom but the point is that we ARE destroying freedom at least I’m pretty sure this bill destroys freedom even though I don’t like KNOW that the bill destroys freedom because I don’t know what’s in the bill because I didn’t read it but still I’m pretty sure it destroys freedom YAY!”
The whole “we have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it” line has been a favorite of Obamacare’s detractors. It’s tossed around to conjure a suspicion of bad faith, to suggest a corrupt lack of transparency in passing the bill, to call into question the law’s legitimacy. And it’s been pretty effective because it does sound like rather a suspect thing to say.
Here’s what Pelosi actually said, in context:
You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting. But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.
This is not the most elegantly articulated thought. It’s also pretty obvious that Pelosi was not saying that nobody, including herself, gets to know what’s in the bill until it’s passed into law, as if this is some legislative version of Let’s Make a Deal. Dave Weigel sums reality up nicely (in the article linked above): “Pelosi was trying to say that the press was only reporting he-said-she-saids about the bill, and that its benefits would become clear, and popular, once it passed.”
Not that this matters to Noonan or to the many Republicans who would prefer pull the one line from context and then tell you what to think about it.
Her comments alarmed congressional Republicans but inspired Democrats…
Alarm /əˈlärm/ verb
past tense: alarmed; past participle: alarmed
Definition: Cause someone (usually a Republican) to experience euphoric excitement at the opportunity to gleefully disseminate a quote (usually from a Democrat) out of context in order to score political points by shamelessly misleading voters about important policy issues.
…who for the next three years would carry on like blithering idiots making believe they’d read the bill and understood its implications. They were later taken aback by complaints from their constituents.
This will probably sound strange coming from someone who likes to swear a lot while writing blog posts castigating conservatives, but is it really okay to just go ahead and call an entire party of elected officials “blithering idiots” in the Wall Street Journal? I mean, even I try to stay away from calling people idiots. I have no qualms about mercilessly ridiculing idiocy (see this very post), but I’d call someone a hilariously ignorant asshat before I called that person an idiot. Maybe it’s weird but to me the word “idiot” is the one that seems to cross a line. And in any case, I would never use either term if I were writing a column for a major newspaper. It just strikes me as bad taste.
Etiquette aside, though, if you are going to call someone an idiot in a major national publication, shouldn’t you support the charge with, you know, evidence or something? If you’re going to make a blanket declaration that an entire party of elected officials “carr[ied] on like blithering idiots” after passing major legislation without fully understanding its implications or even reading it… shouldn’t you have to like, you know, support that with something? Some “idiotic” quotes, or other examples of ignorance? Even one example? ANYTHING?
No? Ok then let’s move on.
The White House, on the other hand, seems to have understood what the bill would do, and lied in a way so specific it showed they knew exactly what to spin and how. “If you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan, period.” “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, period.” That of course was the president, misrepresenting the facts of his signature legislative effort. That was historic, too. If you liked your doctor, your plan, your network, your coverage, your deductible you could not keep it. Your existing policy had to pass muster with the administration, which would fight to the death to ensure that 60-year-old women have pediatric dental coverage.
Alright so this is the one spot where Noonan the Peggtastic has a point. She way overplays her hand, of course, and she dilutes the legitimacy of her argument with a healthy dose of bullshit, but I want to be as fair as I can. And I do have to admit: there is something to the conservative gripe that Obama was at least a little misleading in the way he sold his healthcare bill to the public.
Obama did say those things, and they weren’t completely true. The whole truth would have been something like:
“If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your healthcare plan, provided that it satisfies the minimum coverage requirements we’re putting in place to make sure that everyone who has health insurance actually has a baseline level of legitimate, viable coverage. If not, well, frankly you probably shouldn’t like your healthcare plan, but in any case you will ultimately need to get a different plan, which other provisions in the bill will make sure you can afford.”
And:
“If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, unless your doctor and your insurance provider can’t arrive at an agreement about compensation and your doctor chooses to leave the network. This is always, and has always been a possibility regardless of the healthcare bill, but it is admittedly a little more likely given that the bill alters the market dynamics of the healthcare industry.”
But that’s not what Obama said, and I can understand why some would be troubled by it. Peg-a-noonie-kins, though, takes her limited grounds for righteous indignation way over the line.
“If you liked your doctor, your plan, your network, your coverage, your deductible you could not keep it.” This is at least as misleading a statement as anything Obama said. Noonan is saying that no one who likes their doctor or plan or network or coverage or deductible has been allowed to keep it. This is just false. She would have you believe that everyone with health insurance was sent a questionnaire asking if they are satisfied with their healthcare coverage, and anyone who answered “yes” saw their coverage summarily cancelled.
I don’t think I’m being unfair. It would not have been hard to throw a “necessarily” in there–“…you could not necessarily keep it”–but Noonan chose not to, the same way she chose to take a misleading cheap shot with the whole “pediatric dental coverage” line.
The healthcare bill requires that all healthcare plans provide ten “essential health benefits.” You can read them all here. Two of the ten are related: maternity and prenatal care, and pediatric services. So, yes, that means that men end up paying for health insurance that covers maternity and prenatal care. And, yes, it means that Pegga-Noodle-Doo has to pay for pediatric dental care.
Here’s why: either everyone pays for those things, or we accept that it costs more to be a woman than a man. Ask yourself if you agree with this statement: no American should be required to pay higher insurance premiums based solely on that individual’s gender.
The simple truth is that women can get pregnant and men cannot. Another truth is that pregnancy is really expensive. Prior to Obamacare, this meant that women had to pay more for health insurance than men, because insurance companies sell protection against financial risk, and human beings with a uterus pose a greater financial risk than human beings without one. Obamacare overruled that calculation by stipulating that no one can be charged a higher premium on the basis of gender.
For that to work, though, we have to split the difference between the premiums paid by men and women. Because women do actually represent a greater financial liability to insurance companies than men. Before Obamacare, that was borne out in the premium payments: women could get pregnant so had to pay more; men couldn’t so they paid less. If we agree that it’s not fair to charge women more for health insurance simply because they are women, then men have to pick up some of the slack and meet in the middle.
The “pediatric dental coverage” is just a component of all this. The bill requires coverage for maternity and newborn care; it also requires that children have access to dental and vision coverage. Although, I should mention that it’s also bullshit to say that the administration would “fight to the death” for this particular provision, given that the Department of Health and Human Services has issued rules “effectively making [pediatric dental] coverage optional” in most states.
The leaders of our government have not felt, throughout the process, that they had any responsibility to be honest and forthcoming about the major aspects of the program, from its exact nature to its exact cost.
The Congressional Budget Office has scored the bill throughout the whole process and consistently found that it will reduce the deficit–that is, it will cost less than zero. The major aspects of the program have been consistently in line with what we were told, and if Pegg-The-Tail-On-The-Donkey has an example to the contrary she might have cited it here.
We are not being told the cost of anything—all those ads, all the consultants and computer work, even the cost of the essential program itself.
You can find the HHS’s budget request for Consumer Information and Outreach (“all those ads”) for FY2015 here. I’ll confess I’d prefer more immediate transparency with respect to cost of developing healthcare.gov (“all the consultants and computer work”), but Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has testified at some length to this question, which you can read about here. As for the cost of “the essential program itself,” the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has calculated the cost of Obamacare and concluded, as I mentioned a moment ago, that it will reduce the deficit.
What the bill declared it would do—insure tens of millions of uninsured Americans—it has not done. There are still tens of millions uninsured Americans.
When I first read this, I assumed I was being trolled. Someone had hacked the WSJ’s website and posted this column under Peggy Noonan’s name to make fun of me personally. Noonan’s beloved Republicans have fought at every juncture to thwart the success of the bill, stop people from enrolling, refusing to cooperate with coverage expansion where they can, and overall just being a bunch of dicks about the whole thing. Now I have to listen to Peggy Fucking Noonan tell me HEY IT HASN’T SOLVED THE ENTIRE PROBLEM OF UNINSURED PEOPLE IMMEDIATELY WHAT A FAILURE!
This post is already going to run way too long so I’m not going to go all the way into this. I just want to point out that 24 states have refused federal funding for Medicaid expansion, which would pay for 100% of the cost of expanding coverage initially and 90% of the cost thereafter. Which is to say that almost half of states, most if not all of which are controlled by Republicans, have refused to allow the federal government to fund health insurance for tens or hundreds of thousands of their constituents. The result is 5.7 million Americans left needlessly uninsured.
On the other hand, it has terrorized millions who did have insurance and lost it, or who still have insurance and may lose it. The program is unique
HOW UNIQUE IS IT?
in that it touches on an intimate and very human part of life, the health of one’s body, and yet normal people have been almost wholly excluded from the debate.
The fuck does that even mean? “Normal people” have been excluded from the debate? Do you really not feel it necessary to offer any elaboration at all there? You know, like, maybe give us a few characteristics of “normal people,” or a detail or two about how exactly they’ve been excluded from the debate, or maybe even an example of a “normal” person who’s been excluded from the debate? Even one example?
This surely was not a bug but a feature.
I’ll take that as a “No.”
Given a program whose complexity is so utter and defeating that it defies any normal human attempt at comprehension, two things will happen.
This sentence defies any normal human attempt at comprehension. Also:
(Yes I know cows have “udders.”)
Those inclined to like the spirit of the thing will support it on the assumption the government knows what its doing.
Definitely not because they think that, while imperfect, “the thing” is an overall smart and moderate measure likely to alleviate some of the worst problems with our nation’s healthcare system. One which, by the way, is largely working so far. Definitely not that. It’s definitely that they assume that government always works because they’re communists and hate freedom.
And the opposition will find it difficult to effectively oppose—or repeal the thing—because of the program’s bureaucratic density and complexity. It’s like wrestling a manic, many-armed squid in ink-darkened water.
WHAT?!
At first I was at a loss to understand how someone could even come up with something so outlandish, until I found the image below, which comes from what I can only assume is Peggy Noonan’s favorite movie: The Calamari Wrestler. I’ve annotated it in accordance with the Peggster’s innermost thoughts.
Also, I’m sorry to keep doing this, but “many-armed squid?” As opposed to what, Peggy? A few-armed squid? Is there a class of squid with fewer than eight arms that I’m not aware of? A type of squid that’s not as proficient at wrestling? Or did you just feel the need to clarify that the OBAMASQUID being wrestled by Republicans has not been UTTERLY dismembered?
Social Security was simple. You’d pay into the system quite honestly and up front, and you’d receive from the system once you were of retirement age. If you supported or opposed the program you knew exactly what you were supporting or opposing. The hidden, secretive nature of ObamaCare is a major reason for the opposition it has engendered.
LoLNO. Actually it’s the opposite: the relentless campaign of misinformation from ObamaCare’s opposition is a major reason why so many people find it hidden or secretive or confusing.
The program is unique…
…in that the bill that was signed four years ago, on March 23, 2010, is not the law, or rather program, that now exists. Parts of it have been changed or delayed 30 times.
Well, all the changes have been minor, but I see Pegasus-Noontime’s point. Clearly, landmark legislation proscribing large-scale government initiatives should not allow the administration any leeway at all in making adjustments to the implementation plan. It should be obvious that all government undertakings ought to be judged as wholesale failures if they deviate at all from their initially intended path.
Incidentally, the fact of a bill being amended does not make it UNIQUE. Here’s a list of the many times Social Security has been amended over the years.
It is telling that the president rebuffed Congress when it asked to work with him on alterations, but had no qualms about doing them by executive fiat.
ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?! REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS HAVE VOTED TO REPEAL OR OTHERWISE DISMANTLE OBAMACARE MORE THAN FIFTY FUCKING TIMES!
Is that their way of asking the president to work with them on alterations to the bill? You know, the way Walder Frey worked with Robb Stark on resolving their differences over Robb’s broken marriage vows? (NOTE: That link Contains a Game of Thrones Season 3 spoiler)
The program today, which affects a sixth of the U.S. economy, is not what was passed by the U.S. Congress.
Yeah… it pretty much is.
On Wednesday Robert Gibbs, who helped elect the president in 2008 and served as his first press secretary, predicted more changes to come. He told a business group in Colorado that the employer mandate would likely be scrapped entirely. He added that the program needed an “additional layer” or “cheaper” coverage and admitted he wasn’t sure the individual mandate had been the right way to go.
Assuming I understand correctly, Noonan’s intention with this paragraph is to support her facile “bait-and-switch” argument, the premise of which is that administrative efforts to avoid economic disruption by delaying the implementation of certain provisions in Obamacare amounts to wholesale fraud.
I couldn’t find a quote (and obviously Noonan doesn’t provide one) for Gibbs’ comments regarding the Individual Mandate, but it isn’t going anywhere–at least not while Obama is president. The Employer Mandate is a minor but flawed provision that should probably be scrapped if Republicans in congress had any interest in making the bill work better, instead of blowing it up. The idea of relaxing minimum coverage requirements to allow for “disaster coverage”-type plans with lower premiums and higher deductibles has indeed attracted some support as a moderate, incremental proposal for improving the way the bill works–it is by no means a radical deviation from the bill’s core provisions.
Finally, the program’s supporters have gone on quite a rhetorical journey, from “This is an excellent bill, and opponents hate the needy” to “People will love it once they have it” to “We may need some changes” to “I’ve co-sponsored a bill to make needed alternations” to “This will be seen by posterity as an advance in human freedom.”
Here Noonan blithely ascribes to all Obamacare supporters a series of “quotes” without bothering to cite even one actual human being. It’s also worth mentioning that the “rhetorical progression” she’s positing doesn’t even make sense in the context of her point; an individual could easily support every statement in the “progression” simultaneously, and at any point throughout the history of the bill. She’s trying to make it sound as if Democrats keep changing their tune, but it is perfectly consistent to believe that Obamacare is an “excellent bill” that people “will love” once fully implemented, but which nonetheless may require some alterations to make the bill work better (or “alterNations,” as Noonan actually had it, because lol), and that ultimately history will judge the bill as a success.
Oh and Republicans hate the needy.
That was the president’s approach on Tuesday, when he announced the purported 7.1 million enrollees. “The debate over repealing this law is over. The Affordable Care Act is here to stay. . . . In the end, history is not kind to those who would deny Americans their basic economic security. Nobody remembers well those who stand in the way of America’s progress or our people. And that’s what the Affordable Care Act represents. As messy as it’s been sometimes, as contentious as it’s been sometimes, it is progress.”
Someone said it lacked everything but a “Mission Accomplished” banner. It was political showbiz of a particular sort, asking whether the picture given of a thing will counter the experience of the thing.
“Someone said.” Could have been me, could have been alternate-universe Pelosi, could have been my cleaning lady, or the unicorn that lives in my shoe!
But yeah, Peggy, I see what you did there. The whole President Bush in Iraq thing, amirite? I totally remember it. When Bush stood up there on the aircraft carrier less than six weeks after we invaded Iraq, and he’s got this “Mission Accomplished” banner, and he’s talkin’ all this shit about YO WE WENT IN HERE AND WE WON JUST LIKE I SAID WE WOULD BITCHES and then he dropped the mic and shit, but then it turned out that actually it we hadn’t really quite yet won because actually we were gonna be there for like another 8+ years and thousands of Americans were gonna die so probably it was, you know, a little premature to say MISSION ACCOMPLISHED or whatever because actually the mission wasn’t accomplished and wasn’t ever going to be and the thing turned out to be a huge disaster.
So ya, really nicely done, Peggy, I’m totally with you, Obama’s doing the same thing here. Sure, I mean, instead of committing our military to a protracted, bloody, expensive occupation of a sovereign nation based on false pretenses, Obama’s trying to do something about a broken American healthcare system so as to improve American lives. But whatever, like the saying goes, “I say tomato, you say TOMATOES ARE RED AND THEREFORE COMMUNISTS.” Point is, Obama’s claiming victory, but he’s being premature, just like George W. Bush. Got it.
Say, Peggy, by the way, did you have anything to say about whether we’d accomplished our mission in the Iraq war around the time of the “Mission Accomplished” banner incident you’re referencing? Like, I don’t know, let’s just say… April 7, 2003? You must remember, it was less than three weeks after the invasion, more than three weeks before the banner…
The war is almost over and young Americans on the ground have won it, and they are doing it like Americans of old. With their old sympathy and spirit, and a profound lack of hatred for the foe, and with compassion for the victims on the ground. Iraq, meet the grandchildren of the men who made the Marshall Plan.
Yeah.
…
There are very, very few Democrats who would do ObamaCare over again.
Again Noonan doesn’t bother to offer a single example, not even ONE quote in support of this broad assertion.
Some would do something different, but they wouldn’t do this. The cost of the blunder has been too high in terms of policy and politics.
Indeed, over a year later, Democrats are still struggling to recover from their victory in the 2012 presidential election.
They, and the president, are trying to put a good face on it.
Yes. It’s sad. Let us all pity those poor misguided communist sympathizers, toiling in futility “to put a good face” on a law that has accomplished nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing more than reducing the number of uninsured Americans to the lowest level since 2008 while reducing the deficit; nothing more than guaranteeing that Americans with preexisting conditions can get access to health insurance, that all Americans can stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26, that no American can be denied coverage at the moment of greatest need, or that no American can ever exhaust their access to healthcare because of lifetime caps.
How could anyone put a good face on such a “catastrophe like no other?”
Republicans of all people should not go for the happy face.
It’s easy to just gloss over this one without appreciating the inanity of it. Seriously, what the fuck does “going for the happy face” mean?
They cannot run only on ObamaCare this year and later, because it’s not the only problem in America. But it’s a problem, a big one, and needs to be hard and shrewdly fought.
“Someone said” that “support [her] or not, you cannot look at [Peggy Noonan] and say that” she shouldn’t apologize to all Americans for her embarrassing asshattery before founding, and then committing herself to, an institution for deranged conservative pundits.
The Reason Files 