Thursday, November 14, 2013

US Budget Deficit Drops 24%...but nobody is listening as ACA dominates the conversation.

The Obama administration projected that 450,000-500,000 individuals would sign up for health care coverage during the first month of the ACA rollout.
Yesterday the administration finally released the numbers.
26,794 health plans sold through the plagued federal website.
79,391 health plans sold through the state run exchanges
106,185 total health plans sold during the first month.
Not good!
An insular White House says that they are working on a number of administrative solutions that over the next few months will fix the current difficulties.  They urged people to be patient.  They have said publically that the website will be fixed by the end of the month and once the website is fixed these problems will go away.  But privately White House staffers are saying that’s not going to happen.
Not good enough.
Democrats are enraged.  A number of House Democrats descended on the White House yesterday and in a closed door meeting demanded that the administration fix the problem…now!  They informed the president that if the White House didn’t offer a viable solution by tomorrow many of them would join Republicans in supporting a bill sponsored by House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton.  The Upton bill allows individuals to keep their current coverage even if it doesn’t meet the minimum standards under the ACA.  “The president made a promise,” they said.  “He has to keep it.” If passed such a bill could gut the very foundation of the ACA. 
Senate Democrats are equally upset.  Many of them will meet with the president today to voice their displeasure.  Several Democrat Senators have joined with Republicans to craft a bill that would implement a transition period by delaying the deadline for enrollment for one year.  The Landrieu Bill could also do irreparable damage to the ultimate success of the ACA.
The president is not up for re-election, but many House and Senate Democrats are.  The ACA debacle is killing them.  Democrats don’t want an “administrative solution.”  Democrats want to go on record as wanting people to be able to keep their current health plans as the president promised.  Democrats want a vote.
The cacophony of noise over the ACA is drowning out any attempt by the administration to change the narrative.
According to the Associated Press, the Treasury Department just announced that the US government deficit for the first month of the 2014 budget year is down 24% compared to this time last year.  The AP tells us that the government “ran an annual deficit in 2013 of $680 billion, the lowest in five years and the first in that period below $1 trillion.”
This is great news! 
But nobody is listening.
The president needs to do something with the ACA to change the current narrative that is killing his administration.
We expect some type of announcement today.    

   
      

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