No Need to Freak Out, Elections Are Still a Year Away


Dave Weigel thinks stories about Democrats freaking out over Obamacare are overstated:

You can find anonymous Democrats to panic about anything, and you can find plenty of Democrats willing to trash implementation so far, on the record. But recently, when I was talking to one of the Democrats assigned to win House seats in 2014, I got the impression that the panic is tied largely to the crisis of healthcare.gov. If the website sucked wind through Thanksgiving, said the Democrat, it was dreadful but, for Democrats, survivable. If it failed into 2014? That would blow open doors for Republican-led delay bills, and the party’s vulnerable members would start to endorse those bills, because what choice would they have?

Day to day, it’s very easy to write a “collapse of liberalism” story. Talk to Democrats, though, and you learn that to a staggering degree they think a fixed website would end the general crisis. One month of increased signups—that’s all they want. Ask them how they feel in mid-December.

I agree on all points. The Obamacare rollout has unarguably been a fiasco, but memories are short, both on Capitol Hill and in the country at large. Fix things fairly soon and it will be a non-issue in next year’s election.1 And it really is all about the website. That’s a problem. By contrast, it’s still not clear just how big a problem rate shock is. There’s no question that it’s hit a fair number of people, and as with any bell curve, there’s no question that there are a few people on the right tail who are getting hit badly. But in the absence of hard data, my growing sense is that the number of people with a serious case of rate shock is fairly modest. It’s not a nothingburger, but it doesn’t feel like a political catastrophe either. Jon Cohn provides some details here.

(As a reader reminded me this weekend, network shock might actually be a bigger issue. It’s one thing to get a rate increase. That’s bad, but it’s often tolerable, and everyone in the individual market is pretty used to big annual premium increases anyway. But a lot of plans on the exchange restrict doctor networks fairly severely, and this could be a big problem for people who are loyal to their current physicians. On the other hand, rate shock is mostly a problem for people who make too much money to qualify for subsidies, and they can always buy outside the exchanges. So even here, it’s unclear just how many people are really affected.)

All that said, I’m a little surprised at how little concrete data we have on a lot of this stuff. After a month and a half, we’re still mostly just trading and debunking anecdotes.

NOTE: Image above courtesy of MoJo senior editor Dave Gilson. I couldn’t not use it, could I?

1Especially if Republicans decide to hijack the news cycle in January with some more insane budget demands. Given their almost comical lack of party discipline in this area, I’d say this is a good bet.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

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That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

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Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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