Monday Open Thread [12.30.13]
2013 was a brutal year for me personally, and for our nation. Tomorrow, I am going to kick this year in the ass as it heads out the door. But Andrew Sullivan, while taking note of the horror of 2013, looks on some of the bright side of the year that was:
There were, after all, plenty of reasons for be cheerful in 2013. The number of US troops killed in Afghanistan reached a new low of 161, down from 711 three years’ ago. The war in Iraq remained over. Growth accelerated to 4.1 percent in the third quarter and looks set to continue next year. The Dow is now comfortably over 1600 – more than double where it was five years ago, at the trough of the recession. The budget deficit shrank 37 percent in 2013, and was falling faster than at any time since the end of the Second World War. Yes, perhaps the austerity was premature and the big fiscal crisis has yet to hit. But an economy that’s growing and a deficit that’s fast shrinking is a pretty good combo for the time being. For good measure, the US is now in the full throes of a domestic energy revolution and is scheduled to be energy independent by 2020, a goal sought for decades. In part because of this, the US position in the Middle East is far less constrained, enabling a potentially world-changing detente with Tehran. Terror attacks – widely aca-sign-upsthought after 9/11 as a new norm – have dwindled to negligible levels in the West. Crime perked up a little, but was still way, way down from its past heights, despite the recession.
And in the US, one huge social shift cemented itself. The last few years have seen a revolution in the way in which gay people are integrated into society. 2013 saw not only the Supreme Court place the federal government firmly behind state-sanctioned gay civil marriages, but democratic legislatures also accelerated the trend across the country. There were many ways in which this titanic year for civil rights could have ended, but civil marriage for gay couples in Utah was pretty damn good. Nine more states now issue marriage licenses for gays than did this time last year – doubling the entire roster in just twelve months. Another, Illinois, will see its first weddings next June. In 2013, England, Wales, Scotland, Brazil, Uruguay, New Zealand, Mexico and France introduced marriage equality. The new Pope, for his part, defused the extremely tense religious and cultural debate by refusing to “judge” a gay person genuinely seeking to follow Christ. By any standards, this was a watershed year for an issue that has vexed humanity for centuries.
And, of course, I mention the Pope. In a few months, he has almost miraculously reasserted Christianity against all the modern “isms” of our time, utterly eviscerated the supreme papacy as envisaged by his two predecessors, and reminded billions of the core and simple message of Jesus. If he has initiated a rebirth of Christianity – as is my devout hope and wish – then this year was a turning point for the world, a moment when hope showed its endurance. And although the Affordable Care Act has gotten off to the rockiest start it could have, it remains a fact that more than nine million Americans have reliable health insurance for the first time in their lives because of it.
The graph above was compiled by Amy Fried on Christmas Eve. Many more applied for insurance in the following week. But the point is: these policies will be very hard to take away. I may be wrong, but I’d say the odds are solid that 2013 will eventually be seen not as a triumph for any system of medical care, but as the moment when everyone got into the same, insured boat, and we began to figure out how seriously to control costs.
According to numbers released by the HHS over the weekend, 1.1 million have enrolled on HealthCare.gov.
“More than 975,000 of them signed up this month, prior to the Dec. 24 deadline. In other words: Enrollment in the federal exchange was about nine times as high in December than all of October and November.”
Meanwhile, the HealthCare.gov website is handling the traffic surge.
“The Obama administration said Friday that the HealthCare.gov website adequately handled a massive surge of Internet traffic ahead of Tuesday’s deadline for consumers seeking healthcare plans that begin Jan. 1…Bataille said that in the four days leading up to the Dec. 24 enrollment deadline, response times averaged half a second, and error rates were at less than 1 percent. The website produced those numbers under the strain of record traffic. According to the administration, 2 million people visited the site on Monday, and an additional quarter of a million phoned the call centers. About 1 million people visited the site, and 200,000 called in over the weekend.”
Jonathan Cohn on the enrollment trends:
“Given the technical problems at the start, and given that the important deadline is March 31, what matters right now is the trend in enrollment. In terms of overall enrollment, the trend looks quite good.”
And now that Obamacare is a reality that is here to stay, it will begin dividing the Republican Party horribly, more so than it already is. Eugene Robinson:
For Republicans — to invert a classic George W. Bush bon mot — Obamacare has somehow become a divider, not a uniter. In a year when the GOP may have a legitimate chance of capturing the Senate, several primary contests appear likely to devolve into bloody battles over Obama’s health-care reforms — not whether to oppose them, but how.
In Georgia, for example, one of the leading candidates to replace retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss is Rep. Jack Kingston. He has voted repeatedly — and fruitlessly — with his House Republican colleagues to defund the Affordable Care Act. But when he suggested recently that to “just step back and let this thing fall to pieces on its own” was not “the responsible thing to do,” opponents quickly attacked Kingston as some kind of quisling who was waving a flag of surrender.
In fact, Kingston was simply acknowledging reality. Obamacare is the law. Memories of the program’s incompetent launch will fade. Republicans are going to have to decide whether to collaborate in making the Affordable Care Act work better — or risk being seen as working against the nation’s best interests.
