How Democrats helped Republicans save BushCare (Click on this headline to read more)
Rss@dailykos.com (jon Perr)Tuesday, October 22, 2013, 10:55 pm
President Obama held a public event on Monday to address the serious problems plaguing the federal online health care exchange serving the 34 states which refused to create their own. Echoing former Speaker Nancy Pelosi's pronouncement that the web site difficulties are "unacceptable," Obama insisted, "There's no excuse for these problems" hampering the launch of the Affordable Care Act's insurance marketplaces. Just as important, the President declared, "It's time for folks to stop rooting for its failure because hard working middle class families are rooting for its success."
Which is exactly right. After all, when President Bush's Medicare prescription drug program nearly crashed and burned in late 2005 and early 2006, Democrats in Washington and in the states stepped in to save it.
As Americans should recall, the Bush administration rollout of the Medicare drug benefit for 43 million elderly Americans was a disaster. Ohio Congressman John Boehner admitted as much to Fox News in February 2006 when he lamented that two years after its passage, "The implementation of the Medicare plan has been horrendous." As Ezra Klein recently recounted, in his rare moment of candor the future Speaker was right:
In 2006, the bill went into effect. It was a disaster. Computer systems didn't communicate with one another. Seniors were confused. Some of the poorest and sickest enrollees -- "dual eligibles" who qualify for aid under both Medicare and Medicaid -- weren't able to get their drugs. It was so bad that in his 2006 State of the Union address, Bush "said nothing about the new Medicare prescription drug program, an initiative Republicans once hoped to trumpet but has angered many seniors in its implementation," reported the Washington Post.
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