{"id":6558,"date":"2014-09-22T17:14:17","date_gmt":"2014-09-22T17:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=6558"},"modified":"2014-09-22T17:14:17","modified_gmt":"2014-09-22T17:14:17","slug":"aca-is-hardly-an-abject-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=6558","title":{"rendered":"ACA is hardly an &#039;abject failure&#039;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Texas Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott declared something the other day during his debate with Democratic opponent Wendy Davis that I cannot let stand.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Obamacare,&#8221; he said, &#8220;is an abject failure.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s it, then. The verdict is in. The Affordable Care Act isn&#8217;t working. It isn&#8217;t providing health insurance to Americans who couldn&#8217;t afford it. It isn&#8217;t saving lives. It isn&#8217;t saving people&#8217;s livelihoods.<\/p>\n<p>How does he come to that conclusion?<\/p>\n<p>Oh, wait. I think I know. He&#8217;s running for governor in a state that detests the ACA&#8217;s author, President Barack Obama. So it makes political sense for Abbott to declare the ACA a complete failure. It makes as much sense for the state&#8217;s attorney general to promise, as he did the other night, to bring &#8220;more health care to Texans.&#8221; The question, however, is this: How &#8212; precisely &#8212; does the governor do that?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve noted already that the ACA rollout was full if fits and starts, hiccups, mistakes and all manner of &#8220;technical difficulties&#8221; with the healthcare.gov website that was supposed to be up and running.<\/p>\n<p>However, Americans are enrolling in the ACA. They&#8217;re getting coverage now after being unable to get it prior to enactment of the law.<\/p>\n<p>Will this process <em>now<\/em> proceed hitch-free? Probably not.<\/p>\n<p>The ACA is just a few months old. It&#8217;s going to be fine-tuned, tinkered, tightened as we move along.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the case &#8212; without exception &#8212; with all landmark laws.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Texas Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott declared something the other day during his debate with Democratic opponent Wendy Davis that I cannot let stand. &#8220;Obamacare,&#8221; he said, &#8220;is an abject failure.&#8221; That&#8217;s it, then. The verdict is in. The Affordable Care Act isn&#8217;t working. It isn&#8217;t providing health insurance to Americans who couldn&#8217;t afford it. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=6558\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">ACA is hardly an &#039;abject failure&#039;<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14,18],"tags":[131,540,2006,3376,5218],"class_list":["post-6558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","category-political-news","category-state-news","tag-aca","tag-barack-obama","tag-greg-abbott","tag-obamacare","tag-wendy-davis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6558\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}