[P]arty leaders have decided on an aggressive new strategy to address the widespread unease with the health care law, urging Democratic candidates to talk openly about the law’s problems while also offering their own prescriptions to fix them.

This is a step in the right direction.

But Democrats shouldn't underemphasize other aspects of the strategy mentioned at the end of the article -- "optimism when talking about the law" and the fact that repeal would be a disaster.

Move the debate to what works and what comes next. Force the GOP establishment to put some daylight between themselves and the repeal-only dead-enders, then hammer them on the specifics of maintaining the parts of ACA that people love.

You could start here. Some of these "older Americans who lost jobs during the recession" live in NC. Put them on TV, now.

Comments

[Polifrog]

You could start here. Some of these "older Americans who lost jobs during the recession" live in NC. Put them on TV, now.

As Jim Buie might say,

Other than anecdotal evidence, what economic analysis can you point to that has already, hastily, come to this conclusion, a month and a half after Obamacare went into full effect?

The real question is, of course, what does a Democrat say to those who have been demoted to part time work as a result of the ACA or to those who have lost their jobs entirely due to the ACA? Do Democrats simply blame the interminable bad economy that has followed their Keynesian strategy?

Many progressives paid a political price for supporting Prohibition, a mistake with more popular support (at least prior to 1930) than the ACA. Interestingly, it was only after 1930 and the onset of the Great Depression that anti-Prohibition forces gained political steam. It is not hard to imagine that the same progressives who supported Prohibition, feeling their offices slipping from their hands as the repeal of Prohibition gained traction, pointed to the Great Depression as a distraction. Of course, those progressives had an advantage over today's Democrats in that their prior support for Prohibition did not exacerbate the Great Depression.

Democrats today do not have that same advantage. Democrats should, therefore, be careful when distracting voters with a poor economy that is arguably the result of a Democrat misallocation of resources toward healthcare when they should have been focused on the economy.

[Billy Jones]

You could start personally by trying to move Cone Hospital in the direction took by Cleveland's most successful and lowest cost health care system and bring everything in house cutting out the many middle men instead of creating the many middle men all under the Cone umbrella. After all, you are a board member.

[Ed Cone]

Billy, could you give me more detail on the cost-containment program in Cleveland? Which system are you referring to, and what is included in the "everything" to be brought in house? Our excellent new CFO came from Cleveland, so I can ask him about some of this stuff.

Cost is a huge issue across the industry, and Cone has been focused on it for a few years now.

[Billy Jones]

The Cleveland Clinic is one of the lowest cost hospitals in the nation and offers the highest standard of care. This PDF titled Bending The Cost Curve explains what they do.

The biggest difference is: when you go to Cleveland Clinic, everyone you see there works for Cleveland Clinic and not for some other clinic across town or in another city as is done in Cone and most other hospitals. Therefore there is only one billing department, one liability insurance company, one accounting company, etc... that the customer's bill has to pay. It really pissed me off when I go to the Cone Emergency Room and get a $900 bill from someone in Durham tacked on to the $900 I was charged for the medicine they brought to the room but never actually administered (2 of my brothers were in the room with me) and the $900 Cone emergency room bill only to leave 2 hours later after only having the pressure tested in my eyes and my blood pressure tested.

[Ed Cone]

Thanks. That's where our CFO came from.

Not sure of the details of your experience, CH operates as a unified system but there are many moving parts, if you want to follow up offline please let me know.