What game were we playing when the health bill was making its way through Congress? Was it eleven-dimensional chess? I lose track of the number of dimensions. I’m still trying to solve Rubik’s cube, myself. But the game, whatever it was, was won. At least in the dimension that consists of passing legislation.
However, in the other ten dimensions, the game was lost. Let’s check out what happened or is likely to happen in some of those dimensions.
The Invisible Dimension
The Obama administration dedicated most of its political capital and a year or so of its time to passing the health reform bill. That commitment of resources meant that other things were not being done. At the end of the day, there was a health care bill, a tangible and substantial achievement. But what we won’t ever see is everything that might have been done had that effort been spent elsewhere. There could have been more popular or more important legislation, things like a bigger stimulus or a bill addressing global warming. (And if there are historians around in 100 years, the one question that they will ask about the Congress that is about to expire is, How could they have ignored climate change? In hindsight, the decision to push health care and ignore global warming will be viewed as an instance of world-historical lunacy.)
The Political Dimension
November wasn’t supposed to turn out the way it did. Sure, the Democrats were going to lose seats in the House, that was a given. But losing control of the House wasn’t supposed to happen, and a year ago nobody thought it was going to happen. In the Senate, given the luck of the draw of what seats were up this round, it wasn’t certain that the Democrats would lose any seats at all.
The health reform bill had a particular toxicity to it. It was a bill that was grudgingly accepted by its supporters and loathed by its detractors. Not a good combination. And the longer the bill was debated, the less popular it became. What killed the Democrats in November was the much remarked upon enthusiasm gap. Health reform wasn’t the only reason that Democrats went down, but it would hard to find a single issue in which the enthusiasm gap was more starkly exhibited.
The Dimension of Time
The Democrats have particularly bad timing. This was not a good year to lose an election, particularly not to lose an election massively on a national scale. What is about to happen is unprecedented. Software has been around for a few years to make partisan redistricting virtually an exact science. There has never been a wave election in a redistricting year when this technology existed. Going into this year’s election, the map tilted against the Democrats. A 50-50 split of the national House vote already meant that the Republicans would come out with a majority. That tilt will become quite a bit more pronounced. The Democrats didn’t just lose the House for 2 years. They lost it for a decade, minimum.
The Pyrrhic Dimension
OK, so a lot of Democrats lost their seats. At least, they lost it for a good cause. They achieved something that eluded us for half a century.
Well, sort of. Except that the health reform bill that was passed probably could have been passed 40 years ago. The unsuccessful efforts over the decades were attempts to get better bills passed than the Obama bill.
OK, but it’s still something, and it’s something significant. Except that it may never take effect. As we have learned, the bill had no severability clause to permit specific sections of the bill to be struck down by the courts, without jeopardizing the entire bill. This is incredible. Isn’t this boilerplate language? Isn’t it in any bill of any signficance? And earlier versions of the bill had a severability clause, which was somehow stripped out before final passage.
Moreover, the bill doesn’t take effect until after Obama’s current term ends. It is entirely possible, maybe even likely, that both houses of Congress and the Executive Branch will be controlled by Republicans at that time. The bill could well be repealed before it even takes effect.
A Paradoxical Dimension: No Politics is Local
Wisconsin is a pretty middle-of-the-road state. It’s generally a toss-up state in presidential elections, and no Republican since Reagan has received Wisconsin’s electoral vote.
What happened in 2010 is extraordinary. Wisconsin essentially overnight became a Tea Party state. Extremely conservative Republicans were elected in the statewide races for senator and governor. The races had completely different issues, but the results, broken down county by county, were essentially identical. It was as if voters had just ignored all the issues and all the candidates, and just voted D or R.
Moreover, both houses of the Wisconsin legislature, which had been under Democrat control, shifted massively to the Republicans. Wisconsin voters who were angry about the health reform bill came out in droves to vote against Obama. Except that Obama wasn’t on the ballot. So they voted against every Democrat in sight, be it Russ Feingold or their Democratic state rep.
And once again, the loss of Wisconsin can’t be reversed. I don’t know if Wisconsin has ever had a partisan redistricting. There hasn’t been one recently, as Wisconsin is the sort of state where power doesn’t gravitate too strongly to either side. That’s over now. The district lines will be drawn so that barring some dramatic change in political affiliations, the Republicans will have essentially permanent control of the state legislature.
A One-Point Dimension
There are people who live in the lost dimensions. I am one such person. Next week, when Wisconsin’s government is handed over to the Republicans, there will be dramatic changes. The people who will be immediately affected are the state employees. The governor-elect has made it clear that he intends to cut the benefits of state employees.
There are different numbers floating around. The governor-elect has discussed making state employees pay for 12% of their health benefits. He has also said that the state will recoup a certain number of millions of dollars from reducing health benefits of state employees. The math doesn’t work. A 12% contribution would not come anywhere close to providing the budget reductions the governor has suggested he would realize.
Suppose you take the governor’s figure of how many actual dollars would be taken away from employee health benefits, and divide that by the number of state employees. The result is a reduction of benefits so dramatic that Wisconsin state employees like me will be reduced to Walmart employees. Wisconsin will be offering its employees a health benefit at a cost that few of them can afford on the salaries they are being paid. The practical effect is that state employees will be stripped of their health insurance.
So how does it look in my personal dimension? Before health reform, I had health insurance. As an indirect result of the bill, I may lose that insurance.
I can’t handle eleven-dimensional chess. I’m going back to my Rubik’s cube.
