The Burrow

"Obamacare is in a death spiral." "This is what we ran on; this is what we promised the American people." The bill has not been "scored" by the OMB; the House of Representatives will vote on the bill before the cost is known. I've never been so glad to be on Medicare; I have the AARP on my side and nobody on The Hill wants to make the Granny Lobby angry. I wonder how the Trump voter looking for lower insurance premiums will react when it comes time to enroll in a new plan.  The bill focuses on what we used to call Major Medical - the inexplicable bills which accompany a hospital stay.  Apparently, all that prevention in the ACA - like prenatal vitamins and free wellness check ups - is expendable.  They would rather pay for open heart surgery than subsidize a gym membership. NPR broadcast an Ohio health care official worrying that 25% of the state's hospitals will enter bankruptcy if those formerly-uninsured-now-insured-soon-to-be-uninsure...

I was on the phone with the Secretary of Health and Human Services this morning.  I'm enjoying that sentence.  Really, really enjoying that sentence.  I'm a 60-something blogger with a once-famous backstory. I am a member of the BlogHer community. I completed the Survey Monkey last week and today I had the privilege of being on a conference call with a member of the President's cabinet.  BlogHer lists empowerment as one of its goals.  I am definitely feeling the strength right now. There were twenty of us on the line.  Secretary Sebelius spoke first, then listened as two bloggers shared their stories of life before and after the Affordable Care Act.  There was time for three or four questions and then our thirty minutes close to fame came to an end. Throughout the conversation, women were tweeting and retweeting and letting the world know that we were involved and passionate about an issue that affects everyone. One of my tweets was pick...

The problem with organizers is that their skill set is limited.  They can rally the troops to take action, energize the un-involved, get the message out, and make a lot of noise along the way.  They drop in, work on a problem, then move on to the next unsolved issue.  They don't stay in one place and try to make things work. Unfortunately, governing requires fortitude for the long fight.  It demands that you revisit the same issues, ironing out the kinks while retaining support.  That takes focus. It's playing the long game. It's selling and reselling and then doing it again, proving to the skeptics that you were right then and you are right now.  It's less exciting, perhaps, than a glossy new challenge might be, but that really doesn't matter. I think this is the problem with President Obama's absence from the health care debate these days. He's not sure what to do. He can complain that the fight is personal rather than issue-driven, but that doesn...