SMRs and AMRs

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Democrats Confront Vexing Politics Over the Health Care Law

By JONATHAN MARTIN, NYT
APRIL 19, 2014

ATLANTA — When Franklin D. Roosevelt established Social Security, he created generations of loyal Democrats. When Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare into law, he built on that legacy, particularly with older Americans. And when George W. Bush instituted a new prescription drug benefit for Medicare, it helped reclaim elderly voters for Republicans.

But President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, the $1.4 trillion effort to extend health insurance to all Americans, is challenging the traditional calculus about government benefits and political impact.

Even as Mr. Obama announced that eight million Americans had enrolled in the program and urged Democrats to embrace the law, those in his party are running from it rather than on it, while Republicans are prospering by demanding its repeal.

The reasons are complex and layered in the early assessments, but say much about the nation’s political polarization, its shifting fault lines of class and race, and a diminished faith in government.

(More here.)

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