Janet Adamy of the Wall Street Journal has become the administration’s worst nightmare — a writer for a major newspaper who calmly, straightforwardly, without spin or bias, reports on the unintended consequences of Obamacare as they unfold. Every week she drops a new payload of bad PR on the Democrats as yet another insurance company (often a non-profit one) is forced to raise premiums to cover some new “free” service that Obamacare has guaranteed, or yet another large company (last week McDonalds, this week 3M) moots the option of dropping or altering the health-care plans of its workers in response to the costs associated with the new legislation[.]kevin drum points out that 3M's actions are actually completely consistent with the goals of the affordable care act (and last week's mcdonald's story turned out to be not quite "without spin or bias").
but what i find interesting about janet adamy's reports, and bloggers on the right like spruiell who echo adamy's articles, is what a complete reversal this represents from how things used to be. for years, reporters and bloggers on the left have been the ones who like to bring up problems with health insurance in the u.s. the american system has long provided plenty of examples of both crazy bureaucratic nightmares and genuine human tragedies that result from our private insurance system. highlighting those examples is essentially what michael moore was doing with sicko.
since the passage of the ACA, the right has suddenly discovered the health debacle genre. whereas before the ACA, the right either largely ignored these stories or contested their veracity, now they are the ones who are bringing them up in an attempt to discredit the ACA. now that the right associates the status quo with the ACA, they are no longer defending the status quo.
which i think this is a good thing. the more people we have talking about our crazy health care system the better. such talk can only increase the chances of further reform, even when it comes from the right. rather than being "the obama administration's worst nightmare" i think even adamy's misleading reports help hammer home the idea that the health care system in this country is fundamentally broken and that the ACA did not go far enough.
