Insurers, Doctors, Enter 2014 'Bracing for Chaos'

Today on NRO VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Reality shows about gold miners, ax men, and ice-road truckers are a far cry from the Kardashians. Good Ol' Boy, Inc. THE EDITORS: The Times's slanted account of the killings in Benghazi. Credulous and Tendentious on Benghazi ANDREW STILES: To take on Big Business, the GOP needs more than rhetoric. Middle-Class Heroes? KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON: 2013 brought little more than uncertainty to an already uncertain nation.  A Year of Fear JOHN FUND: A new report shows just how easy it is to commit voter fraud. New York Investigators Obtain Fraudulent Ballots Morning Jolt . . . with Jim Geraghty December 31, 2013 Happy New Year! I don't know about you, but I'm ready for 2014. Insurers, Doctors, Enter 2014 'Bracing for Chaos' Nancy Pelosi to Democrats: "Embrace the suck." Obamacare to America: "Brace for chaos." CBS News says tomorrow, January 1, is "a day of reckoning: Consumers will begin finding out if they're actually enrolled in the plans they signed up for. . . . Consumers who enrolled in an Obamacare plan before December 24 should have insurance starting January 1 -- it remains to be seen if all of them will." Some are running to the doctors and hospitals before the ball drops: As the year comes to an end, doctor's offices are filling up quickly with people scrambling for appointments before the changes of the Affordable Care Act kick in. Many simply have questions about the landmark health care law, filling up clinics across the Coachella Valley. "There's a lot of confusion," said Kimberly Yang, executive director of Desert Family Medical Center, which has locations in Cathedral City and Palm Springs. Some are being priced out of insurance because the price of their plan has risen, Yang said. Others are losing their benefits through work or are no longer going to be able to pay for it. So they are lining up to have coughs and colds taken care of now. Remember the doctor shortage and wait times we talked about yesterday? Christiane Mitchell, director of federal affairs for the AAMC, predicted that many of the estimated 36 million Americans expected to gain coverage under Obamacare will endure long waits to see medical providers in their communities or have to travel far from home for appointments elsewhere. During the debate over the ACA, Mitchell said the AAMC pushed for the federal government to fund additional slots for the training of doctors, but that provision was trimmed to keep the ACA from costing more than a trillion dollars over 10 years. CNN Money: "Insurers and health care providers are bracing for some chaos at the start of 2014 when the newly insured begin to use their Obamacare health coverage. Because of the repeated, last-minute deadline extensions, some applicants' enrollments may be incomplete in insurers' systems on Jan. 1." Politico assesses the president's management style: To listen to Obama discuss the rollout through the fall, he was still figuring out some of the finer points, too. If he had known healthcare.gov wasn't going to work by its launch date, he said in mid-November, "I wouldn't be going out saying, boy, this is going to be great." "In management circles, that's an indictment," said the longtime consultant. "How could you not know? And if no one told you, you're still culpable for that too." The Obama Administration's Convenient Focus on 'Core' Al-Qaeda Should the key question, more than one year after Benghazi, be whether the guys who attacked our people were "core" al-Qaeda or merely "took inspiration" from al-Qaeda, as the administration is arguing, or, say, this aspect: The Times report zeroes in on militia leader Abu Khattala as well as the like-minded Islamist militia Ansar al Sharia. In a recent interview with CNN's Arwa Damon, Khattala acknowledged being at the Benghazi mission after the attack but denied any involvement. Damon spent two hours interviewing Khattala at a coffee shop at a well-known hotel in Benghazi. He allowed Damon to use an audio recorder to tape the conversation, but refused to appear on camera. Khattala's narrative of the events that night was sometimes unclear and, at times, seemed to be contradictory, Damon said. He admitted to being at the compound the night of the attack, but denied any involvement in the violence. Asked about allegations he may have masterminded the attack, Khattala and two of the men he brought with him to the interview "burst out laughing," Damon said. Khattala told CNN that he had not been questioned by either Libyan authorities or the FBI. The militia leader was one of those whom U.S. prosecutors charged in the attacks, as CNN first reported. If the New York Times can track down this guy, why can't our government? Khattala was indicted in August. Look, Obama administration, here's how it all adds up to Americans: "Core al-Qaeda" wants to kill us. Islamist radicals and militants who are merely "inspired by al-Qaeda" . . . still want to kill us. It's a bit like the administration's focus on jobs "created or saved" or Obamacare's "selected a plan" instead of purchasing a plan. Whenever reality is too difficult, they adjust the definition of success. The Three Martini Lunch Awards for 2013 If you don't listen to the Three Martini Lunch, a daily podcast I do with Radio America's Greg Corombus, you've missed . . . well, we aim for ten to fifteen minutes of quick, humorous, takes on the news of the morning, examining one bit of good news for the Right, one bit of bad, and one bit of crazy. Some days, it's a rebuilding day for the Good Martini. We've emulated the McLaughlin Group's End of the Year Awards -- some great, creative categories for the year's political news and figures –- and here's who I picked Person of the Year: For remaining oblivious or hiding the catastrophe of Obamacare's implementation until it was too late, Sebelius has done irreparable damage to the reputation of the Obama administration, the president, big government, and American liberalism. For this accomplishment, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is the Conservative of the Year for 2013 and perhaps the decade. Had she run Obamacare well, the country would look completely different; if, as many of us argue, Obamacare cannot run smoothly as it is currently written as law, she could have at least warned the president and the rest of the administration of the impending disaster. For failing to do either of those, she has inflicted more damage on the public's faith in big government in one year than you or I will do in a lifetime. Turncoat of the Year: Charlie Crist, elected to statewide office in Florida as a Republican in 2000, 2002, and 2006, is the Democrats' most likely candidate for governor next year. Man, you Florida Democrats are cheap dates. New Year's Resolution: I have a big year ahead; my first novel, published by Crown Forum/Random House, hits bookstore shelves in June. My resolution is to promote it in a way that is not annoying. Also try to be a good dad, husband, son, brother, friend and all of those other important roles when work gets crazy. Most Overrated Figure: I was tempted to go with Egypt's Mohamed Morsi, lasting in office one year before spurring massive popular opposition and a military coup against him. But I'm going to go with Mike Bloomberg, whose gun-control organizations lost in both of Colorado's recalls, and saw a third pro-gun-control state lawmaker resign to avoid a recall. Bloomberg's groups also threw millions into Virginia after Terry McAuliffe was already way ahead in the polls, only to see Ken Cuccinelli surge towards the end (probably driven more by coverage of Obamacare than by gun control). The Newtown horror set up the national political environment to be as favorable to gun control as we had seen in many, many years, and yet Bloomberg and his allies couldn't get the Senate to pass anything. Besides the backlash in Colorado, governors in Connecticut, New York, or Maryland who signed new gun-control proposals into law saw no bump in the polls. Bloomberg isn't charming, innovative, ingenious or persuasive, and without his enormous financial resources, Bloomberg would be a nonentity on the national political scene. Most Underrated Figure: I think you can actually make a strong case for John Kerry, because while I think his deals on Syria and Iran are terrible, his big-risk diplomacy is certainly playing a defining role in Obama's second term so far. But I'm going to go with South Carolina Republican congressman Mark Sanford, who everyone thought was a goner in his comeback bid, who won three elections this year, the first primary, the runoff, and then the general election by a healthy nine points against Elizabeth Colbert Busch. Democrats ended up wasting a couple million and he's kept himself out of trouble since. He won by earning it, doing up to ten or eleven events a day and talking to anybody who wanted to ask him anything, while Colbert Busch stuck to a few highly scripted events. Rising Star: Arkansas congressman Tom Cotton, who may very well be Senator Cotton by January 2015. Sterling experience: a Harvard College and Law School grad and Bronze-Star winning Army Captain with the 101st Airborne. Jay Nordlinger's profile begins here. Fading Star: I think John Boehner has done his best in the job of speaker, in a very difficult time to be a leader of the party. But it has mostly been a disappointing era for Republicans, and the job appears to be wearing on him. He will depart sometime in the not-too-distant future; the only question is whether it's in the coming year, after the 2014 midterms, or after 2016. Sorry to See You Go: Ed Koch, who was not the best mayor of New York, but was willing to deviate from liberal orthodoxy, criticize his own party, and praise George W. Bush on Israel. He was a brutally honest and funny voice in public life; Jonah is fond of quoting the story of how when Koch was asked to run again during his successor's disastrous term in office, Koch replied, "No! The people threw me out, and now the people must be punished." Best Idea: The tiny, tiny step towards entitlement reform in the budget deal represented by having federal employees contribute a bit more towards their pensions. Their retirement programs are notably generous compared to the norm in private industry. But for federal workers hired after 2012, the pension program is turning less generous. Most federal civilian employees hired beginning in January will contribute 4.4 percent of their pay to their pension plans under the House-passed budget bill the Senate is expected to approve this week. Government workers hired in 2013 will continue paying 3.1 percent of their gross pay to help cover their pensions; those on the federal payroll before then, 0.8 percent. This is small, but any step in this direction that gets through a Harry Reid Senate and signed into law by Obama is going to be small. Worst Idea: So many options. I thought about the Syrian "Red Line," but then I decided the worst, or at least most ominous idea of the year was the complete shutdown/lockdown of the city of Boston and surrounding communities on the Friday after the Boston Marathon bombing. Yes, it was extraordinary circumstances, and I'm glad they caught the bastard. But will other city authorities be tempted to call for a complete curfew in another crisis in the future? If this tactic is a one-time deal, this worry is moot. But catching a fleeing, dangerous bad guy is a heck of a lot easier if every other citizen leaves the streets -- and it's not hard to imagine the threshold for wide-scale "shelter in place" orders getting lower with time. Boldest tactic: The creepy Uncle Sam ads against Obamacare, from Generation Opportunity make the Demonsheep look tame.  I don't know how effective they are, but they are memorable in a world crowded with political ads. Best story of the year: The failure of Obamacare, and its exacerbation of the problem of Americans without health insurance, instead of fixing it, may very well turn out to be the story of the decade. What the past months have shown us is that the world works the way we think it does: Big, complicated pieces of legislation often have lots of snags and unforeseen consequences. Government bureaucracies are slow-moving, often not responsive, and sometimes incompetent. We knew, even if the president didn't, that buying insurance is complicated. Human history is full of examples of centralized planning failing because it cannot account for all of the infinite variables of human behavior. Just recently we saw almost 60 percent of the uninsured haven't even looked at the exchanges. You can lead the uninsured to the exchange, but you can't make them buy. ADDENDUM: Byron York reminds us that Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, leaves his beloved home city of Newark with the highest murder rate in two decades. Happy New Year! To read more, visit www.nationalreview.com Why not forward this to a friend? Encourage them to sign up for NR's great free newsletters here. Save 75%... Subscribe to National Review magazine today and get 75% off the newsstand price. Click here for the print edition or here for the digital. National Review also makes a great gift! Click here to send a full-year of NR Digital or here to send the print edition to family, friends, and fellow conservatives. Follow Tweet Listen Send National Review, Inc. Manage your National Review subscriptions. We respect your right to privacy. View our policy. 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