One of my conservative friends is absolutely overjoyed about the recent CBO report.
He's ecstatic about the CBO finding that the equivalent of 2.3 million workers would choose to leave the labor force through early retirement or working less hours to take advantage of subsidies.
My friend's actual response was:
"Obamacare is a disincentive for people to work"
-CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf
Go ahead.. Spin that.. :D
I wasn't going to diary today. But because I felt a need for a better response, I found myself typing.
The trouble with most responses I've seen
They're refutations.
- Fact Check: Losing Jobs vs Choosing Not to Work, USA Today
- State by the Press Secretary on Today's CBO Report and the Affordable Care Act, Whitehouse
- Obamacare doesn't kill jobs, CNN
The problem with a refutation is that you repeat the original problem in the refutation.
The CNN article Obamacare doesn't kill jobs, for example, repeats "kill jobs". Read how many times the author says kill jobs, or job killing, or kill jobbing in the article. (And yes, I know I'm saying it here for demonstration purposes. Any bets as to how many people remind me of it in the comments anyways? Heheh. :) )
Let me diagram this out for you. You have the attack, then you have a restatement of the attack in the response, then you have the refutation which often restates the attack again.
The attack gets at least twice the air time. This is how the echo chamber works.
I expect some of this from the media. After all, the media is more interested in controversy as Brian Beutler from Salon points out:
For better or worse, the press is obviously more drawn to controversy and failure than to conciliation and success. Among other things, Tuesday’s CBO report concluded that the Affordable Care Act will quickly make up ground it lost during the two-month Healthcare.gov outage. Premiums are lower than expected. The phantom “Obamacare insurance bailout” that Republicans are trying to repeal will likely result in a multibillion-dollar windfall for the government. That windfall reflects greater-than-expected insurance company profits, which means premiums will fall or rise less than expected. Obamacare will stimulate job growth in the near term and so on. The thing that grabbed everyone’s attention, though, was the conclusion that the law will induce millions of people to either leave the labor force or cut back on their hours.
Is this surprising to anyone?
Everyone knows conservatives are going to try to make healthcare the #1 issue in November. I'm pretty sure at this point we also know that the media is going to play the controversy for ratings.
Knowing this, are we helpless?
My response (no edits)
Here was my response to my conservative friend (And yes, I know it could be better. We'll get to that in a second.):
“By providing heavily subsidized health insurance to people with very low income, and then withdrawing those subsidies as income rises, the act creates a disincentive for people to work relative to what would have been the case in the absence of that act. By providing a subsidy, these people are better off, but they do have less of an incentive to work.” - Douglas Elmendorf, House Budget Committee
Also for full context, he is referring to people moving from part-time jobs to full-time jobs.
Basically, the incentive would drop off if they worked more.
If this is the case, why not gradually role off the subsidy as people work more?
It would be an easy fix.
Easy, that is, if Congress was willing to work on it instead of using it to run for election in 2014.
:)
-David
Breaking it down
Before talking about how my response could have been better, let me briefly explain what I was going for.
Basically, I offered to work with him on it.
Right now you're thinking to yourself, but conservatives don't want to work on it, they want to repeal it.
Yes, exactly.
I know that he wants to use this "problem" solely as an attack to achieve his ultimate goal of repealing the law.
By offering to work with him on it, here are his options:
1) Agree to work with me on it; we both know he won't do that
2) Admit that he is bringing up a "problem" without having a "solution" or even wanting to work on a solution
3) Change the subject
4) Stop talking about the "problem"
He chose #3 because he doesn't want to look like someone who just brings up problems without any interest at all in working on them.
Oh, and btw, I don't have to spin anything. I let him dig his own hole. I acknowledge his issue and propose a solution and offer to work with him on it instead of holding repeal votes.
From there, it's up to him whether he wants to look like a complainer or not.
And the beauty of this approach is that I can see it working for every "problem" we're going to hear about from now until the election in 2014.
Instead of viewing these attacks as attacks, why don't we thank Republicans for raising a concern and then offer to work with them to make the ACA even better?
Some journalists might even cover this. Especially if Democrats could ask Republicans with a little humor or wink to the crowd.
The person I was talking with changed the subject. He is someone who won't go away easily so he'll always keep swinging. Fine with me. Once I established my position of being willing to work to make things better he can complain all he wants. I know I won't win him. The more he responds though, the more I'll make him look like a complainer.
If you're still reading here's a few ways my response could have been better
1. I repeated the quote. Do what I say, not what I do, right? Basically, I screwed up and started responding by refuting the argument. Then, I switched up. A better response would have been to just focus on working on the issue.
2. I should make sure that the solution I propose is better than the existing ACA. In my mind it was, but I didn't state this very well in my short response. To elaborate on my proposed solution, I would increase incentives for people at higher incomes. Imagine if every time conservatives complained, we offered to make the ACA even better?
3. The strategy could use a good media quote. Something like: "If Republicans are really interested in helping, let's stop arm-chair quarterbacking and make this thing better!" I'm sure the highly paid Democratic media consultants can come up with something better.
4. My offer to work with Republicans on it could have been better. It should actually be sincere. Heck, if Republicans wanted to work to improve the ACA for people, I'd be all for it. Seriously.
Close
Of course, I'm sure a more effective approach is to launch a public relations campaign which tries to paint the GOP as obstructive and will be quickly swatted away by the GOP claiming it's from a biased source. Which it is. Instead of putting offer after offer out there that makes the GOP look like complainers without any solutions, they'll look like victims of Democratic attack ads.
Sheesh, sometimes I think Democrats deserve to lose.
Oh well, I don’t write for Democrats. I write for the folks here. Try it out with people you know. Maybe I'm crazy and maybe there's better ways.
Report back on what worked and what didn't. I've found that together we often come up with something better than anything I could dream up.