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www.metro.us Weekend, February 21-23, 2014
Opinion
TOM FOREMAN FOREMAN IS A POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT FOR CNN.
OBAMACARE: FEELING BETTER Amid the Ukrainian turmoil, the Olympic headlines and Ted Nugent’s apparent breakdown from what I can only assume is cat scratch fever, you may have missed a small news item: Obamacare is doing better. Back before the holidays, you could hardly hear yourself think in D.C. amid all the cursing Democrats and chuckling Republicans. The Affordable Care website was still seemingly held together with paper clips and string. Stories were erupting about insurance companies dropping customers like stones in the sea, while the White House frantically argued that Barack Obama never precisely said, “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan.” (For the record, he said those
exact words at a town hall meeting in Wisconsin, and similar phrases many other times.) And everyone was watching the number of Obamacare enrollees lag far behind projections. For a while, it looked like the administration’s poor handling of the program might accomplish what legions of angry opponents could not, reducing it to bureaucratic shambles unable to support its own weight. Now, however, sign-ups are surging with 3.3 million on board at the end of January. Are they on track to hit 7 million by the end of March as hoped? No. Vice President Joe Biden admitted as much this week when he said that 5 or 6 million enrollees would be “a hell of a start.” (And for the record, what matters more is who signs up; about 40 percent need
Quoted
The program is decidedly better off than it was when winter began. to be generally healthy to make the math work.) That said, the program is decidedly better off than it was when winter began. Mind you, issues — some potentially serious — remain. The numbers still suggest that if Obamacare were an addition to your house, it would be the kind of project that came in late, cost more than estimated and did not turn out like you expected. But like that questionable addition, as each month goes by, it looks like America is learning to live with Obamacare — even if it is not what the contractor promised.
Diplomatic process
NEWS N
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Up in smoke
World powers and Iran make ‘good start’ in Vienna Six world powers and Iran made a “good start” in talks in Vienna toward reaching a final settlement in the decade-old stand-off over Tehran’s nuclear program, but conceded that their plan to get a deal in coming months was very ambitious. By late July, Western governments hope to hammer out an accord that would lay to rest their suspicions that Iran is seeking the capability to make a nuclear bomb, while Tehran wants a lifting of economic sanctions. Wide differences remain on how this could be achieved, although the two sides said they agreed during meetings this week on what to discuss and a preliminary timetable for the talks on such an accord. REUTERS
ELECTRONIC CIGARETTE GETTY IMAGES
E-cig industry on tenterhooks ahead of US regulation Lobbyists for electronic cigarette companies have been beating a path to the White House, hoping to prevent the administration from imposing strict rules on the burgeoning $2 billion industry. In November and December, more than 35 organizations, including e-cigarette companies, cigar and tobacco makers, physician groups and health advocates, trooped through the doors of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. REUTERS