Viewpoints: Obama’s ‘Shellacking’; States Benefiting From Health Law Turn Red

The Wall Street Journal: A Shellacking For Obama
Yet the one issue that has been on the ballot everywhere this year is President Obama and his record. ... Democrats in turn studiously avoided appearing with Mr. Obama, much less having him campaign for them, and the Senate challenger in Kentucky famously wouldn’t even say if she’d voted for him. Georgia Democrat Michelle Nunn identified herself explicitly with George H.W. Bush. Mr. Obama was consigned to campaigning in heavily Democratic states, like Maryland. Democratic incumbents claimed their votes for the President’s agenda were mostly “procedural,” but the problem is that all of them were with the White House on every vote that mattered. Each of them provided the last “aye” to get ObamaCare through the Senate. Most Democrats barely defended ObamaCare while promising vaguely to fix it, and GOP Senate candidates ran more ads against ObamaCare in October than on any other issue, according to Kantar Media/CMAG. (11/4)

The New York Times: Negativity Wins The Senate
The most important promises that winning Republicans made were negative in nature. They will repeal health care reform. They will roll back new regulations on banks and Wall Street. They will stop the Obama administration’s plans to curb coal emissions and reform immigration and invest in education. Campaigning on pure negativity isn’t surprising for a party that has governed that way since Mr. Obama was first sworn in. (11/5)

The New York Times' The Upshot: States Benefiting Most From Obama’s Health Law Elected Republicans
Arkansas, Kentucky and West Virginia — states that saw substantial drops in the proportion of their residents without insurance — all elected Republican Senate candidatess who oppose the Affordable Care Act. Control of the West Virginia state House of Delegates flipped from Democrats to Republicans. And Arkansas elected Republican supermajorities to both houses of its legislature along with a Republican governor, a situation that could imperil the Medicaid expansion that helped more than 200,000 of its poorest residents get health insurance. (Margot Sanger-Katz, 11/5)

USA Today: What The Democrats Lost: Our View
Exhibit A was last fall's disastrous rollout of the federal health care exchanges, a blunder for which Obama justifiably gets the blame. There's just no excuse for a chief executive who doesn't stay on top of his single most important initiative. Other failures weren't solely Obama's fault, but they added to the impression of a president who couldn't handle the day-to-day job of managing the bureaucracy, or didn't care: lost e-mails and political targeting at the IRS, outrageous wait times Veterans Affairs facilities, bumbling on Ebola by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Secret Service allowing a deranged man to get deep inside the White House. ... The most obvious way for Obama and his party to compete [again in 2016] is to display more competence in governing. A good way to start would be by making sure the second rollout of the health exchanges, which begins Nov. 15, goes smoothly. (11/5)

USA Today: What Election Winners Can Achieve Before 2016: Our View
Most recent presidents achieved little, domestically at least, in their last two years as their clout diminished and the nation's attention shifted to the next presidential election. In the next two years, Tea Party Republicans will continue to push for more polarizing confrontation, particularly over President Obama's signature health care law. But there are reasons not to give up hope this time. (11/5)

Los Angeles Times: The Future Of Gridlock
Granted, voters have sent mixed signals about what they want. Polls show growing support for elected officials willing to compromise, yet voters didn't penalize Republicans for shutting down much of the federal government last year in a vain attempt to “defund Obamacare.” The public seems to expect the majority to govern, regardless of what the minority does. With Republicans taking the Senate, Democrats may have little interest in tamping down the voter anger that has led to these “change” elections. ... It would be naive to expect the election to end the polarization between the parties. Nevertheless, its results suggest that voters are tired of watching policymakers dig themselves more deeply into their ideological trenches. (11/4)

Bloomberg: A New Do-Nothing Congress
What about health care? Votes to repeal Obamacare may be inevitable, but they will not have sufficient support to override the inevitable presidential veto. Republicans may do better with targeted legislation aimed at provisions that are unpopular with a number of Democrats. On that list are the medical device tax and the Independent Payment Advisory Board. I am a supporter of both, and believe the Independent Payment Advisory Board in particular has been widely misunderstood, but they are politically vulnerable. The White House would be wise to start defending them now -- or at least limit the damage any changes might impose. The best thing that could happen would be for Congress and the White House to agree to improve the Affordable Care Act by passing legislation such as the Better Care, Lower Cost Act. (Peter R. Orszag, 11/4)

The New York Times: Health Care In The Hands Of The Court
Two and a half years ago, the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act by a single vote. This year alone, between 8 million and 11 million Americans have been able to get health insurance that they did not have before, according to a new analysis by The Times. But this remarkable success has endured relentless attacks by the law’s dogged opponents, who will not stop until they have destroyed it. They lost in their efforts to gut the law in 2012. They could get another chance as early as Monday. That is when the justices are expected to announce whether they have agreed to hear the latest challenge, which takes aim at four words — “established by the State” — buried deep within the 900-page law. (11/4)

Modern Healthcare: Former NEJM Editor Relman Was Refused Physician Aid In Dying
Dr. Arnold Relman, the former New England Journal of Medicine editor-in-chief who died of cancer in June, sought the same type of physician aid in dying that Brittany Maynard received in Oregon last Saturday. But the famed physician's doctors in Massachusetts turned him down, said his widow, Dr. Marcia Angell, also a former NEJM editor-in-chief. “He wanted to bring about death in a peaceful and fast way, and he couldn't have that,” said Angell, who campaigned for passage of a “death with dignity” ballot initiative in Massachusetts that was narrowly defeated in 2012, in an interview with Modern Healthcare. ... “He died of breathlessness, with his lungs filled with tumor,” she said. “Pain is the least of the symptoms for dying patients, it's the easiest to relieve. But breathlessness, nausea, clouding of thinking, these things are much harder to deal with.” (Harris Meyer, 11/4)

Los Angeles Times: Does Your Employer Really Care About Your 'Wellness'? Maybe Not
A federal judge in Minneapolis on Monday refused to block Honeywell International from imposing penalties on workers who refuse to participate in a workplace "wellness" program, denying a request for an injunction by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. This can be seen as a victory for the cause of workplace health, for the goal of the Honeywell program was to discourage smoking, obesity and other bad health behaviors and outcomes in its workforce. It can also be seen as a defeat for worker privacy and independence, for the EEOC saw the program as intrusive and coercive. (Michael Hiltzik, 11/ 4)