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GOP should resist Obamacare hold up

4 min read

Back in 2006, you might recall that Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney signed a bill mandating that residents of his state purchase health insurance, with those least able to afford it receiving subsidies.

The law also included insurance exchanges, and an expansion of Medicaid. From all accounts, it’s been remarkably successful.

Remind you of a certain piece of federal legislation? Say, the Affordable Care Act?

The whole notion of an individual mandate to purchase health insurance first emerged from conservative think tanks in the 1980s, and, when the policy was first attempted by Romney in Massachusetts, it won fulsome praise from his fellow Republicans. U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, a conservative firebrand from deeply-red South Carolina, trumpeted Romney’s skill at taking “good conservative ideas, like private health insurance, and (applying) them to the need to have everyone insured.”

As we all know, however, when President Barack Obama pushed his remarkably similar plan through Congress in 2010, the same Republicans who sang hosannas for Romney’s legislation decided that “Obamacare” was the leading edge of a totalitarian, socialist nanny state.

Romney himself virtually disavowed his most noteworthy achievement as an elected official, and twisted himself into pretzel-like configurations when he tried to explain how what was desirable for Massachusetts would be disastrous when spread across the other 49 states.

With the Affordable Care Act having survived a Supreme Court challenge and Obama re-elected to a second term, you would think the GOP would decide the battle has been lost and it’s time to help implement the law, or improve it. However, like Japanese soldiers who continued to fight World War II long after its conclusion, they’re dug in, trying now to sabotage it.

Among the methods to their madness are the never-ending, and absolutely pointless, votes in the House of Representatives to repeal the law. At last count, we were up to 39 repeal votes, with a cost to taxpayers of $50 million for a completely empty, symbolic exercise. On the state level, Republican governors and legislators are refusing to create insurance exchanges, are churning out misinformation on rate hikes, and some congressmen have apparently decided that when constituents call with questions, they’ll shrug and politely decline to help them.

Perhaps most gallingly, some House Republicans want Obama to agree to defund the law to get an agreement on lifting the debt ceiling (fat chance of that happening), and they want to urge young, healthy people who don’t have insurance to skip buying it.

You read that right. They’re going to urge young people to not purchase insurance. That means, if those young people get in an accident, or some entirely unexpected health problem befalls them, they’ll have to pay thousands of dollars out-of-pocket for medical expenses.

That’s prudent.

The wholesale resistance to the health care law is not only making the GOP look like the sorest of sore losers, but it’s also raising questions about fundamental responsibility and their ability to effectively govern and solve the nation’s problems.

Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute last week said of the attempts to derail the Affordable Care Act, “What is going on now to sabotage Obamacare is not treasonous – just sharply beneath any responsible standards of elected officials with the fiduciary responsibility of governing.”

Republicans have stated repeatedly over the last few years that the law is bound to fail. If they believe that so fervently, why not let it be fully implemented, stand back and reap the political benefits that would come their way? Their actions would leave one to believe that, in their heart of hearts, they feel otherwise.

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