The Republican gambit of demonizing Obamacare is starting to backfire — as well it should. The strategy is based on a lie.
In 2009, Pres. Obama opted to use the individual mandate model as the basis of health-insurance reform — rather than the single-payer, Medicare-for-all approach his supporters preferred — in part because he hoped to strike a deal with Republicans. His quest for bipartisanship seems ridiculous now (as it did then to many people), but it was, in fact, grounded in reality.
After all, as has been noted here many times, the individual mandate was the Republicans’ own plan. That is the foundational lie at the base of Republican opposition to Obamacare. They had to obfuscate their party’s role as inventors of the individual mandate in order to set up the other false narratives — death panels, healthcare rationing, Muslim exemptions and the rest.
If Republicans’ opposition also happened to hurt their own uninsured constituents, who risked bankruptcy, poor health and even death from lack of treatment, more’s the pity for them. Politics trumps all.
With Republicans on the Supreme Court set to overturn federal subsidies next month, which will effectively cancel the health insurance of about 7 million working-class people, most of whom live in red states, the GOP may finally get what it wants: the destruction of the health-insurance reform it created and then disowned.
But now Republican leaders in Congress are realizing, belatedly, that it is more than likely that millions of red-state voters whose policies will be cancelled are likely to blame the GOP when they lose their insurance.
While you've been spending your disposable cash on video games, Spotify, literally anything, women have been paying $50 a month for birth control.
(This is a BFD.)
Posted by msnbc on Thursday, May 14, 2015
John Stoehr at The National Memo succinctly sums up the predicament Republicans have put themselves in:
Some might judge this as hypocrisy and thus dismiss the new Republican position as entirely unworthy of scrutiny. There’s merit to that, as Washington wallows in hypocrisy. But hypocrisy can prevent us from seeing what’s really going on. In this case, I wonder if Boehner and the leadership are worried about holding their ranks, as the temptation to defect grows from within.
Over time, the Affordable Care Act will penetrate deeper into the population. The millions of Americans who will benefit from the law will have an incentive to maintain the status quo. They’ll likely support the Democratic Party as long as the Republicans demand repeal of the law. So, as of now, a vote for a Republican, from the point of someone covered by the Affordable Care Act, is a self-destructive vote. And among those millions are conservatives.
Some might argue that in saying things about Obamacare that just aren’t true, [GOP leaders like Speaker John Boehner risk] alienating conservatives that make up the base of the Republican Party. Why would they trust the House Speaker if he is so consistently wrong? There’s something to that, but a likelier explanation for the GOP’s continued, and shifting, stance against the health care law is that opposition, no matter how contorted, is the best way to keep the conservatives in line.
Given time, more conservatives are going to benefit from the law. And the more they do, the more they will vote their self-interests.
