Reblogged: Already in Obama's Lap?

[Gus Van Horn blog]

Jeffrey Anderson, in an article aptly titled "Wimping Out on Obamacare?" warns that the GOP is already hard at work to save the Affordable Care Act, something I feared might eventually happen (i.e., at least take some time). Referring to no fewer than three ACA-saving tweaks in the works, Anderson asks:

[W]hy would Republicans want to "fix" the law in this way? The focus of Obamacare's opponents should be on repealing and replacing the overhaul, not on repairing it -- and everything they do should be with an eye toward advancing that larger goal. In the short term, therefore, they can look to pull pieces out of Obamacare -- particularly pieces whose absence would simultaneously provide relief for Americans and undermine Obamacare. A fine example is the individual mandate: Americans hate it, and Obamacare relies upon it. Another good play is to highlight especially egregious sections that haven't gotten much popular attention, such as the effective ban on building or expanding doctor-owned hospitals -- a striking example of Obamacare's rampant cronyism, and one that comes at the expense of a group with whom Republicans would be well-served to align themselves.

Anderson isn't even writing from a consistently free-market perspective and he can see the folly in this approach. Will the GOP wake up? Anderson thinks it might. Had I not already set my bar so low -- only to be disappointed already -- I might feel more of the slight optimism Anderson ends his article with.

-- CAV

Link to Original

[CrowEpistemologist]

While I'd love to see the R's actually face down the cronyites, I'll believe it when I see it. The only thing that rivals Obama's rampant cronyism is the Republican's rampant cronyism.

 

As for pulling one of the three legs out of the system--the individual mandate--you should only expect a lot of huffery and puffery, but there will be no action because there cannot be action there as it will instantly stop the entire system from working, and effectively repeal it, which the R's definitely cannot do. They can't do this because they don't challenge the basic premise of socialized health care, so they'd be left with creating another system of socialized health care--and remember that this one was actually conceived by a Conservative think tank and enacted by a conservative republican governor.

 

So while you're going to hear lots of populist bullishit coming from the Republicans ("stop the individual mandate!"), they know all they are doing is blaming math on the Democrats, which is just a political parlor trick and not actionable policy.