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May 23, 2013
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 Turning the Tables on Health CarePosted on Jan 9, 2011Rule One of politics: When you have the advantage, don’t allow your opponents to turn the tables. House Republicans violated this rule when they decided to make repeal of the health care law their first major act in the 112th Congress. The mistake will haunt them for years. It was a surprising error from a leadership that showed shrewd judgment and exceptional discipline during President Barack Obama’s first two years. John Boehner is now speaker of the House because he and his party focused on demonizing everything Obama did and winning the public argument over both the health care plan and the stimulus. By contrast, the health care debate that was to have taken place this week would have put Boehner and the Republicans on the defensive. On Saturday, Republican leaders—to their credit—postponed all legislative action this week following the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona and the deaths of so many at her town meeting. Already, that impending vote had forced the GOP to fudge its pledge to respect the minority’s rights, since the leadership ruled out any amendments to its bill. The inconsistency led Boehner to produce one of the lamest sound bites of his career. “Well, listen, I promised a more open process,” he said. “I didn’t promise that every single bill was going to be an open bill.” Advertisement Moreover, the GOP highlighted the extent to which this legislation is all about politics by giving it the jarringly unpoetic name, Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act. This is less a bill than a piece of propaganda. But the biggest problem is the signal this vote sends about how the Republicans plan to use their new power. Rather than leading off with positive action showing what the party stands for, they start by tearing something down before they have anything to put in its place. Do they really want us to believe that theirs will be a reactive majority (unless you prefer the word reactionary)? And how much of what they do will be defined by the imperative of throwing bones to the tea party movement, which sees health care repeal as a holy cause? Boehner and his colleagues could have been more deliberate and serious by first holding hearings to highlight what they see as the flaws in Obama’s approach and to begin the work of writing a bill of their own. They could have questioned the assumptions behind the health law in a systematic way. The Congressional Budget Office issued a painstaking study finding that the repeal bill would add $230 billion to the federal deficit over the next decade. Boehner dismissed it: “CBO is entitled to their opinion.” The CBO was not expressing an opinion in the way that, say, “I prefer green ties to red ties” is an opinion. And even though the GOP did issue a report challenging the CBO, its attitude toward neutral accounting was captured by the report’s title: Obamacare: A Budget-Busting Job-Killing Law. In the meantime, Democrats have never been as united behind the health care law as they are now. Most of them, even some of the 13 Democrats remaining in the House who voted against the bill last year, see this debate as an opportunity to point out all the popular provisions the Republicans would scrap. Consider, for example, that voting for repeal is, in part, a vote for a tax increase because it would involve eliminating a slew of tax credits, including $40 billion over a decade to help small businesses buy coverage. Couldn’t Republicans at least keep those nice business-friendly tax credits? Then there is the presumption that by repealing the law in its entirety the House is speaking for “the people.” Wrong. Even a Fox News poll, taken last month, found that only 27 percent of Americans wanted to repeal the health law entirely, while 32 percent wanted to repeal parts of it. On the other side, 16 percent wanted to keep it as is, and 15 percent wanted to expand it. This poll and many others do show that supporters of the law have a lot of work to do. House Republicans will be helping them to do it. Maybe someday their bill, to pick up the rather violent rhetoric of its title, will be seen as the Republican Majority-Killing Repeal Act of 2011. E.J. Dionne’s e-mail address is ejdionne(at)washpost.com.  TAGS:
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By Salome, January 11, 2011 at 3:47 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
What I think still sticks in Republican craw is the scenes of thousands and thousands of people at the rallies for Presidential candidate Obama while McCain had to hire people to attend his rallies.
I will not take Republican attempts to “repeal” the healthcare law seriously until they produce the “replace” part that they keep talking about but which has been notable for its’ absence rather than its’ presence.
Report thisBy Textynn, January 10, 2011 at 9:48 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Single Payer is the only answer. There is no excuse for putting into place a health care program that excludes millions. This is the same as a slave formula. People are asked to do millions of jobs in this country that do not extend benefits and do not pay enough to secure it. In other words, we have millions of people benefiting from the labor and time of individuals at their health peril.
This is a slave formula by any other name and those that insist upon it are exactly like the fat plantation owners sipping tea on the veranda while the slaves pick cotton in back breaking heat to live in miserable poverty. And having no real access to health care is poverty of the highest order. These people even used religion to justify this abuse and the country still conducts itself in the same unevolved sick way.
Report thisBy WriterOnTheStorm, January 10, 2011 at 2:52 pm Link to this comment
The Worm has the right perspective on health care “reform”, but the battle is not
Report thisreally about that. This is all about tribal wars, and the perception of a progressive
victory. It’s the victory part that sticks in the craws of the boot-strappers. The
only “sense” that matters here is the sense that team red lost the big game.
There’s nothing more to this than an attempt to salvage their pride. It’s pathetic,
like a football team throwing a triumphant hail-mary into the endzone—after
the opposing team has left for the locker room. We can now add “sore loser” to
the growing list of character defects of the conservative mindset.
By BR549, January 10, 2011 at 11:02 am Link to this comment
It isn’t that health care reform is unconstitutional, only that THIS version of HCR is
unconstitutional. The politicians just don’t have it in them to be able to come up
with anything meaningful without some faction of those $3,000 gray suits peeing
in the pool with porkbarreling and earmarks.
While ObamaCare took a step to support an elevated minimum of insurance
Report thiscompany expenses being spent solely on non-administrative expenses, so much
of the remainder of the bill is pure crap and disgusting politics.
By RayLan, January 10, 2011 at 9:04 am Link to this comment
Correction. I posted the last post to the wrong article. Sorry.
Report thisBy RayLan, January 10, 2011 at 8:54 am Link to this comment
Sharon Angle of Arizona -
Sarah Palin -
This is a small sample from a wealth of such incendiary rhetoric. It’s not just an attack on opposite ideology. It’s not just strong disagreement which get conflated with hatred. It suggests a violent solution.
Report thisThere are a lot more.
By sandyg, January 10, 2011 at 8:46 am Link to this comment
The fact that the Republicans insist on referring to the HCR as ‘Obamacare’ reinforces the notion that they are not so much against Health Care REFORM, but that they just cannot STAND the fact that the President is BLACK: i.e. their racial prejudice is more than they can abide.
Report thisTheir megaphone in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has adopted that role in the Senate.
By G.Anderson, January 9, 2011 at 9:58 pm Link to this comment
What a joke. All that’s going to happen is that the Republicans get to Blame the
Report thisDumbocrats, for blocking the repeal in the senate once it is passed in the house. It’s just
the usual, grandstanding, finger pointing and blaming the other party.
By aacme88, January 9, 2011 at 9:39 pm Link to this comment
The truly delightful thing about Republicans (yes there is one)is that eve, or occasionally a lot, of power they immediately shoot themselves in the foot and everybody ends up hating them even worse than before.
Report thisBy the worm, January 9, 2011 at 9:33 pm Link to this comment
It’s cute that EJ can go on and on about this Republican ‘blunder’, when the
truth of the matter will be the Supreme Court’s decision to find health reform
unconstitutional.
“Mandated customers” are not required for the ‘reforms’ that EJ finds so
desirable (and probably the rest of us find desirable, as well).
These include “... no child can be denied insurance coverage because of a pre-
existing condition. Coverage can no longer be canceled when the policyholder
gets sick. Insurance companies can no longer impose annual or lifetime limits
on payments for care. Adult children can remain on their parents’ policies until
they turn 26. Policyholders cannot be charged extra for seeking urgent care at
an emergency room that is not in the insurance company’s approved network
of providers. ... requirements that insurance companies spend a certain
percentage of the premiums they collect on actual care; a discount on
prescription drugs for some seniors covered by Medicare; a rule that gives
seniors free screening for cancer and other diseases.”
Most importantly, the ‘certain percentage’ requirement means that 20% of your
premium (and of the tax payers’ subsidy for those ‘mandated’ who cannot pay)
can go to -
1 lobbying by the insurance industry
2 serving on ‘Boards’ to set rates for you and me
3 donating to ‘sympathetic candidates’
4 CEO ‘bonuses’
5 efforts to cut costs (i.e. cut care, prescribe care, limit care)
You and your premiums and you and your tax money will fund activities 1 - 5.
From the insurance companies’ perspective, this is the beauty of the non-
reform of health care: All private for profit insurance companies receive
subsidies from the federal government and hundreds of thousands of ‘new’ (i.e.
mandated customers).
From the people’s perspective, we are ‘mandated’ to pay for a non-value-added
activity (i.e. the paper shuffling on the insurance companies) at the rate of
20/80.
We will essentially be paying $100 for $80 worth of actual health care.
And this during a period when health care costs are “driving budget deficits”.
Think of it: Your President and mine, agreed to pay private insurers $100 for
every $80 of actual health care and then called it ‘reform’.
And this during a period when health care costs in the US are twice what they
are in any other developed nation and no more - in fact often less - effective.
Whether it’s the Republicans in Congress or the Republicans on the Supreme
Report thisCourt, the best thing that could happen is to have this non-reform squelched,
and single payer pasted in the years to come. Right now, we are saddled with
the worst of all worlds - a keenly disguised private sector rip off.