Art offers his perspective as a movement progressive activist.
As this week’s epic SCOTUS hearing unfolded with the 5 Republican justices hammering away at the Affordable Care Act and Democrats freaked out about the ACA getting axed, a funny thing happened. The GOP contenders are now being asked what would they do to provide healthcare to Americans. This is a welcome development, as all they have been doing is attacking Obama’s healthcare law for years and providing no counter policy.
Well, rest assured frontrunner for the GOP nod Mitt Romney has a solution. None. He went on Jay Leno and once again made a statement that will haunt him come November:
“People with preexisting conditions – as long as they’ve been insured before, they’re going to continue to have insurance,’’ Romney said in response to Leno’s question on NBC’s “Tonight Show.’’
But, Leno asked, what if they have not been insured?
“Well, if they’re 45 years old, and they show up and say, ‘I want insurance because I’ve got a heart disease,’ it’s like, ‘Hey guys, we can’t play the game like that,’ ’’ Romney said. “You’ve got to get insurance when you’re well, and if you get ill, then you’re going to be covered.’’
So this is his solution? Really? Get insurance when you’re young and healthy or if not, well, then your ruined. This is not what voters want to hear or even need.
For years now the GOP has devoted itself to taking down ACA without providing any alternative of substance. None but to promise to nix the law if elected. As David Frum points out, this is a disastrous situation the GOP has put itself in, even if the court upholds the law:
“Unconstitutional” was an answer of a kind. But if the ACA is not rejected as “unconstitutional,” the question will resurface: if you guys don’t want this, want do you want instead?
In that case, Republicans will need a Plan B. Unfortunately, they wasted the past three years that might have developed one. If the Supreme Court doesn’t rescue them from themselves, they’ll be heading into this election season arguing, in effect, Our plan is to take away the government-mandated insurance of millions of people under age 65, and replace it with nothing. And we’re doing this so as to better protect the government-mandated insurance of people over 65—until we begin to phase out that insurance, too, for everybody now under 55.
I bet some Republican politicians are praying ACA is upheld. Because if it is nixed they have nothing to offer or run against.
This is not about healthcare but it is about Republicans not getting what they paid for. An article in the Thursday NY Times entitled, ” A bet gone Awry for G.O.P donors ” explains how big business groups, after dumping huge sums into the 2010 campaign to elect Republicans have gotten very little in return. No transportation bill ( long term, that is ), no import/export bank, no tax breaks for wind energy, R&D and a host of other pet programs. It’s looking more and more like they would have been better off supporting Democrats.
Haha! The PPACA was designed to reform health care while keeping it mostly in the private sector. Since conservatives seem to have a big problem with that one wonders if they’ll embrace an alternative in the public sector. Lol! Is a tax a mandate?
I hear ya! This is crazy.
Their support for free market solutions is about as constant as the Democrats’ support for civil liberties.
Yet another example of how isolated our leaders, and this one in particular, are from the rest of us. Thanks to insurance being about 3x more expensive when you’re middle aged, as opposed to in one’s twenties and single, it’s pretty common for employees in their fifties to be let go in favor of younger workers. Yes, age discrimination still exists. They are also less likely to be hired, partly for that reason. What this usually means is that during the years that workers don’t need health care that much, they’re paying into the system. Then, when they’re old enough to need it, they’re stuck with the $1k – $2k a month premium payments, and they’re unemployed.
BTW, none of that was fixed by the ACA.
Alan Grayson gave the three point Republican several years ago. If you don’t have government or private insurance health care ‘Don’t get sick, if you do get sick, die quickly’. That’s Plan B.