That was fast. In reponse to President Obama's outreach to Republican governors, supporting legislation that would allow states to get waivers to implement their own versions of the Affordable Care Act three years earlier than in the original law, we get pure politics.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, fully engaged in seeing that he doesn't meet the same fate as his former colleague Bob Bennett at the hands of Utah teahadists, is in full-throated rejection of the olive branch.
Sen. Orrin Hatch on Tuesday called President Barack Obama?s endorsement of the Wyden-Brown amendment to increase state flexibility ?bull.??This date-shift gimmick does nothing to change the fundamental problems of Obamacare,? the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee told the Federation of American Hospitals conference. ?I went on TV yesterday after Secretary [Kathleen] Sebelius and she was going on about how much flexibility this was going to give the states and how much better it was going to be for everyone. That?s bull. States still would have to provide Washington-dictated coverage and waivers fail to give relief on the Medicaid spending mandate.?
?Flexibility ? I believe the technical legal term is baloney,? the Utah Republican said.
That dastardly "Washington-dictated coverage" under Wyden-Brown (maybe) boils down to expanding affordable coverage to more people and making sure insurers aren't cheating anyone out of coverage. Oh, and easing the cost burden of providing coverage for employees to small businesses AND handing the insurance companies a whole mess of new customers.
TPM's Brian Beutler points out that any kind of opt-out was rejected already by GOP Senators, opposition repeated to in the wake of Obama's endorsement of the waiver legislation.
As [Sen. John] Barrasso and other Republicans argued forthrightly earlier this year, the only opt out provisions they really support are ones that fatally undermine the law.And even [Sen Scott] Brown, who co-authored this plan has told us that he'd still support full repeal, even if Congress adopted this measure.
At a weekly Capitol briefing with reporters Monday, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Obama's olive branch really just masks the case for full repeal.
"It is just making our point that not only have we seen a variety of exceptions and waivers issued for the private sector under the act, but now we are seeing how that act is troubling states in a real way as far as their trying to figure out the fiscal situations," he said.
Meanwhile, since it's obvious repeal isn't going to happen, some states are exploring interstate compacts, "loose treaties between states and have the force of federal law," that would "give states authority to regulate health care matters and specifically declare that the arrangement trumps federal law."
These states could be looking at collaborating to provide more efficient regional healthcare delivery systems. But the secret is, they don't care about making sure their constituents have access to quality, affordable healthcare. They care about defeating Obama. Period.
No comments:
Post a Comment