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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Obamacare sabotage campaign
By TODD S. PURDUM | 11/1/13 5:04 AM EDT Updated: 11/1/13 5:49 AM EDT
To the undisputed reasons for Obamacares rocky rollout a balky website, muddied White House messaging and sudden sticker shock for individuals forced to buy more expensive health insurance add a less acknowledged cause: calculated sabotage by Republicans at every step.
That may sound like a left-wing conspiracy theory and the Obama administration itself is so busy defending the indefensible early failings of its signature program that it has barely tried to make this case. But there is a strong factual basis for such a charge.
From the moment the bill was introduced, Republican leaders in both houses of Congress announced their intention to kill it. Republican troops pressed this cause all the way to the Supreme Court which upheld the law, but weakened a key part of it by giving states the option to reject an expansion of Medicaid. The GOP faithful then kept up their crusade past the presidents reelection, in a pattern of massive resistance not seen since the Southern states defiance of the Supreme Courts Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.
The opposition was strategic from the start: Derail President Barack Obamas biggest ambition, and derail Obama himself. Party leaders enforced discipline, withholding any support for the new law which passed with only Democratic votes, thus undermining its acceptance. Partisan divisions also meant that Democrats could not pass legislation smoothing out some rough language in the draft bill that passed the Senate. That left the administration forced to fill far more gaps through regulation than it otherwise would have had to do, because attempts usually routine to re-open the bill for small changes could have led to wholesale debate in the Senate all over again.
But the bitter fight over passage was only the beginning of the war to stop Obamacare. Most Republican governors declined to create their own state insurance exchanges an option inserted in the bill in the Senate to appeal to the classic conservative preference for local control forcing the federal government to take at least partial responsibility for creating marketplaces serving 36 states far more than ever intended.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/the-obamacare-sabotage-campaign-99176.html
alp227
(32,019 posts)Hekate
(90,660 posts)I'm not in the mood to donate to anyone's campaign just now, but if for instance Organizing For America had such a fund, I bet they could get a lot of us to toss in a buck or twenty.
Laelth
(32,017 posts)-Laelth
Judi Lynn
(160,525 posts)leftstreet
(36,106 posts)Or at the very least a public option
If the GOPers were going to sabotage the ACA no matter what BeCAUSe ObAMA !! what possible good did it do to compromise and appease?