Republicans Are In a Full Blown Panic as the Affordable Care Act Grows More Successful

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Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction and as a rule saboteurs attempt to conceal their identities to avoid the consequences of their actions; unless they are Republicans. Since January 2009, Republicans have gone to great lengths to sabotage President Obama’s attempts to save the economy and they made no attempt to conceal their identities. In fact, Republicans reveled in the publicity they received for killing jobs and obstructing economic recovery, and their racist supporters cheered them on every step of the way regardless the damage they wrought to the economy and other Americans. Still, President Obama prevailed and saved the economy, created millions of jobs, cut spending to their lowest levels in over 60 years, and set reform in motion to give 30-million Americans access to basic affordable healthcare that Republicans are still attempting to sabotage.

There are several reasons why Republicans are escalating their attempts to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, and none are more important to their survival as their inhumane supporters’ opposition to other Americans’ well-being. It is not to say that Republicans would love nothing more than to deny 30 million Americans basic health insurance for the sole purpose of seeing them infirm and suffering, because that is, in and of itself, a primary Republican goal in sabotaging the ACA. In fact, they were brutally frank that, by their libertarian standards, healthcare was a divine privilege reserved for Americans who could afford astronomical premiums just to stay healthy, but there is more driving their machinations to derail the ACA than simple conservative inhumanity.

Regardless the ACA will give the insurance industry about 30-million new policy holders, there are provisions in the law that Republicans despise because their industry donors lost free-rein to gouge policy holders and rake in obscene profits. In fact, there is a direct correlation between the renewed frenzy to sabotage the health law and industry profits that drives Republican opposition. The secret trigger in the ACA that pushed early Republican opposition was the so-called 80/20 rule that required insurance carriers to spend 80% of premiums on real healthcare or write rebate checks to policy holders for amounts they did not spend. Republicans rushed to defend the industry that railed at the idea of only reaping 20% profits. The second trigger is that competition inherent in healthcare exchanges in states that embraced the health law has reduced premiums substantially. For example, in New York, premiums are set to fall by roughly 50%, and in California, this author’s premiums fell by about 40% after 17 years of perpetual increases and that does not include rebate checks that began rolling in last year according to the 80/20 rule. It is the health law’s success stories like these that have Republicans in a panic and it is the third reason they are going all in to sabotage the ACA; it is successful.

Republicans hoped beyond hope that the law would fail giving them the opportunity to portray President Obama as a failure, but between ending pre-existing conditions, keeping children on their parents’ policies until age 26, the 80/20 rule, and free-market competition resulting in lower rates, the law is a success. That it reduces the nation’s deficit and creates jobs is just too much for Republicans to bear and has elicited a multi-faceted, last ditch effort to sabotage the law that a long-time conservative stalwart considers “unprecedented and contemptible.” Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative belief tank, recently assailed Republican leadership for going to extreme measures to “damage the possibility of a smooth rollout of the health reform plan.” Ornstein railed at Republicans’ “guerrilla efforts to cut off funding, dozens of votes to repeal, abusive comments by leaders, attempts to discourage states from participating in Medicaid expansion or crafting exchanges, threatening letters to associations that might publicize the availability of insurance on exchanges, and now a new set of threats—to have a government shutdown, or to refuse to raise the debt ceiling, unless the president agrees to stop all funding for implementation of the plan, to do everything possible to undercut and destroy its implementation to benefit politically from all the resulting turmoil is simply unacceptable, even contemptible. That the effort is spearheaded by the Republican leaders of the House and Senate takes one’s breath away.” It is noteworthy that Ornstein joined Thomas Mann last year to assail Republicans for creating Washington’s dysfunction and inability to govern, but to directly criticize the GOP leadership is remarkable and too long in coming.

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http://www.politicususa.com/2013/08/11/republicans-full-blown-panic-affordable-care-act-grows-successful.html