How the GOP may pave the way for ‘socialized medicine’
WASHINGTON » When President Obama created the Affordable Care Act, he did everything possible to include Republicans, making it market-friendly and incorporating ideas Republicans had previously endorsed.
His conciliatory efforts only achieved a long delay in getting a bill through the Senate, which nearly killed it entirely.
You would think Republicans would finally accept Obamacare. They failed to repeal it the first year under President Trump, then lost the House of Representatives in an election in which voters named health care the No. 1 issue and when those who did backed Democrats overwhelmingly.
But, no, the evil federal government helping Americans with modest incomes get health insurance is, in the eyes of the right, a calamity. If this plan continues to deliver, folks might realize that the GOP’s antigovernment propaganda campaign is just a cover for policies that cut taxes on the rich and do little for Americans who lack money and influence.
So, having lost in a democratically elected branch of government, Republicans concluded: The heck with democracy! Let’s get conservative judges to override Congress, ignore the popular will and jettison the ACA through the back door.
First, in a ruling legal scholars generally saw as wacky, Reed O’Connor, a right-wing district court judge, astonished the country last December by throwing out the Affordable Care Act altogether. (Fortunately, the decision was stayed pending further litigation.)
O’Connor reasoned that Congress undercut the constitutionality of the law by eliminating a tax penalty on those who failed to buy health insurance. Chief Justice John Roberts hung his 2012 opinion validating the constitutionality of the ACA on Congress’ power to tax, so O’Connor’s pretext was that once the tax went, the whole structure collapsed.
Pause and marvel at the gall of conservative jurisprudence. Conservatives say they’re strict constructionists and believe in reading statutes closely. But Congress didn’t ditch the ACA. It merely undid a small piece of it. Too bad, said O’Connor. What Congress did or didn’t do makes no difference. And if abruptly throwing some 20 million people off their health plans isn’t the “judicial activism” conservatives regularly bemoan, what is?
The ACA’s penalty was aimed at enforcing a mandate that everyone buy health insurance — originally a GOP idea, by the way. One of the most popular provisions of the ACA prohibits price discrimination against those with preexisting conditions. But to achieve this goal, the law imposes the mandate to spread the cost of coverage as widely as possible. The requirement’s purpose was to ensure that health insurance markets wouldn’t be destabilized if mostly the sick bought into the system.
On Tuesday, a three-judge federal panel heard the appeal of O’Connor’s decision and, once again, partisanship ruled on the bench. Kurt Engelhardt, a Trump appointee, disingenuously said that Congress could easily fix it.
Right. Years of struggle to reform health care go down the drain. The arrogance of conservative judges knows no bounds.
If the two GOP judges act on the views they expressed, it’s hard to see the ACA emerging whole. And there’s reason to fear a Supreme Court ruling.
For now, Democrats should set aside “Medicare for All,” defend Obamacare and loudly object to the conservatives’ eagerness to rip away health insurance from millions.
If the ACA falls, Republicans will demonstrate that no matter how Democrats compromise, the GOP will wreck their work. By fighting the most middle- of-theroad ways of getting people coverage, Republicans could thus pave the way to the “socialized medicine” they claim to hate.