Philip Klein: Obamacare Repeal is More Likely, and Now GOP Needs an Alternative

Posted: November 17, 2014 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Health and Social Issues, History | Tags: Asa Hutchinson, Barack Obama, Health Insurance, Health law, Individual mandate, Insurance, Jonathan Gruber (economist), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Obama administration, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Republican Party (United States), Subsidy, Supreme Court of the United States |1 Comment

Philip Klein writes: This month, two developments have shaken the conventional wisdom that repealing President Obama’s healthcare law is an impossibility.

First, Republicans scored a historic election victory, not only taking control of the Senate but likely winning the most House seats since 1928 — the year before Ernest Hemingway published A Farewell to Arms.

Second, the Supreme Court took up another case on Obamacare, and if the justices rule against the administration, it would force a re-opening of the law.

“Benson’s fear is that if the Supreme Court rules against the Obama administration, whatever the merits of the decision, liberal media would portray it as a right-wing court ripping health insurance away from millions over a silly typo out of animosity for the poor. And if Republicans didn’t pass a simple fix to change the wording, they’d be accused of mass murder.”

This doesn’t even account for the recently released videos of one of Obamacare’s main architects, MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, conceding that Democrats misled the public to get the legislation passed, benefiting from “the stupidity of the American voter.”

“The problem for Republicans — which I tried to convey to Benson in a spirited exchange that followed — is that going along with such a “fix” would be rightly seen as a complete surrender by Republicans that would alienate conservatives and enshrine Obamacare forever.”

The prospects of repealing Obamacare can now be better described, in the words of Rocco Lampone in The Godfather Part II, as “difficult, not impossible.”

But the hope of repealing Obamacare, however remote, is all the more reason for Republicans to begin coalescing around a real alternative to the law.

“That is why conservatives should push Republicans to have an alternative plan ready to pass should the Supreme Court strike down the federal subsidies — a decision that should come by late June. “

Due to their suspicions of Republicans, whenever anybody utters the phrases “Obamacare alternative” or “repeal and replace,” many conservatives tend to hear “Obamacare lite.”

However, not every alternative to Obamacare needs to be a watered-down version of the healthcare law. And in fact, it’s always worth keeping in mind that even before Obamacare, the United States did not have a free market healthcare system.

Returning to the pre-Obamacare status quo would still leave Americans with a system in which government is the dominant actor and rules and regulations stifle choices.

While that’s the policy and ideological argument for coalescing around an alternative, there is also the political rationale.

As a reminder, the case before the Supreme Court hinges on whether the section of the law that references health insurance subsidies flowing to “an exchange established by the state” means that…(read more)

WashingtonExaminer.com