It’s a matter of political record that since at least 2009, Republicans have talked at length about health-care reform, especially alternatives to Obamacare. Apparently almost all of them were, as Jon Lovitz’s Master Thespian would put it, “Acting!” That’s essentially what The Week blogger Paul Waldman alleged in a Wednesday post.
“Republicans have faced a real health care problem for many years now, which is that health care just isn't their thing,” asserted Waldman. “It's one of those ‘mommy’ issues that liberals care about, while conservatives are much more likely to be interested in topics like tax policy or national defense. Yet throughout the Obama years, they've had to act like they both care about and understand the substance of this issue.”
Waldman argued that GOPers occupy a “fantasy world” in which Obamacare is a massive failure and maintained that if they’d just acknowledge its overall success, “they'd be able to say, ‘OK, but this law still has some problems, so let's figure out how to fix them.’ If they said that, they'd get agreement from the other side, because there are no Democrats who would deny that the ACA can be improved. But that's not possible, because Republicans have convinced themselves that improving the law is tantamount to collaboration with the enemy.”
From Waldman’s post (bolding added):
Republicans have faced a real health care problem for many years now, which is that health care just isn't their thing.
It's one of those "mommy" issues that liberals care about, while conservatives are much more likely to be interested in topics like tax policy or national defense. Yet throughout the Obama years, they've had to act like they both care about and understand the substance of this issue…
And after telling voters for years that ObamaCare has transformed America into a hellish communist nightmare, the ones running for president have to present something that resembles a health care plan…
…[T]his week, two Republican candidates, Scott Walker and Marco Rubio, have presented their plans…Both [plans] hail from another planet, where all the Republican predictions about how awful the ACA would be turned out to be true (unlike this planet, where just about everything Republicans predicted was wrong), and switching to a newer, crueler system would be no problem at all.
…[B]oth would transition Medicare from what it is now — one of the most successful social programs in American history, beloved by its beneficiaries, with an iron-clad guarantee of coverage for all — into a voucher (or "premium support") program…
Walker and Rubio's plans contain some things that are perfectly fine (like wellness programs), a bunch of terrible zombie right-wing ideas (like limiting people's ability to sue for medical malpractice), and things that have been proven to fail (like high-risk pools for people with pre-existing conditions)…But more than anything else, they're hampered by their refusal to deal with the world as it is right now.
In the Republican fantasy world, the rate of uninsured hasn't fallen dramatically (it has), the cost of the ACA is outrageous (it is projected to cost far less than originally thought), everyone who got insurance through an exchange hates their coverage (those people are actually more likely to be satisfied than people with employer-based plans), the ACA caused premiums and health care spending to skyrocket (just the opposite has occurred on both counts), and the law ground job creation to a halt (job creation has been excellent since the law took effect).
If Republicans could accept that reality, they'd be able to say, "OK, but this law still has some problems, so let's figure out how to fix them." If they said that, they'd get agreement from the other side, because there are no Democrats who would deny that the ACA can be improved. But that's not possible, because Republicans have convinced themselves that improving the law is tantamount to collaboration with the enemy.
