Sunday, August 11, 2013

Obama takes Obamacare on the attack, putting the GOP on defense



Pres. Obama  kicked  the issue of what he himself called” Obamacare” into higher gear  when he answered a question posed by the media in an August 9  press conference. His response became an attack on the GOP’s  central   campaign platform  for  2014 midterms: to defund Obamacare and shut down the government if they do not get their way.  Obama charged,   the idea that you would shut down the government unless you prevent 30 million people from getting health care is a bad idea. “ With that answer, he put the GOP on the defensive, a change from his own prior defensive  reliance on simply enumerating   health insurance reform benefits. The Democratic Party’s  job is now to run with the ball he has given them and to take this new, more aggressive approach  to  the public discourse.
 If Obama and his supporters continue to put the GOP on the defensive, the GOP will be unmasked  for what it really is.  It is  an ideologically fixated party that protects a   health care system that leaves too many with no access to good health care, and screws those already insured with anti consumer practices that have made inability to pay  health care bills the number one cause of personal bankruptcy.   The GOP’s Tea Party wing   will  also now have to defend their threat to close down the government, a tactic the GOP  tried once before that caused them to lose the next election cycle.
By stating  his health care reform  benefits in terms of what health care consumers would lose if the GOP succeeded,  Obama has a better chance to help the public  understand  the law’s benefits. So far just listing benefits of the law has been a failed strategy.  However, enough of Obamacare has been implemented for those 85% already insured by their employers for Pres. Obama to  make a  good case. He can and did  charge that the  GOP wants to  eliminate protecting consumers  from insurers that use  excessive amounts of premiums for  administrative overhead or stop  protecting them  from denial of insurance because of life time caps or pre-existing conditions.  The GOP will now  have defend their proposal to delete   such  popular provisions as  keeping young adults on parent’s policies, or copay free cancer screening, annual checkups  and contraception.   
The right wing media is full of claims that Obamacare is already a failure,  a bit premature since the implementation of the provision that would give a way for the uninsured to buy affordable insurance through exchanges has not even happened and will not begin until October, when consumers can begin to sign up.
 What will happen before the November 2014 midterms is that enough states will have successfully implemented Obamacare to show the potential  of success to other states who have done all they can to sabotage the program by refusing to expand Medicaid and/ or failed to set up their own affordable market place insurance  systems.    That explains why the Tea Party is focusing on defunding at this time , hoping to knock out the ability of states to succeed by taking away their  ability to finance implementation.  The Tea Party fears Obamacare’s success.
That there are some improvements that could be made in the law is indisputable. For example, the small number  of businesses butting up to the  50 employee threshold level and do not already offer insurance, may reduce their full time workforce. There are proposals that have been made to solve the issue,  but the GOP Party of No  refuses to even consider any legislative tweaks in favor of just killing off the entire legislation. Therefore, the President has been making his own tweaks whenever he can do it administratively.
Obama is  onto something. His  approach  of going on the attack by painting the GOP into an anti consumer, unreasonable corner may well  be a winner.

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