Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The Washington Post takes a break from its war fever to address GOP efforts to sabotage "ObamaCare" in an editorial opinion today. Republicans should get out of the way of Obamacare:
You wouldn’t think state leaders would need convincing to accept
mountains of federal cash to help people with meager incomes obtain
health insurance. But many Republican leaders and activists have waged a
disruptive and harmful campaign to complicate, delay and undermine the
ACA, which starts phasing in when state insurance markets begin
enrolling customers in a month.
The most prominent efforts have been in Congress, where conservatives’ latest move
has been to insist on holding the government budget process hostage to
obtain cuts in funds intended for ACA implementation. But the most
disruptive activity has been at the state level. Twenty-one states
have refused to expand their Medicaid programs, blowing a large hole in
the ACA’s coverage strategy. The Urban Institute estimates that 5
million people won’t get coverage as a result.
As The Post’s Sandhya Somashekhar reported last week, Republicans at the state level also have applied a variety of less visible measures
to impede the law’s implementation. Some won’t enforce consumer
protections, including a ban on insurance companies rejecting patients
with pre-existing conditions. The result will be illegal discrimination.
Another tactic has been restricting the work of federal “navigators,”
consumer assistants who help people understand their options and get
coverage. The result will be more people without health insurance.
Though
some analysts offer explanations for why state governments might make
one or another of these decisions, states taking these steps are unwise
at best. To the extent they represent a deliberate policy to derail the
law, such steps are worse than misguided. Georgia’s state government is
doing “everything in our power to be an obstructionist,” Ralph Hudgens, the state’s insurance commissioner, boasted.
Congress
enacted the Affordable Care Act. The Supreme Court found most of its
provisions to be constitutional. Republicans, having opposed the bill
and supported the legal challenge to it, are entitled to be unhappy
about the outcome, though in our view they are wrong on the merits. They
are not entitled to obstruct and flout the laws of the United States.
On the contrary, they have an obligation to cooperate in good faith with
wholly legitimate laws duly passed and reviewed by all three branches
of government.
A point not made frequently enough by our feckless media villagers.