Among the many lies/talking points about health care reform making the rounds on cable television is a particularly nasty absurdity that Democrats refuse to stop circulating. As Rep. Michele Bachmann sputters on about death panels and Sen. Marco Rubio wages war on fact-checking, Democrats unite to perpetuate a crowning fabrication of their own: Many liberal politicos continue to bizarrely insist that Republicans have no realistic or comprehensive plan to begin plugging holes in the crumbling dam that is the money pit we comically refer to as the American health care system. Of course Republicans have a plan, and it requires a special brand of deceit to maintain this denial for as long as the left has. ObamaCare is the Republican plan.
Even Fox News concedes that the backbone of ObamaCare, the individual mandate, was the brain child of the deeply conservative Heritage Foundation more than 20 years ago. ObamaCare’s initial high-profile impementation was actually and widely considered to be something of a resounding success in Massachusetts, where ObamaCare is known as RomneyCare, and it was a point of Republican pride. Then President Obama appropriated it as the central tenet of the Affordable Care Act and Republicans insisted on giving Barack Obama credit for their idea. While inexplicably denouncing their baby, Republicans universally attached the “ObamaCare” label to this decades-old conservative concept.
Meanwhile, the liberal idea for health care reform that many Democrats favored was the so-called “single payer” system of universal coverage that is profoundly vilified by Republicans. But ObamaCare is considered a win, in particular, for the Republican ally that is big business which will soon see millions of paying (often with big federal subsidies, but insurance/pharmaceutical companies don’t care where their money comes from) customers, enabling Republicans to find it more palatable when Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010. The left hung on as long as it could, hoping to at least incorporate the “public option” for those least able to afford private insurance. But Republicans stuck to their guns, only passing ObamaCare in its original GOP-certified form.
Even so, the right would go on to cry foul, as they continue doing today, but surely we can agree it is a simple matter of time before Republicans change their tune and once again claim responsibility for their ObamaCare. I’m setting the 2024 presidential campaign as the over/under for when the first Republican candidate will paint national ObamaCare as a GOP success story. Of course, sometime around then the evil socialists of Europe will probably perfect universal coverage, which may or may not be a Nazi plot to provide health care. And the liberal wing in American politics will want to progress beyond ObamaCare while conservatives steadfastly cling to their precious and private market-based ObamaCare. And then, of course, the public will be rewarded with another decade of health care battles and propaganda to sit and sift through.