North Carolina House Speaker and Republican U.S. Senate candidate, Thom Tillis, can't for the life of him articulate what he's for when it comes to health care reform, but he sure does know what he's against. Everything that lies between is
so much gibberish and avoidance. Even as House leader, Tillis refused to take a stand on the state's effort to limit the Affordable Care Act, a bill that would probably end efforts to require health insurance coverage for some autism treatments. Rather than decide on which way to go on these conflicting bills, Tillis punted and decided to form a "study commission" to look into whether or not the state would try to limit federal law, which would be unconstitutional anyway.
That reflects Tillis's inability to come to a coherent position on Obamacare overall.
“I look at any consideration for insurance mandates the same way I would look at an incentive,” Tillis told the NFIB crowd. “I’m neither for all incentives nor against them. I’m neither for all mandates nor against them. Let’s take a look at the economic benefit.”
His campaign would not specifically respond to questions about what mandates in the federal health care law he supports. He has advocated for the repeal of the bill but not entirely endorsed a replacement.
“Speaker Tillis believes that the ACA should be repealed,” campaign manager Jordan Shaw said in a statement. “Once that is accomplished, specific mandates should be looked at on an individual, case-by-case basis to determine their business case for improving outcomes, increasing access, and driving down costs.”
So, some of the mandates in the law might be okay, but some might not? But he's not willing to say which he likes and which he doesn't? It has to be repealed first, and then maybe he'll decide what should be brought back? But he doesn't know now, despite the fact that he's had four years to figure out exactly what's in the law? Right.
Meanwhile, Sen. Kay Hagan—the Democratic incumbent—is all in supporting Obamacare and what the law can provide to North Carolinians, specifically getting half a million lower-income people in the state coverage under expanded Medicaid. The last time Tillis was asked about how to cover 500,000 people at essentially no cost to the state, more gibberish ensued: "In terms of Medicaid expansion, in business you would never put more money into a failing business until you got the business on the right track." For it? Against it? Maybe someday? Who knows? Clearly, not Thom Tillis.