Despite growing evidence that the issue is a political dead-end for them with the majority of Americans, House Republicans are going to keep playing to their extremist base and run on repeal.
House Republicans are returning to their promise of repealing the Democrats' health care reform law with a retread of their own alternative plan that a Congressional Budget Office analysis last year determined would provide coverage for next to no one. Just in time for the midterm elections, the Republicans introduced legislation to scrap "Obama care" -- even parts that voters like -- and sub in their own version.
As a refresher, their plan would let people buy insurance across state lines, give states more power and would include tort reform to end so-called "junk lawsuits" that the Republicans say make health care costs more expensive. The CBO score last fall found the GOP plan would cover just 3 million more people "leaving about 52 million" without insurance at about the same as the 2009 share of uninsured people. It would reduce premiums by between zero and three percent, CBO said. To hear the Republicans tell it, the measure would decrease premiums by "up to 20 percent." It reduces the deficit over time, but so does the Democrats' law.
While the House Republicans are trying to breathe life into this dead bill, Senate Republicans are trying to resurrect the battle by opening a new front. They are having hissy fits over Obama's nomination of Donald Berwick to run Medicaid and Medicare. Berwick is "a pediatrician and Harvard University professor with a self-professed “love” of the British system."
Now Senate Republicans are vowing to press their case against Obama’s sweeping new health care law by challenging Berwick’s nomination — just in time to resurrect the brutal yearlong health reform battle ahead of the midterm elections.
This is all about keeping the teabagger base happy and trying to keep them energized to vote in November. The House Republicans know their legislation isn't going to go anywhere, they know that even if they manage to gain back the House this election, they won't get a majority in the Senate or be able to overturn an inevitable veto. In the Senate, they will be able to block Berwick's nomination because they can keep putting holds on it. But that's not going to do anything to change the fact that they lost the fight against health insurance reform, and they can't undo it by keeping this man from being appointed.
There's not much logic to it, but logic isn't necessary with the extremists in the GOP base.