Could The Republican Party Secede From America?

No one likes the mandate, which was always just a bad conservative Republican plan about how to use market principles to finance health care reform. Once pusillanimous, compromise-for-the-sake-of-compromise and conservative Democrats embraced the idea-- which, of course, is a feature of RomneyCare in Massachusetts, the GOP abandoned it. And the mandate is the financial edifice upon which Obama's health care bill is built. It shouldn't have been. Progressives warned from the beginning that single-payer (Medicare For All)-- or, as a fallback position, a public option-- is what the Democrats should have fought for. But corrupt corporate Democrats catered the the GOP-- and for what?-- and mandates were baked into the equation. Now, congressional Republicans are campaigning on tossing out the entire bill.

Tossing out the entire bill may be a bit of an overreach. Many of its features are popular with voters-- like kids being allowed to stay on their parents' insurance and insurance companies being forced to cover pre-existing conditions. But the GOP is making its move. Thursday Boehner spoke for the whole party when he said they want to wipe the slate clean and start fresh. No, they don't want to start fresh; they just want to wipe the slate clean and leave it at that. “We voted to fully repeal the president’s healthcare law as one of our first acts as a new House majority, and our plan remains to repeal the law in its entirety. Anything short of that is unacceptable.”

Republicans are focusing more intently on their healthcare strategy as the high court’s ruling approaches. The court is expected to rule next month on whether the law’s individual mandate is unconstitutional and, if so, whether the rest of the law should fall along with it.

If the court upholds the entire law or only throws out the mandate, Republicans will have to decide how to handle its politically popular provisions, including the policy that bars insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

Conservatives are lobbying their colleagues to avoid the temptation of leaving popular elements in place. Boehner made clear on Thursday that he’s committed to full repeal.

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) also urged Republicans to abandon even the most popular elements of the healthcare law as they prepare for the Supreme Court’s decision.

“I'm a little concerned that there might be some people in the House that would repeal what they might call the most egregious aspects of ObamaCare, [but] leave some of those aspects that seem to have some support,” King said on C-SPAN Thursday morning. “My position is very strong-- I will fight that. I want all of it pulled out by the roots.”

A measure to repeal the entire healthcare law was the first bill Republicans brought to the floor after taking a majority in the House.

Conservatives have also been pushing the party to steer clear of a comprehensive plan to replace the Affordable Care Act. They believe a single, unified proposal would expose Republicans to charges of hypocrisy, given their consistent attacks on the length and scope of Obama’s healthcare law.

The reality is that the kinds of market reforms that mainstream conservatives have always championed as their fallback position only work with the mandate-- which is why the GOP came up with the idea to begin with. Obama and the Blue Dogs accepting that premise was a disaster for healthcare reform and if the Supreme Court rules it unconstitutional-- which seems likely-- the Democrats should move forward with Medicare For All as a key plank in the party's platform. Market reforms for the sake of market reforms isn't the way to go. It never was. Studies consistently show that the Affordable Care Act is driving down the price of healthcare-- good for consumers, not good for the folks who finance conservative politicians' career paths-- and that the decade-long erosion in access to medical services will be accelerated if the GOP gets its way and repeals healthcare reform.

The study, one of a series on the fractured state of the $2.6 trillion U.S. healthcare system published in the May issue of the journal Health Affairs, says access to health care deteriorated for U.S. adults aged 19 to 64 between 2000 and 2010, even among those with private health insurance.

...The law would extend affordable health coverage to more than 32 million uninsured Americans beginning in 2014, by creating subsidized, state-regulated health insurance markets and by expanding the joint federal-state Medicaid program for the poor.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says access to care and use of healthcare services has declined in recent years, partly as a result of a recession that swelled the ranks of the unemployed and uninsured.

Researchers at the nonpartisan Urban Institute found the deterioration in access to care was evident even earlier, from 2000 to 2010, as spiraling healthcare costs led to reductions in employer-sponsored insurance benefits and strained the existing Medicaid system for the poor.

...The healthcare law's success could depend on how well its provisions, including Medicaid expansion, are supported by state governments, more than half of which currently oppose the law.
Healthcare policy experts at Harvard and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston found that Medicaid participation nationwide currently stands at 63 percent of eligible adults.

Results range between by states, from 43 percent in Arkansas and Louisiana to 83 percent in Massachusetts, which enacted reforms similar to Obama's law in 2006.

Their research warned that the take-up rate for expanded Medicaid coverage in 2014 could be lower than anticipated if benefits prove to be restrictive.

"To encourage high participation in the expanded Medicaid program, states will need to offer comprehensive coverage of needed benefits, provide community-based outreach and consider more dramatic changes to their enrollment processes, such as automatically enrolling people in Medicaid based on their participation in other public programs," the experts said.

The Medicaid expansion and creation of new insurance exchanges would greatly reduce long-standing racial and ethnic disparities in access to care demonstrated by data that currently show uninsured rates to be 2.6 times higher among Hispanics and 1.8 times higher for blacks, compared with non-Hispanic whites, according to another Urban Institute study.

In other words, normal productive states are being threatened by the most backward, racist, superstitious hellholes, primarily the Old Confederacy, with being pulled down to their Third World levels. If Greece could amicably leave the European Union, why doesn't the South make the same decision with the United States? Who would support keeping them now if the Confederate states wanted to go? They're nothing but a drain in every way and without the South, there would be no GOP in the U.S. and no Blue Dogs either.