Every South Dakota Republican running for Congress next year wants to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Two have signed a pledge to that effect. One has joined in 40 show-votes to repeal ObamaCare.
These Republicans, says Yankton Press & Dakotan editor Kelly Hertz, is committing "political sabotage and ethical malpractice":
Take a look at the aforementioned GOP pledge. It declares what the politicians don’t want, but says absolutely nothing about what they would do instead.
In short, they are ignoring the problem.
...finding an alternative is the key to scrapping Obamacare. The plan needs real specifics, not some vague calls of promoting competition or just doing something later, which is what we heard back in 1994 and never heard of it again. We need to see a genuine option. Anything else is simply political sabotage and ethical malpractice [Kelly Hertz, "Dumping Obamacare," Yankton Press & Dakotan, 2013.08.08].
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has already saved Americans $3.1 billion in direct rebates and premium savings. The PPACA insurance exchanges may save my family more than $2,000 per year on health insurance, not to mention guaranteeing that we can get health insurance. If Kristi Noem, Larry Rhoden, Annette Bosworth, and Mike Rounds want to take that economic liberty and peace of mind away from us, they'd better show they can think up something better.
Update 16:05 CDT: At his press conference yesterday, President Obama showed he's on the same wavelength as Kelly and I:
“I think the really interesting question is why it is that my friends in the other party have made the idea of preventing these people from getting healthcare their holy grail.... Their No. 1 priority. The one unifying principle in the Republican Party at the moment is making sure that 30 million people don’t have healthcare and repealing all those benefits I just mentioned: kids staying on their parents’ plan; seniors getting discounts on their prescription drugs; I guess a return to lifetime limits on insurance; people with preexisting conditions continuing to be blocked from being able to get health insurance” [President Barack Hussein Obama, quoted in Brian Beutler, "How Obama Turned Obamacare into a Weapon," Salon, 2013.08.10].
Beutler notes that as the PPACA and its benefits get real, repeal moves from being a feel-good abstraction for Republicans to a vote to take valuable services away from constituents.
Most people are not responsible enough to pay their own health care costs. They pay an insurance company to pay them instead. So when Obama's plan was to replace medicare with national health care the Republicans were deceitful enough to advertise it in the election campaign as if Obama was dropping medicare as if to scare old people into thinking that they would not be covered. Scaring old people who have paid in all their life is not nice.
Making sure that Obama and ObamaCare fail has dominated every Republican effort for the last several years. It is too bad that so few efforts have been made to make our country stronger.
40 votes to repeal ObamaCare or for a "Balanced Budget" amendment are time wasted. How about one vote to improve health care? How about some meaningful votes between extended vacations?
Making sure that Obama and ObamaCare fail has dominated every Republican effort for the last several years. It is too bad that so few efforts have been made to make our country stronger.
The success of an American President, Whether it is a Bush or Obama, is tied closely to the success of the USA. Pray for Obama, pray for America whether you like them or not.
Kelly Hertz is exactly right and more newspaper editors have to have the guts to stand up and say the same thing. These people can blast Obamacare all they want but then come up with a solution.
I asked Rep. Noem that same question and she said exactly what Hertz mentioned in his article-competition which was allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines.
The other thing Noem mentioned was tort reform. I think some reform is needed but it shouldn't be the first or only thing reformed.
I'd fee a lot better about ObamaCare if we had details NOW about benefits and costs.
here's one site. I'm sure there are more on the internet.
http://www.calaverasenterprise.com/health/article_e74b546c-011c-11e3-bda2-0019bb2963f4.html
On this one point we can agree.
Tort reform is only part complete answer. We also need more clinics and doctors. We need to get a handle on the out of control pharmaceutical companies, and their continued abuse of patent laws. We also need to restore honor to the medical profession. This is just the tip of the ice berg.
In opposing Obamacare, Republicans have done well, but, like article indicates, that is about it.
All these pledges and useless votes are just bread and circuses for the ignorant. There used to be some smart people in the Republican Party who actually thought up the idea of the health care mandate. Those people used to run the party. Now they are run out of the party by the ignorant and uneducated. When your party has to appeal to really stupid people, it's time to admit that the party is done. They may win elections, but they can never govern a modern country.
I think the Republican Party is making a huge mistake with Obamacare. There are many good reasons to oppose Obamacare (mostly because it is cronyism at its worse, written by the medical and insurance industry). However the Republican Party has done a poor job of selling what they will do instead of Obamacare. Due to over-regulation and subsidies in the medical and insurance industries simply repealing Obamacare will do nothing to help anyone. A simple repeal would not bring healthcare prices down or improve the doctor shortage issues. Republicans are going to have a rough year in 2014 if they don't regroup and come up with a vision that can be easily sold to the public. But I don't see that happening.
In South Dakota that won't likely hurt the Republican Party too bad, but in other less Red states I expect some incumbent R's will have a tough re-election.
I recently spent about 5 minutes with a doctor who wrote two prescriptions. The clinic charged $85 for her time That works out to about to about $1020 per hour. I could have looked at an old "The Pill Book" and prescribed the same 10 or 15 year old medications.
In MN the people trying to stop ACA have put up a billboard next to the state fairground which will be visited by a million plus people at the end of this month.
The billboard shows a worried adult with a sickly looking little girl. "Why can't I choose my daughter's doctor any more?" Then, "Stop Obamacare."
I think this will backfire on the Republicans because it's pretty commonly known here that ACA will offer more options. People don't like to be treated as stupid and gullible.
That billboard sounds appalling, Deb. And I haven't seen any policy explanation of how ObamaCare prevents anyone from choosing their own doctor. Lies, lies, lies, but still no clear alternative policies from the GOP naysayers.
I definitely can't defend the Republicans on that one. They really are not providing any alternatives. Simply saying "that is bad" without an alternative is going to kill them in the 2014 midterm election (well, except in SD).
Hang in there, Ken. We'll wake some more Dems and Indies up to PPACA here in South Dakota, too. I by no means predict we'll kill the SDGOP in 2014, but we can use this issue to make some advances.