Learning to Live with Obamacare
Don't let Wednesday's repeal vote fool you. The GOP's already signaling that an apocalyptic showdown over health care isn't in the works.
Reminisce with me for a moment on the summer of 2009. Remember it? Swine flu? Protests in Iran? The Hangover? Think back now on another memory from that bygone era - an endless parade of spittle-flecked seniors harassing their representatives at the town hall meetings that popped up like so many dandelions in the July heat. As the luster began to come off of the Obama presidency for the first time, controversy hinged on the outlines of Obama's promised health care reform - whether or not it would include a "public option" (a government-run health care plan), for example. Sarah Palin, managing to retain the spotlight after ignominious defeat less than a year earlier, gave us her "death panels", and a sitting US president could be called a socialist, an Afro-Marxist, and a fascist, all at the same time and with a straight face. Heady days, indeed!
The Summer of Tea kept going into 2010, through filibusters and "nuclear options", until a bill was finally rammed through, with no Republican support, in March. Immediately afterward, opponents of reform crowed of the certain success of lawsuits against the bill, filed by several state attorneys general. But, as one war ended and another escalated, unemployment stayed at 10%, and both conservative activists and the GOP establishment began looking toward the midterms, the rage over health care reform gradually faded.
Fast forward to 2011. Now, with Republicans in control of the House, and many provisions of the Obamacare reform set to take effect this year, one would think that it would be the perfect time to restart the right-wing outrage machine over health care. But the GOP, despite its victories, is signaling that another apocalyptic showdown over health care may not be in the near future. Consider the symbolic "repeal" of the reform that took place on Wednesday. The repeal bill, only two pages long, simply serves as a big CTRL-Z on the reform bill. Last year, the GOP promised "repeal and replace", asserting that the controversial Obamacare plan would be replaced by one fixing the worst aspects of the current system while stopping short of an individual mandate to buy health insurance. If there are conversations going on within the GOP caucus over what form such a plan might take, we aren't hearing them, and they aren't going into any bills.
There are other indicators, too, that the Republicans are willing to let sleeping health care reforms lie, at least for the time being. The new House leadership, with the power to subpoena witnesses to testify, could be shutting down the business of the House with hundreds of hearings about the possible negative consequences of Obamacare, offered by experts from any number of right-leaning think tanks. Though such threats were made before the election, no plans have actually been made for such a parade of testimony.
One of the most embarrassing aspects of opposing health care reform, for Republicans, has been the similarity of Obama's plan to a proposal by the conservative Heritage Foundation in 1994, as well as the system that was actually put into place in Massachusetts by then-governor Mitt Romney in 2006. A small sign that Republicans may be willing to come to terms with this legacy - and an acceptance of Obamacare, at least in its broad outlines - is the hiring of Sally Canfield several weeks ago as the new legislative director for incoming Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), a Republican rock-star if ever there was one. That Rubio hired Ms. Canfield, who worked on the Romney 2008 campaign and wrote a piece in the conservative Townhall Magazine in 2007 defending Romney's Massachusetts plan from Republican attacks, indicates that he may be favorable to a strategy on health care other than "Cry, 'communist!' and let slip the dogs of war."
None of this is to suggest, of course, that the Republicans can make any measurable progress toward repealing Obamacare until 2012 at the earliest. Any bill (like the provocatively-named “Repeal the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act”) to that effect which passed the House would stall in the Senate. If, by some freak occurrence (the entire Democratic caucus were sick with Swine Flu 2.0, perhaps) such a bill passed both houses, President Obama would veto it. The Republican attitude toward health care in 2011 won't be anything more than a pose, but it indicates the overall strategy that Republicans are going to take now that the voters have handed them back some of the reins of power. Two solid years of rage and hyperbole helped get the GOP back into office after a historic defeat, but it seems that the new leadership understands that it will have to do some actual governing if it wants to stay there.