Sabotaging the health law (LA Times editorial)

[pinto]

Sabotaging the health law

The GOP's guerrilla warfare campaign against the Affordable Care Act is counterproductive.

By The Times editorial board
July 30, 2013

A dozen Republicans in the Senate have said they'd rather shut down the government than provide funding for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the 2010 healthcare reform law better known as Obamacare. Meanwhile, more than 60 Republicans in the House have called on their leadership to cut off all federal support for the law in the coming fiscal year. And they complain when President Obama doesn't hold up his end of the bargain?

The GOP's irresponsible threats are just the latest in a long series of attempts to undermine the law and obstruct its implementation. Lacking the votes to repeal the law or any of its major provisions, they've waged a guerrilla war against it. Granted, the Obama administration hasn't helped matters by falling behind on the rules needed to administer the law's provisions. But at least it's making a good-faith effort.

Not so for the law's critics, who are eager to bring about the dire outcome that they've predicted. There's no better example than the bill the House GOP leadership rushed through the chamber this month to delay the law's requirement that virtually all adult Americans obtain health insurance in 2014. Without a mandate to compel healthy people to carry coverage, insurers would wind up with a sicker, riskier group of customers than they have now, driving up premiums and making insurance unaffordable to more families. That's just the sort of disaster conservatives have said Obamacare would bring about, except they'd be the ones causing it.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-health-obamacare-funding-20130730,0,7325045.story

[UCmeNdc]

1. The only thing the GOP knows how to do well, screw up a good thing......

Typical GOP!

[Vietnameravet]

2. Impending showdown

I think the GOP is pushing this nation toward a crisis..they have absolutely no scruples and will say or do anything to get their way..I dont see how we can continue like this for much longer.. At some point things are going to reach a crisis stage and I think the sooner the better..We cannot continue so hostile and divided...

[pinto]

3. The public is increasingly seeing this (Repug) shutdown agenda for the danger it is.

And their failure to do a job as one part of the federal government. I don't think "shutdown the government" is part of the job description.

I've never seen anything like this. Been following politics since the Kennedy years.

[Vietnameravet]

4. I blame talk radio and Fox News for this

Before this these people were just a lunatic fringe.. Now they think extremism is a virtue!! Remember when Goldwater said something to that effect?

[Rosa Luxemburg]

5. At least our Dem congressmen could scream back at them