Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell famously said that the number one priority of Republicans is to make Obama a one-term president. As a necessary conclusion from this assertion, Republicans are trying to deny any kind of success to Obama. Even if that means deliberately subverting a program that aims to expand health care coverage to people. Reading things like this just makes me sick.
There is no reason a Republican should hate a health care exchange. It’s the free market, or as free as you can practically get when it comes to health care. The existing health care market is not working. I fully believe in the free market when it works, but when it doesn’t, it’s time for the government to step in. Health care exchanges are probably the lightest touch the government can give when it comes to market interference. It’s as innocuous as a food court where customers can look at all the options and decide where they want to eat. That’s why health care exchanges were part of Mitt Romney’s health care plan in Massachusetts, and why Newt Gingrich essentially supported exchanges in 1994. Letting multiple insurance companies freely and transparently compete for premiums, instead of putting everybody into a single-payer insurance system, has been a bedrock principle of conservative health care reforms forever. At least when they were putting forward serious plans.
I can see why middlemen like insurance sales people would be against exchanges: it is taking away from their cut. I don’t agree, but I can sympathize. I can’t sympathize, though, with Republicans who oppose it simply to give Obama a defeat. Especially when they waste $1 million to do so. There really is no excuse for this.