Tags
Blaine Luetkemeyer, DNC, health care reform, HR 5424, missouri, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Peter Kinder, PPACA, Reform Americans Can Afford Act, repeal, Roy Blunt, Todd Akin
Republicans lost on health care and the Missouri GOP has responded with predictable temper tantrums in order to impress their Tea-Party addled constituents:
–Republican Governor wannabe, Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder, is planning to (maybe) file a pseudo official lawsuit against the Obama health care reform, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
–Rep. Todd Akin (R-2), man of action that he is, isn’t waiting around like Kinder, but has just signed on to an amicus brief in support of the lawsuit against the PPACA that the Republican governor of the State of Virginia has filed.
–Roy Blunt (R-7) has announced his support for legislation to “repeal and replace” the “onerous” PPACA by bringing back the much ridiculed earler GOP “alternative,” and repackaging it as a new Republican proposal. HR 5424, the Reform Americans Can Afford Act, which is cosponsored by Todd Akin and Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-9), would cut access to health care, drive up the deficit, reduce the life of the Medicare trust fund by 10 years, and reopen the “donut hole” for prescrption drugs. (As far as reform goes, a bit unclear on the concept perhaps?)
–Not to be outdone by the GOP federal congressional delegation, the state’s GOP dominated lege wants Missourians to vote to opt out of health care reform this August.
Just the usual political games you may be thinking – but perhaps not, after all, such smart political moves as some GOPers thought a month or so ago. As Slate reporter, William Salatan observes:
Tales of death panels and warnings about losing your doctor can now be falsified. (That’s what happened to the early scare stories about Social Security and Medicare.) And Republicans who denounce the program and promise to repeal it will no longer be bashing an abstraction. They will be proposing to take away existing, tangible benefits… .
… why assume that lockstep Republican opposition will discredit the health care program? Maybe the opposite will happen: Lockstep opposition will discredit Republicans.
Apparently the Democratic National Committee not only agrees with this assessment, but has enough confidence in it to go on the offensive. Which brings me to a great new DNC ad that will soon begin airing:
Update: Speaking of tangible benefits, my husband just forwarded a message from his employer detailing the changes in our health care coverage that have resulted from passage of the PPACA, and needless to say, it’s all good. Now just let the Republican try to take it away.