GOP putting pedal to the metal on O-Care sellout?
It’s arguable that the Republican electoral success in 2010 had its origins in voter anger over the passage of ObamaCare. Republicans won governor seats, state legislative majorities, and a majority in the US House. It was pretty clear what the voters were looking for.
Fast forward to 2014, and you are seeing Republican candidates and officials discreetly, in discussions about ObamaCare, replacing the word “repeal” with “replace” or “fix”. The AP can’t contain its glee as it reports on Republicans across the country reportedly seeing ObamaCare as a permanent fixture in American society:
While Republicans in Congress shout, “Repeal Obamacare,” GOP governors in many states have quietly accepted the law’s major Medicaid expansion. Even if their party wins control of the Senate in the upcoming elections, they just don’t see the law going away.
Nine Republican governors have expanded Medicaid for low-income people in their states, despite their own misgivings and adamant opposition from conservative legislators. Three more governors are negotiating with the Democratic administration in Washington.
Rather than demanding repeal, the governors generally have sought federal concessions to make their decisions more politically acceptable at home. That approach is in sharp contrast to the anti-Obamacare fervor of their party in Congress. […]
Contrast to WHAT in Congress? Stuff like THIS or THIS?
Well, it appears that North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory is attempting to join the Medicaid expansion party — despite a clear message sent last year by his fellow Republicans in The General Assembly:
Good news for the hundreds of thousands of truck drivers, janitors, day-care attendants, fast-food servers and other low-income workers in North Carolina: Gov. Pat McCrory and the legislature may soon reconsider their long-standing opposition to Medicaid expansion.
Aldona Wos, the state Health and Human Services secretary, told the Observer editorial board Wednesday that with some flexibility from the federal government on how things are structured, a half-million or so state residents could become newly eligible for health insurance.
“We really are evaluating the different options and will be presenting them to the governor,” Wos said, echoing what she has told others in recent weeks. “But the road to the end result is a rather long road.”
This marks a dramatic and important turnaround. McCrory, Wos and Republican legislative leaders opposed Medicaid expansion from the first time they considered that provision of the Affordable Care Act. Now they might be open to it, attracting more than $30 billion of federal money in the next eight years to provide health insurance to 300,000 to 500,000 residents – at very little cost to N.C. taxpayers.
Amazing. As though that federal tax money comes from — and is the responsibility of — SOMEBODY ELSE. Not us. MORE:
McCrory said all along that the state’s Medicaid program was “broken” and so shouldn’t be expanded. He also worried that the federal government wouldn’t live up to its promise to pay 100 percent of the cost for the first three years and 90 percent for years after that.
But Wos recently announced a $63 million budget surplus for the state’s Medicaid program. She told the editorial board that the program is on sound footing and so now expansion is worth considering.
“We obviously have stabilized the department … in a meaningful way,” she said. As for trusting the federal government to hold up its end of the deal, Wos praised other states that have proposed a “clever” solution: Agree to expand Medicaid, but tell the feds the state will quit the minute the federal funding dries up.
[…]
*SIGH*. Until people recognize that the battle is bigger than Ds vs. Rs. — actually freedom vs. authoritarianism — we, as a state and a nation, are going to keep heading toward that cliff.
From legislators I talked to, back when the legislature blocked expansion, they got the impression that Wos at that time would really have liked to expand it. I hope they reconsider. This is an issue that really separates the wheat from the chaff when it comes to who is a Big Government Republican and who is a Limited Government Republican. Any Republican who supports this Obamacare welfare state expansion is a welfare stater and does not belong in the Republican Party. Those governors who have accepted expansion like those in NJ and Ohio, I have crossed off my list as acceptable GOP presidential nominees in 2016.
The welfare state is a monster as it is. It needs a meat ax taken to it, not an expansion.
Those who support Obamacare Medicaid Expansion are going against the GOP platform and showing that they have no party loyalty to the GOP. In that case, GOP voters would have no duty of party loyalty to them. Lets hope that these guys and girls get some sense and stand for principle instead of selling out to the welfare state. I would really like to be able to vote for McCrory in good conscience if he is the GOP nominee again. This would throw a spanner in the works for that.
Medicaid expansion? Good grief. At this rate, we’ll be enrolling EVERYONE in Medicaid. When it comes to whether a state should accept more federal funds for anything, I agree with the noted rapper/philosopher Notorious B.I.G. – “Mo’ money, mo’ problems.”
Medicaid expansion to the poor,blind,disabled and those with Alzheimer’s is coming and you can lump it troglodytes.I suggest you run a candidate who is against it and see how far they get.
You collectivists can move over to a party whose ideology is closer to yours, like maybe the Socialists.
”From those according to their ability; to those according to their need” is Marxist ideology.
”The government that governs best, governs least” is Thomas Jefferson, America political philosophy.
You can have Marx all you want. I’ll take Jefferson any day.
If the Republican establishment decides to take the GOP into crypto-Marxism, then I suspect the rest of us will have to start a new party, but I suspect that the rest of us will prevail within the GOP against the collectivists.
It is always convenient to quote the wealthy forefathers who designed government to, at the very least, not hurt their own interests when arguing against helping those in need. T. Jefferson – case in point.
I suggest you go start that new party.
Medicaid expansion is like same-sex marriage. It is coming.
We will have single-payer insurance before too long. It is better to roll with the tide. When you are in a rip current you let the current take you. Then we the current releases you then you can swim to shore.
That is the same sort of mushy thinking that David Cameron employed when he made a big push to ”modernize” the UK’s Conservative Party by moving left on many issues. When he came out for gay marriage, in particular, he had mass resignations among party activists.
Now they are paying the price at the polls with the rise of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) on their right, which opposes gay marriage, takes a hard line against immigration, espouses a libertarian economic policy, and wants to get out of the EU. In the last two annual sets of local elections across the UK, UKIP snapped up lots of seats that had been held by the Conservative Party. Then came the elections for the UK seats in the EU parliament this year, in which UKIP came in first place and the Conservative Party third place. That was the first time a party other than Labour or Conservatives won a nationwide election in the UK in a century. Now it is happening in special elections for the national parliament. A week ago, there were two such special elections. At the former Conservative Party safe seat of Clacton, UKIP won with 60% of the vote leaving the Conservatives in the dust 35 points behind them, while in a former Labour safe seat in Lancashire, UKIP came within 2 percentage points of Labour. Another Conservative safe seat is up next month at Rochester and Strood, and UKIP leads by 9 points in the polls.
If the establishment in the GOP keeps on moving left, conservatives in the US will pull a UKIP on them.
Oh, and if you say the UK is different than other countries, you ought to check with Angela Merkel of Germany’s CDU about the rise of the Alternative fur Deutschland party on her right which is making electoral gains at her expense.
“Oh, and if you say the UK is different than other countries, you ought to check with Angela Merkel of Germany’s CDU about the rise of the Alternative fur Deutschland party on her right which is making electoral gains at her expense.”
Exactly, just like the Republicans are making gains against the Democrats here in the US. Obama has pushed too far to the left and the Republicans will bring us back to the right.
However, the fight is not yet won so we must remain vigilant if the Republicans are going to take control of the US Senate.
When those ”Republicans” are actually Vichy Republicans, collaborators with the Obama regime, then that is not winning much. The GOP establishment would rather do deals with the Democrats than with GOP conservatives. It is like McConnell vowing to ”crush them everywhere” talking not about Democrats but about conservatives in his own party. Or like Merkel’s CDU preferring to do deals with the Social Democrats in German state parliaments than AfD. What really takes the cake with McConnell though, is his organizing the financing among other RINO senators for the really nasty dirty tricks used to steal the nomination from Chris McDaniel in Mississippi. Tricky Dick Burr was one of those who helped fund that despicable Watergate maneuver, and I will not be voting for that suckweasel ever again. I regret voting for Burr in his last two elections.
Then the Republicans will go as the Whigs did. I think it is past time to start a new party platform.When I listened to my own daughter spout it would be better to have more time off to raise her family she doesn’t realize that we have been so overtaxed and demeaned that some women want to be full-time mothers and others would like to work part-time with the same benefits. Go figure.
“Then the Republicans will go as the Whigs did”
They already have…