When House Speaker John Boehner declared Obamacare the “law of the land” two days after his party took a drubbing in the election, the real reveal came in what happened next: he walked it back in record speed and re-affirmed his commitment to getting rid of it. Having failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act at the national level, Republicans are now dedicating their efforts to botching its implementation at the state level. And having failed to invalidate the law at the Supreme Court, they’re now seeking alternate legal avenues to weaken its regulations. Republican governors are turning down the law’s Medicaid expansion, a move made easier by the Supreme Court decision that made the expansion optional. Among them are Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania and Nikki Haley of South Carolina. Given that the federal government pays the vast majority of the cost in the medium term, these states are, in effect, rejecting an extraordinarily generous financial incentive to insure their residents. Implementing the expansion in full would insure about 17 million people. “If [many states] don’t accept the Medicaid expansion you’re going to have millions of low income Americans who will remain uninsured and without access to health care,” said Tim Jost, a health care expert at Washington and Lee University who supports the Affordable Care Act. Some dozen Republican governors are refusing — and about a dozen more are considering refusing — to build state-based insurance exchanges, the law’s primary vehicle for expanding and improving coverage. These governors, which include John Kasich of Ohio, Rick Perry of Texas and Mary Fallin of Oklahoma, are consequently empowering the federal government to build one for them. Read more: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/11/gop-anti-obamacare-crusade.php?ref=fpa
