{"id":3302,"date":"2013-05-28T09:38:19","date_gmt":"2013-05-28T13:38:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/?p=3302"},"modified":"2013-05-28T09:38:19","modified_gmt":"2013-05-28T13:38:19","slug":"the-gops-dangerous-obamacare-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/2013\/05\/the-gops-dangerous-obamacare-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"The GOP\u2019s dangerous Obamacare strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\"health-caduceus_logo_blue\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In today\u2019s New York Times, Jonathan Weisman and Robert Pear report on a peculiar problem faced by the Affordable Care Act: Republicans who\u2019re unable to repeal it also refuse to permit any tweaks or technical correction that would help it work better. In fact, they\u2019re creating new problems by withholding implementation funds.<\/p>\n

This is a real problem for the law, and for the country. Back in January 2011, I called it the biggest danger for health reform, and I still think that\u2019s right: If it persists, \u201cwhat America will get is not the Affordable Care Act, and nor will it be repeal of the Affordable Care Act. It\u2019ll be a hobbled version of the Affordable Care Act, where what works isn\u2019t expanded and what fails isn\u2019t replaced. And though that might be better than nothing for the uninsured, it will be pretty terrible policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s both a strategy and a principle at play here. The GOP really, truly hates Obamacare. They believe that their best chance to repeal it is to make it as big a mess as possible. Anything that makes it easier to live with makes it harder to get rid of. But they know that the chances of repeal are pretty slim. That\u2019s where the politics come in. They think their best chance to retake the Senate in 2014 is to make Obamacare as big a mess as possible and then ride the outrage in the midterms.<\/p>\n

They may be right about that, or they may be very wrong. But this is a theory that requires Republicans to knowingly damage America\u2019s health-care system on the off-chance the damage is severe enough to help them accomplish a much larger policy goal.<\/p>\n

MORE:<\/strong> \u00a0 Wonkbook: The GOP\u2019s dangerous Obamacare strategy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0 In today\u2019s New York Times, Jonathan Weisman and Robert Pear report on a peculiar problem faced by the Affordable Care Act: Republicans who\u2019re unable to repeal it also refuse to permit any tweaks or technical correction that would help it work better. In fact, they\u2019re creating new problems by withholding implementation funds. This is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19,5,22],"tags":[125,26,672,856],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3302"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3303,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3302\/revisions\/3303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}