Excuses, Fearmongering and Sour Grapes Are Only Certainty In GOP's Response To Health Care Reform

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As a supporter of Medicare For All or a genuine public option at the minimum, I'm still only lukewarm to Obama's health care reform act despite the law being affirmed by the highest court in the land. I also suspect more fall-out from the court’s mixed decision, most notably in its weakening of the law’s Medicaid provisions in the name of states’ rights.

But if I were the republican governor of a state, I'd certainly proceed with the framework of state-run health care exchanges, knowing that the exchanges are a requirement in practically every proposal for health care reform written over the past 30 years.

Gov. Scott Walker however says Wisconsin will not proceed with implementing the Affordable Care Act because the SCOTUS decision he claims, creates uncertainty.

Channel 3000 Excerpt:
In the meantime, Walker says the state will not proceed with setting up a health care exchange as is required.[...]

He said the decision creates uncertainty for Wisconsin businesses and that's bad for job growth. Walker has also said businesses will be bullish about adding jobs since he won a June 5 recall election.

Bad for job growth but businesses remain bullish about adding jobs? Which is it?

But tell that to four (Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois and even Tea Party Mitch Daniels Indiana) of the six midwestern states that have all outjobbed Wisconsin in 2011 while instituting that "uncertainty" by building the framework for the state health care exchanges in the new health care law. Add to that the fact that two (California and New York) of the top three states in the country that have had significant increases in employment from May, 2011 to May, 2012 have implemented the ACA almost in it's entirety. While three states with dismal job growth, North Carolina, Alaska and New Mexico have literally banned the ACA. Beginning this week, New Mexico has finally initiated a task force to develop a proposal for creating a state health insurance exchange. So how can the decision be bad for job growth?

Even more ridiculous is to say the decision is bad for Wisconsin. But we'll have to go in circles here for just a moment to tackle that one.

Walker's belligerent failure to implement the law has the same impact on the state as if SCOTUS struck it down. So the decision can't be bad for job growth or create "uncertainty" for Wisconsin businesses if he refuses to implement it. Without implementing the Affordable Care Act, it's business as usual for the GOP and the state of Wisconsin. With the recalls behind us, the state should be gushing in certainty ...and jobs according to Scott Walker.

Conversely, he could have claimed Obama's health care reform was bad for job growth given the poor state employment results of the past year, but only if he had implemented it. He missed that opportunity by fighting it every step of the way. But this is where the rubber meets the road. The GOP's (and Walker's) biggest fear is not that Obama's health care reform fails - but if it would succeed. The idea of course is to never give it a chance.

So using Walker's fearmongering and certainty logic, only states that implemented the federal health care law have "uncertainty," yet those same states have experienced some of the most significant job growth over the past year AND if Walker was right, that should have translated into businesses and workers fleeing those states for Wisconsin.

But we know that's not happening and Walker is playing politics as usual and fabricating more uncertainty by hedging on not implementing the health care plan, with the intention to blame the health care law for all that fails in the state by not implementing it. That's full circle insanity.

Mitt Romney also found himself in a similar foot-in-mouth position earlier this week by saying if the nation’s highest court overturned what he derides as Obamacare, “then the first 3 1/2 years of this president’s term will have been wasted on something that has not helped the American people.”

Boston.Com Excerpt:
Yet the court, with the vote of conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, today upheld the law’s constitutionality.

Accepting Romney’s logic, that would mean that the bulk of Obama’s first term in office was spent on something that helped the American people.

Roberts is not someone Romney can dismiss, either. On his campaign website, he pledges to nominate Supreme Court justices “in the mold of Chief Justice Roberts,” as well as other court conservatives.

Epic backfire.

ADDITIONAL:

Political Environment - Who Does J.B. Van Hollen think he Is? The Party Boss?

Think Progress - Sen. Ron Johnson thinks freedom means having the freedom to deny health care to cancer patients.

Democurmudgeon - Tea Party Losers Whine, have Temper Tantrum, call for Armed Revolution.

Crooks and Liars - Republicans Biggest Fear: That Health Care Reform Would Succeed