GOP In Disarray Over Just How Much Of American Health Care System To Destroy

Only another month or so until the great Supreme Court case of our time, Wingnuts vs. Concept of Health Care, comes to its anticlimactic or completely terrifying conclusion! Now, since there is a not-insignificant possibility that Justices Scalia et al. will drop the full-overturning, "I don't see any problems with conservative mid-18th century conceptions of society" bomb, a nation of cracked-skull diabetic zombies will then turn to the Republican party for those long-awaited "replacement" solutions they've been working on for zero hours over the last few years. Same deal for President Romney tries to repeal it during his first hour in office. Will they go with the ol' Republican uselessness/added destruction trifecta of tort reform, selling insurance across state lines, and health savings accounts? Eventually. For now, though, some Republicans are considering keeping the most popular parts of the bill -- more free money for olds, letting youngs stay on their parents' plans, and, uhh, keeping the guarantee on coverage for people with pre-existing conditions... somehow. This admission that some parts of ObamaCare are good things, however, is causing a schism in the party. Not one single verb or preposition in that bill is worth keeping!

Yes, all it took was for a couple of members of the party to raise the possibility of keeping a couple provisions of ObamaCare after its Supreme Court nuclear obliteration or 2013 "repeal" for the Club for Growth et al. to call them RINO sell-out space pussies from Hell. Via TPM:

Amid signs that Republicans are warming to some provisions of President Obama’s health care law, influential conservative groups are warning the GOP not to waver on their promise to repeal the measure in its entirety.

Conservative advocates are displeased that Republicans are privately weighing a replacement plan that involves reinstating popular elements of the health care law — including its coverage guarantee regardless of pre-existing conditions, the ability to remain on a parent’s plan until age 26 and provisions that close the Medicare “doughnut hole.”

FreedomWorks and Club for Growth, two powerful conservative interest groups that are fresh off of purging the Senate’s longest-serving Republican for insufficient fealty to the right, are flexing their muscles.

“The Club for Growth supports complete repeal of Obamacare. And complete doesn’t mean partial. It means complete,” said Barney Keller, a spokesman for the group. “We urge the so-called ‘tea party’ Republicans to keep their promises to voters and continue to fight for complete repeal as well.”

What we don't get is... well, you tell us which one of these three is different than the others:

• Closing the Donut Hole For Old People Drugs.

• Letting twentysomethings with no job prospects ever mooch health care from their parents for a few more years.

• Guaranteeing coverage for those with pre-existing conditions.

It's that third one, see, that requiresa comprehensive overhaul of the health insurance systemif you're going to do it. The Democrats who wrote this bill would have simply wrote "guarantee coverage for those with pre-exisiting conditions" and left it at that if such an idea was economically viable on its own. But it wasn't, and so they had to craft the Rube Goldberg apparatus of mandates, exchanges, and subsidies to make it work.

But anyway, this will be their problem! Have fun.

[ TPM ]