By Kevin Rogers
Managing Editor
House Majority Whip Francis Underwood, D-S.C., Kevin Spacey’s charmingly wicked anti-hero on Netflix’s “House of Cards,” has some advice for congressional Republicans on how they should deal with the Affordable Care Act.
“When your enemy is f**king up, don’t interrupt.”
And indeed, it appears that Republican foes are stumbling and fumbling through the implementation of the healthcare package, lovingly known as Obamacare. It’s also well known that last month’s government shutdown resulted from Republican efforts to defund Obamacare. In the end, nothing came of that effort except falling poll numbers. Nothing has come from the more than 40 House votes to repeal the law.
It’s time for a new strategy. Let the law play out. Republicans should take Underwood’s advice: sit back and watch the madness unfold. And there has been plenty of madness.
Since its launch on Oct. 1, HealthCare.gov, the federal government’s site allowing Americans to search healthcare plans, has been plagued with glitches and crashes, limiting the number of people that have been able to enroll, according to an Oct. 30 Reuters story. Adding to the website’s woes, an Oct. 29 CNN report says one of the website’s top contractors warned the administration that the website wasn’t ready for launch.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius took blame for the self-titled “debacle” at a House Energy and Commerce hearing, according to Reuters. The website will get its fix eventually, but recent events suggest the website is the least of the administration’s worries.
As the administration worked through its website issues, an Oct. 21 report from Kaiser Health News said insurers were sending out hundreds of thousands of insurance cancellation notices. Some policies are being cancelled because they don’t meet the law’s minimum coverage standards; others are being cut for people with pre-existing conditions. On Oct. 28, NBC News reported that as many as 75 percent of the 14 million Americans with individual insurance plans can expect to receive such notices.
This strikes at President’s Obama claim as the law was being passed: “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period.” The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” retroactively gave Obama’s promise “Four Pinocchios,” its top badge of shame. Of course, Obama may have believed what he said at the time; if that’s the case, his Democratic allies in Congress didn’t tell him the truth.
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Democrats knew that some health plans would be cut under the law, according to an Oct. 29 story in The Hill. Hoyer served as House majority leader during the law’s passage in 2010, giving him a key role in the policy making. At the time, the looming insurance cancellations appeared to have slipped his mind.
Of course, all this comes before most of the law, including its individual mandate, takes effect on Jan. 1.
So where does this leave Republicans? Should they continue their never-successful attempts to dismantle the law? The answer is no.
Republicans need to take a page from Frank Underwood and gleefully watch the administration struggle. It’s a cynical, Machiavellian mindset, but it’s the best chance Republicans have to win out and eventually have a credible attempt at repeal.
If America stays focused on the law’ struggle and not the efforts to repeal it, the responsibility remains with Democrats. If it turns out Obamacare is the best policy ever, Democrats win, Republicans take a hit and they will both move along to other issues. But if the rest of the law’s implementation continues to falter, Republicans will be there to benefit from it electorally.
This lends itself to another quote from Underwood: “What a martyr craves more than anything is a sword to fall on.”
If Republicans are smart, they’ll be quietly waiting and ready to hold that sword when the right time comes.
rogerskd10@bonaventure.edu
