Obamacare is supposed to go into full effect in 2014, just a few short months away.
So…how’s that going, Democrats?
Well, last month, Democratic Senator Max Baucus, one of it’s architects, said that he sees a “huge train wreck” ahead.
“I just see a huge train wreck coming down,” he told Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at a Wednesday hearing. “You and I have discussed this many times, and I don’t see any results yet.”
You won’t believe who agrees with him. Harry Reid.
“Max said unless we implement this properly it’s going to be a train wreck, and I agree with him,” Reid said, echoing a warning delivered last month by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.).
Reid warned the federal government is not spending enough money to implement the law because of Republican opposition to ObamaCare.
And just days ago, President Obama himself explained how some states are making the law difficult to implement.
Q: Do you think without the cooperation of a handful of governors, particularly large states like Florida and Texas, that you can fully implement it?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I think it’s harder; there’s no doubt about it.
Q: But can you do it without those?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: We — we will implement it. There will be — we have a backup federal exchange. If states aren’t cooperating, we set up a federal exchange, so that people can access that federal exchange.
But yes, it puts more of a burden on us. And it’s ironic, since all these folks say that they believe in empowering states, that they’re going to end up having the federal government do something that we’d actually prefer states to do if they were properly cooperating.
Notice he didn’t say anything about Medicaid? That’s because the true way to make Obamacare difficult to implement is to block the state-run exchanges. The tea party in Ohio would have you believe that it is Medicaid expansion, but they are dead wrong.
In case you aren’t familiar, here’s what they are referring to. The writers of Obamacare wanted each state to set up and run it’s own Obamacare insurance exchange. These are the exchanges where people who qualify can buy insurance and then get a subsidy to pay for most of it from the federal government.
The problem for Obama is that over half of the states are run by Republican governors, and the bill’s supporters knew most of them wouldn’t cooperate. A state can refuse to set up and run an exchange and make the federal government do it. And that’s exactly what John Kasich did last November.
Other health care experts agree:
“Obamacare’s implementation at the state level is overwhelmingly about the implementation of the exchanges mandated by PPACA.”
– Benjamin Domenech, Managing editor of Health Care News, research fellow at the Heartland Institute, and co-founder of RedState“The exchanges are key to most other parts of PPACA — it subsidizes/enforces the individual mandate and determines who is eligible for a newly-expanded Medicaid program. Stop the exchange, stop PPACA.”
– Christie Herrera, Director of Health and Human Services Task Force at ALEC.“Let’s be clear. States cannot stop ObamaCare at their borders. What they can do is make it very hard for the federal government to implement the law. In fact, they may even be able to make it prohibitively hard. The main way is by refusing to create a health insurance “Exchange” and by sending all related funds back to Washington.”
– Michael Cannon, Director of Health Policy Studies at the CATO Institute
Impeding Obamacare has nothing to do with Medicaid. After all, Medicaid already exists and is administered by the states. Blocking the exchanges are the single most effective way for states to push back against the law. And that’s what Ohio has done.
Instead of misleading their members and tearing down Governor Kasich, Ohio’s tea party should be thanking him for helping to make Obamacare a train wreck by telling the federal government that Ohio will not run Obama’s insurance exchange for him.