Why the ACA is Bad: June 28, 2012 Republican Spin Edition

Remarkably, after listening to some of the commentary yesterday on the SCOTUS decision to uphold just about all of what the Republicans call endearingly call the Job-Killing Health Care Law, I came away with an odd feeling that they actually support the bill, but are concerned that it doesn’t go far enough or meet the President’s promises, so that’s the reason why it must be repealed. Or, as Mitt Romney promised, struck down on his first day in office. 

Here are just a few of the reasons:

• Obama said if you liked your health care you could keep it, but that won’t happen because employers will drop coverage because of the ACA. So since it won’t do what the President said, we must repeal. 
• The penalty for employers for not offering coverage is too low, and so they will drop it. So, since we’re not imposing a high enough incentive on business to continue coverage, we must repeal.
• The President said he’d not raise taxes on the middle class, but since SCOTUS said the penalty for the individual mandate provision was a tax, then the President did not keep his promise. And so we must repeal.

My thoughts: 

• Yes, we were told that if we liked our coverage we could keep it, and yes it’s possible that some businesses will stop offering the coverage (which they have maintained even in the crappy 'Obamaconomy') and throw their employees to the wind. The thing is, dropping coverage is not a provision of the law, it's choice some companies may make. If every law were repealed based on the way people (and by people of course I mean corporations) respond, where would we be? And if leaving the choice on whether to offer insurance to the employer is bad, what are the alternatives? Mandate that employers must offer coverage, no matter what? Or mandate that they don’t offer coverage? Both mandates and choice can't be bad, can they?  
• Regarding the penalty being too low – seriously? Republicans pretending that a business regulation is not burdensome enough?  How stupid do they think we are? 
• The penalty for individual mandate does not constitute raising taxes on the middle class. From a constitutional definition, it may be a tax, but it only applies to people who choose to pay it. That’s right – this tax is a choice, not a mandatory tax that’s going to apply across the board. To claim that for this reason Obama has broken a promise not to raise taxes on people earning less than $250K is ridiculous.

One more thing: another reason I heard yesterday on why the ACA is bad is because we have a doctor shortage. See, if we give coverage to all those tens of millions of uninsured, they’ll never get in to see a physician, or worse they’ll keep me from getting in to see a physician. So clearly we must repeal this bill. 

Yep – we have a doctor shortage, I think everyone agrees on that. So, Republicans - if you're ‘all about the jobs' , why don't you focus on putting more health care professional to work, instead of repealing the ACA?