McConnell: Guys Seriously, We'll Repeal ObamaCare

Via Gabe from a couple of days ago but with this weird week you may have missed it. McConnell is emphatic that repealing ObamaCare is job 1 if the GOP has the House, Senate and White House.

Over the weekend, you and Chris Wallace of Fox News had an exchange about the uninsured, where you said that’s “not the issue.” What did you mean by that? And what is your preferred policy for covering more of the uninsured?

Our goal, number one, is to repeal and replace Obamacare. Number two, is to address the health care that the federal government has already got, which is in deep trouble, both Medicare and Medicaid. Earlier today I saw that 15 governors have now said that they’re going to opt out of the additional Medicaid mandate, now that the Supreme Court has made it clear that they have the option to do so. I think we will be looking at every angle to replace this, and what it’s replaced with, of course, depends on what the market looks like at that time. For example, the private health-insurance market has already responded on the growing demand to leave 26-year-olds on policies, because it’s turning out to be a good business decision for them. The issue of preexisting conditions has always been complex. Half of the states are addressing that with high-risk pools. I’m not convinced that issue needs to be addressed at the federal level. We will see. But job one is to replace Obamacare in its entirety, clean up the health care we’re already responsible for, and then we’ll see where we go from there.

This is a really great point. The federal government has done a lousy job with the health insurance programs it runs so the idea that it is in a position to run the private market was always ludicrous.

As for the uninsured, Obama sold his plan as lowering costs for people and making the insurance they had better, the additional coverage was always a secondary point. If he'd been honest and said, "we're going to make your coverage worse and more expensive to cover people who don't have any (and coincidentally who mostly vote for Democrats)" it would have never passed. So no, covering 30 million or so more people isn't the issue, it's preserving it for the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have coverage.

As for people who doubt his and the GOP's commitment to repeal, McConnell has a message.

Boy, I don’t know how they could be suspicious on this issue. Every single Republican in the House and Senate voted against Obamacare. I must have made 125 speeches about it on the floor. If there is any area where I don’t think conservatives of any stripe should be concerned, it would be this one. We’ve been clear and unambiguous about Obamacare from the beginning to the end — all of it. And I led the fight in the Senate, so I know what I’m talking about.

I know that Romney is focused exclusively on a message of "Obama and the economy stink" but he really needs to start talking more about repealing ObamaCare.

First, it is an economic issue.

Second, people don't need to be told the economy is awful. Everyone knows that. ObamaCare made things worse, repeal will make it better.

Finally, even though ObamaCare is unpopular (not because Obama hasn't sold it well but because people understand how bad it is) repeal will still be tough. Don't think so? How long is the list of repealed massive government entitlement programs? Yeah. We need to lay the political ground work to do it. Mitt needs to be able to talk about more than one issue and ObamaCare needs to be talked about and most importantly...repealed.

posted by DrewM. at 11:05 AM

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