GOP Still Trying to Stop Health Care Reform - New York Times (blog)

Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesJohn Boehner looks on as Eric Cantor speaks during a press conference on July 9, 2013.

Just because there is no sign of actual governing arising from Congress, it doesn’t mean that the right-wing dominated House Republican Caucus is just sitting around doing nothing. To the contrary, in addition to plotting the demise of the first real chance at immigration reform in decades, House G.O.P. leaders are thinking of new ways to continue their long-running show of trying to stop health care reform from taking effect.

On Wednesday, Representative Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader, announced that the chamber will vote in July on whether to delay the rule in health care reform that everyone must have insurance, or face a tax penalty. The move has the veneer of logic — Mr. Obama has delayed for one year the requirement that businesses with more than 50 employees show whether they are following the legal mandate to give their workers the opportunity to buy group coverage.

But that delay is relatively minor. Remember, employers will still will be legally required to arrange affordable coverage. They just don’t have to do the paperwork for a year showing the government whether they complied.



Delaying the requirement that all people must have insurance would be devastating to reforming the health care system. It is vital that everyone buy health insurance — including on the new exchanges that can offer them at subsidized rates based on income — so that healthy, young people become part of the insurance pool as well as older, sick people. It’s the only way to really get rates down and make sure that when uninsured people do get sick, they don’t just go to emergency rooms for treatment.

Senate Republicans also want to revoke the funding for the Independent Payment Advisory Board — health care professionals who will make recommendations to Congress about ways to slow the growth of spending in Medicare. This is an effort that Republicans should like. At any rate they’ve been demanding something comparable for decades. But now that the idea is associated with President Obama, they hate it.

Senator Jerry Moran, Republican of Kansas, said his right-wing allies want to block all of the insurance mandates, indefinitely, and kill what he called “the so-called death panel” by starving it of money.

The “so-called” is particularly funny, because only Sarah Palin-types call it that. And it’s not a death panel of any kind. As Bill Keller wrote in a blog post last year, “The board can reduce the amount Medicare pays health care providers for services and propose innovations to cut waste. It has no say in the treatment of any individual; it cannot change eligibility for Medicare, reduce benefits or raise premiums.”

Nothing is going to stop Congressional Republicans from this kind of outrageous behavior. It’s worth keeping an eye on, though, if for no other reason than to see your tax dollars at work.