Opinion: Obama Gets Another Big Win From The Supreme Court
Immigration and Affordable Care? Check and check! President Barack Obama won big this week.
But the bigger winners are families that have already benefited and will continue to benefit from Obamacare – including young adults who were able to get coverage on their parents’ policies and people with preexisting conditions.
Republicans argued that President Obama wasted four years on the Affordable Care Act and the Supreme Court was going to strike down the health care law for what Republicans called constitutional overreach.
It turns out the constitutional overreach struck down this week was with the right wing’s on immigration.
Mitt Romney and his Tea Party Congress couldn't have had a worse day or a worse week. They lost badly. And it is Republicans who have wasted four years.
The Republican Party's strategy of opposing Obama at every turn ended up being the losing strategy. They hinged everything on a victory in the Court. Now Republicans will make the unpopular argument for repeal.
In the face of comprehensive health care legislation Republicans have a rallying cry: repeal and replace. But they give no hint as to the replacement for the Affordable Care Act.
Why? Because the numbers are with the President and the Supreme Court on health care. The Pew Institute found that 53% of Americans prefer to expand or leave the Affordable Care Act as is, 38% favor repeal and that 6% prefer expended benefits, 47% approve of the law and 39% oppose it.
Those are not good numbers for Republicans. And, in light of the Court's decision, the numbers will get worse for Republicans in the days ahead.
Now Republicans need to vote for full repeal in the House and Senate and a return to discrimination against women by healthcare companies, lifetime caps on insurance payouts, Americans with pre-existing conditions should not get coverage and host of other unpopular features of our former healthcare system.
Rick Santorum nailed the Romney Healthcare Trap when he said, "there's one candidate who is uniquely disqualified to make the case" against the law "because he [Romney] supported government-run health care as governor of Massachusetts."
Now Republicans are going all in on repeal with the architect of the mandate. It is yet another losing strategy on healthcare for Republicans.
About Bill Buck
Bill Buck is a Democratic strategist, President of the Buck Communications Group, a media relations and new media strategies consulting business based in Washington, DC, and Managing Director of the online ad firm Influence DSP. He has over twenty years of international and national communications experience. The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of CBS Local.
