In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal published on Wednesday, just one day after the election, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell accused the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) of killing jobs and hurting health care in the U.S.
Of course those charges are ludicrous. Obamacare has been responsible for many thousands of new jobs in the health care industry (because hospitals are now getting paid for care they once had to write off as a loss), and no one can point to any credible evidence that Obamacare has cost jobs in any other industry.
And how has heal care been hurt -- when millions more Americans now have health insurance and can get the care that once was denied to them (especially preventative care). The fact is that the overwhelming majority of the health care industry thinks Obamacare has been good -- both for them, and for the millions who now have access to health care.
There is no way they can actually repeal Obamacare. The president has already said:
"On health care, there are certainly some lines I'm going to draw. Repeal of the law I won't sign. Efforts that would take away health care from the 10 million people who now have it and the millions more who are now eligible to get it, we're not going to support."
And he added that he would also not sign any bill eliminating the individual mandate.
I think McConnell understands this, because he said they would probably try to repeal it a bit at a time. That's not going to work either though. President Obama will veto anything that substantially hurts the Affordable Care Act -- and both houses of Congress have enough Democrats to prevent the override of a presidential veto.
I sort of hope the Republicans do try to damage Obamacare. They won't be able to do it, and it will remind the voters of just how out-of-touch the Republican officials really are. A clear majority of Americans have been saying they don't want Obamacare to be repealed for months now -- and the longer it stays in effect, the more people will realize that (while it didn't cure everything in our broken system) it definitely improved health care in this country.
Bring it on Boehner / McConnell. You may have a majority in both houses of Congress, but this is a fight you cannot win -- and could easily hurt you in 2016.
(The image above is by DonkeyHotey.)