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You are here: Home / Politics / Republican Venality / GOP Obstructionism, by Name

GOP Obstructionism, by Name

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In the New Yorker, Atul Gawande — Rhodes scholar, surgeon, MacArthur Fellow, best-selling author, American offspring of Indian immigrants — goes there:

… The law’s actual manifestation, however, is rather anodyne: as of October 1st, healthcare.gov is scheduled to open for business. A Web site where people who don’t have health coverage through an employer or the government can find a range of health plans available to them, it resembles nothing more sinister than an eBay for insurance. Because it’s a marketplace, prices keep falling lower than the Congressional Budget Office predicted, by more than sixteen per cent on average. Federal subsidies trim costs even further, and more people living near the poverty level will qualify for free Medicaid coverage.

How this will unfold, though, depends on where you live. Governors and legislatures in about half the states—from California to New York, Minnesota to Maryland—are working faithfully to implement the law with as few glitches as possible. In the other half—Indiana to Texas, Utah to South Carolina—they are working equally faithfully to obstruct its implementation. Still fundamentally in dispute is whether we as a society have a duty to protect people like Paul Sullivan. Not only do conservatives not think so; they seem to see providing that protection as a threat to America itself…

This kind of obstructionism has been seen before. After the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, in 1954, Virginia shut down schools in Charlottesville, Norfolk, and Warren County rather than accept black children in white schools. When the courts forced the schools to open, the governor followed a number of other Southern states in instituting hurdles such as “pupil placement” reviews, “freedom of choice” plans that provided nothing of the sort, and incessant legal delays. While in some states meaningful progress occurred rapidly, in others it took many years. We face a similar situation with health-care reform. In some states, Paul Sullivan’s fate will become rare. In others, it will remain a reality for an unconscionable number of people. Of some three thousand counties in the nation, a hundred and fourteen account for half of the uninsured. Sixty-two of those counties are in states that have accepted the key elements of Obamacare, including funding to expand Medicaid. Fifty-two are not…

Reader Interactions

64Comments

  3. 3.

    Yatsuno

    They need it to fail. It not only goes against their ideology, they had no hand in its creation, even though their own think tank came up with the idea. They know they will get punished politically for refusing to pass it. Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of douchecanoes.

  5. 5.

    Botsplainer

    Tomorrow, I’m calling the office of the extremist freshman Teatard that reps the gerrymandered district I reside in (I work in the district repped by the wonderfully progressive John Yarmuth), and will blister the ass of whoever answers. I will also call Hal Rogers – he is likely malleable.

  6. 6.

    dmsilev

    @Yatsuno: I hope to live long enough to enjoy the irony arising from all the effort that the right put in to dub this ‘Obamacare’. Well done, lads, to tightly bind ‘healthcare’ to ‘Democratic President’.

  9. 9.

    Yatsuno

    Medicaid was also slowly adopted by states. I believe Arizona was the last one to accept it in the 80s but I could be remembering that wrong. ACA will most likely have the same fate, especially in states with large border cities where the residents flee for the state that will cover them. Sucks if you’re in Kansas City though.

  11. 11.

    cathyx

    If God wanted you to live, he would have blessed you with good health or good healthcare. If you don’t have either, you aren’t the chosen one. Sorry.

  12. 12.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @schrodinger’s cat: He seems to have been subbing for Bobo all over the place this week. He was paired up with E. J. Dionne on NPR’s All Things Considered the other day.

    It is probably wrong of me to note that for the longest time, I thought he was female. Wasn’t until I heard him explicitly addressed as “Sir” by some NPR host a year or so ago that I Googled his name and discovered that he is, in fact, a man. Just one with a very high-pitched voice (NTTAWWT).

  13. 13.

    Bob In Portland

    On the five o’clock news there was a blonde with a drawl, not sure who she was, who said that shutting down the government was all in Obama’s plans. Is Ted Cruz a closet commie?

  15. 15.

    Davis X. Machina

    @Yatsuno: 1982, I believe. When Jan Brewer didn’t pull AZ out of the Medicaid expansion, people were shocked because of the history.

  16. 16.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @Baud: In ten years it will be known as Romney care and Mitt Romney will be lauded as the greatest president ever.

  17. 17.

    dmsilev

    @Litlebritdifrnt: No, it’ll have some blah name (“Expanded Medicare”). Mitt Romney has already become an unperson.

    (well, OK, it’s debatable whether Romney ever was a person to begin with. An unrobot perhaps)

  18. 18.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @dmsilev: I can’t remember now who it was — some pundit whose name mercifully escapes me — who was really holding forth on what a bad idea it was for Democrats to embrace the term “Obamacare.”

    Me, I think it’s great. I think health care in this country is eventually going to become universal, single-payer, beloved of nearly every citizen, and I can’t think of anything cooler or more appropriate than to attach President Barack Obama’s name to it, in perpetuity.

  23. 23.

    Villago Delenda Est

    The justification for their assholishness always comes down to the invisible sky buddy who, conveniently, cannot be consulted as to its actual whims, intention, or opinion.

  24. 24.

    Stacy

    I swing wildly between “we’re totally screwed” and “deadenders in their last throes” at least 5 times a day.

  28. 28.

    schrodinger's cat

    @SiubhanDuinne: Yeah he does have a rather squeaky voice. He converted to Catholicism just like Jindal. I guess if you are an immigrant and want in with the god botherers, you need to leave your birth religion, at the door. Isn’t Nikki Haley some version of Protestant and not Sikh.

  29. 29.

    Mike G

    @Violet:

    Is that Dinesh D’Souza the adulterer?

    But…but Jesus told him he had a loophole. Moral rules are a cudgel to keep the rabble behaving responsibly, they don’t apply to Special People like him.

  30. 30.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Litlebritdifrnt: Nah. It’s going to be treated as all a coincidence. Like that story from Kentucky a few weeks ago where the person was all happy to sign up for a new health insurance option because it sure beat that Obamacare he’d been hearing about.

    Ten years from now, people will have this memory that some time around 2013-14, states just for some reason started to make it easier for white people with lousy jobs to sign up for insurance. Too bad they couldn’t have stopped the lazy colored people from getting their Obamacare and their Obamaphones and all those other goodies, but, well, that’s Democrats for you!

    Guaranteed: “Obamacare” will for 50 years be the thing one white guy mutters to another in the doctor’s waiting room when a black person gets called in before both of them.

  31. 31.

    Belafon

    @Stacy: Those are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but I would argue that civilization has survived through worse, and has generally come out better on the other side.

    Having said that, DK actually had a good FP post about the new white supremacist movement among the young. We will always have to fight.

  32. 32.

    J

    Good piece. Though for a moment I thought calling them by name would mean something like calling them ‘swine’ or ‘pond scum’.

  35. 35.

    geg6

    Calling them by name would require calling them the traitorous cowards that they are. But considering we’re talking about a pundtwit in the MSM, I’ll take it.

  39. 39.

    Kay

    @FlipYrWhig:

    Ten years from now, people will have this memory that some time around 2013-14, states just for some reason started to make it easier for white people with lousy jobs to sign up for insurance.

    True.

    WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 — President Bush vetoed the children’s health insurance bill today, as he had promised to do, setting the stage for more negotiations between the White House and Congress and sparking unusual dismay from some prominent Republicans.
    President Bush made an appearance in Lancaster, Pa., after issuing his fourth veto, of the children’s health insurance bill.
    Mr. Bush wielded his pen with no fanfare just before leaving for a visit to Lancaster, Pa. The veto was only the fourth of Mr. Bush’s presidency, and it may have spawned the most anger, not just from Democrats but also from some members of Mr. Bush’s own party.
    “Because the Congress has chosen to send me a bill that moves our health care system in the wrong direction, I must veto it,” Mr. Bush said in his veto statement, adding that he hoped to work with the lawmakers “to produce a good bill that puts poorer children first.”

    It was children, so not even adult moochers, and he made this insane argument that lower middle class children were somehow stealing from poor children- we were putting “poorer” children “second”.

    See, his objection was on behalf of POORER children who would get LESS health care IF some other children took some…he just sort of trailed off.

    No one remembers this, and it was 2007.

  41. 41.

    fka AWS

    @Kay: FWIW, I still remember that, and I remember calling my worthless piece of shit rethug congressman’s office about it as well.

  42. 42.

    J

    Among the most disgusting things the anti-Obamacare swine–oops there I did it again–have been doing is comparing themselves to people who struggled against Fascism and Nazism in the 30s and those who fought racial injustice two decades later in the US. I amuse myself by imagining an impossibly eloquent Victor Laszlo-like figure played by Paul Henreid delivering a crushing rejoinder to tailgunner Ted. They aren’t fit to clean Rosa Parks’ boots.

  43. 43.

    Kay

    @fka AWS:

    It went on for years. Years. That’s why I laugh when they’re all worried about “young people being forced to buy insurance”. They had a whole different set of objections in 2007.

    It doesn’t matter what the “bill” says. They’d object to any health care access law, any time, for any set of people.

    Remember this? 2010-11:

    One part of Mitt Romney’s new fiscal plan that’s gotten less notice is his proposal to eliminate Title X, the only federal program devoted to family planning. This wades into an issue that has challenged congressional Republicans — and one that none of Romney’s competitors have touched.
    Created in 1970 during the Nixon years, Title X covers reproductive health services like birth control, STD screenings, and cervical-cancer exams. In 2008, the program reached about 5 million Americans, mostly women.

    The Tea Party House gutted funding. Obama threatened a veto. They were ready to zero out a health care law that’s been in place since the 70’s, and that George HW Bush supported. 5 million people.

  44. 44.

    Belafon

    @J: That’s why I think the point made above is so important. I don’t generally come up with great examples to point out issues, but the the idea that blocking ACA implementation is almost exactly like blocking desegregation will be easier to argue.

  45. 45.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Haven’t you heard, Kay? Every extreme thing the Republicans do is just their opening negotiating position. The question you have to ask is, why aren’t the Democrats willing to negotiate and reach a compromise.

  46. 46.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Oh, sure.

    But when Boehner later asked for the elimination of funds for Title X –– spending for women’s health and family planning organizations that also provide abortion services, the aide said the president flatly refused.
    The president replied, “Nope. Zero.”

    There would LITERALLY be women dead from cervical cancer, and God knows what else. They’d be dead by now. It’s not even that they don’t have a replacement. They’re busy getting rid of the pathetic “system” we have now.

  47. 47.

    J

    @Belafon: I agree completely. I also think we can and should start making stronger claims for our side, by affirming that ours is a battle for human dignity, that we are the heirs of those who fought for racial justice, against child labor, for universal suffrage, decent working conditions for all and the like. A few verses of ‘we shall overcome’ wouldn’t go amiss. I understood, and accepted the strategy of trying to mollify the Republicans by adopting a market friendly approach to health care, but the time for soothing words and compromises is past. They have chosen the path of confrontation and lies. It’s time to fight dishonesty and slander with hard truths and to reclaim the higher ground, which they sully with their lying cant about about freedom and liberty.

  49. 49.

    RSA

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    The justification for their assholishness always comes down to the invisible sky buddy who, conveniently, cannot be consulted as to its actual whims, intention, or opinion.

    And sometimes that sky buddy is Ayn Rand. One adherent recently told me, for example, that House Republicans were cheering on Friday not because they’d passed a plan to prevent millions of people from getting affordable health insurance, and not because this increased the chances of a government shutdown, but because they were saving taxpayers money. Uh-huh.

  52. 52.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @RSA:
    No. It’s because they’ve learned they can substitute the words ‘saving taxpayers money’ for ‘hurting the other guy’ and not get called on it. That kind of bait-and-switch is common in human thinking. People want to be assholes AND feel righteous.

    @Full Metal Wingnut:
    Yes. Apparently quite a few conservatives think the joke is on liberals.

  53. 53.

    gene108

    The misinformation campaign by Republicans has people so ambivalent about the law, even if they cannot prevent it from going live in two days and into effect in three months, this ambivalence they have created has blunted the electoral blow back they should face.

    I do not think voters understand exactly how Republicans are screwing things up to get a good backlash going in 2014 or 2016. It was not until 2006 that a backlash built up against Republicans over Iraq and other bad behavior that had been around since 2002 and earlier.

  54. 54.

    PurpleGirl

    @schrodinger’s cat: If you are referring to Dinesh D’Souza, his family was Catholic back a number of generations. He comes from a section of India that was colonized by the Portugese (Goa) and had a Catholic elite. It’s one of the reasons he thinks President Obama is anti-colonial.

  58. 58.

    Hal

    I’m wondering what the citizenry of one state will think when their across the border neighbors are able to receive healthcare that they could be getting if not for their Governor’s refusal to expand medicaid. I’m sure they’ll figure out a way to blame Obama anyway.

  59. 59.

    JoyfulA

    @Kay: I just saw a newspaper article where a volunteer fire company is having a fund-raiser for a woman with cervical cancer—

  60. 60.

    James E. Powell

    @gene108:

    I agree with you. But it isn’t like anyone outside of some bloggers and a handful of OpEds who have countered the right-wing narrative on Obamacare. This has been so since before the ACA got out of the senate committee.

    The opposition is organized, well-funded, and relentless. The pro-ACA forces? They barely exist.

  61. 61.

    fuckwit

    @James E. Powell: No, that’s not true. I stood in a lobby at Dianne Feinstein’s office alongside a well-organized, well-prepared group of pro-ACA forces, otherwise known as “Obama for America”. The Obama campaign deployed its forces to get ACA passed. Where are they now though? I don’t know.

  62. 62.

    fuckwit

    @gene108: This is one of the unfortunate things about the truth: it’s slow. Really slow. Sometimes way-too-late slow.

    The truth is slow. Lies are fast.

    In 2002 I was marching to try to stop the Iraq war. By 2006 most of America finally agreed it needed to be stopped. What the screaming fuck? Only 4 years too fucking late. Sheesh.

    Look at how long it took to get civil rights in the South, or women’s rights, or gay marriage rights, etc.

    The arc of justice is SLOW.

    So, who knows how long it will take before people realize that Obamacare is saving their asses? I can hope: RIGHT NOW, before 2014 elections. But reality is: probably not for another 4-6 years.

  63. 63.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Full Metal Wingnut: Yes. Some of them get that he’s a satirist, but they think there are three layers, that he’s actually subtly propagandizing conservative ideas to liberals in the guise of mocking them. What probably gives them the idea is that, in his interviews, he’ll remain in character but sometimes tone it down: he’ll give a more or less straight rendition of a conservative POV for the sake of discussion.

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