Prospect of healthcare repeal baffling

By Rahul Rekhi     1/13/11 6:00pm

Party politics is a funny, and often frustrating, phenomenon. It's a perennial tug-of-war, really, a back-and-forth struggle for ideological supremacy, often at the cost of sound policy. Sometimes it seems that the Republicans and the Democrats are destined to go at it forever.But every once in a while on Capitol Hill, you see a bill come along that is ostensibly above reproach, progressively post-partisan, universally appealing - a bill so undeniably sweeping in its scope, so unyielding in its reform, that one expects sheer force of reason to, for once, crack the monolithic gridlock of partisan bickering. Or so I thought.

But when legislation that provides health insurance coverage to an additional 32 million Americans, grants small businesses $40 billion worth of tax credits, creates state-based free-market insurance exchanges, reduces prescription drug costs for seniors, re-incentivizes primary and preventative care, provides thousands of dollars of scholarships and loan repayments for medical students willing to work in primary care, and ends coverage denial based on pre-existing conditions, all while cutting the federal deficit by $143 billion over the next decade and $1.2 trillion over the following one - when a bill like that is being put up for repeal, I, as both a student and a citizen, am not only dazed, but baffled.

Sure enough, however, that's exactly what's happening: With the newly minted 11th Congress sworn in, the Republicans, buoyed by their resounding victory in the 2010 midterm elections, have vowed to dismantle President Barack Obama's health care legislation.

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Perhaps significantly, the Republican legislators have argued that their successes at the polls in November signify the American populace's disapproval with the Affordable Care Act - that the Republican triumph in the midterm election lends them a democratic imperative to repeal the bill. Taken at face-value, this conviction almost seems reasonable, perhaps even called-for.

But truly, how many Americans favor giving insurance companies near-monopolistic market power? Support adding billions (and eventually, trillions) of dollars to the federal deficit? Celebrate the pre-existing conditions clause? How many American citizens are OK with being uninsured when unemployed - having no health insurance coverage when least able to pay their medical bills?

Even the most vehement critics of the health care bill would be hard-pressed to, in good faith, find anyone against any of these individual provisions. The GOP may have capitalized on voter discontent with the sluggish economic growth, or perhaps the Obama administration as a whole, but there is no reason to believe that a repeal of this bill is at all demanded by, or in the best interests of, the American people.

What else then possibly justifies the imperative to repeal the act? Cost? Can't be: As alluded to above, the bill significantly reduces the deficit. Rising premiums? Nope: According to the nonpartisan CBO, the Affordable Care Act will actually slightly decrease premiums for employer-based insurance. Kills jobs? Negative again: Another recent report by the Congressional Budget Office indicates that the legislation will have a negligible effect on unemployment.

I can't tell you the true reason for which Mr. Boehner and his colleagues seek to annul the reform bill; however unlikely, it is possible that I've missed some key motivating factor. What's more, this is not to say that the health care bill is perfect; certainly the 1,000-page legislation is not without its flaws. That being said, the call for repealing health reform sure appears to be all about party politics. And that is something that I - nay, the American people - simply won't stand for.

Rahul Rekhi is a Sid Richardson College sophomore.

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