United Liberty

Reiterating their support for full repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care act, key Republicans are now campaigning on promises that their version of health care reform will implement some of the same provisions as the one they have spent years campaigning against:

Speaking to more than 100 students at American University, Cantor said, “What you will see us do is to push for repeal of the healthcare bill, and at the same time, contemporaneously, submit our replacement bill, that has in it the provisions [barring discrimination due to pre-existing conditions and offering young people affordable care options].”

Cantor stressed that while he supports full repeal of the current law, Republicans share some of the same goals as Democrats, although they propose different ways of achieving them.

“We too don’t want to accept any insurance company’s denial of someone and coverage for that person because he or she may have pre-existing condition,” Cantor said, addressing a young woman in the audience who noted that she had a pre-existing health condition.

“And likewise we want to make sure that someone of your age has the ability to access affordable care, whether it’s under your parents plan or elsewhere,” Cantor added.

Understanding that certain portions of the health care reform are actually popular (while others are not), Republicans are preparing for a potential judicial overturning of PPACA. Ostensibly having no plan of their own, they appear to be plotting to piggyback on the same sort of government meddling that they’ve been demonizing. It now appears that Republicans’ only ideological grievance with the Affordable Care Act is the individual mandate.

Couple this with the GOP nominating a man who implemented similar reform (including the individual mandate) during his gubernatorial tenure and the Republican Party is negligibly better than the Democrats for those of us wishing to get government out of the health insurance market.