Former Rep. Jack Kingston says Republicans may have dodged a bullet with last week's ruling that preserved a cornerstone of President Barack Obama's health care law.
Republicans would have been stuck in an impossible bind had the ruling invalidated the health insurance tax credits in states such as Georgia that did not create their own exchanges, Kingston wrote in a column published in Peach Pundit.
Instead, the Savannah Republican said, the court's ruling dulled a possible wedge issue for Democrats. Here's a snippet:
On the other hand, if we did nothing in response to the ruling, the nanny-state press would have had a field day. I can see the headline now: "Soulless Republicans kicking poor people out of insurance exchanges." No matter how unwarranted the attack, the coverage would be disastrous for Republicans in an already difficult 2016 election season, where the Presidency appears to be a coin flip and Republicans will be defending 24 seats in the Senate to the Democrats' 10.
So, while it is clearly a huge loss for conservatives that this law stays in place, politically, the party may actually be better off.
Jonathan Martin of the New York Times argues that a "rout in the culture wars" in the past month - from the public retreat on Confederate emblems to the legalization of same-sex marriage - presents the GOP with a chance to pivot. From his story:
Yet what appears, in headlines and celebrations across the country, to represent an unalloyed victory for Democrats, in which lawmakers and judges alike seemed to give in to the leftward shift of public opinion, may contain an opening for the Republican Party to move beyond losing battles and seemingly lost causes.
Meanwhile, two of your Insiders explore the deepening stalemate in Georgia over the fate of Obamacare in Sunday's AJC - and a possible, if narrow, third way forward. From the story:
The request is led by Grady Memorial Hospital, which is working with struggling rural hospitals to craft a plan to cover some of the estimated 650,000 people who would be covered if Georgia expanded Medicaid. Deal said the request aims to "give us some flexibility" in using federal funds for health care.
"That's the main ingredient that governors like me have been saying all along," he said. "If you give us some flexibility, then we could provide greater coverage and more coverage."
Some fiscal conservatives have questioned the legality of the move, including Republican state Rep. Scot Turner of Holly Springs, who called it an attempt to "back-door an expansion of Medicaid."
Others, though, hold out hope it could break the stalemate in Georgia. State Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, a Dalton Republican who is one of the few GOP elected officials who publicly supports expansion, said the waiver could emerge as a politically palatable compromise.
About the Author
