Worse, such political grandstanding looks unpleasantly like segregationist George C. Wallace’s legal antics in the 1960s. Then-Gov. Wallace “stood in the schoolhouse door” to “interpose” Alabama’s government against the federal government. His aim: To keep the University of Alabama lily white. Republicans were on the right side of that issue. Too bad they’re on the wrong side of the health care fight.
That's an irony. The bill Democrats passed last week is as radical as indoor plumbing. A more conservative measure can hardly be imagined. In fact, the American Medical Association's president — Dr. J. James Rohack (a Texas cardiologist) — applauded passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
If that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about ObamaCare’s “radicalism,” facts aren’t your thing. For generations, the AMA fought federal health-care plans, arguing they’d “interfere with the doctor-patient relationship.”
Turned out the politically critical relationship was the “doctor-insurer” relationship, which ended up as unhappy as the “patient-insurer” relationship. Doctors learned health insurers don’t want a relationship any more than they want risk. They just want money.
Republican stonewalling in Washington actually solved one problem faced by Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Some Democratic liberals originally opposed the Obama-Pelosi package as too conservative, though there were no House Democratic votes to spare. But the GOP frenzy welded congressional Democrats to the Obama bill — even Democrats who know it’s a shadow of what genuine reform would be.
Single-payer was the way to go. In Washington as in Columbus, however, the health-insurance companies survive everything. WellPoint (Anthem), Aetna and UnitedHealth will make out just fine. They always do.
As for GOP brag that a Republican-run Congress would repeal ObamaCare in 2011, that’s about as likely as the return of Prohibition — or the abolition of the U.S. Department of Education, the Tennessee Valley Authority or Social Security, all the targets of earlier Republican threats.
Inside Ohio, the presumable point of Republican lost-cause rhetoric is to elect a Republican-run Ohio House and, if possible, knock off a couple Ohio Democrats now in the U.S. House.
In 2011, Ohio’s up-for-grabs House and GOP-led Senate will redraw congressional districts. Ohio may lose two of its 18. When parties share the legislature, a typical deal is for each party to sacrifice one U.S. House member. If Republicans rule all, that could doom two Democratic districts.
This November, even if Republicans can’t unseat targeted U.S. House Democrats — Columbus’ Mary Jo Kilroy; Cincinnati’s Steve Driehaus; Zack Space, south of Canton — some of them could get so banged up they’d retire in 2012.
Though Space’s Web site calls “the [health-care] status quo ... unacceptable,” he voted “no” on the bill. Ah, he must’ve checked the stats: John McCain won 53 percent of the vote in Space’s district, according to the Almanac of American Politics, while Obama carried Kilroy’s (54 percent) and Driehaus (55 percent).
Democratic dropouts would be ideal for Republicans: The GOP wouldn’t have to retire two of its Ohioans from Congress. And fewer Democrats would be at the U.S. Capitol to vex its top Ohio Republican — House Minority Leader John A. Boehner.
Thomas Suddes is an adjunct assistant professor at Ohio University. Send e-mail to tsuddes@gmail.com.