THE HEALTH INSURANCE LAW: DO YOU REALLY WANT ITS REPEAL?

            Do you really want Congress to repeal the new health insurance law, as flawed as it is?

            That’s the question posed by a House vote on Jan. 12, when the new GOP majority there passed a 2-page bill “repealing” the landmark legislation.

Virtually every Republican, and maybe even a few House Democrats – the remnants of the “Blue Dog” caucus – can be expected to vote for repeal.

            House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., declares the health insurance law “spends money we don’t have,” and kills jobs.  He promises to “repeal and replace it,” but he won’t say with what.

            Then the action will shift to the Senate, where pressure will be intense, despite the Democrats’ control, to push for repeal.  Trashing the law is a big cause of the GOP, the Tea Party and their corporate backers, after all.

            That pressure means unionists and their allies must raise the following questions with their senators after the House vote and before the Senate acts:

* The law now bans health insurers from dumping people when they get sick.  Do you want to go back to that?

            * The law now starts to close the ‘doughnut hole’ in the Bush-era Medicare prescription drug benefit.  Reopening that would cost grandma thousands of dollars for her medicines.  Do you want to go back to that?

* The law now bans insurers from denying coverage to kids with pre-existing

conditions.  Do you want to go back to that?

            * The law also lets you keep your kids on your insurance until they’re 26.  Do you want to throw them out in the cold?

            * The law says insurers can’t limit how much they pay for your treatments either yearly or in your lifetime.  Till now, they could, and did.  Do you want to go back to that?

            * The law sets up a federal commission to ride herd on the insurers’ rate hikes, and prods the states to do so, too.  Do you want unlimited premium hikes again?

These are all sections of the health insurance law that have already taken effect.

The parts Republicans scream about – forcing everyone to buy insurance and a greater government role in health care – come in 2014 or later.  And the worst part for unionists, taxing so-called “high value” health insurance, doesn’t kick in until 2018.

            None of these questions arose in the House debate, in the GOP’s rush to get their “repeal” through, without offering the “replace.”  But the Senate is in less haste, and that gives you time to raise these questions with lawmakers.

            Interestingly enough, polls show that when it comes to the health insurance law and its specifics, people agree both ways.

            Say “health insurance law” or “health care law,” and reflexively, people think “big government.”  The country is split down the middle: 48% for repeal, 47% against.  But cite the specific benefits of the law, without the labels, and huge majorities back them

            That leaves unions and their allies with work to do: Keep pushing the specifics, saying you’re for them, then asking your senators of the alternatives: “Do you really want to back to that?”                                  ###