How Does the Continued GOP Argument Against ObamaCares Make Sense?

Republicans are making a “pretty strange argument…. Essentially, what they’re saying is, once this is fully implemented and millions of people who currently don’t have health care have health care at reasonable prices and protections are in place for consumers across the board, that it will be sufficiently successful and popular that people won’t want to repeal it.

“Well, that’s a strange argument. So the notion is, we’ve got to stop it before people like it too much. That’s not an argument that I think most people buy.”

Part of the argument being made is that people come to like things that the government can’t afford anymore. “This is the argument that was made with respect to Social Security. This is the argument that was made to Medicare. It turns out, actually, people liked it, and we could afford it. And unlike the prescription drug plan that was passed by Republicans, which now is very popular with seniors — although at the time that it was passed was actually less popular than the Affordable Care Act, according to the polls–we paid for the Affordable Care Act. It doesn’t add to the deficit. In fact, repealing it would increase the deficit.”

Though others seeking to advance a contradictory ideology want to argue different. All “the assumptions [we advanced] so far not only have held; they’ve actually exceeded expectations. Health care costs have gone up slower since we passed the Affordable Care Act. There were great predictions coming from the Republicans that health care costs would go up even faster; that hasn’t happened. There were predictions that the marketplaces that we’re setting up–essentially, the group plans where people buy health insurance — would not offer a good deal to consumers, and so far, the bids have come in from insurance companies, and lo and behold, they’ve actually come under the estimates that the government had so far.

Unlike the prescription drug plan that was passed by Republicans, which now is very popular with seniors — although at the time that it was passed was actually less popular than the Affordable Care Act, according to the polls–we paid for the Affordable Care Act.

So the truth is that every prediction about how bad the Affordable Care Act would be for individual consumers out there has not proven to be true, and so I understand why some Republicans who have made great political hay over the last two, three years about what a disaster this is going to be are worried about when it’s fully implemented and it turns out not to be a disaster–I get that. But that’s certainly not an argument for us to leave a whole bunch of people out there who don’t have health insurance to continue to suffer. We’re not going to do that.”

To hear more good sense, you can find the full interview between the President and NPR’s Steve Inskeep here.