The conservative (African-American) pundit Deroy Murdock believes that the new Republican-controlled Congress should abandon caution and pass a law that repeals Obamacare despite the fact that the president would instantly veto it and neither the Republican majority in the House or Senate could muster enough votes to override that veto.
I’m not so sure attempting to repeal Obamacare is a good idea — it would be both a sure defeat and a high-profile one, and what the new Republican Congress needs most is to show the public that it can govern sensibly and with some degree of bipartisanship.
But Murdock has one other idea that I think is brilliant. Republicans in the new Congress should introduce new legislation — Murdock calls it the “Like Your Plan, Keep Your Plan Act of 2015” — which reads in its entirety, “The Affordable Care Act notwithstanding, all Americans who like their health-care plans may keep their health-care plans. Period.”
First of all, at 18 words it would be the shortest, simplest, easiest-to-understand legislation proposed since the first Congress in 1789, which would probably make it the first legislation since then that every member of Congress actually read before voting on it.
Second, this legislation actually might get passed, and for two good reasons. One, it would have the support of the vast majority of the American people, millions of whom were furious when they learned that, because their current health plans (which most of them “liked”) didn’t meet Obamacare’s minimum standards, those plans were cancelled. Those millions of Americans would overwhelmingly approve a law that allowed them to keep their old plan if they liked it, or even keep Obamacare if that was their preference. It’s called giving the American people a choice.
Two, President Obama would be hard pressed to veto this legislation. After all, when he campaigned for Obamacare the president repeatedly stated that if Americans liked their current healthcare plan they could keep their current healthcare plan. Therefore, when presenting this legislation to the president for his signature, Republicans could remind him that offering Americans a choice of plans — their old plan or Obamacare — was actually his idea, and here’s a golden opportunity to keep that promise to the people.
Granted, the president might still veto it, but that would confirm to the American people that he had lied about giving them a choice of healthcare plans. It would also make Republicans look like moderate consensus builders and put Democrats on the defensive. But worst of all for the president, it would stain the one act of his presidency that he most wants to be remembered for. That would damage his legacy, something all presidents worry about, but especially, I would guess, our first black president.
