Saturday, December 14, 2013

The Walker Test

by JASmius

The damn-well-better-be Tea Party Republican candidate for president in 2016 (if there's an election) proposes both an end-run around ObamaCare and a means of visibly proving what is already pretty evident:

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has a plan to sidestep ObamaCare – and his novel idea is gaining traction, according to reports.

Walker reportedly wants to let the uninsured use tax credits to buy plans offered on the federal online exchanges directly from the insurance companies.

"Basically, our number one concern right now should be getting folks health insurance. Given the website problems, that suggests the value of a pilot of the type proposed here," Jonathan Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the Journal Sentinel in Milwaukee.

Remember how Barack Obama marketed himself in 2008 as a "moderate pragmatist" who just wanted to "get things done"?  Well, here's a highly successful conservative Republican governor who is trying to do just that.  So everybody should be on the same page and marching forward together, right?

Not necessarily:

The plan will need the approval of Health and Human Services.

“If they don't approve this, this is ultimately exposing that this isn't really about access and this isn't about affordability,” Walker told Fox News Thursday. “It's about government playing a heavier hand in these kinds of decisions.”

Care to lay odds on Commissar Sebelius's decision?  It's a losing bet.

Governor Walker's solution would break the logjam and get more people covered in a less ham-fistedly bureaucratic fashion - which is why the Regime will never permit it.  It would reduce their control and further humiliate them for their stupendous failures.  They can't possibly allow a 2016 rising star of the opposition show them up this badly and gain ever greater electoral momentum in Wisconsin next year and nationally two years after that.  "Scott Walker rescues Americans from ObamaCare" is a headline that must never, EVER be written.

And so it shan't - just as Governor Walker has already predicted.

Oh, and don't give the aforementioned Mr. Gruber too big a pat on the back:

Still, Gruber told Fox News other plans can’t go as far as the [Una]ffordable Care[-Less] Act.

“I’ve yet to hear a Republican alternative which covers nearly as many uninsured or even half as many uninsured or offers evidence-based solutions to the health care cost crisis,” he told Fox News.

You mean like ObamaCare has reduced the number of insured  by over five million (so far) and explosively spiked the health care cost crisis, Mr. Gruber?  I think I'll take my chances with WalkerCare - and there'll be tens of millions of voters who'll be with me on that one.

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