In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, some Republican Governors are betting that the Affordable Care Act won’t survive repeal.
(h/t Yahoo! News)
The Supreme Court upheld President Barack Obama’s health care law on Thursday, but Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a possible Republican vice presidential contender who has refused to establish a federally mandated health care exchange in his state, said Friday that he will continue to ignore it.
“We’re not going to start implementing Obamacare,” Jindal said during a conference call with Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. “We’re committed to working to elect Gov. Romney to repeal Obamacare.”
Under the Affordable Care Act, states must set up a health insurance exchange program by Jan. 1, 2014, and will receive grants from the federal government to implement it. Several Republican governors, including both Jindal and McDonnell, have put off setting up the exchanges in the hope that the law would be repealed or struck down by the court. Now that the law has been upheld, Jindal said he won’t change course and is looking to presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to lead the repeal effort if he takes office in 2013.
Congressional Democrats, obviously, are singing a very different tune:
Speaking outside the Senate floor Thursday, Senate Democratic leaders criticized Republicans for moving forward with another repeal vote after the Supreme Court ruled its key provisions constitutional.
“Now that all three branches of government have ratified the law, the time for quarreling is over,” said New York Sen. Chuck Schumer. “The time for disputing its validity is over. Congress should now return to its full time focus: The issue of jobs and the economy in America.”
“If you ask people what they want us to focus on,” he added, “it’s not rehashing health care.”
As much as Democrats would like to argue that the health care issue has been decided and the American people are ready to move on, the reality is that this just simply isn’t the case.
A Rasmussen poll taken 3 days before yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling shows a 15 point gap among Americans who favor repeal versus those who oppose it. In the poll, 54% of those surveyed want the law repealed, while only 39% oppose repeal.
It will be interesting to see if the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the law to survive as a tax will have any effect on those numbers.
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