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Health & Fitness

Bailing Out Obama: GOP Needs to Increase Its Ransom Demands

In a Tuesday interview with OZY.com, former President Bill Clinton opined, “Even if it takes a change in the (Obamacare) law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what (health insurance) they’ve got.

A few hours later, the Hill reported that “President Obama agrees with former President Clinton that people who like their insurance should be able to keep it under ObamaCare.”

As long as Barack “Judge, Jury, and Executioner” Obama has made it a (so far successful) tactic to try Republicans in the court of public opinion as hostage-takers, it’s time that the GOP at least collect some ransom.

At no point during the Obama reign have Republicans had the leverage they currently hold over the president and his Democratic congressional henchmen.

In order to save the country from Obamacare’s eventual intentional destruction of the private health insurance industry, Republicans must win elections — starting in less than a year. Simply delaying the inevitable results of the Affordable Care Act — which is what Sen. Johnson’s bill would accomplish — would be worse than doing nothing.

Not only does it allow the continuation of Obama’s fundamental assault on the health care industry, but it bails out vulnerable Democrats in 2014 and 2016, decreasing the likelihood of a GOP majority in the Senate and — this being the reason that Bill Clinton opened his mouth to begin with.

Why would Republicans agree to bail out a president who is about to destroy what little political capital he has remaining, without getting a huge payoff in return?

Republicans must be careful as they play this game, knowing that if they call for substantial reform to Obamacare — reform so significant that it could be seen as nearly undoing the law, or at least making other changes worthy of GOP compromise — Democrats will say, “Yet again, the GOP is holding the country hostage, preventing your ability to keep your health insurance in order to get some extreme conservative policy wish.”

But the GOP should bravely go down that road anyway, demanding something important — something like tort reform, or interstate purchase of health insurance — while trying to keep partial relief from the negative impact of Obamacare limited to one year so that repeal remains an issue — the issue — in 2014.

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