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THE OPINION PAGES | EDITORIAL
The Vanishing Cry of Repeal It
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD JUNE 1, 2014
It was supposed to be so easy this election year for Republican congressional candidates. All they would
have to do was shout repeal Obamacare! and make a crack about government doctors and broken
websites, and they could coast into office on a wave of public fury. The failure of the Affordable Care Act
was simply assumed.
But it has not quite worked out that way. The government website was fixed, and 8.1 million people
managed to sign up for insurance through the exchanges. An additional 4.8 million people received
coverage through Medicaid and the Childrens Health Insurance Program. Three million people under
the age of 26 were covered by their parents plans. Though the law itself has never been widely popular,
most people say they like its component parts, and a large majority now says it wants the law improved
rather than repealed.
That sentiment conflicts with the Republican playbook, which party leaders are suddenly trying to
rewrite. The result has been an incoherent mishmash of positions, as candidates try to straddle a
widening gap between blind hatred of health reform and the publics growing recognition that much of
it is working.
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Sometimes the dissonance reaches nearly comic levels. The Senate minority leader, Mitch
McConnell, recently won his partys primary for his Kentucky Senate seat in part by saying he wanted to
repeal the health law root and branch. Last week, though, he was asked what repeal would mean for
the 413,000 people who had signed up for insurance under Kynect, Kentuckys state-run exchange. I
think thats unconnected to my comments about the overall question, he said. Mr. McConnell knows
full well, of course, that the popular Kynect program was created by the Affordable Care Act and could
not exist without it, but he is hoping to fool his constituents into believing the health care access they like
has nothing to do with the law he has fought against for so long or with President Obama.
His campaign even suggested he would allow many of the 300,000 Kentuckians who signed up for
Medicaid solely because of the laws expansion to stay covered after repeal, which makes about as
much sense as his previous statement.
Many other Republican candidates have also switched from brimstone to mush on the issue, no
longer claiming they will repeal the law but instead will replace it or fix it in some unspecified way
that could not possibly work. An example is an ad from the United States Chamber of Commerce in
support of Richard Tisei, a Republican running for a Massachusetts congressional seat, which promises
that he would work in a bipartisan manner to fix health care the right way.
And just what is that right way? He wants to instill free-market solutions, the ad says, end the
job-killing tax on medical devices and curb lawsuit abuse to bring down the cost of care. None of which
has anything to do with bringing care to the uninsured, or those with pre-existing conditions.
Scott Brown, who failed to sell this kind of nonsense in the Senate race in Massachusetts in 2012, is
now peddling it in New Hampshire, where he is running for the Senate by saying the health law is
hurting families. But not his family, apparently; in 2012, he admitted to keeping his daughter, then 23,
on his policy, thanks to the law.
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The good news is that some Democratic candidates, sensing the same change in the weather, are
beginning to campaign on the laws benefits. Improving access to health care was the right thing for the
country, and supporting it may turn out to be good politics, too.
Meet The New York Timess Editorial Board
A version of this editorial appears in print on June 2, 2014, on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: The Vanishing Cry of
Repeal It.
2014 The New York Times Company