Why The NH State Senate Republicans Must Bail on BradleyCare! - Granite Grok

Why The NH State Senate Republicans Must Bail on BradleyCare!

faustEvery day there are more people, and more reasons made public for not expanding Medicaid in New Hampshire–what I have dubbed ‘BradleyCare!  But this may be the single most important reason of all.

I better preface this first.

Do you recall the left’s reaction to the O’Brien Budget?  Do you remember how Democrats responded when the Republican Executive Council didn’t want to fund Planned Parenthood?  They freaked out.  They freaked out for weeks.  They freak out over the slightest sliver of light if it threatens their agenda.

Why are they not freaking out over BradleyCare! and it’s “guarantee” to sunset the program?

The sunset provision must either work to the Democrats Political advantage and/or advance their policy goals.  if it doe not they would be bleeding out their eyes in opposition to it.

Every so-called non-profit would be protesting, every Newspaper would be flooded with LTE’s.  Harrell Kirstein would be crooning about the excellent care he is getting as a result of his ObamCare insurance to treat the carpal-tunnel he got cranking out press releases opposing BradleyCare.

But instead we get a passive acceptance,  a warm embrace, dare I use the word tolerance, from the New Hampshire left.  It is as if they are waiting for Jeb to drive the Hopey-Changey bus to their stop so they can all get on, knowing that they will take the state of New Hampshire with them, and that once we are on board we will NEVER be able to get back off.

The House plan is worse, but that is no excuse for wrecking the state by another name.  And protecting the New Hampshire advantage is doing something.  Protecting New Hampshire citizens from the inevitable funding cuts and the insecurity of not knowing how we will deal with them is doing something.    Defending our most vulnerable from failed Federal policies and all the nasty side-effects of Medicaid is doing something.  This is all bad and the NH Senate majority needs to stop wasting time making excuses for why they think they have to give in and to start directing that energy into  public narrative about why we can do it better ourselves.

You don’t improve people’s outcomes by hanging them on a promise  with a predetermined expiration date.  You don’t better people’s lives by signing NH Medicade is Bradley Careup for a program “funded” by a government that will down-shift those costs in a heartbeat to cut its out-of-control-debt, knowing it can now pressure the states who took their bait (which Medicaid expansion is) to find a way to make them keep a promise the Feds knew they could never keep.

It doesn’t work, we will be trapped, and if you hadn’t noticed, Democrats want that, they want the broad-based tax we will have to pass to fund it, and just as a reminder, Democrats do not stay silent unless they stand to win.  And it is awfully quiet on the left..

The NH Republican Senate needs to oppose SB 413.  They must oppose the House plan.  They must stand firm against the destruction of the New Hampshire advantage.

Then, if they are serious, they will study the real problem being created by ObamaCare, and past Democrat mandates placed on the delivery of health care in our state   They will ask how having only 1 of 2 providers of anything is ever good for cost or service?  They will ask hard questions about how we got here, and seek responsible solutions that may even require them to refuse to implement other Federal acts of overreach, even overturn them, by opening up the insurance market and incentivizing competition to bring rates down and increase options.

Do something that will create choices, options, available nowhere else.  Be innovative.

Do you want to create jobs?  Would you want to raise revenues?  Revenues you could use to fund a New Hampshire solution to whatever actual problems need solving with regard to insurance and health services?  Give business owners a refuge from ObamaCare instead of rushing to redefine the terms of our surrender.

Democrats will hate it, which is why it should be at the top of your list of thing to do right after you stand up and stop the effort to throw New Hampshire down the Medicaid expansion hole.

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