OPINION:
Jonathan Gruber was thrust to the center stage of the Obamacare debate with his remark that only the “stupidity of the American voter” made passage of Obamacare possible. Stupid is as stupid does, as the old folk wisdom has it, and the Republican Governors Association has elevated to chairman a governor who has undercut the Republican argument that Obamacare is a bad thing. Gov. Bill Haslem of Tennessee actually likes it.
Mr. Haslam has announced a “verbal agreement” with the Health and Human Services Department to expand Medicaid under Obamacare. The governor’s expansion of Obamacare Medicaid welfare sets a bad example for his party’s new and incumbent governors. It sends a bad message to voters, too, who are likely to be unforgiving of broken promises.
Six weeks ago, voters across the country sent a wave of Obamacare skeptics into office at nearly every level of government, with firm instructions to kill and replace the president’s health care scheme. Mr. Haslam seems determined to destroy Republican resolve and credibility.
The allure of “free” money from Washington is so powerful that it casts aside the Republican legacy of fighting big-government waste and profligacy, and leaves it to Washington to dictate how Obamacare expands in Tennessee.
Voters have made it clear that they want their states to act differently from how the government operates in Washington. They have elevated candidates to statehouses who stand in sharp contrast to the politicians inside the Beltway: bold reformers, leaders in opposition to federal intrusion, and soldiers for smaller government. Indeed, the next Republican president may come from those ranks of the skeptical and the resolute.
Mr. Haslam disguises his Obamacare expansion with a misleading name (Insure Tennessee), flowery buzzwords (a market-based Tennessee solution) and even a little conservative window dressing that the Obama administration is sure to reject, as it did for Iowa and Pennsylvania. But a wolf disguised in sheep’s clothing is still a hungry wolf.
Like all Obamacare Medicaid expansions, Mr. Haslam’s expansion scheme expands Medicaid to capture the Obamacare expansion population, using federal dollars.
Whom does Mr. Haslam’s expansion plan really help? According to the Urban Institute, 88 percent of the Tennessee expansion population is comprised of able-bodied, working-age adults without children. When nine out of 10 of these new Medicaid welfare recipients are healthy adults who should be expected to take care of themselves without a government crutch, no amount of conservative window dressing can hide the truth.
The Congressional Budget Office says Medicaid expansion discourages work, and this will further damage the slowly recovering Tennessee economy.
Mr. Haslam’s foolish flip-floppery is doubly unwise because Tennessee has been burned by Medicaid expansion before. When the state’s most recent Republican governor expanded Medicaid eligibility 15 years ago, it nearly bankrupted the state. The actual needy, struggling by on Medicaid, had fewer and fewer services.
Rather than leading a conservative opposition to Obamacare, Mr. Haslam is making Obamacare more intrusive and props up the liberal ideology behind it. This is not what voters demanded, loud and clear, on Election Day. Mr. Haslam goes athwart the interests of the patients and taxpayers of Tennessee and Republican prospects for sustained electoral success.
He betrays conservative interests that put him where he is. He should reconsider his apostasy.
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