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One of the striking things about Sen. Rick Scott’s new policy blueprint is its scope: It’s one thing for a Republican to roll out a handful of vague, pleasant-sounding ideas; it’s something else when a sitting GOP senator unveils a 31-page document, chock full of right-wing elements.
Josh Barro joked, “The whole Rick Scott document has a hilarious ‘back of a napkin’ feel, like they had a brainstorming session, and then instead of talking to the pollsters or the bean-counters about the ideas they came up with, they just dumped everything on the whiteboard into a PowerPoint.”
Quite right. The Florida senator took a kitchen-sink approach, throwing together ideas related to education, race, crime, immigration, the economy, culture-war issues, the budget, and on and on.
But Scott’s plan didn’t mention health care.
There were no references to the Affordable Care Act. “Obamacare” went unnoticed. The Republican senator wants to pursue an almost cartoonishly reactionary agenda on a wide range of issues, but repealing the ACA didn’t make the cut.
Literally the only reference to “health care” in the entire 31-page document was a passing reference to giving veterans more private-sector choices. That’s it. That’s the contribution Scott’s lengthy blueprint makes to the debate over health care policy.
It comes a week after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was asked on Fox News about the GOP’s policy priorities for the next Congress. The California Republican pointed in a variety directions — including prioritizing a discredited conspiracy theory — but McCarthy made no mention of health care.
For those of us who covered the political fight over the Affordable Care Act, this day seemed implausible. Before Barack Obama signed the reform package into law, Republicans condemned it as an economy destroying attack on free enterprise and the American way of life. After the ACA became law, Republicans spent years, not only denouncing the reforms, but voting several dozen times to repeal “Obamacare.”
At one point, then-Rep. Mick Mulvaney — before he joined Donald Trump’s White House team — characterized ACA repeal votes as rites of passage for Republicans on Capitol Hill. They didn’t care whether their repeal bills passed; they cared about going through the motions for the purpose of political theatrics.
Nearly 12 years after the Affordable Care Act became law of the land, the debate appears to have run its course. “Obamacare” is working; it’s popular; it’s affordable; it’s withstood far too many legal challenges; and it no longer has a Republican-imposed target on its back.