On Tuesday, Fox News contributor and Washington Post columnist Dr. Charles Krauthammer said the core issue creating the struggle for Republicans to repeal Obamacare is not necessarily a messaging problem or a failure of leadership by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, but, rather, the out-of-control growth of entitlements, namely Medicaid. As noted by the scholar, Medicaid was “inflated by Obamacare to include able-bodied workers up to 400 percent of the poverty line”; such a large entitlement is almost impossible to reign in once unleashed.
“Their problem is not — forgive me — this is not a failure of communication as in ‘Cool Hand Luke,’ this is a failure of expectations,” Krauthammer said on Fox News’ Special Report. “The country does not want to see the entitlements that were handed out by Obamacare retracted. That’s the issue. It’s not communication. It’s not the lack of coordination between the House and Senate. It’s the fact that Medicare was inflated. It was supposed to be for women and poor children and the disabled. It was inflated by Obama to include able-bodied workers up to 400 percent of the poverty line. So this is completely out of its original intent.”
The columnist explained that even the marginal cut to Medicaid proposed in the current Republican health care bill is deterring Republican lawmakers from signing on.
“The fight now, and the reason a lot of moderate Republicans are scared is because under this bill it goes from 400 percent down to 350 percent,” he said. “This is a marginal retrenchment of what makes you eligible for Medicaid. And people are used to what was. They don’t want to give it back. That’s the reason that Obamacare repeal is in trouble.”
As noted by the author, offering entitlements to the American people is a longtime winning strategy by Democrats, dating back to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.
“The country is not where it was seven years ago. It’s the reason that the Left usually wins, because when you hand out goodies since the New Deal, it is extremely hard to bring them back. That’s the core issue here,” he explained.
Krauthammer’s argument is hard to rebut, but radio talk show host Laura Ingraham added another element to the conversation: the Republicans’ messaging, or lack there of, to sell their brand of health care, which is rooted in free market capitalism and subsequent innovation as a way to lower costs, is seriously deficient.
“I think if a really good strong communication strategy on a free market approach to health care was done, I think you’d have a much better look at public approval polls. … I think that was absent here. I think it’s part White House failure. I think it’s part congressional Republican failure,” she said. “The Democrats are, of course, exploiting that.”
You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who’d disagree with the idea that Republicans usually run into a messaging problem.
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