“I’ve made up my mind -- don’t confuse me with the facts” could be Republicans’ unofficial motto when it comes to Obamacare, suggested New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait in a Tuesday post concerning decreased growth in health-care costs.
Chait asserted that “some aspects of the lower health-care-inflation rate can be clearly tied to Obamacare reforms,” though he allowed that “it’s impossible to know just what proportion of credit the law deserves for the lower inflation rate.” His main point, however, was that statistical analysis regarding the effects of the ACA is irrelevant to hyperideological GOPers.
“It’s obvious that no conceivable data can falsify conservative opposition to Obamacare,” wrote Chait. “The premise that Obamacare has failed is a matter of doctrinal writ, as holy as the sanctity of the great Ronald Reagan. To abandon this position is to abandon conservatism itself…If [Donald] Trump’s campaign has demonstrated anything, it is the hopelessness of crafting technocratic justifications for the pulsating right-wing Id.”
From Chait’s post (bolding added):
During the Obama era, the keenest minds in the conservative movement have had to develop policy responses to the administration’s agenda. But…Republican politicians…had to operate within the bounds of what their voters considered acceptable. And Republican voters, as the 2016 election cycle has made abundantly clear to even those long committed to denying it, are bat-shit crazy.
That frothing quality burst forth in its fullest form during the debate over health-care reform, in the summer of 2009. Angry Republicans flooded town hall meetings to denounce [the] law…identifying sources of grievance both real (cuts to Medicare) and imagined (death panels). The Republican Party’s stance on health-care reform took shape during those days of rage, and even six years after the law’s passage, its position on Obamacare has remained unaltered…
One of Obamacare’s goals…was to “bend the curve” of health-care inflation…Indeed, health-care inflation has not only slowed, it has dropped to the lowest level since the government began measuring it…
Some aspects of the lower health-care-inflation rate can be clearly tied to Obamacare reforms…Obamacare changed its reimbursements to penalize hospitals with high readmission rates. And sure enough, medical errors in hospitals are down, as are patient readmission rates…
…It’s impossible to know just what proportion of credit the law deserves for the lower inflation rate, some of which might have occurred anyway...
Among conservatives, though, it remains an unchallengeable certainty that Obamacare has failed…
…It’s obvious that no conceivable data can falsify conservative opposition to Obamacare. The premise that Obamacare has failed is a matter of doctrinal writ, as holy as the sanctity of the great Ronald Reagan. To abandon this position is to abandon conservatism itself…Republicans hate Obamacare not for its concrete outcomes but for what it represents to them. If Trump’s campaign has demonstrated anything, it is the hopelessness of crafting technocratic justifications for the pulsating right-wing Id.
