You know how Republicans like Ed Gillespie and Barbara Comstock have been attacking Mark Warner, John Foust, and other Democrats because – as Comstock claims – “250,000 Virginians are losing their healthcare due to #ObamaCare?” Except here’s the thing: as Mark Warner’s spokesperson Kevin Hall has correctly pointed out:
Federal policy allows states to continue to give consumers the option of keeping their existing plans, so this is now a state issue…The Virginia legislature will have an opportunity in next week’s special session to allow the state insurance commissioner to give consumers the option of keeping their current plans. Thirty-seven states, including North Carolina, have already done that, and the Virginia General Assembly can and should do the same.
So, “next week’s special session” has no come and gone, and the Republican-controlled Virginia legislature did…that’s right, absolutely NOTHING to remedy a problem they claim is SUCH a big deal, and which they have it 100% within their power to fix. See the bill by State Sen. George Barker below, note that it fixes the problem, and pay careful attention to what the Republican-controlled State Senate did with the bill. That’s right, they referred it to committee, where presumably it will now sit until the legislature comes back in 2015 (at which point they’ll undoubtedly kill it or send it to legislative “Siberia” yet again). But wait, you ask, if Republicans truly believe that this is such an urgent problem, and if they are fully capable of fixing it (which they are), then why didn’t they…ya know, fix it?!? Are you saying that Republicans are 100% (gasp!) playing politics here, that they aren’t truly concerned about the actual issue itself (let alone the Virginians affected)? To answer my own rhetorical question: why yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. 🙂
Sign up for the Blue Virginia weekly newsletter
