If Republicans truly want to go to the mat over the Affordable Care Act — and they say they do — then give Americans what they want.
A reasonable alternative.
The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision Thursday, upheld the law declaring that penalizing people who can afford insurance but don’t buy it can be treated as a tax.
Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court’s four liberal justices — Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor — to form the 5-4 majority.
Republicans now hope the court’s ruling will fire up their supporters and inflame popular opposition to the law. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and GOP congressional candidates promise to repeal the law if voters put them in power.
Then what?
We know the law is not popular with Americans. Each time The Associated Press has asked in polls, more than eight in 10 Americans have said the government should not have the right to require everyone to buy health insurance. Many elderly Americans are worried about the cuts in reimbursements paid to hospitals and insurers by Medicare, which have already started and will grow deeper.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said President Barack Obama deceived Americans by denying that the penalty on the uninsured amounts to a tax. The ruling marks “a fresh start on the road to repeal,” he declared.
Given that, the Republicans would do well to offer up their own plan prior to the November election. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., while he served Southwest Missouri in the House, did just that.
Some of his proposals were similar to the ACA. He told the Globe’s editorial board almost two years ago that people should not be denied health coverage if they had pre-existing conditions. He also had no problems with allowing those up to age 26 to continue on their parents’ insurance. But he parted ways on cuts to Medicare and the law’s lack of medical liability reform.
His attitude was and still is today: Let’s keep what works and fix what’s broken.
Republicans would do well to go back to Blunt’s alternative health care plan he offered up some two years ago. Repealing the law without a viable solution for those who can’t afford insurance or who can’t get health insurance does not serve this nation.
Opinion
Our View: GOP must offer new medicine
- Opinion
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Our View: Spying on us
Distrust of government secrecy has been elevated to an exceptional level with the disclosure the Justice Department covertly examined two months of Associated Press phone records to determine who leaked details to the AP about a foiled terrorist plot.
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Our View: Pass on the legacy
Forty hungry members of the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry began gathering corn at the Rader farm near the village of Sherwood when they were ambushed by a guerrilla band of about 70 Southern sympathizers.
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Our View: Big Brother looms large
The federal government, working under the cloak of secrecy, has been having a heyday at the expense of all Americans.
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Our View: Disgraceful military assault
We want to make one thing clear: A sexual assault is not a sex scandal. Nor can the rise in sexual assaults in the military be justified in any way.
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Elliott Denniston, guest columnist: Right-to-work laws only hurt workers
Middle-class workers have been fighting an uphill battle for the past 30 years.
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Your View: Food drive efforts
Branch No. 366 of the National Association of Letter Carriers along with the National Rural Letter Carriers Association, the American Postal Workers Union and the U.S. Postal Service would like to thank all the area communities that participated in the 2013 Stamp Out Hunger food drive.
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Your View: More about tax credit
The Globe’s editorial in “Our View” (May 10) may have left readers with a few inaccurate impressions.
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Other Views: Sickening disparity
Don’t feel bad if you don’t understand the wide, sometimes huge, discrepancies in fees hospitals charge for the same procedure. Or if you don’t understand the arithmetical magic the hospitals use to arrive at those fees.
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Carol Stark: America in need of more 'momisms'
Several years ago, I attended a writing workshop where one of the sessions was called “Tell it to Mom.”
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Our View: Keep learning
Donna Maus, a biology teacher from St. Mary’s Colgan High School in Pittsburg, Kan., told a group of top students, their parents and their teachers something we think everyone needs to hear.
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