Stiles and State Senate GOP Try To Keep NH in the Dark

Scot Lehigh of the Boston Globe said it best. When it comes to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), Republicans act like Captain Ahab in mad pursuit of the great white whale, Moby Dick. No matter how much damage they do to others or, indeed, themselves, the GOP can't bring themselves to end their  fanatic and ill-fated  attempts to block a bill that has become the law of the land.

Only a new Congress and Administration can overturn the Affordable Care Act, so, in that sense, current Republican efforts are a waste of time.  Yet, like Captain Ahab, they keep beckoning the rest of us to join them as they sink beneath the waves.

The Republican-controlled New Hampshire State Senate has become part of this ship of fools. On June 6, Republicans in the Senate killed a bill (HB 668) accepting federal money to help the uninsured sign up for the new insurance offered by the Affordable Care Act. The vote was 13 to 11 with all Republican senators (including our local Republican state senator Nancy Stiles) in the majority and all Democratic senators in opposition to them.

But not so fast. A way was found to circumvent Republican refusal of the money. In an editorial, the Boston Globe (8/11/13) wrote, "The (NH) State House guardians of ignorance were armed to the teeth with objections to Obamacare and weapons of obstruction. But they were outflanked by people who believe the state's residents have a right to know what their options are for obtaining health insurance under the federal Affordable Care Act . . . Kudos to the state Health Advisory Board, the Insurance Department, the federal Center for Medicaid Services and the New Hampshire Health Plan . . . They found a way for New Hampshire to accept a $5.4 million dollar grant to pay for an effort to educate consumers about the federal health care law and the New Hampshire health Insurance marketplace."

Why did State Senate Republicans want to block this money? If the public didn't know how to obtain the new Affordable Care Act insurance, great confusion, bewilderment and annoyance would result. Republicans could then claim that the chaos (that their refusal to take the money had created) was due to problems in the Affordable Care Act. And the resulting uproar would give them a wonderful manufactured issue to use against the Democrats in the 2014 election.

At some point, wouldn't it be nice if the GOP  promoted bills designed to help the lot of the average person instead of concocting  phony schemes designed to get themselves elected?